Yesterday I took my own timeline off my Twitter client and just ran five columns of my lists. It was much nicer. Just news and information. This means that winter hermitage is coming on. It’s already autumn, here in British Summer Time, chill winds chasing up the coast and never more than six hours away from a rain notification. Everyone’s angry about something. Everyone is making a show of being terribly earnest about something. Almost always with good reason, to be sure. But there was a thing identified many years ago called “compassion fatigue,” in the wake of the million Band Aid-style charity campaigns. Eventually, people draw the line against the welter of things they’re told to be sad and angry about. That’s bad for any system that relies on engagement for its capital, and for any charity process that relies on windfall funding. Bad for conversation. Bad for surfacing actual issues.

Untweeted: I don’t know why unverified people are even allowed to buy food.