Make Your Damn Bed

Enjoy this throwback episode (from day 872) before the new series drops on Monday! "There's a sucker born every minute." - P.T. Barnum Carl Sagan shares guidelines with us for how to critically think. Today, I share them with you! Critical thinking never goes out of style. especially when we consider how MUCH information we are forced to take in on a daily basis. Historically speaking, Never have...

ENJOY THIS THROWBACK EPISODE FROM DAY 751, BEFORE THE NEW SERIES DROPS ON MONDAY - Make a list of all the shit you're good at + a list of all the good shit in your life + all the shit that bothers you about your life. Using the first two lists, attempt to solve the last list and bingo-bango you've got yourself a lil action plan template. WATCH: www.youtube.com/juliemerica GET A MONTHLY NOTE FROM M...

Curiosity is fragile. Learning is difficult as hell. Our brains are built for efficiency, not thinking. We can trick our brains into motivation by worrying about the difficulty of the challenge, rather than the topic or the content. We rely on our memories more than our thinking brain. According to Daniel Willingham's book, "Why Students Don’t Like School?" "Thinking occurs when you combine inform...

Some of the lessons I prioritize, still: Stop being so hard on yourself when you’re struggling to learn or master or understand something new. You’re actually doing a great job as a learner. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, trying, messing up, learning. If you knew already, you wouldn’t be learning anymore. Learning is impossible to mess up, unless you give up. It’s supposed to be chall...

And that’s the beauty of math, right? There are many ways to get there, but there is one answer. It’s tidy, if you’re tidy.  It’s also why I hate math - because I am not the tidiest worker.  I try to be, and am training myself to be so I can enjoy the process of things more, and actually invest in the process as much as the outcome, but when I was younger and sometimes still, I really do...

Dirt in a cog is a way to embody resistance. It focuses on slowing down, jamming up, creating little bits of friction that make it difficult to keep attacking our citizens effectively. We need all types of resistance, don't think there are limits to your modes of resistance. Make fascism hard. Don't normalize the violence we're seeing. Keep showing your community + your country that you aren't goi...

Joy is part of the practice. When you can't find it and don't know where to start? Start small. Start by reminding yourself that joy still exists, and it's a frequency vibrating right above our heads, and if we can just poke our heads out of this damned hole, we can find it - tap into it, and use it like the resource it is.  Pay attention to the glimmers that make you feel seen. The goal is t...

Tactical frivolity is what happens when you use humor, whimsy, and joy to make those in power look ridiculous. It flips the script and reclaims agency. The optics matter, the message matters, and how the message arrives matters. So get involved, stop leaning into despair, and flip that damned script. Get some joy in your resistance. It's exactly what the world needs right now. Threads: https:...

Beliefs require faith, rationality requires flexibility. Unless your belief is rooted in rationality, these things can conflict. Refusing to acknowledge or label something doesn’t make it go away, but it does take your power away from being able to confront or address it. Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66 SUPPORT JU...

Our brains have a tendency to over-value the effect of TINY inconsequential differences when comparing options. Distinction bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate how different their options are when they compare them to each other rather than evaluating them independently, against some absolute standard. This bias often leads to an exaggerated perception of the differences be...

The contrast effect is a bias where the perception of something is distorted by being compared to something else, making the differences between them seem greater than they are.  SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 Contrast effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_effect#:~:text=%5Bclarification%20needed%5D-,Dom...

The  omission bias  refers to our tendency to judge harmful  actions  as worse than harmful  inactions , even if they result in similar consequences. SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 OMISSION BIAS: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/omission-bias and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_bias More bias...

Our brains are designed to notice interesting (or negative) events. This can lead us to make decisions based on the negative experiences in our lives, and forget to consider the positive. SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 More biases here: Bizarreness effect, Humor effect ,  Von Restorff effect ,  Negativity bias ,&nb...

Too much information means our brain needs to take some shortcuts. Let's discuss how they work so we can know what to watch out for. SOURCES: BUSTER BENSON'S MEDIUM POST: https://medium.com/@buster/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18 Read more about the biases here: Availability heuristic ,  Attentional bias ,  Illusory truth effect ,  Mere exposure effect ,  Context effect...

Friction is a type of resistance that leads to consideration, growth, and unique solutions. Without friction, we all flatten into the same, boring, identity. Also, friction doesn't "go away" it shifts. So, where you find a frictionless experience, it means that someone else had to take that on. Most importantly: Friction isn't the enemy. It is a valuable communicator, if we're willing to listen. T...

Loneliness isn’t just personal. It’s institutional. It’s fiscal. It’s a bit engineered. It’s purposeful. - Kyla Scanlon The Sources: Kyla Scanlon's Substack Post: https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-most-valuable-commodity-in-the Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66 SUPPORT JULIE (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.co...

We are not cooked. We just have to learn how to imagine all the ways it CAN be better, first. The Sources: Faron Sage's Medium Post: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/everybody-needs-to-wake-up-the-world-17d4636d15dd Projects like  Moral Imaginations  and  Thrutopia  and activists like  Rob Hopkins  and  Manda Scott   Resources for Resisting a Coup: ht...

Which wolf will you feed? The Source: https://theacademy.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/two-wolves-cherokee-story.pdf Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66 SUPPORT JULIE (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed DONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.net GET AN OCCASIONAL P...

How often are you checking in with your values to see if your actions are aligning with them? Today we're doing a life audit - starting with our personal consumer ideology: spend one week at a time, assessing your current consumption habits . You may wanna take it a step further and Audit Your Favorite Brands . Then, create your “In a Perfect World" Company.   Resources for Resisting a Coup:...

Sometimes, when you're dissociating effectively, and really "in the zone" of distraction? You can find ANY interruption to be an inconvenience. Even winning. I fear this is what has been happening to me when I lock into my phone too hard. Every interruption (even the good ones) feel like a shock to my system. Everything feels like a distraction. Learning why this happens has been really helpful in...

Did you know that your* government has run official, formal, propaganda campaigns against its own citizens to spread disinformation. They have manipulated media, created bot account farms to sow discontent, and created smear campaigns - all in the name of "political strategy". "Remember kids, the next time someone tries to tell you the government wouldn't do that, oh yes, yes they would." If they...

We've discussed the "dead internet theory" a bit in the past, but today I want to remind you that is by design - and the people who profit off of you believing the internet is dead are grateful you don't look for the alive parts of it, that are still there + pushing back against the pollution + misinformation they are spreading. The internet is not trash. I think of it like thrifting. Most of it i...

Tech companies + advertising executives are manipulating us, no matter what. Today we're talking about how they do it. Tomorrow we'll talk about what to do about it. Main source: "Your Brain on Ads": https://www.npr.org/2011/06/14/137175622/this-is-your-brain-on-ads-an-internal-battle Advertiser's Tactics (neuroscience): https://www.usdatacorporation.com/blog/brain-response-to-ads-the-neuroscience...

Today we're talking about #gamergate and how it can help us understand what has been going on in our culture, just beneath the surface. Understanding that has changed my perspective on how I address certain topics with people I engage with. "Leftists may have a better product to sell but conservatives know better how to two sell a product." Did you know? Some studies show that "right-leaning indiv...

We ALL have ideology that guides us. Developing a personal, social, and cultural ideology is an inescapable fact of life. So let's consider your consumer ideology for a minute: How much of it is yours? How much of it was pushed upon you? How much of it is manufactured by advertisements? Do you have any brands you feel "loyal" to? Why? Is it a superior product? A better price? Or does it appear to...