~the-official-medium | Bookmarks (93)

🤖 I swear to God a human wrote thisIssue #250: foraging, pickling, and dead husbands who haunt your dreamsEarly robots were charming. In 1956, artist Irving Block designed Robby the Robot for the movie Forbidden Planet. Robby had a dry wit, was designed to help humans and follow Isaac Asimov’s three Laws of Robotics...

🇺🇸 It’s MLK Jr. Day and Inauguration Day today here in the U.S. — so we’re off today, but we have a brief issue for you while we’re out.Issue #249: autofiction, Carter’s legacy, and making good memoriesMatthew Teutsch, director of the Lillian E. Smith Center at Georgia’s Piedmont University, teaches college students...

📆 Today is Friday, January 17th. There’s only one other Friday the 17th in 2025, happening in October.Issue #248: moderation, small language models, David Lynch, and post-death password sharingMeta’s announcement last week that they were gutting their fact-checking efforts and changing their approach to moderation o...

📱 One of my lightly held 2025 resolutions is to stop picking up my phone when I don’t know what to do with my handsIssue #247: Excalidraw, luck, and teaEven if two products do the exact same thing — like enabling you to upload 90-second videos or publish 1,000-word blog posts — they’re different. They have different...

🚗 Hello and welcome backIssue #251: wildfires, knives, and lesser-known reading recsLate last year, I was visiting one of my favorite places on Earth: Dolores Park in San Francisco at golden hour. It was starting to get cold and the sky was turning purple, which meant I’d need a ride home. “You have to take a Waymo,...

👋 Somehow, we’re (almost) halfway through JanuaryIssue #246: making a mobile game, empathy v. accountability, and a procrastination tipA few of my coworkers do this chaotic thing at the beginning of the year: They delete every recurring meeting and repopulate their calendars gradually, only reinstating what they act...

On Wednesday, January 29th from 12–1pm ET (9–10am PT), we’re holding a free webinar for anyone interested in learning more about academic and scholarly writing on Medium. Here’s the link to RSVP!Event overviewThe event will be a panel discussion with three experts in academic/scholarly fields: Carin-Isabel Knoop, Re...

☀️ We’re back with the Medium NewsletterIssue #244: Louise Bourgeois, imperfect information, and the best outdoor photography gearMy philosophy professor once tried to help me understand Kant’s theory of the sublime. “It’s that feeling when you’re inside a house during a raging storm,” he said, rolling a cigarette. ...

✌️ Be safe this weekendIssue #243: literary rejections, good storytelling, and unconscious envyI’m guessing some of you saw this, but: Yesterday, at former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, Barack Obama was seated next to Donald Trump. They were in the second row, behind Kamala Harris and surrounded by all 5 li...

Image created by Jason CombsAs we’ve written here before, part of being a platform is dealing with spam and fraud. Yes, we’re building a place where anyone can share their knowledge, wisdom, and experience, and our goal is to deepen our collective understanding of the world through the power of stories. But we also ...

👋 Hello againIssue #242: wildfire policy, vibe curators, and optimizing for understandingI’m writing this one day before you’ll receive it (Wednesday morning), and I just woke up to photos and videos of the Pacific Palisades fire — one of three fires burning in and around Los Angeles. At least 30,000 people were for...

👋 It’s Wednesday, and we’re 2% of our way through 2025Issue #241: salt, Jimmy Carter, and the Golden GlobesOn Friday, I saw Heretic with a friend (Hugh Grant is perfectly cast, just likable enough to be an unexpectedly three-dimensional villain) and then we walked a few blocks to a nearby bar. I didn’t think I was g...

🙂 Welcome back to the Medium Newsletter (it’s so good to be back!)Issue #240: who the Pope would play in Baldur’s Gate 3 and a good reason to read moreWhat does the phrase “getting out of your comfort zone” really mean, especially when it pertains to writing?“When you stretch your limits, you redefine comfort,” says...

😎 We’re back and better-rested than everIssue #239: jungle gym careers, Billie Holiday, and questioning your defaults“Writing forces you to hear your thoughts,” goes one of my favorite tweets. “It is a confrontation with yourself.”One of my resolutions this year — and maybe one of yours — is to write more. (Thankful...

🎁 It’s our last issue of 2024. If you’ve been reading since January, thank you!Issue #238: better meetings + blob peopleThis week, we’ve shared top highlights, responses, publications, and new writers of the year. But more than anything, Medium is a home for stories — so, we dug through our trove of data to bring yo...

🤫 It’s my favorite time of year: Dead Week, the no man’s land between Xmas and New Year’s EveIssue #237: weird libraries, beating procrastination, and a goal-setting techniqueOn Medium, anyone can publish a story, find an audience, and earn money. This happens thousands of times a day, often for writers brand new to...

🕎 🧑‍🎄 Today gives us a wonderful two-for-one holiday deal: Merry Christmas AND Happy Hanukkah!Issue #236: a tech copywriter’s foster care beginnings, Xmas movie reviews, and hilarious Hanukkah cartoonsIf you’re not entirely familiar with publications on Medium, they’re essentially magazines or collections of stories...

✌️ Welcome backIssue #235: why Spotify wrapped hits different this year + reversible decisionsIt’s an age-old principle of the internet: Cunningham’s Law. To get an accurate answer, say the wrong thing in a public forum and someone will probably jump in to correct you! Wikipedia is built on this principle, and it’s ...

🙏 The highlight of my year? Working on this newsletter. Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of you who open and read this each week!Issue #234: highlights, year-end book lists, and deliberate distractionAs the calendar year wraps up, we’re doing the same here at the Medium Newsletter. This week, we’ll be taking a...

Instead of having our offsite work sessions in a basement conference center with no light and stale air, we got creative and worked with The Hoxton to have exclusive use of the first floor restaurant for the week. I’ve gone into more detail about my disdain for windowless meeting spaces in my previous post, and I mu...

🥳 It’s the Friday-est Friday of the yearIssue #233: ambiguity, art, and tab lifeWe’re about to take a much-needed vacation here at Medium HQ (though we still have a few issues coming your way next week!). Looking back, I sort of can’t believe we’ve been sending this newsletter daily for almost a year (!). Thank you ...

Image created by Jason Combs, featuring images from the stories in this roundup.“Showing up. Showing up with your whole self, showing up with your values and beliefs, showing up with what makes you unique, but above all — showing up with consistency.”That is one of the most highlighted lines across all of Medium in ...

⏳ It’s Thursday, and we’ve got just 3.46% of the year left to go!Issue #232: a muster of peacocks + starting smallI don’t get enough sleep. I bet you don’t either. The NIH helpfully reminds us that lack of sleep is a problem, causing high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, lack of productivity and an increased likelih...

👋 Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #231: 2024’s video game of the year, a history of hunger strikes, and texting thank yousRecently, government officials and pundits have begun reexamining the use of fluoride in public drinking water. The anti-fluoridation crowd often points to published studies that claim...