Well, this was one of the most lazy Saturdays I’ve had in a long, long time. At least that’s how it felt. I stayed at home almost for the whole day! Imagine that!
Three things happened:
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I read lots of mission statements of Newspapers, articles about “bad news” and which kind of psychological impact the news have on you. Then I drafted an outline for an article about “more honest news”. I’m afraid of three things: That the article will be too provocative. That the article will be too long. And/Or that I (therefore) don’t finish writing the article. I keep doing that: Not finishing side projects.
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My blog article from yesterday got some mini momentum - not so much in form of retweets or so, but I’ve never had so many people retweeting a tweet of mine while actually saying something about it. I had a nice morning because of that.
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I decided to kill my hunger for some work with numbers with a quick pull of my Twitter followers and some analysis of how often they tweet and the link to their number of followers. I tried hard(er) this time to make a mainstream-y looking graph which is still visually interesting. I really wanted to bring the attention quickly to the most important elements. I didn’t succeed 100%; at some point I lost interest.
Input? 8
Output? 9
Learnings:
“People who were more interested in current affairs and politics were particularly likely to choose the bad news. And yet when asked, these people said they preferred good news. On average, they said that the media was too focussed on negative stories.” (BBC) That makes me sad. How I interpret it: People know what is good for them (the WANT on a higher level), but they get still drawn to the things they WANT on a deeper level. It means that these people will continue to consume things they know they shouldn’t consume. It’s like drugs. Or chocolate. Well, chocolate is sugar and sugar is a drug. No? I don’t know.
Asking for help on Twitter works! Even on a Saturday. Even at almost 10pm. Uh well, maybe it’s “especially” instead of “even”.
Workflowy is really, really awesome for drafting text outlines with sources. So much better than I thought.
Questions:
How should I respond to the many homeless people in DC asking for money? I’m overwhelmed.
Should I set at deadline for reading books? Should I read a book every two weeks? Then I would still have one week left since the beginning of my fellowship.