iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Julie Beck

ceej @ceej.online · 29/09/2026

emulsions… very “enemies-to-lovers”

Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

reading @gbullard.bsky.social's Against Convenience really made me think about how many of our beloved conveniences come at the cost of our relationships and community--so I wrote about it: www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

theatlantic.com

Convenience Is Lonely

Far too many innovations keep us from other people.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

*to the tune of Mrs Jones* me and Mr… Mr Brown

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Reposted by Julie Beck

The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 01/09/2026

Being online comes with trade-offs, @julieebeck.bsky.social says—but are we "being pushed by default" into accepting them? She joins @cwarzel.bsky.social to discuss. Watch Galaxy Brain: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K6e...

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

if you haven't yet listened to the finale of How to Touch Grass, you can have an enhanced experience of it with the Galaxy Brain version! It comes with a very fun preamble conversation between me and the great @cwarzel.bsky.social, discussing the whole season www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...

theatlantic.com

Welcome to the Scrolling Backlash

Why so many people are trying to be more offline

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

the finale of how to touch grass is out today! this is a special one--I did an experiment on my own attention span and got to talk to one of my biggest influences, Jenny Odell, about attention and phones and BIRDING www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...

theatlantic.com

What It Takes to Reclaim Your Attention Span

Jenny Odell, the author of “How to Do Nothing” and “Saving Time,” has advice for fighting back against the forces of digital distraction.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

this week on the pod it's all about learning with your OWN HUMAN BRAIN. as our guest Michelle Miller said: "teaching another human being how to do something—that is one of the highest and best expressions of humanity that there is." www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...

theatlantic.com

Why Learn Something That a Machine Can Do for You?

Technology may shape how and what we learn, but the act of learning itself is deeply human.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

how to touch grass: the podcast

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

spent my last days of being 35 trying to figure out if I’m middle aged, and what middle age even MEANS anyway www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

theatlantic.com

When Middle Age Actually Starts

Trying to attach some numbers to a fuzzy phase of life

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

tough times for this restaurant

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

everybody's thinking about attention these days, and this, by Xochitl Gonzalez is so key www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

sprained my back something fierce and now I’m rediscovering the lost art of Laptop In Bed anthropologists date this practice to the late 2000s and early 2010s, particularly popular in the cinderblock dwellings of collegiate sectors, until the market saturation of smartphones began to endanger it

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I hurt my back at the gym :C but the good news is I’m lying around watching the wire, so everyone on god’s green earth can finally stop hounding me about it

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

once again I have been passed over for the times' list of "most stylish people" despite my sartorial commitment to elevating Costco brand elastic waist cotton pants

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

my dentist scheduled my next 6 month cleaning without asking me, just put it on my calendar and started sending me texts about it...the absolute gall you are not the boss of my january 12 at 10 am! I am the boss!!!

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

just checking in to say several months later, hearing the opening notes of "I'll Believe in Anything" still activates something in me

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Reposted by Julie Beck

The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 13/06/2026

If you’re looking for something to read all summer that contains hundreds of pages of interesting material to keep you enthralled, @julieebeck.bsky.social recommends “The Transit of Venus.” See the full list of 25 books that suit any mood or fancy: theatln.tc/Hyog4S28

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

let us all now lower the stakes of socializing and then lower them some more

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I recommended 2 for this! A new love, Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus & the love of my middle school heart, the first in Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald-Mage trilogy. (Valdemar-heads, hmu) +other great recs from my colleagues for your summer reading pleasure www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

25 Sensational Books to Read This Summer

The Atlantic’s writers and editors have chosen fiction and nonfiction to match all sorts of moods.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

for my money, there's no more important tension in American culture than the one between individualism and community. and there's never been a show that explores that better than Survivor www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

theatlantic.com

The Secret of 'Survivor'

For 50 seasons, the show has gamified the tension at the heart of American life: Are we individuals or a community?

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

making someone vote for themselves…this is the worst twist in survivor history, it undermines the whole spirit of what survivor is!! give me fire tokens before this. what have they done to my pants-pooping king

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

would it be insane for me to ask for a cover for my nonfiction book about friendship in the style of 1990s fantasy mass market paperbacks? probably, right?

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

I used to be intimidated by negotiating for equipment at the gym w bros, being perceived by them, etc, but one thing that really recommends at least the gym bros of DC, is they are very receptive to a brief bit. a lil small talk quip as you grab a barbell clip, we chuckle, and then we both move on!

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Reposted by Julie Beck

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

‘if you don’t learn to use AI, you’ll get left behind!’ 🍆✊ www.patreon.com/posts/155290...

If an AI future is what I'm getting left behind from, then Christ, just leave me behind.
A girl can only pivot so much, hoss, and I hung up my pivotin' boots some time ago. I don't make videos even though that was supposedly the future of writing ten years ago — I mean, I guess I do, but they're little banjo practice videos for my friends, not expressions of a desperate careerist impulse. I use social media with the attention-crazed dopesickness of an addict, not the care and forethought of a professional, as any cursory read of my posts will confirm. I'm a writer by trade — a creative, as you might say — and here you are, running a business you don't even understand into the ground, deskilling my trade and expecting a thank you when you explain how you're doing it. If I don't devalue myself the way you continually devalue me, you warn, I'll be left behind. Okay, says I! Quit making it my problem and go! The dust you leave me in will settle, and in the meantime, I will keep doing my work in much the way I've done it since I first became literate.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I know we're a nation of delivery now, but doordash can never replicate one of life's greatest pleasures: eavesdropping on an insane conversation at the restaurant table next to you

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

no greater camaraderie exists than the line for the women’s bathroom at a public event when everyone is just a liiittle tipsy

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

solidarity to propublica's union! ✊

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

it’s time I stopped hiding. I have a chronic case of Cat Ass. its only symptom: every time I lay on my stomach, I sprout a cat on my ass. there is no cure

Julie is lying on her stomach on a bed, looking back over her shoulder at her ass, which a sleepy white cat is melted atop, like those clocks from that Dali painting

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Reposted by Julie Beck

Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

This is no way to live, man

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

just living for the part of the day where I can engage in my fiber crafts and watch the adventures of a handsomely bearded brooding doctor…I call it Pittin’ & Knittin’

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

“living life a quarter mile at a time” but it’s just me going for a really short walk around the neighborhood then going home and sitting back down

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I wrote about the collective yearning for a more analog life that has sprung up recently and why, for most people, it hasn't manifested in actually dumping their smartphones: www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

theatlantic.com

The Tension That Defines Modern Life

Most people have a smartphone. But many want to use it less.

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Reposted by Julie Beck

The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 18/03/2026

AI-chatbot “friends” are one logical destination for the current trend of human friendship—but “using these tools to address loneliness has the potential to make it worse,” Julie Beck writes.

bit.ly

What AI ‘Friends’ Reveal About Human Friendship

Social chatbots offer relationships that are low effort, completely personalized—and hollow.

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Reposted by Julie Beck

Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I've been working on this for ages and it's finally up today! I was p. baffled by AI friendship, until I realized: AI is a logical, if extreme, extension of the kind of friendship our culture already values: individualistic friendship that is on your own terms www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

theatlantic.com

Friendship, on Demand

AI chatbots offer relationships that are low effort, completely personalized—and hollow.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

theatlantic.com

Friendship, on Demand

AI chatbots offer relationships that are low effort, completely personalized—and hollow.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

I don't know how to get on SurvivorSky, or where my Survivorheads are at, but let me just say I am having the BEST time with season 50 and I am all-in on Christian, my pants-pooping king.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

"All she could afford to be was grateful." a heartbreaking, personal look at what happens when you're uninsured, by @jenishawo.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

theatlantic.com

The Impossible Predicament of the Uninsured

My aunt couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. She ended up there anyway.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

the new snail mail songs are that rare and precious genre of “makes me believe spring will actually come” they are vitamin d, they are an ssri, they are fixing my brain chemistry

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I really enjoyed Stephen Fishbach’s novel Escape!—as a Survivor fan, and as someone who thinks way too much about how the desire for narrative shapes our lives www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

A ‘Survivor’ Contestant’s Empathetic Reality-TV Novel

Stephen Fishbach mines the drama of competition shows to write a cautionary tale about trying to edit down the mess of life.

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Julie Beck @julieebeck.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

two journalists arrested for practicing journalism—Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort

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