Jello wrote:

I enjoy these narratives. I'm just curious about what your intention is when you start one: do you have a beginning and an end a core meme you track passing through these links and you are trying to make a point that summarizes what you gathered from them all, or are you just free associating link to link that you find interesting for the day, and what pattern emerges is left to the reader?

First, let me say that I appreciate the comment, because these 'narratives' generally provoke so little reaction that I have assumed they go unread. (I write them because I enjoy making them, so the silence with which they are typically received doesn't really bother me. They are rarely recommended by others -- the longest ones, almost never. One might consider them the very antithesis of Diggy posts.)

I am reluctant to try to explain them, or to articulate, ex-post-facto, a characterization of 'method' which does not really exist in practice. The technique, such as it is, is definitely associative, though I would not call it free. As I work my way through a piece like Superbugs here, I am inclined to recall other things I have read recently, or not so recently, and I like to cite them as I can, both for the sake of sharing, and to improve their findability down the road/stream. Sometimes there is an overarching theme or three, perhaps as minuscule as a single word that struck me as evocative or memorable. Clearly, patterns exist, though the relationships often do not become entirely clear to me for another day or so.

RE: Superbugs