Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
An investigation found AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered lower-income and least-White neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as speedy connections they offered in other parts of town -Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin writing for The Markup
Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of a study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.
Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.
Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic
Is Taylor Swift doing a better job at building a metaverse than Mark Zuckerberg right now?
Well, in the sense that Mark Zuckerberg is almost totally failing, yeah. This may seem like a leap, but a metaverse—a futuristic virtual-reality world—is essentially a shared online experience, which is not all that different from the online fanscape that Swifties inhabit. It sounds like the Swifties might be living in something that is pretty close to a metaverse currently. They’ll go wherever she goes. So it’s not a virtual world, but it’s a virtual community. That’s really what makes the metaverse and metaverse platforms powerful. People building metaverse platforms, most of them think it’s a technology question. But it’s really a community and culture question.
Wagner James Au quoted in The Atlantic
Good game designers know how to draw us in by catering to some very basic emotional needs. (Researcher Jane McGonigal) notes that the best games have four elements: clear goals that allow us to feel a sense of purpose; rules that make the task harder and thereby challenge our creativity; rapid feedback to chart our progress; and an experience that is voluntary.
Wouldn't it be nice if work was more like a video game? Your boss would articulate a clear mission and set of milestones you were expected to meet. You would go into the office every day and receive ongoing feedback about your progress so you could see the impact you are having.
The truth, of course, is that reality is messy. Our goals are fuzzy, our progress unclear. Video games, the majority of which now focus on getting us to cooperate rather than compete, offer a more fulfilling existence, McGonigal argues.
"We all want to find more meaning in what we do, like we're part of something bigger," McGonigal said. "Games give us a place to feel that, to cooperate and do something that is more satisfying."
Chris O'Brien, Mercury News Columnist
"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of a study to be published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania.
In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers write. What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at Florida State University, was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003.
The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the overall group. In the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use your highest strengths and talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self."
For instance, having more meaning in one's life was associated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively seek meaning out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness. Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves, they also worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study.
Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic
Free short online courses to strengthen your skills and add a line to your resume. Most of these Poynter courses are one-hour in length or less.
Journalism Fundamentals: Craft & Values - A five-hour, self-directed course that covers basics in five areas: newsgathering, interviewing, ethics, law and diversity.
Telling Stories with Sound - Learn the fundamentals of audio reporting and editing in this self-directed course.
How to Spot Misinformation Online - Learn simple digital literacy skills to outsmart algorithms, detect falsehoods and make decisions based on factual information
Understanding Title IX - This course is designed to help journalists understand the applications of Title IX.
Clear, Strong Writing for Broadcast Journalism - One-hour video tutorial
Powerful Writing: Leverage Your Video and Sound - In this one-hour video tutorial, early-career journalists will learn how to seamlessly combine audio, video and copy in captivating news packages.
Writing for the Ear - In this five-part course, you’ll learn everything you need to write more effective audio narratives.
Fact-Check It: Digital Tools to Verify Everything Online
News Sense: The Building Blocks of News - What makes an idea or event a news story?
Cleaning Your Copy: Grammar, Style and More - Finding and fixing the most common style, grammar and punctuation errors.
Avoiding Plagiarism and Fabrication - For authors, editors, educators, journalists, journalism students, news producers and news consumers
The Writer’s Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use
Ethics of Journalism Build or refine your process for making ethical decisions
Conducting Interviews that Matter
Make Design More Inclusive: Defeat Unconscious Bias in Visuals
Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers -Three important areas of media law that specifically relate to gathering information and publishing online: defamation, privacy and copyright
Freedom of Information and Your Right to Know -How to use the Freedom of Information Act, Public Records Laws and Open Meetings Laws to uphold your right to know the government’s actions
Journalism and Trauma - How traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect
How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust (International Edition) -What news audiences in various parts of the world don’t understand about how journalism works
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he really has a hole in his head.
Staying somewhere where you are no longer happy, and doing things that you’ve long ago stopped being surprised or fulfilled by, is never a good thing. Yes, there will be a difficult moment or several during the moving process, but it is at least a step towards taking active change in your life and putting it on a path that you want to see it go. I mean, if you’re at a point in your life where you are legitimately saying you are “over” the “drama” of your group — and you’re not on a reality show — there have to be some changes to make.
In any case, choosing to be somewhere because it’s familiar is a short-term fix to what is certainly a much bigger problem. There is a certain degree of charm that your hometown can take on after a long enough separation, and maybe it will end up proving the right place for you at some later point in your life. But don’t we all owe it to ourselves to explore a bit as an adult, and listen to ourselves when we constantly mutter how unhappy we are? A move is never a guarantee of a better life, but it is a guarantee of doing something you actually want to do, even if it means taking a chance.
Chelsea Fagan writing in Thought Catalog
Incompetent people lack the skills to improve because they are unable to distinguish between incompetence and competence. Incompetent people overestimate their own competence and, failing to sense of mismatch between their performance and what is desirable, see no need to try to improve. Incompetent people can be taught to raise their competence by learning the skills to judge their own performance more accurately.
To become more competent, or even expert, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don't know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.
Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
Fade In
Script-writing software with similar features toFinal Draft without the price tag. Not as many of the extras that come withFinal Draft but only $50. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Final Draft*
Industry standard for writing screenplays on both Windows and Mac. Notes section for keeping track of characters, special scene view to get an overview, index card system for summaries, etc. $170.
Trelby
Free script-writing alternative to Final Draft and Fade In. Enough features to get you started.
TV Tropes
Fiction writing help through examination of storytelling devices in creative works.
The best thing you can do is get good at being you. -Denise the Menace
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. –Friedrich Nietzsche
Looking for some tools (apps and online) that will help you with editing your writing (or the writing of others)? Here are some useful options. The tech tools site also has a list of links to writing helps for better organization, academic papers, and putting together scripts. If you have other suggestions, feel free to send them my way.
1Checker
Mac app that checks your grammar and spelling. Free.
After the Deadline*
Checks your story for grammar, spelling and style. Works as a plugin for WordPress blogs, an add-on for the Firefox browser, etc.
AutoCrit
Scans your writing and highlights flaws such as repetitive words, overuse of adverbs and use of passive voice. $30 a month.
Check-Plagiarism
Free plagiarism checker.
Expresso*
An app that analyzes your writing, breaking down everything from which words you are using frequently to the number of times parts of speech come up in your writing. See what percentage of sentences are extra-long and which words are filler and which verbs are weak. Free.
Ginger
Writing tool that works as grammar checker, sentence rephraser, translator, dictionary and text reader. Free.
Grammarly*
Automated proofreader and personal grammar coach. Free version though the premium option has more features ($29.95).
Hemingway App
The Hemingway app is designed to make you a better writer by highlighting problems in your writing. Goal is to make more direct and active--more Hemingway-ey, as the Washington Post proclaims. Just paste your text into the app and it will highlight hard to read sentences, adverbs, complex phrases, and passive voice. Color coordinated highlighting. Click on these words to see the suggested alternatives. Word count, readability grade, etc. $6.99.
Marked 2
Tools for writers including word counts, document stats, highlights repeated words. Mac only. $9.99.
oDesk
Hire an experienced proofreader based on an hourly rate (typically one hour for every 5000 words).
PaperRater
Grammar, plagiarism, and spell checker. Mostly free but $7.50 per month for all features.
Proofread Bot
Shows your mistakes and what areas of your writing that could be strengthened. The more words reviewed, the greater the cost starting at $5 for 20,000 words.
Quillbot
A paraphrase and summarizer tool that will also check grammar and for plagiarism. Can extract the essential parts of a text into bullet points. The grammar checker lacks some of the advanced features offered through services like Grammarly, Compatible with Word and available on Google Docs and Chrome extensions. The free version is limited with a 700-character limit per check . $80 a year for more tools—extra for plagiarism checker per page.
Readable
Scores text based on how long or complicated your sentences are and level of accessibility. Free.
Readability Score
Cut and paste your text into a dialogue box to see the writing's grade level. Free, but for any contribution you get access to more advanced tools like readability alerts, PDF and Word doc processing and bulk uploads. TextEvaluator offers more feedback on the text.
Slickwrite
Writing app that checks grammar along with flow, structure, word frequency, and overused phrases.
TextEvaluator
Like Readability Score, it will tell you what grade level a piece of text is written on, the average length of sentences, etc. But TextEvaluator goes further, including grammatical complexity, insights on vocabulary, etc.
Word Counter
Cut and paste your document (or just type) to see how many words, characters, and sentences you are using. It shows what words are overused, the average number of words in your sentences, and the reading level you are writing at. Free.
Word Frequency Counter
See how often you use (and overuse) words and phrases in your writing.
Writefull
Checks your text against a huge database of correct language. Use it to find language you might not have considered. A desktop app that works with emails, Word docs, etc. Free.
In a 2014 study, researchers left people in a room alone for six to 15 minutes with nothing to do and found that the participants turned to almost any available activity, including administering painful electric shocks to themselves. Even pain—even, gasp, Twitter—is better than being alone with your thoughts. Despite the difficulties, learning to do nothing is good for us.
Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic
Experiencing more awe is associated with living healthier and more meaningful lives. A 2021 study reported that feeling more awe is correlated with reporting feeling lowered levels of daily stress.
Positive experiences of awe have also been found to increase feelings of well-being, life satisfaction and sense of meaning. Emerging research shows that experiencing awe may make us more curious, creative and compassionate people.
Richard Sima writing in the Washington Post
Distance acquaintances are more likely to help you get that new job than people you know well. That’s the finding of a new study of more than 20 million LinkedIn users. Researchers found weak ties, people with whom you have few mutual connections, are the most helpful. The “strength of weak ties” theory was first proposed in 1973 by a Johns Hopkins University sociologist.
Sinan Aral, a management professor at MIT and co-author of the paper says, “Moderately weak ties are the best. Not the weakest, but slightly stronger than the weakest.” The sweet spot is about 10 mutual connections between people. The usefulness of the connection to the other person falls when there are more than 10.
Bottom line: When we broaden our horizons then the networks of acquaintances can go to work for us. The power of weak ties may have implications for other parts of life as well.
Read more details of the study in the journal Science.
Think of Abraham Lincoln, who was elected president of the United States in 1860. he grew up on an isolated farm and had only one year of formal education. In those early years he was exposed to barely half a dozen books. In 1832 he lost his job and was defeated in the race for the Illinois legislature. In 1833 he failed in business. In 1834 he was elected to the state legislature, but in 1835 his sweetheart died and in 1836 he had a nervous breakdown. In 1838 he was defeated for nomination for Congress. In 1846 he was elected to Congress but in 1848 lost the renomination. In 1849 he was rejected for a federal land appointment, and in 1854 he was defeated for the Senate. In 1856 he was defeated for the nomination of vice president, and in 1858 he was again defeated for the Senate.
Many people, both at home and abroad, consider Lincoln to be the greatest president of all time. Yet it should be remembered how many failures and defeats marked his life and how humble and unpromising his early beginnings were.
Ted Engstrom, The Pursuit of Excellence
Looking to ‘own’ someone in argument has the wrong orientation, that of domination not only during the exchange but afterwards. Instead, we should approach our particular and individual exchanges with the hope that we can set the stage for a more respectful and honest culture of reasoning together. For sure, this is but a hope, but it’s better to serve as an example of that aspiration than as an example of how argument can go wrong.
Scott Aikinis writing in Psyche
Research (published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology) found that people who perform a random act of kindness tend to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And they believe that miscalculation could hold many of us back from doing nice things for others more often. “We have this negativity bias when it comes to social connection. We just don’t think the positive impact of our behaviors is as positive as it is,” said Marisa Franco, a psychologist. “With a study like this, I hope it will inspire more people to actually commit random acts of kindness,” she said.
Catherine Pearson writing in the New York Times
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