News, Notes, and Notions for 5May24
On reading and writing in the digital vs physical worlds, plus latest from Heard Tell Show and things worth reading and watching from the week that was.
I have joked with folks that my age cohort is the last of the analogs; the last generation that grew up without ubiquitous internet. My high school years “going online” started as something you had to do in the newfangled computer lab at school. By the time I graduated the townie kids were starting to get dialup at home and AOL was filling up mailboxes with starter discs. No such luck Up Yonder, outside of town, which finally got full blown modern internet that was usable for more than just slowly scrolling Mom’s Facebook on December 29th, 2023.
While the internet, and the then-force multiplier of the internet that was smart phones, have changed much in the last thirty odd years since folks first started really using the internet, one thing I have really noticed is how digital words have changed how folks read. Not just content, but the physical act of reading. If you take college courses online now, as my kid is doing and I am getting ready to do once again, you usually do not even get books anymore. They are all online. What was once a novel new thing with Kindles and e-readers is now standard for higher education in many places.
The problem is, I have discovered I read differently when reading digitally. I have fiddled and experimented with my reading over the years since I have various kinds of reading to do. I must read a large amount of news and information to do my writing, commentary, and Heard Tell shows, which are obviously all digital. If I am taking classes or doing research, I must read for comprehension, both physical and digital. Reading for pleasure is different still.
What I have found is patterns that are universal to digital vs physical mediums reading regardless of reason. I read much faster digitally, and if reading for comprehension too fast. I read slower and retain more reading physical mediums. With digital, I do tend to focus in with that faster reading and press on to the end. Physically, I do tend to get more distracted for all the usual reasons that are inherent to a book or paper, like having to manipulate it by hand instead of just swiping or clicking.
The result of which has formed noticeable habits. I rarely read for pleasure on digital anymore. I hate having to read for comprehension digitally. Which is a problem in a digital, right-now world. I write everything online but when editing I will often print it out and go old school, pen-and-ink through the work so I slow down and really chew through it.
I am a writer who started out in the digital realm but later made a purposeful move to write <a href="https://www.fayettetribune.com/search/?l=25&sd=desc&s=start_time&f=html&app=editorial&q=andrew+donaldson&nsa=eedition">for a local print newspaper back home.</a> Writing for print just hits different on a couple of levels. It is just fun holding your work in your own hands. Being a smaller, rural area it is also interesting when the ladies at church bring my mother the cut out and marked up with commentary feedback of my pieces that rubbed them the wrong way. But writing for a newspaper also in subtle ways changes how I write, because for whatever reason knowing someone will physically be holding the words I am writing just does something to my brain in creating them. Which is a good thing, in my humble but accurate opinion, a necessary tether to real people in all too often dehumanizing realm of the interwebs.
While I know reading online will dominate the future, and my writing online will reach far more audience than print does, I cannot help but think about the difference in how I read, and how others might read differently also. The folded newspaper on my father’s desk may be archaic, but there is something there beyond just nostalgia. My youngest youngin and her friends are fairly obsessed with physical media - records, CDs, DVDs, even cassette tapes and VHS - and I cannot help but think for them it is something deeper. A generation that grew up completely digital craves holding things in their hands, possessing it, owning it, and having something old and slow once in a while in their ever-faster, very online world.
So, I am good with old and slow reading, writing, and media, in moderation and in understanding having small outposts of the past is fine and does not stop the time and tides of modern technology. Human nature may be changing and evolving, but not as fast as we think. Nothing wrong with taking our time, from time to time, and making sure we are swimming with the currents of change and not just drowning in them slowly.
Latest Heard Tell Episodes:
Listen on iTunes
Listen on Spotify
Listen on iHeartRadio
Heard Tell RSS Feed
Your Heard Tell Show is turning down the noise of the news cycle and getting to the information we need to discern our times by talking about the shocking case of dead 14 year old girl in Boone County, West Virginia, who was found “emaciated to a skeletal state” dead on her bathroom floor. While the mother has been charged, this horrible story once again highlights the issues of endangered children, the broken child protective system, a state government who either can’t or won’t allow transparency and accountability, and shocking lack of give a damn by a public who can’t seem to be bothered to force some change. Kelli Caseman of ThinkKidsWV returns to Heard Tell to talk about what needs to happen on the government level, policy ideas, the need for effective advocacy, and what the public can do about it.
All that and more on this episode of Heard Tell.
Listen on iTunes
Listen on Spotify
Listen on iHeartRadio
Heard Tell RSS Feed
Your Heard Tell Show is turning down the noise of the news cycle and getting to the information we need to discern our times by going beyond the headlines and into the halls of congress with Eric Garcia, the Washington bureau chief and senior Washington Correspondent at the Independent. Eric explains the current changes in congress that saw the foreign aid bills passed, the apparently sideline-ing of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the chaos caucus's constant threats of removing Speaker Johnson, how the looming elections are affecting the politics on Capitol Hill, generational change coming to the US Senate, simmering internal strife with the Democratic Party, and what the post-election congress might look like. Plus, we end on a good note with the story a immigrant who already had an incredible story of coming to America and battling cancer, and that was before he hit a billion dollar lottery prize.
All that and more on this episode of Heard Tell.
Worth Reading:
Can confirm this from my own experience in the area, child care issues are keeping companies away: Child care advocates stress importance of funding By Josephine E. Moore The Register-Herald
Also speaking at Tuesday’s town hall was Jina Belcher, executive director of the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority.
Belcher said the NRGRDA focuses on attracting and retaining businesses in Fayette, Nicholas, Raleigh and Summers counties, but their job is made infinitely harder due to the lack of affordable child care options.
In the past few years, Belcher said 10 companies – four of which would have employed 75 or more people and six of which would have employed 75 or fewer people – decided against locating to the region because there were not enough child care options.
“We know that regardless of the water, sewer, fiber, electric infrastructure that we have, and that the state is actively investing in as a need, we know that child care now needs to be considered a critical and crucial infrastructure for the state to fund,” Belcher said.
She added that investments in affordable child care need to be made in conjunction with other investments that the state is making in the business community.
“We know that the governor is prioritizing the business community. We’ve seen him cashing checks. We’ve seen him making critical investments to a lot of projects and companies in the state, but the sustainability plan isn’t there if child care isn’t funded along with those critical investments,” she said. “And so in an effort to retain the business community that we have in the state and prioritize their growth, it’s crucial that we start looking at child care.”
The pay-by-enrollment method the West Virginia Association for Young Children is advocating for was initially started during Covid and was funded federally in an effort to provide financial stability for child care providers.
That federal funding ran out in September 2023 but was extended by West Virginia through the end of August 2024.
Our friend Mike Viola has a piece out on housing policy in Chicago in which he finds common ground with Mayor Brandon Johnson:
Rent in Chicago is climbing at record rates. As of March, median one-bedroom rental prices saw a 21% year-over-year increase, even as real estate markets have slowed down and home prices have stalled. Meanwhile, overall demand for rentals is in decline: Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Chicago’s population was shrinking, but since then, the city has been losing residents left and right.
More shocking than the stubborn rental prices, however, is that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has a proposal that may actually do something about it.
Johnson’s plans to deal with housing have generally taken the restrictive route that got Chicago into this mess in the first place. His Bring Chicago Home proposal, which failed as a referendum in March, would have nearly tripled the real estate transfer tax on properties selling for more than $1 million and up to $1.5 million while quadrupling it for properties selling for more than that. Soaking the rich, whom Illinois has a hard enough time keeping around, was never going to improve housing for everyone else. Rather, it would have disincentivized further development and held large commercial and multifamily properties hostage to the status quo.
Since the dismissal of Bring Chicago Home, Johnson has adopted a new approach. Proposals in his new “Cut the Tape” report take the opposite philosophical stance to his failed tax hike. The mayor calls for “a more effective and streamlined development process,” seeking to reduce time spent on onerous bureaucratic procedures and suggesting that they will bring more units of “affordable, supportive, and market-rate housing” along with citywide commercial development.
This is a welcome change. Johnson suddenly sounds less like the Chicago machine and more like the Chicago school of economics, suggesting that perhaps he’s realized that supply available to renters who pay out of pocket is declining for reasons that can be squarely blamed on state and local government. Chicago’s bloated regulatory regime means only big developers can afford to build, and even they have limited options with strict zoning laws and building stipulations. This biases new builds toward luxury rentals — a fact counterproductively decried by housing activists — because that’s the easiest way for developers to recoup their high overhead costs. Now, even those builds are slowing down, and Illinois ranks last in the nation in the construction of new homes.
As promising as Cut the Tape is, we should not expect it to solve Chicago’s housing problems without broader changes to the city’s bad habits. Many of its prescriptions are straightforward: Expedite approvals, eliminate redundant environmental reviews, loosen zoning restrictions and remove parking minimums. However, if the mayor appoints only partisans and allies to related positions and working groups, he runs the risk of creating more tape.
It took over two years, but Paul Farhi has won his long running battle with The Washington Post over his reporting as a Washington Post reporter on the Washington Post:
Paul Farhi, a veteran media reporter and former top writer at The Washington Post, announced on Wednesday that he had won his lengthy battle with the Post over a 2022 suspension that stemmed from accurate reporting about the Post itself.
In March of 2022, Farhi tweeted, “Some internal news: In response to Putin’s threats against reporters in Russia, the @washingtonpost will remove bylines and datelines from stories produced by our journalists in Russia. Goal is to ensure staff’s safety.”
The veteran media reporter added, “Been around a while. Never seen anything like this.”
Politico later reported on the suspension, noting that it had lasted for five days and resulted in Farhi being docked his pay during that period.
Farhi, who now writes for The Atlantic, also noted that “he was suspended without discussion or chance of appeal.” The Washington-Baltimore News Guild filed a complaint on Farhi’s behalf to force arbitration on the issue and eventually won back both Farhi’s pay and got the Post to rescind the suspension retroactively. The Post defended its suspension of Farhi in response to the union’s complaint alleging that his tweet “jeopardized the safety of a colleague as well as the ability of The Washington Post to report in a foreign country.”
A spokesperson for the Post told Mediaite in a statement that the paper does not comment on personnel issues.
Worth Watching:
From our friend Peter Pischke’s always fascinating CultureScape:
So what's different about Gamergate this time around?🤔 In this episode of CultureScape we interview Journalist Carlos Miguel del Callar about Gamergate history & it's current modern version. In this insightful interview, we explore the evolution of Gamergate, comparing the original movement with its recent resurgence, Gamergate 2.0. 🕹️🔍 Carlos, known for his sharp insights on gaming, entertainment, and socio-political issues, sheds light on the key points surrounding this controversial movement. From ethics and diversity to representation in the gaming industry, no topic is off-limits. 🎤🌐 In this episode, we discuss: The focus of Gamergate 2.0 and its impact on the gaming industry. 🎯 What makes GG1 & 2 different? What do they do right & what do they do wrong? MIlo versus Matt Walsh? The debate around the role of ESG funding in video game development. 💰
Welp…
Is Perrier actually soda? A court says it is from Fox 5 DC:
We are going to cover this more with one of our UK friends on Heard Tell Show first of the week, but our friends over yonder in England are doing some voting last few days and the reactions are pouring in: From Times Radio: