Extra, Extra

Manage Expectations: “The goal is to lighten the mental load, to calm down. We’re kind of forced to mix our professional and personal lives nowadays – our brains don’t automatically forget what’s going on at work just because it’s 9PM and we’re home.” That’s the reason behind the endless list of to-do, project management, and note-taking apps. But, Is Micromanaging Your Life With an App Really a Good Idea? I once wrote an article on the abundance of choice in every category that opened with the line, “Looking back on it now, the first time I truly felt the need for a note-taking app was when I started researching note-taking apps.” And that was 2011, when there were hardly any choices by comparison.

+ Tank Tops: “This is not a run of the mill rotation … This is one of those moments in time where if you want to make a difference, this is it.” Top US general visits training site for Ukrainian soldiers.

+ Buzz Kill: “After decades of confusing and sometimes contradictory research (too much alcohol is bad for you but a little bit is good; some types of alcohol are better for you than others; just kidding, it’s all bad), the picture is becoming clearer: Even small amounts of alcohol can have health consequences.” NYT (Gift Article): Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health. (This will be one of the big stories of 2023. A lot of people, and a lot of beverage sellers, have decided drinking is bad. Expect shelves of new products and an oncoming culture war.)

+ The Glass is Quarter Full: What’s a bigger story than drinking alcohol? Drinking water. “The survival — or at least the basic sustenance — of hundreds in a desert community amid the horse ranches and golf courses outside Phoenix now rests on a 54-year-old man with a plastic bucket of quarters.” WaPo: Arizona city cuts off a neighborhood’s water supply amid drought.

+ Hoodlums: “Initially, the Taliban wanted the mannequins to be outright beheaded.” Instead, they settled for just keeping them hooded and masked. It’s just unreal that these crazy monsters are running a country.

+ Core Values: “If ‘free speech’ was his mandate for ­Twitter the platform, it has been the opposite for Twitter the workplace. Dissenting opinion or criticism has led to swift dismissals. Musk replaced Twitter’s old culture with one of his own, but it’s unclear, with so few workers and plummeting revenues, if this new version will survive. As one employee said in December, ‘Place is done for.'” The Verge and NY Mag go deep on Elon’s Twitter tenure. Extremely Hardcore. As terrible a financial deal as buying Twitter was, it’s critical to remember that we live in an information economy. Every word Elon tweets or speaks is parsed in a gagillion think pieces. For the malignant narcissist, buying Twitter was the bargain of the century.

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