Writing a bio is hard A couple of weeks ago, I took a bio-writing workshop with Katel LeDû, who some of you may know as the former CEO of A Book Apart. I don't know about you, but I think that writing a bio is some of the hardest self-promotion out there. Who am I, really? Am I the same person that you see on LinkedIn, or is there more? (Hint: there is always more.) First, let me say that this workshop is the most painless that I've ever been a part of. Words flowed clearly and easily. And...
13 days ago • 3 min read
What do you want to know? There are so many things that I could focus on in the never-ending firehose of bad news (gestures broadly at everything). Every week I try to find an angle that will inform and educate without depressing the hell out of all of us. So, do tell: what would you like to see? Do you want more explainers about how everything is interconnected? (Like when I talked about pandemics and climate or how urban heat islands are related to redlining policies of the past?) Would you...
20 days ago • 2 min read
How to think about what's possible Today we're going to chat about two ideas that spend a lot of time in my brain, at least in recent weeks. They are the Overton window and the Stockdale paradox. We'll start with the Overton window. This is the range of subjects that are broadly politically and socially acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. For example, there was a time where smoking in public was widely accepted as a perfectly fine thing to do. You could even smoke on...
27 days ago • 4 min read
Shelter from the storm Like many of us, I've been looking for ways to find refuge and community in the midst of the whirlwind of "unprecedented times" or whatever the hell all of this is. (*gestures broadly at everything*) So here are some things that I've found that are helping to keep me grounded. The local library. Let's just take a moment to marvel at the utterly genius concept of a free library. Free books. Free audiobooks. Free movies. Free computer access. Literacy education. Genealogy...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Doing good within narrow parameters I've been thinking a lot about how to still do good work in these "unprecedented times." It seems increasingly unlikely that the regulatory or management objectives align with public benefits. So how can we still do good within a structure that doesn't incentivize it? I'd been mulling over the idea of malicious compliance. But what is the opposite of that? What if we could do some good in this world while complying with management directives? For now, I'm...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
[Urban heat] islands in the sun? A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the connections between pandemics and climate. The feedback I got was basically "hey, connecting the dots is really interesting but also this is specifically very terrifying. So maybe something similar but with less pandemic trauma?" I hear you. Also, this is what it's like in my brain every day. But today we're going to talk about urban heat islands, why some places are so much hotter than others, and how this correlates...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
A tale of Whamageddon I need to take a break from the crushing onslaught of batshittery that is the U.S. news right now and talk about something lighter: the weird stuff that's going on with AI in music. I should preface this by saying that I have a weirdly good ear for music. (I also always have an earworm which may or may not be related. This morning I woke up to Simon and Garfunkel.) When something is out of tune, or in an unexpected octave, or just plain wrong, there is this weird mental...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Can AI do it better? Last week, I did a Button watch party about sustainable content design. In the course of the Q&A, Kristina Halvorson asked about AI: "But what if I'm planning a trip and I have ChatGPT pick my hotel, flight, and the top five things for me to do. Is that one search better than me looking at 100 different pages over the span of weeks?" My in-the-moment answer was "I don't know," because if we're talking direct metrics it really depends on the size of the pages, if you're...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Who needs the World Health Organization anyway? Well, here we are: week 1 of the new normal. It's going great so far. Given that the U.S. is now withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), it feels like a relevant time to talk about how climate change can (and will) fuel pandemics. Infectious diseases are always there, waiting in the wings for an opportunity to seek a broader audience. Many of them tend to be in wild animal populations that were once living quite comfortably in...
2 months ago • 3 min read