How We Create Personal Myths, and Why They Matter
My parental separation was vastly less traumatic than what is happening to children at the border. But this narrative lives inside me.
This isDATA, a column by Angela Chen on numbers, nerdery, and what it means to live an evidence-based life.
It didn’t take long for Morgan to become frustrated with my suggestions. She wanted our hero to have more powers; I wanted her to be more ordinary. She wanted each interaction to be a Chekhov’s gun that would have meaning later; I stripped out the heavy symbolism and inserted meaningless scenes. I was forever undoing Morgan’s work, changing eyes from “emerald” to “green,” skin from “creamy” to just . . . skin.
You always want to see things in the most plain way possible,
Well,
Angela Chen is a science journalist at The Verge. Her reporting and essays have also been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Paris Review, Aeon Magazine, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, Hazlitt, Electric Literature, and more. She is on Twitter: @chengela
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How I Learned to Reconcile the Distance Between Experience and Memory
As my mother loses the ability to remember, I find myself playing with my own memory.
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Many of us subconsciously believe there is only so much good allotted to us—so, when something good happens, watch out.
The Downside of Radical Honesty
The problem with radical honesty is that we are not transparent to ourselves—we are always biased, and so is the feedback we provide.