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Three cheers for living a quiet life!
Wait, no, shh, that’s counter-productive, sorry about that.
My guest on the podcast this week is Susan Cain. She’s the author of the best-selling 2012 book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Susan has a new audio series coming out this week on Audible called A Quiet Life in Seven Steps. In the interview, she previews some of those steps and offers some insight on what could lie in store for us if we could cultivate a way of being where we spend some more time noticing things and less time taking constant action and making constant conversation.
I think the world is dragging us (luring us? tempting us?) toward more conversation all the time thanks (no thanks) to the world of social media and even online reviews. I’m traveling as I write this week’s newsletter and I’m struck by how unquiet a consumer transaction has become. The hotels where I’ve stayed keep contacting me and wanting me to fill out surveys and write reviews of them. The password for the wifi at the hotel where I’m currently staying is “rateus10”.
Susan doesn’t really get into online reviews and the obsessive need for consumers to generate them but thinking on that subject makes me more intent than ever on eschewing these commercial entreaties and trying to be as quiet as possible.
Except for typing a newsletter to you, of course. But I’m doing that silently in a room in a hotel that I will not be rating as a 10 or anything else. I’ll just quietly go about my business.
Ricky Rubio retires from basketball after taking a mental health break
Pro athletes missing time to tend to their mental health used to be unheard of. At least in any kind of honest and candid way. Then when it did happen it was seen as a rarity, even something controversial. Now it just happens, no more shocking than a knee injury.
Ricky Rubio, the Spanish point guard whom everyone seems to love, has retired from the NBA. The retirement follows an extended absence from the league for the entire season thus far. Aside from saying that the break was because of his mental health, he hasn’t gone into much detail. And I didn’t want to pry.
"One day, when the time is right, would love to share my full experience with you all so I can help support others going through similar situations," Rubio wrote in a statement Thursday. "Until then I would like to keep it private out of respect for my family and myself, as I'm still working on my mental health. But I'm proud to say I'm doing much better and getting better everyday."
People in Minnesota sure loved him.
In Houston, mental health resources in schools are drying up but the need remains strong
Many kids in Houston have lost parents to covid and the grief is highly disruptive to their overall health as well as their school life. But the means to support those kids is ending and not much is being done to continue it.
From the Texas Tribune:
In Harris County, thousands of students continue to grapple with the long shadow of grief cast by the deaths of parents and caregivers from COVID-19. Yet today, with federal stimulus funding for schools drawing to an end and state lawmakers dedicating virtually no additional money for public schools during the 2023 legislative session, education leaders are starting to make tough choices about whether to maintain mental health support for children like the Ortegas.
Their decisions will have lifelong effects on students quietly struggling with their anguish. Researchers have found the sudden loss of a parent trumps all other traumas when it comes to impact on academic performance.
The American Dialect Society has chosen its word of the year
And that word is ENSHITTIFICATION.
The term enshittification became popular in 2023 after it was used in a blog post by author Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse. “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification,” Doctorow wrote on his Pluralistic blog.
Presiding at the Jan. 6 voting session were Ben Zimmer, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and Dr. Kelly Elizabeth Wright of Virginia Tech, data czar of the New Words Committee. “Enshittification is a sadly apt term for how our online lives have become gradually degraded,” Zimmer said. “From the time that it first appeared in Doctorow’s posts and articles, the word had all the markings of a successful neologism, being instantly memorable and adaptable to a variety of contexts.”
On Sleeping with Celebrities: Rob Harvilla!
Ooh, there I go shouting again. Shh. rob harvilla.
Rob is the host of one of my favorite podcasts, 60 Songs That Explain the 90’s. On our show, in order to put you to sleep, Rob takes a look at some songs from the 90’s that have pretty special meaning because they are the songs he would play and sing at his college open mic night performances. In Rob’s retelling of those days, you can feel the boldness, the hubris, the desperation, and a million other feelings that will somehow put you right down for sleepy time.