Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

@qcroll — “The century of the speaker is over: Once, we did everything for the speaker’s convenience, gathering in one place. Now, we do everything for the community, because speakers, sponsors, and the audience trust us to gather the best people.”

@bhargreaves — “Everyone crowing about a permanent remote future where they live in Boise but earn their current NYC/SF salaries is gonna be real pissed when they discover they’ll live in Boise but earn Manila/Bucharest salaries.”

@yaneerbaryam — “Bureaucracies exist in order to say no. They wouldn’t be needed if they said yes. So the people who rise to the top, and the culture, are an automatic ‘We don’t do that’.”

@delphina777 — “propaganda does not need to be persuasive, only pervasive — its secondary purpose is to convince — its primary purpose is to exhaust”

The Art of the New Deal: Why the Federal Government Funded the Arts During the Great Depression

“The WPA-era art programs reflected a trend toward the democratization of the arts in the United States and a striving to develop a uniquely American and broadly inclusive cultural life,” the National Gallery explains. Art from this period “offers a window through which to explore the social conditions of the Depression, the mainstreaming of art and birth of ‘public art,’ and the opening of government employment to women and African Americans.” Opponents of the programs pushed back with red baiting. Arts funding under the WPA was ended in 1943 by a Congress, says scholar of the period Francis O’Connor, who could “look at two blades of grass and see a hammer and sickle.”

Connection and imagination, with @White_Owly

Have you discovered any tools (technological or otherwise) that have been particularly useful for remote working?

I have been using videoconferencing for meet ups, but I find it saps me of energy and rarely delivers the best of me. Twitter has been invaluable. Not just as a useful resource for ‘work’, but for my need to explore and share my own creativity, and the creativity of others. It is important to familiarise yourself with all the communication tools you possibly can, but never feel compelled to use them in the way others do. Make your own choices while also understanding that you sometimes need to park your own preferences in the interests of others.

She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next? via @ArmineYalnizyan

If America enters the next wave of coronavirus infections “with the wealthy having gotten somehow wealthier off this pandemic by hedging, by shorting, by doing all the nasty things that they do, and we come out of our rabbit holes and realize, ‘Oh, my God, it’s not just that everyone I love is unemployed or underemployed and can’t make their maintenance or their mortgage payments or their rent payments, but now all of a sudden those jerks that were flying around in private helicopters are now flying on private personal jets and they own an island that they go to and they don’t care whether or not our streets are safe,’ then I think we could have massive political disruption.”

“When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars “— Photo by Mark Finnern