The infinite scroll

The headline is decently grabby, and the story seems likely to be authoritative, engaging, and brief. All of which is to say that it is worth a click. So you click it.

You manage to close these various boxes, and now you can scroll. For a few seconds, anyway, until another ad creeps down from the banner ad above the headline. This one is pushing an online subscription to a different newspaper’s crossword puzzle. It briefly stops downward progress, then disappears. From there, it’s easy cruising for three ordinary paragraphs and one declamatory, single-sentence Sportswriter Special, before it’s time for another ad—a home treadmill—and then another paragraph, and then a large photo.

All of this was, at some point, a choice. And then, at some later date, it wasn’t anymore.

Source: The infinite scroll – Columbia Journalism Review

How to Create Gratitude

This thing you have—this meal, this bed, these clothes, this friend—if it’s possible to have it, it’s possible not to have it. If you take a moment to imagine not having it, the good fortune of having it is no longer lost on you.

Source: How to Create Gratitude

When you accidentally shake hands during the times of flu

Source: Coronavirus: Kane Williamson’s Reaction To Unintentionally Shaking Finch’s Hand Is All Of Us