Welcome to week 25 of Internet of Literal Things. The weird, wacky, wonderful, and wild of the world wide web seems to be several-too-many “w’s” and a perfect place for me to start. I’m Sara Nason, a fellow person on the internet, who happens to have many hours on hand to read random articles that are tucked into multiple crevices in my phone.
For most of my life (or at least what I can remember of it — I stopped writing in journals once I realized I never enjoyed re-reading them), I can recall some sense of feeling like I didn’t belong or wasn’t good enough or shouldn’t be in the room where it happens. My imposter syndrome became very prominent in college, when I started to doubt *everything*. Usually, I’d welcome the existential crisis, but I have one about every year, so this particular unraveling of consciousness was… well… unwelcome. In thinking about who I want to be in five, ten, twenty years, I often used a metaphor of packing my backpack. I’m preparing for the next level, I’m still packing my backpack with what I’ll need to succeed. I’ve come to think of my imposter syndrome as one of those notebooks in the backpack. Not necessarily that I need to open the notebook every day or should take the messages spinning through my head for truth, but as a reminder of how much I continue to grow, to take chances, to fail often and hard. I’ve developed the fear of falling into a healthy sense of self: I know who I am and what I’m good at.
I used to be terrified of falling from the mountain path I was climbing — now, I see it as part of the journey. It’s nice to keep climbing, but it’s even nicer to enjoy the view.
So, strangers of the internet, here we go. on imposter syndrome for the Internet of Literal Things #25.
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What I’m Reading
Are we overestimating how much trees will help fight climate change? (Undark)
Climate gentrification: coming to a community near you (Mother Jones)
How lagging late-night transit harms vulnerable workers (Curbed)
DMVs are selling your data to private investigators (Motherboard)
A pothole stunt for the ages in New Orleans (CityLab)
Ghost towns of Instagram (The Baffler)
A tomato grows in the East River (NY Times)
The technology of kindness (Scientific American)
A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services (JustDelete.Me)
Dumb password rules (GitHub)
A history of anti-brown violence in the American Southwest (Autostraddle)
Amazon’s next-day delivery has brought chaos and carnage to America’s streets (Buzzfeed)
How Amazon hooked America on fast delivery while avoiding responsibility for crashes (ProPublica)
A century of “shrill”: how bias in technology has hurt women’s voices (The New Yorker)
Elite failure has brought Americans to the edge of an existential crisis (The Atlantic)
Why euthanasia rates at animal shelters have plummeted (NY Times)
Lizzo is ‘100% that bitch’… but can she trademark it? (The Guardian)
A very German idea of freedom: nude ping-pong, nude sledding, nude just about anything (NY Times)
Sorry, we can’t join your Slack (Reify)
You can now tell Facebook to delete its internal record of your face (OneZero)
What I’m Visually Experiencing
What I’m Listening To
Reelin’ in the years by Steely Dan (Spotify)
Windows by Frankie Cosmos (Spotify)
Just watch me now by Lady Bri (Spotify)
🏆 A Photo of An #UglyDogs Related Thing On The Internet 🥇
Because last week, this section was (!!!) missing/incomplete, here’s 2 photos for you:
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