a fact takes more than merely petrifying faith

I think of viewing my Grandma Rosie
recomposed in her casket, maybe
like a painted cicada husk
left here, in this world, while the flying and chittering
lifted to another--which the rabbi promised happened
for a fact, and while I think a fact takes more
than merely petrifying faith, I do admit
that there are mysteries whizzing throughout an oxygen
  molecule

-Albert Goldbarth | The Title for a Collection of Poems Appears Out of Nowhere

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When I was ten or so, I was terrified of tornadoes. As soon as the sky got that particular color (fellow tornado alley residents know the one), I'd have a pile of blankets and pillows ready to take down to our basement at a moment's notice. It wasn't the only severe anxiety trigger I had at that age (house fires and home invasions were both on that hallowed list), but for a while at least, it was the worst.

It wasn't long after that my adolescent exploration into Christianity happened, and with it my fear of tornadoes eased up, though it's never really gone away. I had God on my side, see, and it made me feel safe. Later I realized, as I think most people realize, that the overlap of Christian America and tornado alley suggests a fair number of genuinely faithful people are killed by tornadoes every season, but at the time, a child's faith was enough to soften the terror I felt about something unpredictable and completely uncontrollable. 

A lot of this year, and today in particular, has me feeling like my ten year old self, hunkered into a nest of blankets at the top of the basement stairs. I know the blankets are only a comfort and that even the basement is only going to do me so much good, but I cling to feeling like anything can make any difference. Masks and isolation are a functional effort against a virus that doesn't abide much by justice, but they help and they're something. We cast votes like prayers even though the system that receives them isn't working the way we'd like to think it does. We grasp at imperfect solutions for the sake of being able to do something against a big, unpredictable world where our power is limited.

I've found myself thinking a lot more about religion lately, about how it might be nice to have something like that to bring comfort, but in giving myself space I know that my heart isn't and has never been comfortable diving into the specifics of faith, and I don't feel right about doing it in half-measures. So here I am, like the rest of the world's faithless, trying to calculate with 2/3 of the information what it means to live in this world. Making our own meaning.

This is the second time I've shared an Albert Goldbarth poem, and I've long loved his poem The Sciences Sing a Lullabye. Goldbarth's work frequently explores science and spirit and the space between them, and it's in that place that I most often find myself making a safety nest these days.

Conservation of energy means that everything in me, all the matter and chemical processes and electricity, are part of the universe and always will be. In this year where so many are lost, I've returned again and again to that. I find strength in knowing that not only our muscles and bones but also the electrochemical processes that are emotion and memory are all forever, that there is meaning, even if it won't always be for me. I do what I can to make sure the energy I'm giving the world in my living is the kind I want everyone else to have. ​

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What is the Internet Doing to Boomers' Brains? | Huffington Post

"It has become a familiar story: The older relative, the intensifying Fox News habit, the alarming Facebook posts, the inevitable detachment from reality. Losing a parent to the conservative cyber-swamp is such a common experience among millennials that it has produced an entire sub-genre of documentaries, books and online support groups. 

What it has not produced, however, is a satisfying answer to a simple question: What is the internet doing to our parents’ brains?

So far, research indicates that older Americans are a major vector of misinformation. 

“Older adults consume more misinformation and are more likely to share misinformation,” said Briony Swire-Thompson, a senior research scientist at Northeastern University who specializes in social media networks. During the 2016 election, users over 65 shared more fake news than any other age group and seven times more than users between 18 and 29. In 2020, Trump has dedicated almost half of his reelection campaign budget to Facebook ads — many of which include blatant misinformation — to users over 65 years old."

I've put together a presentation on understanding how your attention is being manipulated and leveraged on social media and the internet at large. To watch it, access the slides & transcript, and check out some more information on the subject, you can click the button to get it. Your email address will only trigger the presentation email, and won't change anything about your subscription to the Letters.

Get the Presentation

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• America's Future Might Be Lebanon | The Atlantic
• The Simple Rule That Could Keep COVID-19 Deaths Down | The Atlantic
• Let’s Just Lie on the Floor and Scream Together | Slate
• These Teachers Are Struggling To Pull Their Students Out Of A QAnon Rabbit Hole | Buzzfeed
• What Health Care Can Teach Other Industries About Preventing Burnout | Harvard Business Review
• Successful Remote Teams Communicate in Bursts | Harvard Business Review
• It's Time to Talk About COVID-19 and Surfaces Again | Wired

'“I think that one thing that has been tough about this pandemic is there has been such a strong initial message that gave people the wrong intuition,” says Morris, the Princeton researcher. For some people, and especially for institutions that were trying to reopen, liable to employees and visitors, priorities had been set based on what we knew back in the spring. It was also a way to show that they were doing something, Morris adds, even if it didn't do much. In July, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson coined the term “hygiene theater” to describe the rash of corporate disinfection. It’s still around.'

• Our Work-from-Anywhere Future | The Harvard Business Review

Well worth the read if your organization is actively or is thinking about transitioning to WFA.