Meredith McKay

In 2014, @zephoria.bsky.social (danah boyd) published *It’s Complicated,* an ethnographic study of why teens spend so much time on social media. Her key finding: Adults limited their free time and ability to hang out.

It’s a famous book by a major scholar. Infuriating to see her work ignored here.

😂😂

Idk I had a pilot come out of the cockpit on a flight a couple weeks ago to say he knew there had been lots of issues lately but “not on his plane, not on his watch, and he takes it seriously to get us to where we’re going safely” and that was nice and also yikes

monsters next door on the messiness and proximity of good and evil

My latest on substack, addressing the super light and fun subject of good and evil. Including a good midwestern Tupperware metaphor: open.substack.com/pub/meredith...

same re: my dog

Pope Leo and Women Instead of an assembly of men trying to come up with a theology that explains women, I want to see the Church settle on one theology for everyone.

“…because most of them were—and here I will use a technical term—kind of weird about women.” This piece from @mollieoreilly.bsky.social is excellent (and a far more sophisticated take than my recent substack lament about women in the CC) www.commonwealmagazine.org/pope-leo-and...

It doesn't matter if they are ever coming for you.

It was always ever already too much that they were coming for anyone.

The water fountain 👀💀💀

A map showing current active and contained wildfires in the Pacific Northwest (there’s a whole hell of a lot of them)

Absolutely stuck doomscrolling because there’s a fire weather watch, spontaneous fires, an arsonist active in my area, and the rest of the world feels literally and figuratively on fire help

I’m sorry this is not an acceptable series of words

Just another day where the thought crosses my mind that the US Catholic Church missed a real marketing opportunity by not referring to Laudate Deum as “Laudatwo Si’”

a reddit post with the title "Best place to dump my boyfriend in the Omaha metro area"

a response saying "Nebraska humane society. So he can get a new friend after you put your relationship down."

we'll give you a coupon for $50 off an adoption if you dump your boyfriend at the shelter

In The Incredibles, when Frozone’s wife says “I am the greatest good you are EVER gonna get,” she is embodying the Ignatian principle of Magis. In this essay, I will…

In this time of unwarranted provocation and threatened retaliation, when so many of us are afraid and seeking our center; two prayers to breathe into our core:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love

Icon: 'Saint Francis and Sultan Al-Kamil' Br. Bob Lentz

HONEY. I gasped. Omg

Yes. I am right. I am seeing how Chat GPT is ruining students critical thinking and writing skills in real time. It is not the future. It is a tool designed to render the populace helpless, to make people doubt their innate intelligence, and to foster overreliance on technology.

Yes! My parents were big fans of W but I still remember lengthy dinner conversations many times leading up to it, discussing/debating/wondering

The Parable of the Cherry Trees Fruits of the spirit (and a morning ritual in a backyard garden)

Most recent post on substack inspired by my obsession with my backyard cherry trees: meredithmckay.substack.com/p/the-parabl...

Meredith wearing a yellow shirt and showing off a brand new hydrangea tattoo on her bicep, covered by tegaderm

A new addition

As ever, grateful for local news coverage

Is 6pm too early to go to bed? Asking on behalf of my jet lag

Better than I’ve done 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oooh, good on you!!!

It’s so bad and so frequent that I don’t even have the energy to tell people that it’s fake?

Why on earth is there so much slop out there with fake pope quotes???? And why are so many people falling for it???

Fox hosts, parroting DHS, claimed Sen. Padilla "ran at,” "lunged at," and tried to “bum-rush” Kristi Noem. Video disproves their claims, showing Padilla standing calmly across the room asking his question as security grabs him.

Literally same thought, currently in Italy…. I’ve not been posting anything out of concern for this precise thing (except now 🫣)

The author looking skeptical while drinking a glass of wine on an Italian balcony in the evening sunlight

Abruzzo

Hello from Rome, where I am very confused about what time it is and apparently what language I should be speaking because I responded in Spanish when the woman at the cafe asked what I ordered 🤦🏻‍♀️

An Ode to Yellow On the unexpected things we gain from healing

Me again, because I apparently have a lot to say (and if I stop to worry about whether it’s good I’ll never post any of my writing, which is the only way I know how to get better) meredithmckay.substack.com/p/an-ode-to-...