~the-official-medium | Bookmarks (106)

“Where are you from?”Here we go again.“The Bay Area.”“No, where are you really from? You know, China, Japan?”In an essay on this vexing question, Paul Yee describes how disorienting it can be to flatten your heritage into a single phrase, like: “I was born in the United States. I am American.”Yee’s father immigrated...

💍 It’s Friday, a word that comes from Old Norse for “Frigg’s Day” — which is often attributed to the Nordic goddess Frigg who rules over marriage, clairvoyance, and motherhood. In Latinate languages, Friday honors a similar goddess, Venus, hence “Vendredi” in French and “Viernes” in Spanish.Also today: the mighty el...

👋 Welcome back to the Daily EditionToday: Finding freedom in constraints, font pairings, and why assumptions are not your friendsBy Harris SockelPolice have arrested over 800 protesters on U.S. college campuses in the last two weeks. At Columbia University, near me, students set up camp outside the library and occup...

📱 ByteDance, TikTok’s owners, generated around $120 billion in revenue last year, 89% of the revenue Meta generated in the same year.Also today: the truth about virality, pushing Medium to its limits, and how to be the type of person everyone wants to knowBy Harris SockelLast week, nearly four years after it began w...

What do you see most each day? Since it’s 2024 and we all have supercomputers in our pockets, my phone screen is at the top of my list — and probably yours, too. We can discuss whether that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or somewhere in between, but shouldn’t we at least make the time we spend staring at these screens...

🐸 Greetings! It’s the Daily Edition.Also today: Storytelling tips from a lawyer, rattlesnake facts, and how to avoid awkward meeting endingsBy Carly Rose GillisIf you have a “desk job,” employee culture surveys are a fact of life. One common question in these surveys is: “Do you feel like you can bring your whole se...

📅 It’s Monday, and we’re 32.79% of the way through 2024Also today: The 25th anniversary of The Matrix, re-examining the JFK assassination, and strategic small talkBy Harris SockelIf you’ve used the internet, you’ve benefited from 26 words known as Section 230. This sentence, nested within the 1996 Telecommunications...

Photo by ameenfahmy on UnsplashHi everybody,A few weeks ago, we shared with you our latest thinking on A.I. generated writing on Medium, how we’re working to keep it out of your feed as well as out of the Partner Program. It’s clear that A.I. is a permanent part of our digital lives, for good and ill (Meta rolled ou...

In March 2024…You published 100,000 stories in publications.You created 63,570 new public lists.2,752 stories were Boosted last month. 1,824 of those were nominated by the 131 editors in the Boost Nomination Pilot.March’s most-highlighted passages“Honesty is direct, whereas dishonesty tends to be indirect.” — Joshua...

🎶 On this day in history: Kris Kross’ “Jump” hit №1 song (1992); U2’s The Joshua Tree hit №1 album (1987); the Jackson 5’s “ABC” bumped the Beatles’ “Let It Be” from the top spot (1970); Elvis Presley had his 13th №1 single, “Stuck on You” (1960).Today: Why big hits stay hits longer, first aids myths, and taking ins...

🎧 Good morning to the Taylor Swift earworm that might be stuck in your head this weekToday: Swiftian ancestry, life on O.J. Simpson’s block, and everyday magicBy Harris SockelMany of Taylor Swift’s fans know that “Marjorie” — a haunting ballad on her ninth album, Evermore — is dedicated to the opera singer Marjorie ...

👋 Welcome back to the Daily EditionToday: Taylor Swift breaks her own record, a jargon decoder, and how to give the best complimentsBy Harris SockelEvery word contains an imprint of its history — even corporate jargon.Case in point: Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired, has been updating this giant li...

📚 April 23rd is World Book Day, and also happens to be the date* a number of literary luminaries — from William Shakespeare to Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) — all diedAlso today: A year in the life of a poet laureate, an electrifying theory about bees, and why you should play video games at workBy Carl...

🌎 The Amazon Basin has been warming at an average of 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade since the 1980s, with some regions warming even fasterAlso today: evolving cities, old dogs, and marriage tipsBy Jon Gluck“What Is The Amazon ‘Tipping Point,’ Exactly?” by Quentin Septer doesn’t pull any punches. “The Amazon Rainfor...

Photo by Kyle Cleveland on UnsplashHi,If you’re like me, the act of trying to come to grips with the climate crisis does funny things to your brain. Like dealing with other unpleasant but nonetheless true facts of being human in our time (taxes, social media, the pandemic), thinking clearly and deeply about the chan...

👟 It’s Friday, and today marks the 127th anniversary of the first Boston marathon. Here’s Amby Burfoot, former editor of Runner’s World and champion of the 1968 marathon, on how he won.Today: The dual smartphone system, AI fails, and Hofstadter’s lawBy Harris SockelAs we go into the weekend, I want to point you towa...

🎂 It’s April 18th, which means happy birthday to Rick Moranis, Conan O’Brien, Kourtney Kardashian, America Ferrara, and many, many other people!Today: A wrenching recollection, and advice on how to make requests that actually get heardBy Scott LambIs there anything more miraculous in its simplicity and potential for...

👋 Welcome to the Daily EditionAlso today: Julian Assange, an AI music experiment, not your same-old Wordle starter words, and the power of bracing for the worstBy Jon GluckThe anti-diet movement is a welcome and long-overdue effort to combat fat-shaming and promote body positivity, right? Well, yes. But it’s also an...

👋 Welcome back to the Daily EditionToday: Slow creativity, the math powering neural networks, and a sleep tipBy Harris SockelPeter Higgs, the British physicist and Nobel laureate who predicted the existence of a “God particle” that gives everything in the universe its shape, died last week.Thankfully, on Medium, I f...

💰 Today is Tax Day in the U.S. — 66% of our tax dollars fund human services like education, Social Security, and veterans benefits.Today: The so-called anxious generation, tax poetry, and the 50/30/10/10 ruleBy Harris SockelGenerations are an invention. A French philosopher came up with the concept in the late 19th ...

Photo by Felipe Santana on UnsplashHi everyone,We’re celebrating something really special at Medium this week: Passing one million members! As our CEO Tony Stubblebine writes on our blog, it feels great knowing that the words, analysis, and opinions posted by writers and editors here are so valued by our community o...

🧠 In honor of World Autism Month, three neurodivergent people share their stories Also today: A devastating dual diagnosis, everything you always wanted to know about ticks (but were too creeped out to ask), and the power of living abroad By Jon GluckEvery April, the advocacy group Autism Speaks celebrates World Aut...

🍎 Today is the 48th anniversary of the release of the first Apple computer. It was only a motherboard — customers had to bring their own keyboards and displays.Today: Developing for Apple Vision Pro, childfree weddings, and cold emails. Written by Harris Sockel.I’m flying next week, and even though the odds of a pla...

👋 Welcome back to the Daily Edition.Today: Pranking the BBC, how to cook fish, and your neologisms. Written by Harris Sockel.Over 1.3 million teens in the U.S. will hear back from colleges this month — and, for the first time since 1961, admissions officers won’t be able to factor race into their decision-making pro...