What We’re Reading: An eclipse, Easter and other spring traditions
Hi everyone,
This spring season brings with it the usual clustering of religious and cultural observances. You have Ramadan, Easter, Holi, Passover, spring break, Spring Equinox, a series of eclipses, and, that financially-based U.S. staple, Tax Day. It’s a season of volleyball weather and topsy-turvy energy, which is why so many productivity experts say that now is a good time to clean out any container — including digital spaces — needing a declutter or a refresh.
Medium writers are tackling these spring storylines with grace and tact. Here are a few.
- Essayist Meg Greygor writes lovingly of her Polish heritage and Catholic Easter services in Massachusetts in “Easter and Family Traditions.”
- Indonesian travel writer Cindy Roaming remembers Ramadan in Mecca.
- NASA writer Rebecca Jean T. explains how eclipses work.
- A scientist takes a swing through spring cleaning poetry.
Plus, Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine shares his insights about how all of us contribute to a healthier Medium.
If you are writing about a refresh or a clearing out, I’d love to read the piece. Be sure to respond to this post with the link or include the tag “Spring Clean 2024” in the story and I’ll be sure to find it.
Thanks for reading and writing on Medium
- Adrienne Gibbs, Director of Content at Medium
What We’re Reading
What the 2022 Midterm Elections Can Tell Us About What Will Happen in November
Published by Thomas Hershewe, Zoe Kava, and Brian Schaffner for the Tufts Public Opinion Lab
For instance, there continues to be a divide between young and old voters, between those with a college degree and those without one, and between men and women. And the size of the gaps between those groups has stayed pretty consistent over the past several election cycles. Thus, there is good reason to think that on many (or even most) metrics, the 2024 election will look quite similar to 2022 and 2020.
New York Times Reports More Black Americans Moving to Africa to Escape U.S. Racism
Published by Quintessa L. Williams
Black Americans have been trying to escape American racism — from segregation to heinous organized violence, such as lynchings — for generations. In America, we feel hyper-visible in ways that perhaps may not exist in other countries. This reality is all too routine and indicative of the recent report from the New York Times highlighting an increased number of Black Americans moving to Africa to escape American racism.
Intro to DSPy: Goodbye Prompting, Hello Programming!
Published by Leonie Monigatti in Towards Data Science
Currently, building applications using large language models (LLMs) can be not only complex but also fragile. Typical pipelines are often implemented using prompts, which are hand-crafted through trial and error because LLMs are sensitive to how they are prompted. Thus, when you change a piece in your pipeline, such as the LLM or your data, you will likely weaken its performance — unless you adapt the prompt (or fine-tuning steps).
- Everyone is still talking about the nationwide shortages of Ozempic and other weight loss drugs, but can a person lose pounds without the additional help? Researchers say the body already has a built in weight loss system.
- Meanwhile, the United States is reeling from the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, where several people are presumed dead. But who is the namesake of that bridge, exactly? He wrote the Star Spangled Banner, but Medium writers go deeper into his history.
This week’s Final Word goes to sportswriter Omar Zahran, whose analysis explains why the modern March Madness college basketball tourney doesn’t compare to the March Madness of the 1990s. His headline is this: “College Basketball is a Three Week Sport…For Better or Worse.”
“The issue with one and done from the college basketball product perspective, is that we lose the attachment to a player at a school. While the name brand schools and coaches are still there, we have lost an iconic player coming back for multiple tournament runs to create intrigue. Instead, it is the same story every year just with a different player, hone your skills enough to get noticed by scouts and then get as far as you can in the tournament before starting to prepare for the draft. This lack of year over year continuity means that every season we are getting used to a new cast of characters at a school, which leads to limited buy-in during the regular season.”
Read the entire story here.
Read or write anything new? Let us know in the responses.
