1. Are You A Highly Sensitive person? 10 ways this Will Change Your Life For The Better. “Find out if you’re a Highly Sensitive Person, why this REALLY matters, and learn how you can honor your wiring if you are.”

2. These Are The Most Common Symptoms Of COVID-19 If You Are Vaccinated. “If you’ve been vaccinated and start sneezing a lot without an explanation, you should get a COVID test, especially if you are living or working around people who are at greater risk from the disease.”

3. Grief Resources: You Don’t Need to Grieve Alone.

4. The Costly Quest for Superhuman Strength. “As fitness culture has reoriented itself around ‘wellness,’ it has become less fashionable to discuss how exercise remains stubbornly linked to rigid and sometimes absurd beauty standards for both men and women.”

5. Silky Flowers Spring from CJ Hendry’s Enormous Hyperrealistic Drawings in Colored Pencil.

6. Simone Biles Shares Video Of Her Struggling To Complete Dangerous Stunt, Further Explains Olympic Competition Withdrawals. When I hear the negative reactions some people are having to her choices, her situation, all I can think of is this video: Worry about yourself!

7. Health update, show cancellations, and a lot of love, a video message from Andrea Gibson. I’m not sure exactly how someone you love so much announcing they have cancer can make me feel more hopeful, but they did it.

8. I Remember: Elementary school edition on Rita’s Notebook, which inspired me to sign up for the writing course she’s taking, Play with Pattern: Crafting the Braided and Collage Essays. 

9. There Is No Debate Over Critical Race Theory.

10. There is No Climate Justice Without Racial Justice.

11. 7 Secret Benefits of an Afternoon Nap.

12. Glued To Your Phone? Here’s How To Rethink Your Relationship With Social Media.

13. I Swapped Out My Bedroom TV Area for a Reading Nook — Here’s What I Learned.

14. The Dharma of Distraction on Lion’s Roar. “It goes a lot deeper than how many times a day you check your phone. According to Buddhist teacher Judy Lief, distraction is the very foundation of ego, the way we protect ourselves against both the pain of life and the open space of awakened mind. You could even say that letting go of all distraction is the path to enlightenment.”

15. Progress is a trade from Seth Godin. “The truth is pretty simple: All we do, all we ever do, is trade one set of problems for another.”

16. 0s&1s interview series with writers, on six different topics.

17. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: Dragonflies and The Twisties, and More life to get, and Skip the boring parts.

18. It’s Never Too Late, on The New York Times, “a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.”

19. No, you’re not entitled to your opinion. “The problem with ‘I’m entitled to my opinion’ is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for ‘I can say or think whatever I like’ – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.”

20. The Solving Plastic Issue from Yes!. “In this issue we explore the history of plastic, its global impacts, and some of the most inspiring solutions we’ve come across.”

21. How Big Beverage poured empty promises down our throats. “Beverages have become just another way for people to signal allegiance to a certain lifestyle or to tell ourselves that we are working toward something better. But our faith in the beverage industry has mostly survived so long because we are in denial about what gives us pleasure. Instead of collectively admitting that we love drinks — on a social and emotional level that is hard to compare to anything else — we would rather fool ourselves into believing that drinks can fix us.”

22. Mark Lewis Wagner: Drawing on Earth, an interview with an amazing artist, a beloved human.

23. In ‘Goldenrod,’ A Poet Finds Lessons In The Good, The Bad And The Unexpected. “In times of distress, many of us tend to search for a universal truth. Knowing that there’s a way out, a way through can help us make sense of the world when it seems completely out of our control. And for more than a year now, the distress of social distancing, lockdown, and a rapidly mutating virus has overshadowed our public lives. In her new collection Goldenrod, Pushcart-Prize winning poet Maggie Smith responds to this destabilization by turning inward and asking — is the universal truth what we think it is?”

24. How (and Why) to Welcome Insects Into Your Yard.

25. One Simple Way to Stop Climate Gloom.

26. Tom Daley casually knitting a pouch for his gold medal at the Olympics is winning the internet.

27. Artist “Prints” Amazing Landscapes and Portraits Using Only the Characters on a Typewriter.

28. 50 Times People Who Do Not Believe Quilting To Be Fit For Grandmas Only Made These Incredible Things.

1. Asian Cucumber Salad. I made this last night (pictured above), because we have so many cucumbers from our garden right now, and it was delicious.

2. I’d Rather Be Home, and I Don’t Feel Bad About It. “Introverts live in two worlds: We visit the world of people, but solitude and the inner world will always be our home.”

3. Everything I needed to know about house-staging I learned from writing, some good writing “advice” on Rita’s Notebook.

4. The Delta Variant Is the Symptom of a Bigger Threat: Vaccine Refusal on The New York Times. “There are almost as many reasons for vaccine hesitancy and refusal as there are unvaccinated Americans. But this problem, not the variant, lies at the root of rising infection rates.”

5. Social Media in My Work (where it’s been and where it’s heading) a free podcast episode from Mindy Tsonas Choi.

6. As the World Opens from Jamie Ridler. “As we re-enter the world, we won’t just be finding a new normal, we’ll be creating it. Now is the time to move forward with intention, to make fresh and meaningful decisions before things settle into place.”

7. Unsuspecting Pedestrians Trigger a Dance Party By Standing on Decal That Says ‘Stand Here For Dance Party.’ 

8. Good Poetry: A Force To Be Reckoned With. “At its best poetry carries life. Gives life. Brings us back into life. Brief, clear, beautiful, heartfelt, educational, communal, liberatory. I think of it as vibrancy anchored in truth. I appreciate the way it pays homage to oppressed communities, often emerging from oppressed communities. Born of one particular experience, in its specificity it goes beyond specificity.”

9. You Don’t Know Me But, a pandemic poem/prayer by Laura Grace Weldon.

10. Beyond allies and accomplices to concrete plans. “I challenge you to create one concrete action beyond giving money, amplifying voices of color online, or reading books that will be in service to dismantling white supremacy that you can focus on this year. By all means, keep doing the other things, but now it is time to grow in your work.”

11. New Connie Sun cartoon. “I draw what I see — sometimes happy, sometimes sad.”

12. “I’ll Take It”: Tig Notaro on Becoming An Internet Icon. “The comedian chats with them. about her new animated special Drawn, and those cigar-smoking GIFs that broke the queer internet.”

13. At Tokyo Olympics, women gymnasts wear full bodysuits to protest sexualization of women athletes. In related news, People Are Confused And Enraged About The Decision To Fine The Norwegian Women’s Handball Team For Choosing To Wear Shorts Instead Of Bikini Bottoms.

14. Sunlight Filters through Misty Spruce Forests in Enchanting Photos by Kilian Schönberger.

15. White Woman Is Shamed For ‘Cultural Appropriation’ For Going To A Salon That Specializes In Black Hair.

16. Impasto Marks and Thick Dabs of Paint Render Dreamy Landscapes in Rich Layers of Color.