time and headspace

How progesterone intolerance got me good (in a bad way).  I've decided to share my personal experience with synthetic progesterone – aka progestins, aka the "mini pill" – in the hopes it might help even one person lurch out of their own hormonal hell. For just over five years I had taken the mini pill, first under the Jencycla brand, and then Movisse . The brand switch occurred when my pharmacy happened to be out of stock of the first, and was substituted with the second. "They're identical", I was reassured, "you shouldn't notice a difference". I started taking the mini pill while in a relationship. The man I was seeing didn't enjoy my monthly mood swings (I mean, I didn't either, but I was also one year into running a market farm I had started from scratch, which sometimes got a bit stressful, if you can believe it), so I promised to seek a solution. The combined pill seemed like a whole commitment; the list of possible side effects ...

Our data is the fastest growing commodity in the world, and we're just giving it away. I've always been skeptical of social media (while also using it for most of my adult life), maintaining that the whole gambit is a dangerous social experiment. For years I had a personal rule of "no real feelings on the internet", and I so wish I had held to it. Now that it's become a fully-fledged global industry – an industry worth more than 163 billion USD , comprised of data collecting, storing, processing, analyzing, and utilizing – the more I think about the possible trajectories and implications, the more my heart and stomach tighten. Of course, it was always about data. For advertisers right? "A better customer experience". For many, the idea that their phone is listening is a funny abstract blip. Targeted and mis-targeted ads are a part of our daily online woes and amusements. But it's about so much more than that. Data is now inextricable from our econom...