Meghan Caughill

New year…same ol’ me. Have you ever felt that making a big change to your lifestyle—like moving or getting a dramatic new hairstyle—will also change you on the inside? I’ve been guilty of that for many years. Surely THIS TIME I’ll get my new apartment decorated and keep it in impeccable shape. It never comes to pass. I keep repeating patterns of thought and behavior, so of course the past repeats itself! I hadn’t yet done the work to change.

I have high hopes for 2019, but so far I’ve been lying low. I’m avoiding the work—the early stages are always so painful. But like sore muscles after the gym, you (and I) have to work through the discomfort to get somewhere worth going. I have muscles now, after going through the gym. What will I have after going to art gym for 6 months? Let’s find out.

» How gorgeous are these cyanotype notebooks???

» Michigan State is a bellwether for things to come in academia. Universities are full of people who like to avoid responsibility and making difficult decisions. Structurally, the fiefdom model (only each discipline has the authority to oversee itself) provides lots of room for shady things to develop. Combined with the cult-like devotion that most universities foster, any misdeeds open a powder keg of bad emotions.

For colleges and universities, tragedies of this scale more commonly take the form of fatal accidents or mass shootings. In such cases, campus communities tend to pull together rather than split apart. The failure of a leader as a moral actor, however, elicits a different kind of grieving. This is an angry grief, a confusing sorrow that tempers enthusiasm for the institution with a kind of quiet shame. It is a phenomenon that finds its singular historic parallel at Pennsylvania State University, where top administrators were criminally charged with covering up the crimes of a serial sexual predator.

As at Penn State, where Graham B. Spanier served for 16 years as president before he was fired and later convicted of endangering the welfare of children, Michigan State struggles to come to grips with what the Simon era means now. Her prosecution brings that struggle to the fore in ways that her long-serving colleagues had not fully anticipated, opening a dam of emotion and ambivalence.

» Ignore all the art-school-ese and this is some pretty cool internet-based art.

» You reap what you sow: “My daughter asked me to stop writing about motherhood. Here’s why I can’t do that.” Check the comments; they’ll say everything that you’re thinking and more.

» Investigators are starting to root out the infiltrators of the alt-right (aka the ones designed to make the alt-right look and act more extreme than they really are)

» I’m not a fan of any type of feminism but this article makes some very good points: “This is everything wrong with mainstream feminism”

» That isn’t to say that I don’t love women. Many women are doing cool and interesting things, like Riva-Melissa Tez. I like her ideas about funding research, and that she’s actually doing something about it.

We really need to improve incentive structures between groups. How can we give other people access to fundamental research? When you read academic papers, researchers are incentivized to keep private the exact details that would explain the breakthrough. I’m opposed to people being private about discovery, even though I understand it would be suicide to do the opposite. I love today’s emphasis on being open source, but we need more incentives for following through. Right now, you need to be altruistic or charitable to be open source. There is no cost benefit. We don’t live in a world where individuals get rewarded for contributing to society. Instead, the message is, contribute to your own thing and you’ll be rewarded for it. Then use that money to contribute to society. That process is too slow in my mind.

» “Gen Z Is Forgoing College To Attend Trade Schools“

» If you’ve ever wondered why the world is a hall of mirrors, this article will help explain why. (Please note that I do not endorse all of the theology. The bit on mimetics is great, tho.)