Confronting the Chaos – The New York Times

My house is never truly clean — I have an 8-year-old, plus three aging cats, and none of us are particularly neat. If you were to visit right now, though, you would probably think it’s fine. Because I have tricked you. The door to my office is closed for a reason.

Spring cleaning, for many of us here in the 21st century, does not mean deep-scrubbing soot from the fireplace after a season of heavy use. It mostly means decluttering those spaces that have been absorbing our chaos since Thanksgiving. These chaos spaces, like my office, help maintain an illusion of order. And that can be a fine substitute for the real thing in the short term. It helps keep us sane. But there’s a pang of guilt whenever that door cracks open.

Today I will open the windows and blast some music and force myself to confront those boxes of schoolwork and stray wires and already-forgotten Christmas presents that cause me to feel secret shame when guests come by. If you’re ready to tackle your own chaos room, the rest of this newsletter is for you.

Tips from a pro

We’ll start with some very practical advice from Christina Fallon, who owns Dream It Done Organizing:

• Don’t use the dining room table as a storage unit.

• Follow the 20/20 rule: If you can get an item in 20 minutes for under $20, and you’re thinking of getting rid of it, get rid of it.

• If you haven’t worn or used something within six months, you’re probably not going to.

Fallon also has some insights about why we have such a hard time letting go of stuff — especially if it’s “attached to a good memory,” like a vacation or a concert or a kid’s milestone. “Most people are sentimental,” she noted. “They worry that if they give something away, that memory will fade.”

Her suggestion? “Take photos of these items and then let them go. We tend to make museums out of our lives.”

Read more of Fallon’s advice in this Q&A with Alix Strauss, a Times contributor.

Myths, busted

I admit that my decision to clean my office this weekend is arbitrary. It’s not as if I didn’t know the room was messy before the daffodils began to bloom. I simply had been finding excuses to spend my weekends doing other things.

Dorie Chevlen, who covers home décor and design for Wirecutter and writes about real estate for The Times, wrote recently about the myths we tell ourselves about cleaning that keep us from actually doing it. She rounded up some experts to help her debunk them.

Myth: I need to buy a bunch of baskets and dividers before I can organize. Actually, buying organizational accessories just makes it slower and more complicated: “You need to measure before you buy stuff, and that step in itself is a block,” said Christi Newrutzen, whose cleanup videos on TikTok get millions of views.

Myth: I don’t have the time. Experts recommend starting small, and chipping away at a project rather than waiting until you have a full day to devote. Often, after completing even five minutes of cleaning, people feel motivated to do another five minutes, said Andrew Mellen, an organizing expert.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

This past week, a jury in California, in a landmark decision, found that Meta and YouTube had harmed a user with addictive design features that led to her mental health distress. A slew of similar lawsuits is expected to hinge on the central question of the case: Is social media addictive?

Yes. These platforms are often compared to cigarettes, but they are, in fact, worse, Daniel Katz, a clinical psychologist, argued in The Los Angeles Times: “Willpower alone, without scientifically supported bolstering, is unlikely to be sufficient in breaking habitual social media use that has been engineered and reinforced.”

No. There is a difference between “social media addiction” and a “social media habit,” Ian Anderson and Wendy Wood wrote in The Washington Post. Repeated use isn’t necessarily an addition, they said, and “habits can be beneficial (regular bedtime) or harmful (overeating). The same is true of social media.”

FROM OPINION

The war in Iran has exposed failures in both strategy and historical literacy, Yonatan Touval writes.

The end of the television series “Queer Eye” is one warning signal of a diminishing acceptance of gayness in mainstream American culture, Rosa Rankin-Gee writes.

Baristas with degrees: Recent college graduates feel betrayed. Their anger goes beyond unemployment and A.I.

Cosmic mystery: Scientists detected a startlingly energetic particle beneath the Mediterranean Sea. They aren’t sure what caused it, but one theory is that a tiny black hole exploded.

“Project Hail Mary,” by Andy Weir: Weir is racking up quite the big-screen record. His first novel, “The Martian,” was adapted into a blockbuster, best picture-nominated film starring Matt Damon. And his third, “Project Hail Mary,” has been turned into what is already one of the most successful original Hollywood films in years. Starring Ryan Gosling as a middle school science teacher tasked with saving Earth from extinction, it perfectly captures the wisecracking, “yay science!” vibe of Weir’s source material. Not a bad time to go back to the original or, even better, to try the award-winning audiobook version.

More on books

THE INTERVIEW

The subject for The Interview this week is YouTube’s chief executive, Neal Mohan, who has led the company during a time of rapid growth. We spoke about the challenges of A.I., how he thinks about parental controls and the impact of the platform on all of our lives.

You’ve declared war on A.I. slop. But you are also handing creators tools to use A.I. How do you distinguish between a creative A.I. video and slop?

I don’t think that this is a solved question by any means. And frankly, the rate at which A.I. is impacting all of our lives, the ground beneath that question is changing on a weekly basis, if not faster. But I have this very firm conviction that it will never replace human creativity. Because of this notion of human stories on YouTube, I absolutely cannot have it be overrun with A.I. slop. A.I. can be a tool to produce amazing content or further democratize content creation, but it can also allow for the creation of lots of low-quality content. There are aspects of it that are not new. The part that’s new is the scale, but the notion of low-quality content, clickbaity content — we’ve been able to deal with that on YouTube. I also think that we have to have a bit of a delicate hand on this. And I would tell you that every day we’re trying to really strike that balance, but we’re very, very focused on making sure that when you open up the YouTube app, it’s not a feed of A.I. slop.

Right now you have a little stamp when A.I. has been used on something. Is that enough?

It’s a place to start. The other really big thing that I hear from creators, public figures, journalists, etc., is being able to manage their likeness in this A.I. world. That is profoundly important, in my view. And not just the classic deepfakes, but also impersonation to trick a user or to steal someone’s creative idea. Those things will not get solved with an A.I. label. The big-picture question around, well, if a video can review a technology product and can create an A.I.-generated reviewer to do that, then who needs me? I really believe, and I could be naïve on this, that what shines through on YouTube is that human connection, what that person stands for. Just like in your case, people understand what The Interview means, they know how Lulu’s going to approach it, and I just don’t think that is going to get swapped by A.I.

Can you promise me that there’s not going to be a Lulu bot doing my job in two years?

I’m not naïve to the point of saying that there isn’t going to be disruption. But to your core question of the replacement of that human creativity element and what people connect with on a service like YouTube, I just don’t see A.I. generation replacing the humans.

Emily Weinstein, the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking, has a soft spot for supermarket tortellini. If you do, too, then this recipe is for you. It has two steps instead of one (“boil the tortellini”), but it’s worth it, as most adulting upgrades are. Emily also recommends roasted chicken thighs with black beans and squash — one of those recipes that soars above the sum of its parts.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was embankment.

Can you put eight historical events — including America’s first stand-up comic, a World War II surrender and Fidel Castro’s rise to power — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz.