1. Poetry: In the Dark of the Cinema and Case Study in Insanity and Sitting on the Porch at Night and The Hope Engine and Opening and Enter Here and Self-Compassion from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Summer Morning on The Weekly Pause with Jeff Crews, Words rise to the surface and the stories that surround from Pádraig Ó Tuama, On Not Hiding and When Everything Changes and Solo from Julie Barton, The Forgotten Corners by Jeff Foster shared by Heart Poems, Want by Carrie Fountain (one of my favorite poems), From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee, and To Begin With, the Sweetgrass from Mary Oliver.

2. A conversation with a death doula. (video) “‘It’s one of the most magical times of life. It’s one of the biggest things that happens to us,’ says death doula Molly Nelson of the end of life.”

3. Detect Fakes. “How do you spot a deepfake? How can you tell if an image is AI-generated? How well can people distinguish between AI-generated media and images, audio, and video recorded by a traditional camera or microphone? Detect Fakes is research project hosted at Northwestern University by researchers at the Kellogg School of Management to examine how people distinguish truth from fiction in online media, especially as synthetic media becomes more and more realistic…The goal of this research program is to reveal what synthetic media looks like, benchmark how well people can distinguish synthetic media from ‘real’ media across a variety of contexts, and generate insights for how to help people distinguish between the two.”

4. Signs Your Social Battery Is Running Low on Introvert, Dear. “In social settings, the introvert brain is busy processing every word and detail, which explains why it can feel so exhausting.”

5. Telomeres: A Strange Fate, “Love, loss and the biology of endings.”

6. The Mystery of the Invisible Fish, “Why aren’t we already moving towards love?” from Satya Robyn.

7. The Purity Culture of Food? “The eerie similarities of wellness and religion” from Gina Luker.

8. A new way to look at the weekend, “and a different way to celebrate” on Hannah Ro Writes.

9. Good stuff from Jena Schwartz: Now Go Sweep the Porch (“Sometimes we all need a reset”) and Freewriting My Way Towards 5786 (“Let the spiritual preparation begin”).

10. A Pep Talk For The Grownups Who Show Up. “It’s part pep talk … part resource … part reminder… all let’s do good stuff together. A video packed with encouragement for anybody anywhere who cares about kids. It’s about tiny big changes, a few vocab words I picked up while visiting schools, and why you are the secret to making this a better world for kids. It’s the pep talk I would give to you if I could be right there with you. If you’re a teacher, parent, librarian, or just someone who cares about the next generation: please watch and share.” from Brad Montague.

11. The Holy Ordinary from Amy Marie Turner.

12. The Question of Missions, “A gesture, a feeling, a prayer” from Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk. Also on Craft Talk from Jamie, Two Pieces of Hate Mail, “On ‘politics’ and book reviews.”

13. The Night I Ended My Pregnancy by Julie Parker on Short Reads.

14. The secrets of lost luggage auctions: I bought four bags for £100. What would I find inside? “Unclaimed suitcases were once destined for landfill. Now people are ‘suitcase gambling’ – bidding for bags and their unknown contents, and diving deep into strangers’ lives.”

15. I would rather share in your earnest mistakes, “Than be pandered to by a slick talking savior” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

16. Radical Pleasure: Why I Keep a Good Things Jar. “Athena Dixon on finding the right balance of what you want and what you need.”

17. 7 Daily Rituals to Release Stress and Worry from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

18. ‘Crafting Sanctuaries’ Sheds Light on Black Experience in the South During the Great Depression. “In a collaboration between Art Bridges and Museum of Art + Light, a new exhibition titled Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Black Great
Depression South revolves around more than three dozen rarely seen images from the FSA archive that shed light on Black spaces during the Great Depression. Photos of homes, churches, schools, and barbershops demonstrate how ‘interior and public gathering spaces became canvases for self-determination and cultural preservation.'”

19. Why We Climb (2017). “Revisiting an old lesson about the value of our struggles” from Connie Sun.

20. Curiosity as an act of courage on Nonviolence Radio. “A conversation with journalist and bridge builder Mónica Guzmán on the power of curiosity in a polarized world.”

21. 5 Quieter Kinds of Success Worth Claiming as a Creative. “Defining success for yourself” from Alix Klingenberg on Earth & Verse.

22. Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert on leaving her marriage for a dying friend: ‘She said, Let’s just live balls to the wall until I die!’ “One was a happily married and internationally famous writer, the other a cool, funny hairdresser and ex-drug addict. Then a shock diagnosis pitched them into an intense love affair.”

23. The Tension Between Rest and Living Fully. (video) “We all want to ‘make the most’ of our time. But what happens when that urge makes it hard to simply enjoy a slow, unplanned day?”

24. 100 things to support your mental health that aren’t go for a walk and drink more water, “with all due respect to going for a walk and drinking water” from Lauren McQuistin.

25. Unmade beds and overdue books: Photographing the rooms of kids killed in school shootings.

26. A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In on The New York Times. (gift link) “More people are turning to general-purpose chatbots for emotional support. At first, Adam Raine, 16, used ChatGPT for schoolwork, but then he started discussing plans to end his life.”

27. Book burning, Latin prayers – and a lot of kids: inside the American ‘trad family’ movement. “The movement towards simple, Christian living can be a yearning for order in a chaotic age. It’s also alarmingly retrograde.”

28. Why more and more people are tuning the news out: ‘Now I don’t have that anxiety.’ “Emotional toll of constant negative news and unlimited access to ‘doomscrolling’ has led to record-high news avoidance.”

29. Photographer Ulric Collette Splices Portraits of Family Members into Uncanny Composites.

30. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone last week.

1. Poetry: Imagine if schools replaced detention with poetry assignments by Christopher Sexton, The Mower by Philip Larkin shared by Patti Digh, What You Won’t Hear On Cable News by Carrie Newcomer shared on Heart Poems, Even the Wild Rumpus Must End and Past Dusk by Julie Barton, Enter the Temple from James Crews and The Weekly Pause.

2. Capture the Dark 2025: Winning photographs. “With over 2,200 entries, from over 22 countries, together we’ve created a powerful story of the night: revealing its wonder, exploring its mysteries, and inviting others to join us in our journey to protect it.”

3. Turning Neighborhoods into Communities. “How 3 Supernuclear readers became case studies for local connection.”

4. What ‘Food Noise’ Is Really Trying to Tell You from Gina Luker.

5. Why Uncertainty Is Good for Us. “Most of us want to avoid uncertainty, but the latest scientific research is showing that uncertainty may be essential for our overall well-being. Here’s how mindfulness can help us unlock its beneficial potential.”

6. I Stopped Reaching for My Phone First Thing—and My Mornings Got So Much Better. “The ‘no-scroll morning’ routine that keeps me grounded and energized.”

7. Recipe I want to try: I have some tomatoes from a friend’s garden so I think I should make this Bruschetta.

8. The Dog Days And Your Creative Juices, a gorgeous video by Noah Kalina. “On today’s show we talk about how hot it is. Can you believe it? It’s so hot. I can’t do anything. But I did go out one morning when it was foggy. There was one day that was fine. But will it ever be fine? Or is it just the Dog Days? I call my dad and ask him about burnout and feeling guilty about not doing work. He gives some pretty good advice.” 

9. Wisdom from Patti Digh: The quiet power of choice architecture (“designing my life for better decisions”) and When a broken bridge is a signal (“You are recoverable”).

10. Conservative Christians Are Saying, “To Hell With Jesus” on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. “I’m willing to go out on a theological limb here and say that if you’re applauding the harassment, fining, and arrest of homeless human beings, you’re not a Jesus Christian. I mean, you can go to church as often as you want, you can stick as many WWJD bumper stickers on your car as you’d like, and you can drop all the scripture quotes into your social media profile that your heart desires—but if you’re celebrating the elimination of reduced lunches, food stamp programs, and low-income housing, well, let’s just say your religion is short one Jesus.”

11. Step The Fuck Up or It’s Over, “Silence, Fascism, and the History Unfolding” by Frederick Joseph.

12. When fear hums beneath everything, “Connection as Survival” from Alix Klingenberg.

13. A Life With Less Pleasure Reading, “If a life has no space to read for pleasure, is that life too full?” from Anne Helen Petersen.

14. Aha! from Seth Godin.

15. I Thought Grief Would Destroy Me, “Instead, I Made My Partner Into A God” from Megan Falley. 

16. Raccoon spotted riding alligators across Florida lake. 😆

17. Baby skunk stomps. (Facebook reel) It’s embarrassing how many times I’ve watched this video, but he’s SO cute! 🥰

18. Urgent Surgery for Abandoned puppy GoFundMe.

19. Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, a new book by Susana M. Morris. I had no idea this book was being written, and I’m so excited — you may not know this about me, but I ADORE Octavia Butler and every single thing she wrote. In related news, Exploring Octavia Butler’s Beginnings as a Sci-Fi Trailblazer (“Susana M. Morris on the Early Writing of a Literary Icon”) and ‘Positive Obsession’ Is a Fresh Look at Octavia E. Butler (“A new biography by Susana M. Morris reveals the struggles, passions and triumphs that shaped the science fiction icon and her books”) on The New York Times (gift link).

Side note: I sure wish when a new book was released, you had the option to get a hardback or paperback copy, because I don’t like hardbacks but in this case and so often, I also hate waiting.

20. Serena Williams built her legacy on defiance. Why lend it to Ozempic culture? “From Compton outsider to American nonpareil, she came to embody resistance to toxic norms. But her embrace of GLP-1 drugs feels like capitulation to ideals she once rejected.”

Just to be clear: I believe in body autonomy. People living in a body have the right to do whatever they want — “your body, your choice.” AND I find this whole issue and the surrounding conversation fascinating and complicated. 

21. And this collection of random things I saved to my phone this week.