Stranded Docs, Start-Up Statesmen, and Personal Echo Chambers
Good morning, lovelies! Apologies for the missing missive yesterday, but the excitement of Odd Salon just gosh darned tuckered me out and I slept in until 6 am yesterday - I know, totally slacking. Luckily, the world is still batshit insane, so let’s get to it!
I want to lead today with a piece my longest and dearest friend Dr. Haley K. Cochrane co-wrote: "We want to come home.” Cochrane is a Canadian training to be an emergency physician at the Harvard-Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency in Boston, which means she deals with actual drama and life-and-death situations, as opposed to the ones I mentally manifest every day. Due to a difference in the residency requirements in the US and Canada, Cochrane must jump through the most arduous of bureaucratic requirements if she every wants to practice in Canada, despite the fact that there is an emergency physician shortage in the Great White North. Which means a Harvard-trained doctor can’t come back and practice medicine in the city she was born and raised in. Give it a read, especially if you’re of the medical persuasion. Also, Dr. Cochrane I love you and you’re awesome.
Over at BuzzFeed, Charlie Warzel discusses the new public tone being struck by executives in Silicon Valley, "where tech’s biggest leaders are no longer selling themselves as innovators, creative geniuses, or domineering tycoons, but as world leaders — statesmen shaping the course of human history.” I agree, the rhetorical shift has been noticeable over the last couple of years, which happens when, as Warzel points out, ones user base is bigger than any country on earth. But CEOs do not automatically Statesmen make, in my opinion, when you’re answering to stakeholders and advertisers as opposed to voters.
Yesterday, I asked my Rabbi a question about social media after reading this article on Vox: What happened when I eliminated political dissent from my Facebook feed. We’d been discussing the role of technology in religious practices, and what he’d seen in the thirteen years he’d served as a Rabbi in San Francisco. We discussed whether self-censoring the ideas around you may limit spiritual growth, and what happens to critical thought when the only opinions around you mirror your own. Spoiler alert: it’s not a good thing.
And finally, There’s A Putin-Themed Cafe In Siberia where you wipe your feet on American flags and wipe yourself with President Obama toilet paper. Major kudos to the BuzzFeed URL, which reads “The best part of waking up, is Putin in your cup."
Cheers!
Amy