It happened on Medium: March 2025 round-up
A month of meditation challenges, digital ghosts, and living cities as archives
Sometimes, I worry that my brain is pickled.
In the 18 years since the iPhone launched, I’ve felt like my attention span has cratered, I’ve become much more easily distracted, and I am far more likely to ruminate on something I’ve read online. Taking into account the five years of a global pandemic and the natural aging process, I think my brain isn’t what it used to be.
When it comes to aging, attention, and the brain, it can be easy to resist, to avoid adapting, to stay stubbornly rooted in habits and preconceptions developed when you were a teenager. But that default towards rigidity comes from a place of fear, fear that being anything other than being perfect is to fail, that to be anything other than what you were at your perceived peak is admitting weakness.
In “The Day I Wanted To Enter A Cave And Meditate For the Rest Of My Life,” published in The Taoist Online, Neha describes the human tendency to reject impermanence (or, simply, change) and “live in our glass ceiling of delusional immortality.” In exploring her meditation practice, Neha describes a time when she was hit by the realization of impermanence and was “left crying to sleep every night… where everything would wither and die in front of [their] eyes.” It’s normal to ignore how everything changes, including our own minds, and to want to avoid the uncertainty that comes with it. But, as Neha says, change is inevitable and human, even when embracing change and the imperfections that come with it can feel like a failure.
But there’s knowing that, and there’s understanding that. In “Fear of showing errors or bugs”, software engineer Adina Teodora Marcu (Gaciu) discusses how being willing to acknowledge error and fault made her much better at her job, giving her the space to realize that “those moments of failure, the errors, and the trial-and-error process are where real learning happens. It’s a shame that the fear of judgment has turned into such a barrier to sharing those experiences.”
Maybe it’s my changing brain or my fear of judgement that blocks me from focusing. But sharing helps — while I was walking my dog this morning, I listened to Josh Johnson on the recent “On with Kara Swisher” episode, where he said: “However you’re feeling right now, you should talk about it. You should talk about it earnestly with people you care about.” He goes on to say, “whatever you’re feeling right now is not permanent… and all we have is each other.”
Reading your writing on Medium helps me reframe my own perspective, and I hope it does the same for you.
— Amy Widdowson, VP Communications
If you read one story…
In “You’re Not a Criminal, But You’re Going to Jail: My ICE Detention Story as a Canadian Citizen,” Jasmine Mooney recounts her harrowing two-week experience in ICE detention facilities after a visa issue. She describes the conditions of her confinement, the lack of communication about her status from authorities, and the harsh realities of profit-driven private facilities “in the hope that someone out there — someone with the power to change this — sees it, feels it, and can help do something.” You’ve probably already heard about this ordeal — Snopes even added an entry to verify her story (“ICE detained Canadian ‘American Pie’ actor Jasmine Mooney for 12 days”.)
Notable stories by new or returning writers
- As an elder millennial, I’ve been online since I was a teenager, but I still remember a magical time when one could hypothetically disappear if one chose to (have you heard about how Agatha Christie just up and vanished for a couple of weeks? Bonkers.). But alas, that time is no more, as Elliot Little writes in “Delete Your Privilege: The Hidden Economy of Digital Ghosts.”
- I must admit, I’m not the most outdoorsy person in the world (left skydiving and hiking Mt. Whitney back in my 20s and 30s) but I do have a soft spot for reading about the outdoor escapades of others. So be sure to give Chris Noble, photographer and author of Why We Climb: The World’s Most Inspiring Climbers, a read, as he has started sharing “how to cultivate one’s own ‘adventurous heart’” in this eponymous new publication — I really liked “What is Adventure?”
The story I didn’t know I needed to read but did
“The History of Painting Drunk People” by Larissa Hayden: The Lecture Vault is a deep dive on the various ways that artists have depicted humans after a couple of wobbly pops. It’s crazy in-depth, quite humorous at times, and a general wild ride.
To ponder, from new writers
“I believe the main problem is that research shifts responsibility for decisions from designers to users. We cover our asses with these studies instead of realising a simple fact: we can’t influence everything. And things are chaotic beyond Figma screens.”
— Maxim Mestovsky in “The real problem with research” in UX Collective
“In the sterile cold of a Copenhagen freezer, hidden in unassuming cookie jars, lay fragments of a world long forgotten — and a discovery decades ahead of its time. They were meant to be ice — solid, eternal, unyielding. Instead, they contained something impossible: sediment, soil, remnants of life from a time when Greenland was not a frozen wasteland, but a thriving landscape. Evidence that the ice had vanished before, and could vanish again.”
— Martina H, “How A Top-Secret Cold War Experiment Warned Us About the Climate Crisis” in Southern Winds
“Now it has become more important than ever, as members of the public, to learn what multiculturalism looks like around the world.”
— Adelina Crudu in “Singapore as a Living Archive”
“We need to emphasize sustainability and under-consumption, slow down and simplify our adventures, and explore areas that are under-utilized currently. By doing so we can not only ensure that future generations can enjoy the outdoors, but we can foster more fulfilling experiences and adventures.”
— Kian Speck in “The Cultural Shift in Outdoor Recreation”
Stories you highlighted the heck out of
- “Our Souls Need Proof of Work” by Julie Zhuo
- “She Ended Our Playdate When My Daughter Made It Weird” by Claire Franky in Frazzled
- “You Know Why A Lot of Modern Poetry Isn’t That Good, Right?” by Linda Caroll
- “The Long MAGA Apology That Is Never Coming” by Carlyn Beccia
Over in the Medium Newsletter this month
A story we highlighted in Issue #279, “The most moving essay I’ve ever read,” was the most-clicked we’ve ever had in our newsletter. Issue #281, “We overestimate AI’s impact in the short-term and underestimate it long-term,” had the most responses from the thoughtful and curious Medium community. Here are just a few:
“Tech drives tech forward. From what I’ve seen, companies don’t necessarily expect to reduce the number of expert engineers. Instead, they aim for greater productivity — doing more with the same engineers to accelerate time-to-market — rather than maintaining the same pace with fewer engineers plus AI. If we zoom out a bit, AI won’t necessarily make things cheaper, but it will allow us to move faster. And since the market itself will also be moving faster with AI, staying ahead will be about speed, not just cost-cutting.”
— Eduardo Calzado in this response.
“I think the real problem isn’t just job displacement, it’s the dependence AI can create. We’ve already seen how addictive the internet is, and AI, even in its current form, can subtly replace human thinking. I’ve noticed people around me turning to LLMs for everything, slowly losing the habit of thinking critically, writing, or even coding on their own. AI isn’t the danger, our uncritical reliance on it is. Maybe the real conversation should be about education: teaching people how to use AI as a tool, not a crutch, before we forget how to be human.”
— Oğuz Birinci in this response.
A remarkable look at the end of a political era
Justin Trudeau’s official photographer for the last 15 years dropped hundreds of behind-the-scenes photos of the former Prime Minister road-tripping around the country (and the world) in “2024–25 with Prime Minister Trudeau, in photos” by Adam Scotti
Got some time? Pull up a chair for these longreads
- A lifelong religious path is so personal, so I really appreciate Tom Mangione’s exploration of his own spiritual journey and crisis of faith in “The Tower.” His depiction of the importance of mindful rebuilding after a personal outlook deconstruction leading into a commitment to rebirth was truly touching.
- I have never been to Alderney in the Channel Islands, but my goodness, I got deep into Edward Pinnegar’s “Bottlenecked: why Alderney is in decline — and how to solve it”. Come for the encyclopedic knowledge of a place, stay for the Evelyn Waugh quote.
- I don’t code but this emotionally pulled me in nevertheless — I love how Drew Harry brought so much humanity into his emotional exploration of what it feels like to “to write code in partnership with a large language model” in “The Gambler and the Genie”.
- Ever wanted to embark on new creative endeavors? Check out “Writing Your First Play” by David K. Farkas.
For more great stories from Medium’s writers and publications, check out our Staff Picks. To learn something new from Medium writers every weekday, subscribe to the Medium Newsletter.
