#5SmartReads - November 17, 2022

Hitha on polls, "on the floor" clothes, and the mental benefits of knitting

November 17, 2022

Because Gen Z - and millennials too - refuse to answer their phones to unknown callers, or respond to e-mails or texts from people they don’t know.

“Pollsters are stuck in an outdated mindset that young people aren’t gonna show up,” Lubin told The Verge. “And even though young people have broken turnout records between 2018 and 2020, and I expect we’ll see some record-breaking new turnout numbers this year, pollsters are stuck in this conventional wisdom.”

If polling is going to survive having any sort of relevance in our elections, then pollsters have evolve how they poll, and that means building relationships and trust with the groups that aren’t responding to their traditional polls.

Honestly, I think they’d have better luck with IG Story surveys or creating a TikTok sound than anything else. And I’d also like them to take polling the younger generations seriously instead of the condescension we typically receive. Just a thought.

On Personal Style (Alicia Lund)

Alicia is one of my most stylish friends, and her “on the floor clothes” phase is how I aspire to look on a good day.

I have my “sloth mode at home” and “boss a$$ bitch” modes covered, but I don’t really know what my everyday style is anymore - and I’d like to figure that out.

I’m going to take Alicia’s advice and to create a personal style mood board (I’m feeling a lot of monochrome outfits with pops of jewel tones and hot pink and wearing my “special occasion” jewelry more often). And then I’m going to stalk Armoire to fill the style gaps left behind my closet.

I’m particularly feeling this look for fall/winter:

FTX’s implosion and the falling value of the cryptocurrency market has greater implications than one would imagine - it’s beginning to affect Web3 as a whole.

“Web3, at its heart, is all about using blockchains and crypto tokens as tools for organizing decision-making, governance and financial incentives in every realm of human endeavor — from virtual world-building to social networking and from accounting to art-making.”

Web3 builders will cite the dot-com crash earlier this century as an example of how this emerging industry can turn things around. But I would urge caution here, as the nascent Internet from 22 years ago had greater utility back then, than the metaverse has now. And while that’s not to say things couldn’t change…I think blockchain-based technology - both in currency and in Web3 - has a long way to go before it has the value of Al Gore’s early Internet.

If you’ve gotten through the beginning of Michelle Obama’s excellent new book, you may also be digging up old craft supplies or purchasing new knitting gear (highly recommend Yarnspirations for both).

Obama shares how the new hobby grounded her and brought her a sense of peace and calm during the uncertainty and stress of the pandemic’s early months, and how she’s continued the habit to present day.

It’s not just Obama, or Olympian Tom Daley, or actress Sutton Foster who find a sense of calm and control through crafts. Crafting - especially knitting, crochet, or needlework - has mental health benefits.

“With hobbies like knitting and crocheting, that repetitive motion itself is very therapeutic," Guenther-Moore tells Verywell. "It allows your mind to kind of take a step back from whatever is bothering you—or causing you frustration or stress—and allows you to zone out while your mind focuses on that repetitive motion. Before you know it, 30 minutes later, you've knitted or crocheted several rows and you're not thinking about whatever was stressing you out or frustrating you.”

I dug up the beginnings of a crochet blanket I began last year and decided to start over and make a cape instead. May it bring me a sense of calm, and may I actually finish it because the hot pink is perfectly on trend right now.

I choose chaos - and the search bar - when it comes to dealing with my digital mess.

I need to take this article’s wise advice (I particularly like the digital file nomenclature - and an excuse to use the word nomenclature), and am going to make this the first task in my self-imposed Slow January.

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