Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I skip the AI summaries at the top of Google Search because they’ve been wrong the vast majority of the times I spot-check the information. It recently told me that Go Gentle by Maria Semple “explores themes relating to the Middle East, including the journey of an Israeli and a Palestinian toward peace.” I had Googled her name to see her Wikipedia page, and I was a little surprised because I was 65% of the way through her book and nothing about the conflict had come up. A quick search of the e-book told me it wouldn’t come up, and I can report that it didn’t come up. So… thanks, Google, for more wrong information.

But this post has a ton of Google tricks to get you to better information. I especially like the verbatim mode, which took me first to Maria Semple’s website and then her Wikipedia page. No incorrect AI summary to jump over at all. Passing it along in case it is helpful to you, too.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

A friend linked to this piece in Sage Journals written by a former BlogHer who has been studying internet interactions for 20ish years. Danah Boyd explains that we called it social media because it was a space for socializing online. But if we’re no longer socializing, is it still social media? Or she proposes that influencers have turned it into parasocial media. You feel like you know the person, but you don’t have a two-way relationship.

She writes,

Users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated … We need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.”

I’ve made plenty of friends through blogging who are true friends. Many have stepped through the screen, and we’ve seen each other offline. Others live too far away, so we talk via Zoom. But, yes, of course I’ve noticed what she describes: “Users are now lucky to see personal content that their friends are posting amid the slick content created by the advertisers and strategic creators who dominate most people’s feeds.”

I know that everyday content and simple musings still exist because most of the people I am connected to online post just that. But a lot of this essay rang true, too. I think a lot about this during this time of year because blogging is what got me through Mother’s Day in the early years. (Apologies for bringing it up here if you weren’t expecting that.)

Our soccer team — Tottenham Hotspur — has been teetering on the edge of relegation for weeks… months?… definitely weeks. We were in the drop zone, then came out of it, and now we’re waiting to see what happens with West Ham this weekend, as well as with our own game. It is all kinds of stress.

On one hand, I keep telling myself that nothing will happen to fans if the team is relegated. It will be harder to watch games in the US, but not impossible. We will continue to cheer for our team and hope they’re promoted back up to the Premier League at the end of next season. And relegation may not happen at all. I could be worrying for nothing.

But on the other hand, relegated teams break up. There is always a movement of players from one team to another, but it will happen on a larger scale if they drop down to a lower league. That’s the part that makes me sad. The idea that we’ll watch the game, but all our favourite players will be on different teams.

It kind of feels like the end of college, where you knew it was unlikely that you would have everyone together in the same place at the same time ever again.

I’m bad with change. I probably shouldn’t have started rooting for a team.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix noticed something with her clients who have children who move between their house and another person’s home. When their kids are there, they take care of themselves. When their kids are not, they don’t. And she related because she often sensed that having to accommodate a child’s schedule would have motivated her, too. She writes, “I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation lately. Why do we sometimes do what we don’t want to do in order to get the things we want? Why do we sometimes just think about what we want but never do anything differently?” They are great questions because there are plenty of things I want to do but don’t get started, and other things that I have no trouble doing, even though I’m not super invested in the outcome. Food for thought.

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof writes about forcing herself to daydream (vs. distract herself with an audiobook) while on walks. I loved the stream-of-conscious thoughts, and it’s a good reminder to let yourself notice the world around you.

The roundup to the Roundup: Come on you Spurs. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between May 1 – 8) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

Go Gentle by Maria Semple is a stunning, stunning, stunning book, and I’ve loved all of the philosophical questions woven through the book, even more once you learn how she got into philosophy.

On page 60, she’s watching the ground crew at her workplace tend the library’s massive garden. They switch out the annuals to go with the season, and she muses: “The efficiency and finished product never failed to impress. But ultimately, it felt airless and safe. Me, I’m a God’s-will girl.”

Of course, you need to pause and ask yourself: Are you a wild garden sort of person or a tended garden? Does “tended” automatically mean airless and safe? Does “wild” automatically give you room to breathe?

Me, I’m definitely a tended garden sort of person. I would rather have safe over surprises.

How about you?

I learned about a website from Kottke that allows you to see reciprocal library card options. I knew about all of the ones tied to my card, but then I started looking up libraries that had reciprocal agreements with my original library, and they had reciprocal agreements with other libraries. I looked at the library furthest east, west, south, and north, often finding that one of my reciprocal partnerships opened up into a whole new set of additional partnerships.

It’s kind of an odd idea: Could you cross the US building on reciprocal partnerships? I think I may have found myself a summer project.

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I’ve had “Simple Gifts” stuck in my head for weeks due to a line in A Deadly Education where she uses it as a meditation. Oh no. I read the line, and the song started looping in my head, over and over again.

Then Josh asked if I wanted to see The Testament of Ann Lee. A movie about Shakers? “Simple Gifts” is a Shaker song. The song went back into my brain.

Finally, we went to the symphony, and lo and behold, the final song of the evening? Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which contains… yes… you guessed it… THE TUNE OF “SIMPLE GIFTS.”

I am never going to get this song out of my head.