As a Canadian, the last week has been challenging for me. With the continuing occupations in Ottawa and Windsor, I've found myself going down a rabbit hole of Reddit megathreads, Twitter feeds, and news updates. I didn't initially notice the anxiety, but the stress of following the news for an extended period of time really caught up with me by the end of the week. 

News and social media has a lot to do with the act of reading, and the language of current events, with its bluntness, bias, and emotional calls to action can be exhausting in large quantities.

Compare the brutal, blunt language of news with the more rich and varied language of books. A quote from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird which I'm rereading this week:

What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life--wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean. Aren't you? I ask. 

• Context is that which is scarce - Tyler Cowen looks notices that much of the anger, bias, and conspiracy talk results from scarcity of contextual understanding.
• The Noise Bottleneck: When More Information is Harmful - a Farnham Street article that explores the nature of signal vs. noise.
• On distributing reading time - How can we get more value out of our limited reading time? Some ideas on a T-shaped consumption strategy from Nate Meyvis. 

• Post Every Day - something I'm not terribly good at, but am trying to improve. 
• Ordinary Skills Mixed Together Can Produce Great Things - consider combining several things you're halfway decent at in order to achieve things that are unique.
• Leaving Classical Music? - A tough decision, and becoming increasingly prevalent since the start of the pandemic. Also take a look at the discussion on Facebook.