August Recap
August 31, 2025What I Read
I started the month with Neil Postman’s 40 year old classic Amusing Ourselves to Death. The book examines our relationship to television and the bleeding of entertainment into education, politics, journalism, and more. It’s scarily prescient for today’s algorithmically-driven media consumption. "People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." The month was bookended with Amanda Montell’s The Age of Magical Overthinking, written with such meticulously chosen turns of phrase that I laughed out loud at several points for just how clever she is and wore out my highlighter. Other highlights include a handful of the Who Was/What Is series as I do research for my own manuscript in the series, including What Do We Know About the Mystery of D.B. Cooper? and Who Is R.L. Stine?.
Stolen Sharpie Revolution gave me some insights into crafting my first zine and Rebel Girl had me deep diving into the Riot grrrl zines at the DC Punk Archive. My top read this month was the new middle grade novel The Anxious Exile of Sara Salt by Gabrielle Prendergast. It features a young protagonist, Sara, with selective mutism who moves in with her half-sister after her brother is born prematurely and has to stay in the ICU. Sara encounters an array of characters as her half-sister strives to build a community of shipping container homes for the city’s unhoused population. Sara is honest and introspective about her struggles and finds clever ways to use her voice to speak up for the things that matter most.
What I Watched
Like pretty much everyone, I’ve been tuning in to watch young adults make questionable choices in The Summer I Turned Pretty (#TeamConrad). I haven’t read the books but from what I’ve heard, the last few episodes of the show are uncharted territory, so I hope SPOILER Belly doesn’t pull a Lauren Conrad and skip out on Paris for a boy. Do you remember the show The Best Years? It was an early 2000s Canadian teen drama in the same vein as Degrassi and South of Nowhere, about freshman college student Samantha Best also making questionable choices. It isn’t streaming anywhere so I snagged it on DVD and have been slowly rewatching. I’ve also digitized some of the special features and added them to the Internet Archive, including bloopers and audition reels. My comfort show this month has been Growing Pains, the 1980s family sitcom starring Kirk Cameron (Candace Cameron’s brother), Tracey Gold, Alan Thicke (Robin Thicke’s dad), Joanna Kerns, and a very young Leonardo DiCaprio. I used to love this show growing up, but it’s never seemed to get the same nostalgic traction as the other Cameron sibling’s Full House. In any case, it’s currently streaming for free on Pluto! August has been pretty busy so I didn’t watch very many movies - just But I’m a Cheerleader! and Psycho Beach Party. Both were campy and kitschy and both are streaming for free on Tubi!
What I Listened To
I recently subscribed to 404 Media which includes ad-free access to their podcast, so I’ve been making my way through the backlog. AI Slop Summer was especially good. Kathleen Hanna’s biography inspired me to listen to the full discography of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, plus Nirvana thrown in for good measure. Lana Del Rey’s on constant repeat, alongside Dan Romer’s incredible orchestration for Chasing Coral. That soundtrack is one of the key reasons I started collecting physical media again. It’s never been released for sale physically which is a travesty because it is SO good.What I Thought About
I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to AI. As a millennial who came of age alongside the Internet but was by no means a digital native, I’ve always been nervous about emerging technology and the fear that one day I will be the boomer helplessly asking how to print a screenshot from my phone so I can send it to my friend. For that reason I’ll experiment with, if not necessarily embrace, new tools and technologies so I don’t get left behind. AI is one of them. I’ve been involved in projects at work, ironically that were lambasted by 404 Media, to try and figure out how to utilize AI in archives. My primary use for it in my day-to-day work however has been to help with coding Python scripts and API queries to streamline my work, speed up the release of important records, and help researchers with their own API queries and scripts. I’m squarely on the side of disavowing AI for creative expression, especially when that’s driven by cost-cutting efforts by corporations like J.Crew using AI to create an ad campaign, and I’m terrified by the implications of people using AI as a therapist. But I do think AI has some value and, for better or worse, it’s here to stay. I’ve been a longtime follower of Cal Newport, who explains in his book Deep Work that viewing technology with an “any-benefit approach” leads to adopting it without a clear intention for its use. In other words, I’ll start using ChatGPT and figure it out as I go. The counter approach he recommends is a “craftsman” mindset, where you focus first on the objective - What do I want to accomplish? - and then ask which tool can best help you do that. To that end, there are likely some tangible uses for AI. I’m just not sure what that is yet and whether or not I can reconcile its issues and failings to justify using it.
What I Did
I went to Panama for a week with my local dive shop to volunteer with Mother of Corals! In 2009, Sylvia Earle founded Mission Blue to create a worldwide network of marine protected areas called Hope Spots. Bocas del Toro is one of 167 Hope Spots and Krista Shoe, the founder of Mother of Corals, has worked closely with Mission Blue to preserve the rich biodiversity of Panama’s underwater world. We dove several sites to monitor reef health and fish populations, cut, propagated, and planted coral, and built and placed some artificial reefs. I also did some fun diving and took a day off to visit the national park on Bastimentos Island where I explored a bat cave with my dive buddies. One of the highlights of my trip was diving under a shipwreck and finding a huge nurse shark sound asleep!
I shot this on my Nikonos V using Kodak Portra 400.
I also started a graduate certificate program in science communication at a local university. I’ve always been inspired by the work of science communicators like Sylvia Earle, Jane Goodall, Bill Nye, and Carl Sagan. I’ve been working for the last 15 years in libraries and archives, but before that I worked in education and I loved teaching kids about the importance of information literacy and media literacy - how to make sure what you’re reading is reliable and true. I’ve been working on a handful of writing projects both fiction and non-fiction for young readers, and I’m excited to learn even more through this graduate program.
What I’m Looking Forward To in September
I’m looking forward to the days turning cooler and the official start of fall on September 22nd! Friends and I have plans to visit the Maryland Renaissance Festival and I’m also planning to attend the Library of Congress National Book Festival.If you've read this far, thanks! I'm still figuring out how I want to interact online - the tools and platforms I want to use, the amount of time I want to devote to it, and how I can reconcile building an online space while trying to live a more analog life. I am so inspired by some incredible creatives like Internet Bedroom and Kindled Ghouls and I love the idea of carving out little spaces of the internet that are wild and strange for likeminded folks. Let me know if you like this format or if there are other things you'd like to see from this space! Leave a comment in my guestbook.