camila domonoske

what this looks like in economically quantifiable terms is that you would have to pay college students to get them to give up TikTok individually, but THEY WILL PAY YOU if you could ban TikTok from their campus collectively: https://home.uchicago.edu/bursztyn/CollectiveTraps_Nov2024.pdf

A recent cartoon for @newscientist

If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.

Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing yet.

by Wislawa Szymborska

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better –fifty-two

doubting every step –nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long –as high as forty-nine,

always good because they can’t be otherwise –four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy –eighteen,

suffering illusions induced by fleeting youth –sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly –forty and four,

living in constant fear of someone or something –seventy-seven,

capable of happiness –twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds –half at least,

cruel when forced by circumstances –better not to know even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact –just a couple more than wise before it,

taking only things from life –thirty (I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain, no flashlight in the dark –eighty-three sooner or later,

righteous –thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous and understanding –three,

worthy of compassion –ninety-nine,

The apocalypse is not a single event hovering in the future bearing down on us while we sit helplessly. We are at least 150 years into an ongoing "apocalypse."

The eastern USA's natural environments were fucking razed. We went scorched earth on everything.

In the 1930's, DEER and WILD TURKEYS were almost eliminated from my state. Deer. Wild turkeys. Common animals that you can see all the time.

I've seen animals close to my home that a person in the 1970's would not have been able to see. I saw river otters and a bald eagle a couple months ago! Farmer family friend remembers when a bald eagle sighting here made the news. There is a thriving population of elk (16,000 animals) in the Appalachian Mountains, for the first time since before 1850!

Our brilliant former intern (and now news blogger & intrepid reporter) Camila Domonoske has a secret second life as a poetry expert, so naturally she decided to approach former FBI director James Comey’s recent tweets as a poetic Work:

The Work opens with a peaceful autumnal scene and two terse, declarative sentences:

“Beautiful fall day at West Point. Lone kayaker on the Hudson.”

The tweet establishes a pattern that will continue throughout the Work, of a specific location tied to every observation. In this case, as the first sentence notes, it’s a location inextricably tied with America’s history of war — but as the second sentence reminds us, on a body of water intimately tied to the ideal of the peaceful American pastoral.

Experience the Work here. (We’re SO proud, y’all. SO proud.)