It's About Time
This newsletter is back once again with some new items worth reading for March 2021.
It’s been a while since the last Items Worth Reading newsletter landed in your inbox. Personal and professional responsibilities took over and then the COVID-19 pandemic made a newsletter about digital tools and technology feel really small. In the wake of half a million Americans dead, millions out of work, and the critical systems that keep us safe, healthy, and free under attack like never before - where does something like this even fit in?
The need to rebuild our communities including this one is not small. Although many people are feeling alone, isolated, and afraid of what the future may hold, we can emerge from this 21st century crisis stronger than ever. We owe it to those who lost loved ones, lost their livelihoods, or lost their way - to try to make tomorrow better than today.
It’s about time.
What’s the Big Idea?
American exceptionalism can be our greatest source of strength but it also makes us vulnerable to unconventional attacks when we think that things “can’t happen” here.
Way back in 2016, the RAND corporation issued a critical report on the “firehose of falsehood” aimed at Americans.
This firehose goes by many names and takes many forms but it follows a model that is easy to see if you know what to look for.
High volume and multi-channel
Rapid, continuous, and repetitive
Lacks commitment to objective reality
Lacks commitment to consistency
Traditional tools of journalism like fact checks or retractions are not enough to overcome the sticking power of first impressions if the first lie wins. Building up our institutions can help and the report has more recommendations.
Related: During the pandemic, millions of people felt a distortion in our perception of the passage of time that can best summed up by these yard signs:
OMG Please Make It Stop 2020
What a Year This Week Has Been
Some of this could be due to the firehose effect, multiple overlapping crisis situations, isolation due to travel restrictions, or it could just be the way our brains are wired. How are you feeling? Are we back to normal or is there a new normal?
How animals perceive time (the swordfish example blows my mind)
2 + 2 = 4 (not 5)
What’s Up With Social Media?
Moving beyond the social media feed + “Super Follows?” + Twitter’s new tools
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) Explained + First Tweet “just setting up my twttr” for sale as NFT + JPG file sells for $69 million (yes really)
Bots hyped up GameStop on major social media platforms + Bot or not?
Oversharing on social media? Watch out for the “Perfect Scam”
Learn Something New
April 1: Health care gets more affordable for millions of Americans + Special Enrollment Period runs through May 15 for most states
The Last Two Weeks in History
If we don’t learn the lessons of history, we may doom ourselves to repeat them. This section is inspired by Voices from the Past (a book I picked up while passing through small town West Virginia).
March 5, 1770 Facts Are Stubborn Things. The Boston Massacre lit the long fuse leading up to the Revolutionary War. The event itself was subject to a media war waged by pamphlets, hand drawings, and engravings. In the trial that followed, John Adams (future U.S. president) defended the British soldiers. He told the jury: “Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
March 7, 1815 The Emperor Strikes Back. Ex-emperor in exile Napoleon escaped from his forced early retirement on the Mediterranean island of Elba and returned to France. He was determined to reclaim the throne by force. In a made-for-TV “drop the mic” moment he marched out on the battlefield and said “If there is among you a soldier who wants to kill his emperor, here I am.” His bravado worked and he was able to turn the opposing army to his side without firing a shot as they cried out “Vive l’Empereur!”
March 7, 1965 A March for Freedom. Non-violent civil disobedience and Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge provided momentum to get the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed and signed into law. President Johnson called the events in Selma “a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.”
March 8, 1983 The Evil Empire. President Reagan shook up the Cold War stalemate by calling the Soviet Union an evil empire. He claimed that the USSR was “the focus of evil in the modern world.”