Give It A Rest

* Reminder: The Savor of the Month theme for August is NUMBERS. Details here; Supporters can share their findings in the thread here. So many great contributions! Check it out!* R.I.P. Dolly.Who is deciding what you’re paying attention to? A recent article in Vox on “rebuilding your attention span” makes a distinction between two forms of “fascination” — hard and soft. Hard fascinations are described as things that “capture so much of your attention that you can’t look away and you can’t quickly recover,” such as the visual assault of Times Square, or the near-addictive pull of scrolling social media. Soft fascination, in contrast, refers to “something that can grab your attention without consuming it, thus giving your mind space to wander,” like a beguiling waterfall spotted on a hike.What stood out to me is the idea that soft fascination is in some sense a restful form of attention. A Psychology Today post on the subject credits environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan…