“E-mail newsletters encourage a kind of benign narcissism: in the quest to fill readers’ inboxes, authors resort to sharing the latest books they’ve read, albums they’ve listened to, and podcasts whose opinions they’ve adopted.”
Well damn, Kyle. 💀
I just knew as I started to read this, Kyle was never a Xanga / Livejournal / tumblr girlie—the disdain is palpable! And the truth is, Substack is a now a safe space for tumblr refugees. Personally, I've always enjoyed reading and sharing recommendations from friends, especially long form content.
Post tumblr and early professional days, I would often share random articles with friends and colleagues via email threads. Later, working at startups, most of us would take advantage of our dual screen setup—code on one screen and 100 tabs opened on the other. It's probably one of my favorite things about working with engineers—they're always reading some article or piece on the most obscure and random topic.
Kyle's right though—human curation is a reaction to boring algo recommendations. At one email marketing startup, we assigned folks a weight on every tagged piece of content they browsed or engaged with, only surfacing or dynamically populating articles based on their previous browse history/profile. This unfortunately didn't leave room for personal curation or discovery—with AI and machine learning, this is only compounded.
Anyways, I shall continue sharing my recommendations and as always, I'm grateful for your continued feedback and engagement! Please continue to share stuff with me as well! 💓
Shoes On. Eyes Open.
-Sarah
random musings—
a collection of random, contemporaneous thoughts. no photos. just vibes.
Not to alarm anyone but I snuck into a bag of Halloween candy and they have changed the taste and colors of the Dum Dums lollipops. The cloudy blue cotton candy hue is no more. Why? During an election year no less.
Yanks deserved to lose the World Series. Sloppy work since Game 1. Congrats to the Dodgers.
If you're early voting, be sure to get there early as there were 25 folks on line before doors opened! I've heard of much longer lines in other areas. Also, mask up—they crammed 20 poll workers into a tiny basement room at a local library. I, of course, forgot to bring a mask. 😷
I'll get the bad news out of the way first—Mixte or Voltaire High (US title) was not renewed for a second season. That said, it shouldn't stop you from watching the first season which was great all around.
The story takes place in 1960s France at Lycée Voltaire, an all boys high school that is welcoming a class of girls for the first time. This is what hooked me—I was the first class of girls to attend an all boys high school in 2000. Despite a 40 year gap between in timelines, the parallels are the same—boys staring into classroom doors, hallways full of upperclassmen glares, teachers' behaving awkwardly towards the girls, and of course, the incessant policing of a girl's body and her clothing (I had a nun who would go around measuring our skirt hem lengths with a ruler..)
But beyond this, the show explores workplace misogyny, homophobia, raiding of queer safe spaces in 1960s France, teenage love, pregnancy scares. Beautiful characters, costumes, & cinematography. Really hope they'll try to resurrect this for a second season.
Fashion takeaway—we need to bring back briefcases and satchels. 💼
Absolutely horrific. The activists confirmed that many of the women are taking their lives after their husbands had been killed by the paramilitary group, Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 🇸🇩
One thing about local news—is that the comments section never fails to entertain! From Judith: “Zones for taxi pick up and drop off? I'm 84. Why don't you kill me right now?” Another gem from Judith re: MTA OMNY: "Wait until all those arthritic hands juggling phones start increasing boarding times. I don't think anyone has thought this through." 😂
I need Judith to be for real right now because increased boarding times def. is due to no one knowing how to swipe their Metrocards..
The city was mapped thanks to airborne laser scanning, also known as lidar (light detection and ranging), a remote-sensing technique that uses pulsed lasers and other data collected through flyovers that can generate accurate three-dimensional models of surface features or topographical maps, revolutionizing the way archaeologists explore the hidden past. 🇲🇽
Macron's ever-shifting support of Israel has been so manic that is has me wondering where this sudden support is coming from. Interestingly, an Israeli outlet suggests that Qatari funds are helping support France's recent budget woes. 🇶🇦🇫🇷
Highlighting gender bias in AI, ChatGPT's model failed to account for Chanel’s employee makeup of 76% women—including the company’s own CEO. The brand's clientele is also 96% women. Let's add the fact that women-founded AI companies aren't receiving funding either.. 🤖
Have never heard of the Oracle Sisters or this song before but it's the perfect laidback melody—psychedelic, trippy vibes. Based in Paris, the group's guitarist inspired this track after being stung by a scorpio in Jamaica. 🍄🌈✨
