Here is a good place to confess that I would lick samples in the geology lab in college. This is how I, a partially color blind student, could tell the difference between rose quartz and halite. The rock cycle endures regardless of what human beings do. There’s deep comfort in deep time.
Other than because I have been very fortunate in financial matters, I subscribe to make sure I do not miss nuggets like “Eating Rocks”
I do think that many of Ms Kendzior’s fans do enjoy being off the grid for a while, such as the walks my wife and I take along the shores of Maine.
I am often challenged to understand her writings and always love the phrasing ,vocabulary and imagery . But today I knew , or thought I knew, that Sarah made up a great word:”enshittification”. Then I learned it was the 2023 word of the year with a meaning of “systematic decline in quality of online platforms driven by greed”.
Never before have a seen a 4 letter word with prefixes and suffixes with a perfect meaning . I still think Sarah created the word
I linked to the Wikipedia entry for it in the article! Cory Doctorow invented it. It’s a fantastic and very necessary word. And yes I think we’ve got a good off the grid group going on here!
Thank you Sarah! Thank you for caring about your readers. We adore you! You are one of the lights in this darkness, for sure!
P.S. In 1987 I told my high school gym teacher to "eat rocks". I got a detention! He was a jerk and detention was a small price to pay for my Truth bomb.
Some thoughts: 1) I am always so happy to be reminded that you have a family--husband, children, and more--whom you love and who love you and are near you in these heartbreak times. We don't need a LOT of people, but we all need some, to keep us from collapsing. I'm glad you have your people. 2) I can't wait to read your new book. 3) I am currently reading Sharon Brous's "The Amen Effect" and I think it's wonderful, and restorative, if you haven't already read it. Also recently read Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal," which was wonderful too. I'm sure you don't have much time to read just for "fun" or "leisure" or comfort or whatever, but if you have a few minutes, both those books provided good reminders of what is really important when everything is clearly and painfully falling apart. 4) Thank you for all you do and are. I am grateful for you and to you. Be well, dear Sarah! You are loved.
Love this excerpt: "Rocks feel comforting because they’re something I can still dig up, unlike the truth. They have been here for billions of years and have outlasted every lie. They are full of secrets, but they are natural secrets, ones that you discover with patience and care."
And this one: "The bars on my phone are the bars of my cage."
And this, too: " We need people with compassion to catalogue the crimes. The price people pay for caring is often measured in personal safety. That is what it costs to stay human inside a surveillance state."
I *love* those lakes. My upcoming book has a whole section on Pictured Rocks, one of my favorite places in the world. I want to go back to Michigan and find Petoskey stones!
Petosky State Park never fails! I'll be there end of June. Every rest stop has an amazing beach and Pictured Rocks is so beautiful. The first time I went I think my witch powers may have actually activated, it was that powerful.:)
As I wrote in HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, my goal is to live like I’m breaking the algorithm and I think I’m doing a decent job at that at least. I can’t wait til the edits on the new book are done. Rounding the finish line! Then I’ll be back to more frequent posts here. Thanks for your patience!
As a geologist and scientist, I really loved this piece. It reminded me of licking some rocks to see the colors...or even tasting for halite...always a mess in the elementary mineralogy class. But eating?...just shows how ludicrous and dangerous AI can be.
I feel like I am the only person in the continental US who did not see the Northern Lights.
I miss the internet of old where it seemed like a never ending fountain of information and you could get lost start out by looking up where coffee beans are grown and end up an hour later reading about the mating habits of some bug you'd never heard of or cared about until that moment. We've gone from being able to find out EVERYTHING to being able to find out nothing because every search is laden with advertising.
We missed the northern lights too. It doesn't get dark until nearly 11PM here, and we're early risers. At 10PM, it was still cloudy as it had been all day, so odds are we didn't miss anything. We tend to miss Fourth of July fireworks too. They start really late. Some years, on cooler days, there's a line out of the Safeway starting around 9PM. It's full of families getting their kids hot chocolate so they don't freeze watching the show. It gets cold here after dark.
"We are losing our collective mind, and it is being replaced with a contrived one." Thanks for your books, prior podcast and newsletter. Contrived mind, the very definition of AI and inhumane robot mentality. Collective mind, a shared human sense of decency, a force for positive change, voting out ALL the blatant psychopaths (if only we had the collective mind to do that!)
Oh, Sarah Kendzior, your writing! Exquisite. My husband and I talked about you while driving along US-2 as we returned from the UP yesterday. I'm 70 and grew up there. Still crave the shores of Lake Superior, Gitche Gumee, the most glorious lake. You are a treasure. Soul-touching writing.
I didn't want to leave. Stayed in a log cabin on Lake Huron close to the Mackinac Bridge. I'm from the Soo, and the best part of getting back there is being able to go to three Great Lakes in a day. Heaven. Thanks for calming us with all the visuals (even if we're "shittifying" our pants thinking about the scary stuff)
Sarah, would you consider penning a guide to digging for dirty Missouri rocks? It sounds like a nice way to get lost, but I don't know where to begin (and due to internet enshittification, I'm not sure what sources to trust).
You nailed it, Sarah. "Paywalled facts and free-floating lies". AI absolutely is terrifying, and with legislators who don't even understand basic human reproduction, let alone understand technology enough to begin to comprehend the problems associated with AI, in all seriousness I wonder what can we do to avoid it. I'm 70, and remember one of my mother's favorite sayings was "don't believe everything you read". All these years later, truth is even more fragile. Although, I do think I'd know not to eat rocks! And I LOVE being off the grid, when I can.
I love how whenever anyone likes this post, I get an email notification that says “[Name] liked eating rocks.” Keep enjoying those rocks everyone! ;)
Here is a good place to confess that I would lick samples in the geology lab in college. This is how I, a partially color blind student, could tell the difference between rose quartz and halite. The rock cycle endures regardless of what human beings do. There’s deep comfort in deep time.
I truly appreciate all that you do here!
Well said, and thank you!
Mmm. Crunchy! :)
can we see your ammonite? i'm wearing my black ammonite on my chest.
Other than because I have been very fortunate in financial matters, I subscribe to make sure I do not miss nuggets like “Eating Rocks”
I do think that many of Ms Kendzior’s fans do enjoy being off the grid for a while, such as the walks my wife and I take along the shores of Maine.
I am often challenged to understand her writings and always love the phrasing ,vocabulary and imagery . But today I knew , or thought I knew, that Sarah made up a great word:”enshittification”. Then I learned it was the 2023 word of the year with a meaning of “systematic decline in quality of online platforms driven by greed”.
Never before have a seen a 4 letter word with prefixes and suffixes with a perfect meaning . I still think Sarah created the word
I linked to the Wikipedia entry for it in the article! Cory Doctorow invented it. It’s a fantastic and very necessary word. And yes I think we’ve got a good off the grid group going on here!
Host Sarah and family in Maine😘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Thank you Sarah! Thank you for caring about your readers. We adore you! You are one of the lights in this darkness, for sure!
P.S. In 1987 I told my high school gym teacher to "eat rocks". I got a detention! He was a jerk and detention was a small price to pay for my Truth bomb.
Haha! You were just ahead of your time
I'm so grateful for you. I know I don't know you IRL, but I think of you as a friend. Is that weird? Don't answer that.
Thank you, sincerely, for your courage and integrity, and for using your skills & talents to help humanity.
Thank you, friend :)
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
i feel that way too.
Thank you for taking us down the river with you, Sarah.
Some thoughts: 1) I am always so happy to be reminded that you have a family--husband, children, and more--whom you love and who love you and are near you in these heartbreak times. We don't need a LOT of people, but we all need some, to keep us from collapsing. I'm glad you have your people. 2) I can't wait to read your new book. 3) I am currently reading Sharon Brous's "The Amen Effect" and I think it's wonderful, and restorative, if you haven't already read it. Also recently read Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal," which was wonderful too. I'm sure you don't have much time to read just for "fun" or "leisure" or comfort or whatever, but if you have a few minutes, both those books provided good reminders of what is really important when everything is clearly and painfully falling apart. 4) Thank you for all you do and are. I am grateful for you and to you. Be well, dear Sarah! You are loved.
I always make time to read for fun, even when I don’t technically have time, so I will add those to my list — thank you!
Love this excerpt: "Rocks feel comforting because they’re something I can still dig up, unlike the truth. They have been here for billions of years and have outlasted every lie. They are full of secrets, but they are natural secrets, ones that you discover with patience and care."
And this one: "The bars on my phone are the bars of my cage."
And this, too: " We need people with compassion to catalogue the crimes. The price people pay for caring is often measured in personal safety. That is what it costs to stay human inside a surveillance state."
Thanks again!
Thank you for reading!
I have always loved you but to know that you are a fellow rockhounder really made my day. I head for
Lakes Michigan and Superior every summer to snack on fossils.
I *love* those lakes. My upcoming book has a whole section on Pictured Rocks, one of my favorite places in the world. I want to go back to Michigan and find Petoskey stones!
Petosky State Park never fails! I'll be there end of June. Every rest stop has an amazing beach and Pictured Rocks is so beautiful. The first time I went I think my witch powers may have actually activated, it was that powerful.:)
I have been looking for more from you recently so thanks for the heads up on editing the new book. I’m sure it will be great!
You could try getting AI to write for you but I would bet a dollar to a dime I would know. Nobody or nothing can be you but you.
Thanks for all you do.
As I wrote in HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, my goal is to live like I’m breaking the algorithm and I think I’m doing a decent job at that at least. I can’t wait til the edits on the new book are done. Rounding the finish line! Then I’ll be back to more frequent posts here. Thanks for your patience!
I made someone a T-shirt once that said "Traumatize the algorithm."
Oh, that's coool. I may have to make myself one.
That's why I shared it. 🤗
Very interesting! You’re old? No way! I’m old!!!!
As a geologist and scientist, I really loved this piece. It reminded me of licking some rocks to see the colors...or even tasting for halite...always a mess in the elementary mineralogy class. But eating?...just shows how ludicrous and dangerous AI can be.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you!
I feel like I am the only person in the continental US who did not see the Northern Lights.
I miss the internet of old where it seemed like a never ending fountain of information and you could get lost start out by looking up where coffee beans are grown and end up an hour later reading about the mating habits of some bug you'd never heard of or cared about until that moment. We've gone from being able to find out EVERYTHING to being able to find out nothing because every search is laden with advertising.
We missed the northern lights too. It doesn't get dark until nearly 11PM here, and we're early risers. At 10PM, it was still cloudy as it had been all day, so odds are we didn't miss anything. We tend to miss Fourth of July fireworks too. They start really late. Some years, on cooler days, there's a line out of the Safeway starting around 9PM. It's full of families getting their kids hot chocolate so they don't freeze watching the show. It gets cold here after dark.
"We are losing our collective mind, and it is being replaced with a contrived one." Thanks for your books, prior podcast and newsletter. Contrived mind, the very definition of AI and inhumane robot mentality. Collective mind, a shared human sense of decency, a force for positive change, voting out ALL the blatant psychopaths (if only we had the collective mind to do that!)
Oh, Sarah Kendzior, your writing! Exquisite. My husband and I talked about you while driving along US-2 as we returned from the UP yesterday. I'm 70 and grew up there. Still crave the shores of Lake Superior, Gitche Gumee, the most glorious lake. You are a treasure. Soul-touching writing.
Thank you very much! I’m jealous you got to go to the UP!
I didn't want to leave. Stayed in a log cabin on Lake Huron close to the Mackinac Bridge. I'm from the Soo, and the best part of getting back there is being able to go to three Great Lakes in a day. Heaven. Thanks for calming us with all the visuals (even if we're "shittifying" our pants thinking about the scary stuff)
Sarah, would you consider penning a guide to digging for dirty Missouri rocks? It sounds like a nice way to get lost, but I don't know where to begin (and due to internet enshittification, I'm not sure what sources to trust).
I may well do that now that I know there’s an audience of one!
😂😂 in all the free time that you have, I know. But hey! There are at least three of us!
You nailed it, Sarah. "Paywalled facts and free-floating lies". AI absolutely is terrifying, and with legislators who don't even understand basic human reproduction, let alone understand technology enough to begin to comprehend the problems associated with AI, in all seriousness I wonder what can we do to avoid it. I'm 70, and remember one of my mother's favorite sayings was "don't believe everything you read". All these years later, truth is even more fragile. Although, I do think I'd know not to eat rocks! And I LOVE being off the grid, when I can.