Sarah Winckler

“Even with the problem of the filter bubble aside, the platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead they reward shouting and oversimple reaction: of having a take after having read a single headline.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“In denying HIV treatment to the poor, the reasons cited—patients couldn’t be trusted to take their medication on time, better to focus on prevention and control—were the same as we’ve seen with TB. In 2001, the head of USAID—the U.S. government’s arm devoted to international aid —had this to say about making antiretroviral treatment accessible to the poor: “If we had [HIV medicines for Africa] today, we could not distribute them. We could not administer the program because we do not have the doctors, we do not have the roads…[Africans] do not know what watches and clocks are. They do not use western means for telling time. They use the sun. These drugs have to be administered during a certain sequence of time during the day and when you say take it at 10:00, people will say, ‘What do you mean by 10:00?’ ” We see here that the racist dehumanization of African people is not only part of nineteenth and twentieth century history. Racism continues to distort our policies and practices. And just as with previous examples of racism, it proved to be totally false. In point of fact, a 2007 study found that Africans were more likely to adhere to HIV/AIDS treatment regimens than North Americans.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Life was being a neutral shade of carpet, which neither delighted the senses nor stimulated passion. And if it felt like digging a little mound in the earth and lying in it for a short while, surely he could satisfy it? Anyone could do it. Lie low. Be a rug.”
― Beena Kamlani, The English Problem

“To pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things; it means constantly denying and thwarting provocations outside the sphere of one’s attention. We contrast this with distraction, in which the mind is disassembled, pointing in many different directions at once and preventing meaningful action.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy