iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Washington, one of the first states to legalize weed, limits the potency of edibles and and flower. But there's no limit on the potency of concentrates. The industry has fought efforts to regulate.

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Equally wild: While reporting on psychosis last year, what I absorbed was that weed mainly triggered schizophrenia in people already at risk for it. But more recent studies show that weed use can just cause schizophrenia – a lifelong, incurable condition – on its own, without a known genetic risk.

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This is wild. One study found that *one-fifth* (!) of schizophrenia cases might be prevented if young men did not develop cannabis use disorder.

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

While reporting on psychosis last year, I was caught off guard by how often weed came up in people's stories. It turns out, of all drugs, cannabis has the closest link to schizophrenia:

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How does journalism continue to exist when, increasingly, this is what the market demands and presents financial incentives for?

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

"...misinformation is powerful, not because it changes minds, but because it allows people to maintain their beliefs in light of growing evidence to the contrary." Essential reading from: @cwarzel.bsky.social @mikecaulfield.bsky.social: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Potentially very important discovery: Scientists knew that heavy weed use was a risk factor for schizophrenia But they didn't know whether weed was a *cause* or whether people at risk for schizophrenia were just more likely to use weed It now looks like weed is a cause, or at least an accelerant:

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

"Ethics becomes a luxury as the speed of our daily life increases.” www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/o...

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5. "Housing First" Sam Tsemberis 2010 I read this for an upcoming story and it's wild how far modern conceptions of Housing First — on both the right and left — have strayed from what this program was originally envisioned to be

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4. "Not a Speck of Light" Laird Barron 2024 I wish Washington State would claim this guy as a local author, even though he lives in New York State now

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3. "Blankets" Craig Thompson 2003 Heartbreaking and meditative little cartoon got me

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2. "Experimental Film" Gemma Files 2015 The folk horror elements are really memorable and deployed with a lot of care

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Books I read this year that are still with me at the end of the year (possibly none of which came out this year): 1. "I Who Have Never Known Men" Jacqueline Harpman 1995 Unsettling and liminal in a way I haven't experienced since "The Other Side of the Mountain" by Michel Bernanos

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"The destruction of patience is one of the most dramatic cultural shifts we’ll probably experience of our lifetimes, and it pervades everything — journalism, music, comedy, the works." mattdpearce.substack.com/p/journalism...

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

For much of history, intimacy was not recognized as a “need” because people lived communally. They wanted privacy, not more intimacy. We’ve only put a premium on intimacy since we’ve gotten lonelier. “Intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of increasing isolation.”

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

“We bring to our love relationships this free-floating anxiety. Love, beyond providing emotional sustenance, compassion, and companionship, is now expected to act as a panacea for existential aloneness as well.”

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

I'm so fascinated by this. Psychosis is not just genetic. It's also triggered, in mysterious ways, by forces in society and our relationships with each other. Outsider status, alienation, and stress seem to be factors. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/m...

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Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Bobbing in a sea of blood-soaked schlock, our deeply-reported podcast about the mental health system is one of the most-downloaded new shows of 2024. I'm proud of the whole team behind Lost Patients for showing what audio journalism can still achieve. analytics.podtrac.com/top-new-podc...

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As I read coverage of audio journalism's collapse and the threats to public media, it's so wild to reminisce about the heady days of 2018-2021 ("Peak Gimlet") when it felt like anything was possible. I wrote this in 2021, a few years after transitioning from newspapers to audio:

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"As everybody’s brain is being adapted to a much more hyperstimulated, short-form world, the ability to think in long form becomes that much more valuable." Ezra Klein on his most recent podcast episode: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/o...

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If you want to know why homelessness exists, you can start by asking why people are poor. It's an absurdly complex question Or you can start be asking: Where did poor people used to live? And what happened to those places?

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The third thing "homelessness" is: All the crises that continue happening once somebody is living outside — the state of deprivation, stress, and alienation that changes one's behavior, the adaptations one makes to survive in a strange, harsh environment. 4/

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The second thing "homelessness" is: The background crises that led to that final eviction — and the state of extreme precarity in which eviction results in someone literally sleeping outside. 3/

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Elon Musk just said the word "homeless" is "propaganda." The truth is: That word *is* actually frustratingly imprecise and has come to mean different things. I've covered homelessness for years and I think what we call "homelessness" is actually three things... 1/

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