🤫 It’s my favorite time of year: Dead Week, the no man’s land between Xmas and New Year’s Eve
Issue #237: weird libraries, beating procrastination, and a goal-setting technique

On 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 the platform. Case in point: Here are a few of the top Boosted stories written by people who published for the very first time this year…

• Gaming journalist Giovanni Colantonio close-reads the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department, which broke the record for most daily Spotify streams in April. He sees the album as a meta commentary on Swift’s parasocial relationship with her fans, writing: “The subtext here is that overprotective Swifties don’t actually have Taylor Swift’s best interest in mind.”
• Adam DeMartino, cofounder of a buzzy specialty mushroom startup once valued at $90 million, conducts a public postmortem into why it failed. Essentially, they thought they were a tech company but were really a food company — and food can’t scale as fast as tech. “VC bets are inherently speculative,” he writes, “and if you want to ride that dragon, you need to be a literal dragon rider. I couldn’t ride the VC dragon.”
• Zhafira Aqyla sparked a conversation about why she chose an arranged marriage. “To me, arranged marriage is different [than] forced marriage,” Aqyla writes. “From the many candidates my parents offered, I had a choice to say no, and I did, plenty of times […] It’s a lot like Tinder, except in this scenario it is an extremely vetted Tinder customized to my personal interest.”
• Remylyn Tornilla (aka Remi) joined Medium via TikTok, publishing personal, confessional stories that resonated with hundreds of thousands of readers. We interviewed Remi on our blog last summer. “I honestly didn’t expect so many people to relate to my writing,” she says. “Writing on Medium has been my escape.”
• Jack Handey of SNL fame penned a satirical tale of young love. There’s an Aristocrats joke element to this, i.e. a twist at the end. “I am 58 years old,” Handey writes. “My fiancee, Holly, is 18. Some people might look askance at our relationship, because of the age difference. But what they don’t realize is how much Holly and I have in common: We both like to have sex a lot, we both like to make out in public, and we both like to drink heavily…”

Those are just a tiny handful of the new writers who opened up a blank post page and shared their ideas, experiences, feelings, and perceptions with us. Who were some of your favorite new writers this year? Who did you discover? Respond to let us all know, and to give us a few new writers to follow in 2025.

— Harris Sockel

⚡ Elsewhere on Medium

• Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, a weeklong celebration of African American culture that began in 1966 — and, as Chanté Griffin writes, its principles of unity and collective responsibility transcend its founder’s controversial past.
• To end procrastination, ruthlessly eliminate nice-to-haves. (Evgeny Khoroshilov)
• You’re not living if you don’t have a Weird Library (a cache of esoteric, out-of-print books that aren’t easily categorized). Read outside the lines! Find a dusty paperback in a used bookstore and get into it. As Rebecca Solnit says, “originality is partly a matter of having your own influences.” (AP Strange)

🎯 Your daily dose of practical wisdom

Most of the goals we set for ourselves are mimetic: We’ve been influenced into wanting them. Luke Burgis, author of a book on mimetic desire, recommends an exercise to help you become more self-aware of your goals:

1. On a piece of paper, draw a circle.
2. Inside the circle, list all of the people or institutions that have influenced your goals, covertly or overtly (e.g. “Instagram Fitness Influencer That I Follow Who Has Six-Pack Abs”)
3. Outside the circle, list what comes to mind when you ask yourself this question: What things might I want to pursue that are completely outside the boundaries of what people and institutions are asking of me, and for which there is no support or understanding? (Examples: learning needlepoint, starting a blog about your obscure interest in the history of mechanical keyboards, or really anything you’re zesty about that no one is asking for.)

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

A few notable writers who made their Medium debut in 2024 was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

🕎 🧑‍🎄 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 cartoons

If you’re not entirely familiar with publications on Medium, they’re essentially magazines or collections of stories. Some writers use publications as portfolios to collect their best work. Others have grown them into thriving communities, with their own meetup schedules, editorial calendars, and support systems. In 2024, over 865,000 stories were published in over 33,000 active publications.

These publications are gifts to the Medium community. Their editors often put in long hours managing and delivering feedback on dozens, if not hundreds, of drafts a month. Earlier this year, we launched a new Featured Stories functionality to help them get their best stories out to a wider audience.

A little bird told me there’s a lot more in store for publications in 2025. To help you learn more about them and support them in the new year, we’re dedicating this issue to the array of publications on Medium.

New pubs

Over 11,000 new publications were launched in 2024! Here are a few that particularly resonated with our readers this year:

• The Quantastic Journal: a publication about humanity, science, and technology.
  Sample story: What is a Particle, Really? by Selena Routley.
• The Parenting Portal: it’s about all things parenting, but it’s not just for parents. Sample story: Pregnancy Feels Different With Grief by Ayne.
• Life Without Children: for those who choose (or did not choose) a child-free life. Sample story: Why the Crazy Cat Lady Stereotype Is Especially Problematic for Women Without Children by Charlie Brown.
• Iberospherical, a publication that focuses on stories of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking lands and culture. Sample story: My Name, My Home by Mario López-Goicoechea.
• The Psychology of Workplaces: examining workplace culture and featuring tons of career tips. Sample story: How My Outsider Status Led to My Greatest Successes by Neela.

Active pubs

These publications are dependable resources every day. They are inspiring examples of what Medium communities can offer, especially if you are thinking about launching a pub of your own!

• Towards Data Science: Truly a one-stop-shop for anyone interested in technology topics, you can learn everything from tech career tips to how to build your own LLM.
• UX Collective: It’s not just about digital design. Its stories feature a lot of important conversations about inclusivity/accessibility, color theory, and brand-building.
• The Writing Cooperative, a phenomenal resource for grammar tips and advice on crafting narrative, but it also features encouraging topics, like Writing Through The Christmas Holidays: A Survival Guide.
• The Narrative Arc: If you love memoirs about the human condition, this is the place to be. It also runs monthly writing challenges, which are a great way to stretch your skills and get to know their community.
• Tastyble: Featuring truly useful recipes and cooking advice for things you know you should be doing, but don’t, so now you don’t have an excuse (such as properly cleaning a cast iron pan or how to quick-pickle your own stuff).

Find *your* new favorite pubs

• Subscribe to our Huge List of Publications Accepting Submissions. Although primarily a resource for writers seeking pubs, it’s also a way to find active and emerging communities on Medium.
• PRO TIP: Use Medium’s search to look for topics you’re interested in, and filter by hitting the “publication” tab on the results page!
• Subscribe to our official blog for our monthly “It Happened On Medium” roundups. We mention plenty of new publications there, too.
• Check out the comment section of this post!? If it’s empty, why not get into the generosity of this holiday season and share your favorite ones here?

— Carly Rose Gillis

Recommended reading

• In Debugging My Childhood, Shari Walker shares her journey from a foster home to becoming a tech copywriter, lovingly depicting heartbreaking details from her childhood and describing how she transformed her experiences into empowerment.
• Laugh your way into the next “eight crazy nights” with Ellen Liebenthal’s hilarious illustrated Hanukkah Gifts for Companies That Just Don’t Get it. My favorite might be the Chanukah Bunny. (Runner up: The Adam Sandler snowglobe??)
• Eric Pierce, editor of Fanfare, endured 40 titles to make this list of the best and worst Christmas movies to stream right now. His pick for #1 best movie? Klaus, an animated film available on Netflix that seems profoundly charming and may help you avoid the #1 most controversial debate at family holiday gatherings: “So, what should we watch tonight?”
• STILL searching for gifts? You’re not alone. For those of us in the U.S., we can blame a late Thanksgiving for that; it’s left us all in a scramble. I’m thankful for this gift guide by author Ximena Vengoechea, which features useful book recommendations and easy options to quickly find, such as a panettone cake (classic and classy, IMO) or unique memberships (like to your local botanical garden).

A practical dose of writing wisdom: denotation vs. connotation

If you are worried about offending your audience, lean into the denotation (the strict definition) of the words you use. If you want to persuade your audience, lean into their connotations (the vibes).

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Harris Sockel

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

Publications that made Medium great in 2024 was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

✌️ Welcome back
Issue #235: why Spotify wrapped hits different this year + reversible decisions

It’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 one of the forces driving the rise of comment sections across the internet over the last 25 years.

All to say: There’s wisdom to be found in the comments if you know where to look. With that in mind, I spelunked through Medium’s stats to find the most-read responses across every story published this year. I found a pattern: Experts jumping in to add thoughtful context. Here are a few of the top responses I uncovered.

Retired software developer Creig S tempers expectations that AI will eat the world:

Let’s get rid of any myths about how smart or good AI is. I prefer to treat the product of generative AI like you would a 3 year old who thinks all dogs are named “King”, with patience, caution, humor, and allowance for many errors.

Entrepreneur Kevin Dewalt adds nuance to VC firm Maverick Ventures’ LLM predictions:

Relative to traditional software, tiny teams can build powerful applications very quickly because the LLM takes on the reasoning traditionally captured by thousands of lines of code. As LLMs get exponentially better, this trend will inevitably continue.

Lastly, JenFireHeartMama’s viral story about the dissolution of her nine-year marriage prompted several of the year’s most-read responses. Dino DiGiulia, who went through divorce himself, remembers “this tremendous feeling of freedom. Broke, alone, but free.” And Allene Swienckowski chimes in with some hard-earned life wisdom from her 58-year marriage: “Without a doubt, marriage, or just committing to another human, requires trust, love, desire (both emotionally and physically) and quite a lot of understanding self and other humans.”

— Harris Sockel

👀 Our open tabs

• Product growth expert Rosie Hoggmascall chronicles the 10-year history of Spotify Wrapped (now a viral marketing trend across many major apps, from Duolingo to Loom). This year’s Wrapped broke a record for listens (up 26% from last year), but fell narratively flat for some — and Hoggmascall chalks it up to Spotify cutting 17% of its team this year.
• Software development is an exercise in decision making, and more than 50% of development time is typically spent investigating existing systems to figure out how they work. (software development consultant swardley)
• In storytelling, one salient detail beats many details every time. (Lulu Cheng Meservey)

🤔 A dose of practical wisdom

Uncertainty is exhausting for humans (it’s one of the reasons why decision-making is so draining). A helpful tip, via Mark Shrime, MD, PhD: “There are very, very, very few decisions in your life that can’t be reversed. Tattoos can be removed, cross-country moves undone, purchases returned, and omelettes shared.”

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

The Medium responses that got you talking (and reading) this year was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

🙏 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 distraction

As the calendar year wraps up, we’re doing the same here at the Medium Newsletter. This week, we’ll be taking a look back at the year on Medium, pulling out the top highlighted passages (today), calling out some of the most-read responses, flagging notable new publications, writers new to Medium, and (Friday) sharing the most-read and most-shared stories of the year. Then we’re taking a break for the last week of 2024 — we hope you will as well, we all need rest — and will be back in 2025 to help you better understand your world in the new year.

Reading through the most-highlighted passages from the year, a few clear themes stood out. By far the biggest one — and not a surprise if you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, as we highlighted a number of these in past issues — are ideas related to deepening your understanding of yourself:

“When it comes to writing online, ‘how I’ beats ‘how to.’”

— Brendan Charles, Why I shifted from pure writing to documenting instead

“People with high levels of trait self-control are good at avoiding temptation — not resisting it.”

— Riikka Iivanainen, The secret life of people with high self-control (it’s easier than you think)

“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.”

— JA Westenberg, Just show up

“There’s a fine line between taking on a worthwhile challenge, and taking on unnecessary stress.”

— John Gorman, Stop wasting your time

“The problem with good habits, in other words, is that they sacrifice intentionality for efficiency.”

— Stephan Joppich, Goodbye, Atomic Habits

“Edison did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification.”

— Pete Sena, quoting the New Yorker in MVP is over. You need to think about MVE.

Of course, the flip side of this showed up here, too — there was also a lot of wisdom about better understanding other people:

“If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context.”

— Devon Price, Laziness does not exist

“The value of research doesn’t come from elevating people who are already shouting. It comes from finding the people who are not being heard, and adding their voices to the conversation.”

— Pavel Samsonov, Nike’s $25B blunder shows us the limits of ‘data-driven’

“Honesty is direct, whereas dishonesty tends to be indirect.”

— Joshua Mason, I’m an (actual) detective: Here are 7 signs that someone is lying to you

Lastly: While we’re avowedly pro-human-writing here at Medium, we also know AI tools can serve many purposes, like helping you learn new skills. And two of the most-highlighted passages this year were AI prompts that will raise your skill level in using chat-based AI tools like ChatGPT. We think you’ll find them useful:

Before you start, please ask me any questions you have about this so I can give you more context. Be extremely comprehensive.

— Jordan Gibbs, The most important ChatGPT prompt

Create a curated list of use cases for ChatGPT, each thoughtfully designed to align with my occupation. This list will serve as my personalized guide, enabling me to leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities in various aspects of my occupation. Organize this list into 10 distinct sections sorted by their relevance to my occupation. In each section, construct a table with columns for “Use Case” and “Example Request”. Each section will contain 5 use cases examples. The “Example Request” will be written in the form of a direct request to ChatGPT. Begin by asking me about my occupation, and based on it fill in the interests, goals, challenges I’m facing. It’s imperative that you follow the request for 10 sections and 5 use case examples in each section.

— Bernard Builds, This one prompt will teach you how to use ChatGPT

— Scott Lamb

What else we’re reading

• I’ve never thought of it this way, but year-end book lists tend to be misleading for very mechanical reasons: Unlike music, TV, and movies, books take a long time to read, meaning critics can only read a tiny fraction of what gets published every year. (Janice Harayda)
• The best thing I learned from this story about a chef’s time working at a Michelin-starred restaurant was how the culinary team — the folks making the food — are also the servers, hosts, and dishwashers. They see the whole experience, so they know how to make it better. (Fox Britten)
• The deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris sees her loss as a symptom of a larger issue for Democrats: The institutions they’re used to influencing — traditional media and Hollywood — are no longer the dominant cultural forces. “You don’t get a national eight-point shift to the right without losing hold of culture.” (Semafor)

⚡️ Your daily dose of practical wisdom about inspiration

To find creative inspiration, practice “deliberate distraction.” Put yourself in the path of serendipity with an aimless diversion, like flipping through old encyclopedias or browsing the shelves of a bookstore without a goal in mind, and see what unexpected connections your mind starts to make.

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Harris Sockel & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

The most-highlighted sentences of 2024 was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’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 for your comments, questions, emails, and (if you’re a writer on Medium) for publishing the stories we’ve all been reading, highlighting, and sharing.

Our first issue, which went out on January 31, states the mission we’ve stuck to since the beginning: Real humans (hi!) who work at Medium sharing human perspectives that deepen understanding about the world. We’ve featured over 800 writers and 1,000 stories this year. Over 2 million people subscribed. Here are the issues you loved this year…

• Our most-read issue: “Persuasive people don’t argue — they listen.” The title is a quote from Andy Murphy’s “16 Strange But Beautiful Paradoxes in Life.”
• Our most popular theme this year? Creativity. Thousands of you nodded along with designer Ida Persson’s advice for embracing ambiguity by exploring ideas that don’t immediately reveal themselves as hits.
• Decision-making was another big theme for us here in Newsletterland. We explored cognitive biases like action bias (we prefer doing something to doing nothing, even when inactivity would be more beneficial) and bikeshedding (fixating on trivial improvements while ignoring underlying issues).
• Lastly, we solved every problem with generative AI this year, didn’t we? Just kidding. But it was a huge topic in the newsletter. We explored how deepfakes are destroying the stock photo industry. We learned from an eighth-grader’s experiment to pit AI-generated poetry against human-written poetry. And we grappled with the age-old question: Can robots make art?

And before I go… maybe this is just me… but will anyone else remember summer 2024 for grainy, lo-res images such as this beaut?

If you played Zoom In, our slightly unhinged game in August, we see you. And we thank you. And maybe we’ll see you in the new year?

— Harris Sockel

✨ What else we’re reading

• After a three-month trial, Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot repeatedly over nearly a decade. As the judge read the verdict, Gisèle’s supporters gathered outside the courthouse, singing and chanting: “We are strong, we are proud, and feminist and radical and angry.”
• Alfred Hitchcock is often cited as the inventor of “spoiler warnings” because he (a) hid the final pages of his scripts from actors, and (b) insisted audiences not tell friends about his films’ endings. On Medium, Monia Ali thinks we’ve taken “spoiler alert” a little too far. I hear those two words all the time in reference to any plot device or narrative element (even if it’s not actually a spoiler). I think this happened over the last decade or so, probably in response to streaming and TV’s increasingly asynchronous viewership. (Fanfare)
• “Do you have kids?” might seem like an innocent conversation-starter, but as a former doula on Medium writes, it can imply social pressure to have them. (MD)

📄 A dose of practical wisdom

Google Docs just made it easier to write your novel, dissertation, or multi-episode miniseries: You can weave together multiple docs in a single window via document tabs (it’s on the left).

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

We sent you 233 emails this year; here are your faves was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I 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 likelihood of death. If you tend to jolt awake in the middle of the night (like I often do), thinking about these facts doesn’t exactly help you chill out. I was therefore thrilled to learn that there might be something off with the current prescription for seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.

As historian Robert Ekirch writes, sleeping for one uninterrupted interval is simply a function of artificial light and the industrial revolution. Before electricity and factories, segmented sleep — sleeping in two intervals — was all the rage. Benjamin Franklin was a fan: Between “first sleep” and “second sleep” he would get naked, throw open the windows and take cold air baths. The French called the period between the two sleeps “dorveille,” while the English called it “the watch.” Both terms sound ancient and spooky in a cool way, which made me search for other people who embrace this period of sleeplessness. On Medium, Ron Geraci describes this state as “an odd, placid form of being awake–more aware but less alert…a ripe sentience that allowed clear but limited thought and wanted stillness.”

Reading this helped me reframe what I previously defined as insomnia. Now, when I wake up in the middle of the night, instead of stressing out about NIH factoids, I remind myself I might be conscious in a way that is only available to me in that moment. I allow my mind to wander, to think in a way that still feels sort of like a dream. This has paid off: I have an army of Monarch butterflies in my garden because one night I decided the next day I was going to plant milkweed everywhere (just one example of my more recent dream-like decisions).

There doesn’t seem to be a scientific consensus about whether biphasic sleep is a good thing, but that’s okay. For me, the knowledge that there is more than one way of looking at periods of sleeplessness has made the NIH’s dire warnings less scary, and makes me want to give a shout out to the true sleep rebels, our beloved night owls. While they don’t necessarily have “two sleeps,” they do find themselves hyper-focused in the middle of the night. A self-described night owl, Stefanie Morejon, writes on Medium that her behavior is perhaps evolutionary, essential for human survival. “Somebody,” she writes, “had to stay awake to keep the fires burning, to protect the community and keep the night creatures at bay.”

— Adeline Dimond

🐦 Elsewhere on Medium…

A watch of nightingales. A muster of peacocks. A murder of crows. These delightfully unexpected collective nouns, or “terms of venery,” date back to a 1486 book about hunting. Most people don’t realize English contains collective nouns for groups of humans, too, e.g. “a promise of bartenders” and “a hastiness of cooks” (!). We really need to start coining more of these. A… draft of Medium writers? That’s not great. Someone should fix that. If you have ideas, let me know. (Jack Shepherd)

📖 Worth remembering

To tell a good story, start super small. (Katie E. Lawrence)

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb, Harris Sockel & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

It’s not (always) insomnia, it’s segmented sleep was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, 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 to connect fluoride to a myriad of health risks, including increased cancer rates and, a hot topic right now, lower IQ scores in children.

There is plenty about fluoride’s use in drinking water that can sound like the stuff of conspiracy theories (so much so that it was once invoked in anti-communist propaganda). The fluoride added to our drinking water is often sourced from phosphate companies, which produce fertilizers. Because it is a naturally occurring chemical made of fluorine minerals (it’s in the periodic table of elements!), fluoride is essentially a byproduct of their mining practices. So, critics are also concerned about the quality of fluoride produced in that way, as well as the pollution caused by those industries. (This also why you may sometimes hear it referred to as “an industrial waste.”)

Fluoridated water is also used to fuel the conversation about “governmental overreach” or personal choice, as it is difficult or impossible for some to truly opt out of public water that has been fluoridated.

Even so, many public health officials are confident that the kind and level of fluoride recommended by regulatory agencies is safe. Critics call those studies about negative health effects and IQ scores unreplicable or irrelevant, as they often are examining a level of fluoride that is at least two times over the suggested maximum amount. (Too much of a good thing may be bad for you? You don’t say…)

Fluoridated water (within healthy limits) is also a public good. “After all, the promise of fluoridation was never just about preventing cavities — it was about ensuring that everyone, regardless of income, education, or race, could maintain basic dental health,” says Dr. Jess Steier, a public health scientist, in a story on Medium.

And yet: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s nominee for head of the Department of Health and Human Services, has said one of his first official acts will be to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” Here’s a punch list of facts and resources I’m keeping an eye on in the midst of it all:

• The recommended amount of fluoride to be added to public water is 0.7 parts per million. Overly fluoridated water (above 1.5 parts per million) is not endorsed by any health professional.
• Internationally, many cities that have defluoridated their water also provide free dental healthcare or provide fluoride in other ways, such as in salt.
• The act of fluoridating municipal water is not federally mandated. One way to find out whether your local water system has fluoride is to check the CDC’s website, My Water’s Fluoride, but some states may have their own resources.

Personally, I’d love to know more about how fluoride is purified before it enters our water systems. What about you? What concerns do you have about the dental health of our communities, and what solutions do you want to see?

— Carly Rose Gillis

More around the web

• Last week, Astro Bot (a video game about a robot obsessed with reclaiming parts of a Playstation 5 from a green alien) (yes, it’s that meta) was honored as The Game Award’s Game of the Year. Ben Ulansey shares some context as to why it grabbed the gaming community’s adoration in these times: “It’s a smile-inducing band-aid on a planet that feels sometimes like it’s bursting apart at its seams.” (Fanfare)
• I’ve been watching the FX show “Say Nothing,” which is based on the real story of two women volunteers for the IRA who performed a hunger strike while they were imprisoned by the British in the 1970s. John Oakes, author of The Fast: The History, Science, and Philosophy of Doing Without, adapted some of his research into a post for the Hell World newsletter. In it, he explores the history of this political action, describing it as “jiu-jitsu politics that inverts the power structure and can undermine authority more effectively than a bomb.”
• Sonification is the act of bringing infographics to life through sound. It’s a part of pursuing a “multi-modal” strategy of learning, which can be especially effective in improving memorization skills. Don’t believe me? Give a listen to the examples featured in this Medium story by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for an unforgettable way of learning about the intensity of black holes or how galaxies are formed.

A dose of practical wisdom

I recently attended a webinar that featured a conversation with Amy Blankson, author of The Future Of Happiness, who shared a few extremely useful strategies for managing stress and increasing optimism in day-to-day life. My favorite: scroll through your phone’s contact list and find seven people in your social circle that you appreciate and text one person per day to thank them. The list and the scope helps with decision fatigue; once you have the list in front of you, you’ll find it hard to not do it. (I’m on day 5, and it’s working!)

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Harris Sockel

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

Fluoride: a chemical byproduct with a complicated past (and future) was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ever since turning 38, my favorite line to deliver with confidence is: “Actually, I’m almost 40.” I smirk, ready to feed off people trying to shhh this fact away as if they were swatting a fly off my head. “But you look so young!!” And thank you, that was the point of this statement — my quest to look and feel younger as I round a new decade.

Aging is something I think about constantly. The World Health Organization has confirmed people are living longer, which makes me entertain the idea of taking The Substance even more. I think about aging when someone tells me about their high-interest savings account or that they need to call a roofer or that they just booked a trip to Japan or even that it’s a Tuesday night and they have plans. How old are they to be doing this stuff? Am I that age too? Have I passed that age? I need to contextualize myself as a single, childless renter in the midst of whatever story they’re telling me so I can feel slightly better about the clock ticking down to a colonoscopy appointment. My compulsion to defend the choices I’ve made is also not innate — comparing ourselves to others is actually a socially conditioned construct. Studies show there is a “strong correlation between frequent comparison and heightened levels of depression and anxiety” (about aging, among other things). It’s so fun.

However, just like therapist Crystal Jackson on Medium, part of me is ready for the “Freedom of the Feral Forties.” As Jackson writes, this is the decade for writing your own rules, getting weirder, and becoming even more yourself. “The clock cannot be stopped,” she explains, “I’m suddenly curious to see myself at all the ages I’m fortunate enough to reach.”

I’m also very aware that getting older comes with its downsides. My mom always says “there’s nothing golden about your golden years” and Rodney Lacroix’s “Countdown to Extinction: A Top Ten List of the Worst Parts of Getting Old” is proof (and it has me wondering if my mom is getting paid to ghostwrite these days).

The scariest thing about aging, to me, is not my lack of a Roth IRA but the compounding loss I experience each year. More and more parents of close and childhood friends are dying. Friends are leaving doctor’s offices with scary, ugly diagnoses. All the pets my friends got in their twenties are now crossing the rainbow bridge. I’ve never experienced as much tangential loss as I have this year alone. As coach Ronke Babajide, Ph.D., observes in “That Thing We Always Forget About Aging,” every day brings us closer to losing the people closest to us. A poignant read that reminds me how limited time is for those close to me the more we blow out the candles.

— Beth Alexandroff

⚡ What else we’re reading…

• Evin Ibrahim and her husband, who is Syrian, react to the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad: “I actually feel myself wanting to help rebuild my country.” (Age of Empathy)
• Complementary colors (opposite on the color wheel, e.g. blue and orange) tend to dominate design, but “halfway color combos” (blue-green and purple) can feel more emotional and evocative. (Ruxandra Duru, Bootcamp)
• It’s easy to be cynical about blatantly commercial awareness days (today is Maple Syrup Day, FYI, and everything I can find about it sounds like SEO bait). But! Dan Brotzel spent 365 days celebrating fake holidays and it kind of changed his life? He leaned into the silliness of Talk Like a Pirate Day, took full advantage of Eat a Bagel Day, and used some Days as excuses to chat up people he’d never meet otherwise. “On their respective Days, I had wonderful conversations with all sorts: a hermit, a lighthouse keeper, a town crier, a stationery fetishist.” (Human Parts)

🧠 Your daily dose of practical wisdom

The “fundamental attribution error” is our human tendency to think everyone’s out to get us — basically, we overemphasize personal intentions and underemphasize how much everyone’s just responding to their circumstances. Most things are not about you.

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb, Carly Rose Gillis & Harris Sockel.

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Aging makes you more yourself was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In T-15 days it will be 2025. Years are artificial, human-created markers of time, but they serve a purpose — they give life shape.

I try to take some time during “dead week” (the week between Christmas and New Year’s) to figure out where I’m going and what I can do better. On Friday, I shared leadership coach Tutti Taygerly’s year-end questionnaire, which is basically a list of journaling prompts. A few: Which relationships of yours grew the most this year? Where did you build unexpected trust? Which behaviors have you let go of?

Inspired by that, I went looking for more succinct ways to take stock of your year. Rochelle Deans suggests looking back through wherever you naturally document your life (texts, sent emails, posts to your social media platform of choice, your photos app) and identifying highlights and lowlights.

Or, if you want a mnemonic, business strategist Dev Singh has a dead-simple acronym, the Four Ls:

• Loved: When did you feel most alive this year? What did you genuinely enjoy?
• Longed: What did you want this year? What didn’t materialize? What disappointed you?
• Loathed: What did you hate? What felt like a waste of time?
• Lessons: What did you learn? What do you still have to learn?

Lastly, in a Medium story from a few years back, executive coach Andrea Mignolo encouraged everyone to write a letter for yourself to read a year from now (i.e., at the end of 2025). There’s really no wrong way to write this. You can tell your future self what you’re committed to, excited about, or nervous about. Seal it up and don’t open it until this time next year.

Whatever your end-of-year ritual (or none), remember: How you end the year is how the next one begins.

— Harris Sockel

📖 2 of my open tabs

• The new rules of media: Most people are less obsessed with “news” and “newness” than journalists think. (One Thing)
• A response to last Wednesday’s issue on ChatGPT’s favorite words, which should really be a Medium post of its own: William Bennett, who taught a course on sci-fi at Tufts, articulates ChatGPT’s Achilles heel better than I could. GPT fails at subtext because subtext depends on “being aware of other selves,” or creating a “we” situation where both you and I have something unspoken at stake.

🥚 Your daily dose of practical wisdom

To boil eggs whose shells slide off elegantly, please for the love of breakfast listen to J. Kenji Lopez Alt, who’s done more tests on egg boiling than anyone. Gently nestle them into about one inch of boiling water and leave them there, lid on, for nine minutes. (This changed my life. I’d been doing it wrong for years.)

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

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How to take stock of the year that was was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last Saturday, before we knew the name of the lead suspect in Brian Thompson’s murder, a writer on Medium named Burt came across a flyer for a lookalike contest in downtown New York City. It asked people to come dressed as the United Healthcare CEO assassin, offering the winner a cash prize. Burt figured his jacket looked enough like the one in the news photos and decided to go.

“I felt frustrated with the extensive media coverage of the shooting and the singling out of the shooter considering the recent unsolved white supremacist stabbing of migrants in the city,” he told me when I asked why he went. As Burt describes it, he participated not to glorify the murderer but to critique the media.

On Medium, Burt recounts that none of the contestants celebrated the assassin. Most of them didn’t even really look like him. They responded to journalists facetiously (joking about the event being organized by the FBI and saying Soros paid them to be there, when in reality the organizer was anonymous and never showed up). “It was a quickly formed in-group: you either knew what was up and how blatantly unserious the whole thing was, or you assumed some sort of odd malevolence or antisocial behavior,” Burt writes. Here’s a video. He won the competition.

Later that day, though, the media framed it differently. The New York Post wrote “New Yorkers mockingly celebrated the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO…” The Daily Mail: “Outrage as New York park hosts vile lookalike event…”

I see this pattern a lot: Something relatively innocuous happens and it’s covered in a way that inspires outrage or indignation. At the lookalike contest, in Burt’s experience, eight strangers in hoodies gathered for a pretty uneventful stunt to poke fun at celebrity lookalike culture. The bemused crowd was described as “outraged.” Another example is TPOT, or “This Part of Twitter,” a community of intellectually curious people posting memes about technology and self-optimization on X. It’s mostly innocuous, but since we’ve discovered Luigi Mangione’s association with it, people think the entire movement is suspect.

“Decorum is often a rhetorical and fabricated means for the media [giving them] the right to pretend that they have the higher ground,” writes Burt, reflecting on how his participation in the event was covered.

It’s a predictable pattern, I think. (It’s also a reason to watch less news.) Have you noticed this? Where and how?

— Harris Sockel

💭 One more story: a year-end ritual

I never do this but always promise myself I will: Actually take time to reflect on your year, in writing. This weekend or next, maybe I’ll finally try leadership coach Tutti Taygerly’s year-end ritual. By hand, write your answers to the following questions…

• Work: What are the 3 projects you’re most proud of finishing this year (at work, in life, anywhere)? What would you change if you had to do them again?
• Relationships: Which three of your relationships grew the most this year? Where did you build unexpected trust? Who gave you the most support?
• You: What behaviors have you let go of? Which new ones have you adopted? What negative patterns have you successfully broken? What are you proudest of learning? What new identities have you adopted?

🤍 Worth remembering

“There’s a fine line between taking on a worthwhile challenge and taking on unnecessary stress.” — John Gorman, “Stop Wasting Your Time”

Deepen your understanding every day with the Medium Newsletter. Sign up here.

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com

Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and join a community that believes in human storytelling.

Media manipulation, lookalike contests, and fabricated outrage was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.