Make Your Damn Bed

Note: This is a revisitation of a past episode from 2023. I used uptime.app to check out the brief spark notes version of "Antisocial Media: Siva Vaidhyanathan's How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy" (available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/antisocial-media-9780190841164?cc=us&lang=en& ) and he said: "Facebook is a modern day Skinner Box" which sent me down...

Did you know that mixed emotions can be more emotionally taxing than purely negative ones? Today we talk about this + how to deal with it through things like “dialectical thinking," which is the attitude that opposite emotions are normal and compatible.  The Sources: Arthur C. Brooks "Nothing Drains You Like Mixed Emotions" for The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/01/...

I am starting to think some of us are looking at ourselves too much, and if you stare at anything too long, it will start to look weird after a while. Plus, the internet has warped our perception of what real humans + real aging is supposed to look like. But today, I want to talk about the ways "selfie-culture" has distorted many people's perception of themselves. I think if more people realized h...

With everything going on in the United States, chances are you’ve been working to stay informed, and maybe even help out in some ways — both of which can take a lot of mental energy. Your main goal is to find the balance between taking action and taking enough care of yourself that you’re actually able to work effectively. - Anna Borges The Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annaborges/recharge-then...

With everything going on in the United States, chances are you’ve been working to stay informed, and maybe even help out in some ways — both of which can take a lot of mental energy. Your main goal is to find the balance between taking action and taking enough care of yourself that you’re actually able to work effectively. - Anna Borges The Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annaborges/recharge-then...

Engaging with AI ethically is never going to be black and white, but we shouldn't feel shame or guilt for using these things with more awareness and tact. Being conscious is the best way to avoid the risks + potential consequences that come from engaging with an unregulated new technology. Managing our expectations and understanding the risks is incredibly important to these beginning stages of AI...

We should be cautious about normalizing AI before establishing regulations:  Unreliable: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729512/#:~:text=This%20study%20indicates%20that%20ChatGPT,back%20to%20an%20existing%20publication . AND https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07930- Plagiarism machine: https://youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc?si=OjKaOsE7GWKfm15p&t=868 Environmental racism, Energy W...

Here are some reasons we should be cautious about normalizing AI + ChatGPT before establishing regulations:  It’s unreliable. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729512/#:~:text=This%20study%20indicates%20that%20ChatGPT,back%20to%20an%20existing%20publication . AND https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07930- It’s a plagiarism machine. https://youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc?si=OjKaOsE7GWKfm...

AI is becoming increasingly unavoidable. It's in our phones, our TV's, and emails. But ChatGPT is one we STILL have a choice on how much we use it. There is a vast number of reasons we should be moderating the amount of AI we’re engaging with, while we still can.  Here are some reasons we should be cautious about normalizing AI + ChatGPT before establishing regulations:  It’s shockingly...

People are more productive than ever before and YET our wages are not reflecting the growth in labor. Our wages have been stolen by the wealth hoarders and redistributed to shareholders at the expense of our dignity. We need to ensure their propaganda about laziness doesn't continue to influence the people around us. The robber barons are worse than ever, but at least we're FINALLY talking about t...

I'm baaack!!! and today I'm diving into Zohran Mamdani's platform and campaign which has given me a surprising amount of renewed hope for the future of American politics, if we can stay focused on resistance, revolution, and harm reduction. SOURCES: NYTimes on Zohran: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/us/politics/what-is-democratic-socialism.html Zohran's Platform: https://web.archive.org/web/202...

there are so many different "consequentialisms" out there + it's important to not get lost in the "sauce" of the different combinations, but focus on the perspectives you can manage now, ideally the ones that affect you, your community, and the world around you. RESOURCE: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com T...

What to expect under an authoritarian regime: 1. Democratic election through fear mongering. 2. They will divide + rule. 3. They will subjugate media outlets to create a propaganda machine. 4. They will create a sense of chaos + fear. 5. They will distort truth and lie to create confusion. 6. They will slander their "enemies" 7. They will create distractions to fight while they pass more insidious...

Hypernormalization: Pretending everything is fine, when it is obviously NOT fine. The goal is to keep us overwhelmed and confused and disengaged. Resist your apathy. Resist in any way you can. Join a co-op, a tenants union, a mutual aid network, a food pantry, local politics, and fight for a new reality that doesn't force so many to pretend it's not happening. FOUSHY ON IG: https://www.instagram.c...

I'm back!!!! I've missed you so much and wanted to ramble about community again (for old time's sake). GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com TUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcast OR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcast OR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica   The opinions expressed by Julie...

we tend to over-intellectualize our feelings because we don't allow ourselves to work through them. Working through means DOING, CREATING, ACTING, PLAYING, and SEEKING JOY. Let down your walls + learn to feel through the act of creation. GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com TUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcast OR BE A REAL GEM + T...

It starts with recognizing the game. If someone is doing you a favor out of the kindness of their heart, it won't be so difficult to offer them a favor in return. When someone is attempting to manipulate you with that favor??? You're allowed to respond in whatever way you see fit. DONATE: www.pcrf.net Get Involved: Operation Olive Branch: Spreadsheets + Links GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM...

When you change the way you show up in your world, you encourage others to do the same + like the butterfly effect, sometimes the smallest + simplest changes can make the largest and most complex impacts! Resource: https://creaworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/All-About-Power.pdf More resources: https://commonslibrary.org/   DONATE: www.pcrf.net Get Involved: Operation Olive Branch: Spread...

I’m the type of person who always feels like I’m running late despite the fact that I very rarely am. I’ve been trying a new type of thought exercise where I take a moment to visit with a more senior or elderly me. Sometimes it’s my 81st birthday. I sit as her, with the underlying understanding that everything did eventually work itself out, and I had a great, full, and beautiful life despite all...

It's not too late. Every action counts. But don't get overwhelmed with doing everything. Instead, choose something + act. Every little bit helps. THE GUIDEBOOK: https://www.nottoolateclimate.com/_files/ugd/c8ef46_65f7332b00de468aa7091e31a4b2f772.pdf THE AUTHOR: http://rebeccasolnit.net/ THE RESOURCES FROM GWUniversity:  https:// onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/sources-for-climate-news/ M...

Another draft that (apparently) never got published, because I haven't been feeling well! "I sat with two diferent feelings: the sense of success and the worry that we didn’t really make a change. I could have given in to either of them. But instead, I began to wonder: What’s strategic here? How do my local actions add up to real changes? How do we move from one-time actions to a whole movement, w...

Democratic Socialism has no singular definition, but the simplest way to describe it, academically, is an ideology, economic or political system, rooted in opposing capitalism's profit motive by shifting the power back to the people, through prioritizing workers instead of the corporations themselves. People > Profits. That said, there can be a lot of descriptions which can lead to a lot of con...

I've been sick for the last two days and so today, we're jumping back in time to an older episode that I never published (oops!) from Rebecca Solnit's book, Hope in the Dark. "We are used to constant flux in the daily details of existence, yet the basic structure of the status quo always looks so unalterable. But it’s not. Profound change for the better does occur, even though it can be difficult...

The problem is, people aren't talking about the same things when they refer to socialism. Most people define socialism differently - but there is a definition (albeit broad) that we can and should all learn together, so we aren't reading to people who aren't even close to the same page. SOURCES: The 2022 research on American's views of socialism: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/mod...

Back to talk about Zohran tomorrow, but for now let's talk about our core belief filter that shapes how we see the world. For our entire lives, every single one of us has been developing a filter through which we see and interpret the world. This filter dictates the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about other people, and the world around us, but because we’ve carried this narrator with...