Yesterday was tense, and I hope everyone was able to reach friends and family who might be struggling amid our current climate disasters (or other issues of note!).

So, a tardy Tough Times focuses on a slightly "lighter" problem: legacy media's buy-in to PR hype about restarting a nuclear plant for Microsoft.

Watch out for such reporting; it creates a sense of inevitability around unchecked consumption, when we cannot afford further investment in waste.

#MediaLiteracy
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/lessons-from-a-weird-hype-cycle-around

@ecksmc, I hope you're having a better day than yesterday (especially with the bullpucky you were combatting).

Pursuant to our last chat, this book just dropped: WE HAVE NEVER BEEN WOKE, a look at how education, nonprofit, and media "thought leaders" leverage the language of equity to further their own careers.

"Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged."

Funny timing! #Books

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we-have-never-been-woke

@Kaysymmetry

🫂💜

@matuzalem

Own it!

Louis Wain (left, 1900) got a recent glow-up for his fame as an artist who popularized cats among the upper crust around the turn of the 20th century. He was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021).

So you're in good company!

This piece is going to take until midnight. I keep checking in with folks in crisis.

What even is writing? Why art?
We have so much distress in the world.
So many people who just need you to sit with them while they're in pain.

It often feels so agonizingly selfish to create, even nonfiction meant to inform.

Our world is falling apart (same as it ever was). Is it worth keeping the creative dream alive when there is *so* much quotidian need to address first?

#AmWriting, but also
#AmHumaning

@Blue_Skyesr_here

I think it comes down to people feeling like they have little agency beyond the social media sphere - so sabre-rattling & rage-posting, as we've seen on CoSo as well as on other forums, becomes the main outlet of political participation.

But when you get back here, you'll be reminded in an instant that there's so much we can do in our barrios instead.

It'll feel like whiplash, coming online and seeing the grandstanding!

But oh, you'll feel saner again. I promise. Soon! 🙂

@LiseL @CanisPundit @BillyBones

Any favourites from français? 👀 What's the hip way up north these days not to get foutu'd, or go "de la merde" even when we really really want to?

@jenebene @Novels56 @gemswinc @LiseL

Do we have a name yet for purple-first plays? 🤔

Connections
Puzzle #485
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨

Strands #219
“Protective measures”
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🟡🔵🔵

Keyword | 6 guesses | 0:09
🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
Perfect score!

🥳👌🏻 World's awful, but this was okay!

@CanisPundit @LiseL @BillyBones

I need to do a full rewatch of The Good Place one of these weeks.

(And of The Leftovers, as @daniel knows.)

Some shows just nail it from beginning to end. 🙂

@LiseL @BillyBones @CanisPundit

:) I listen to this at least once a year. It's why I use "shaving cream" so often in my lexicon!

Brief pop-in to share.

Not sure this needs the music, but whew.

Nature should remind us all how small we are, how precious and fleeting our lives are, and how much we need to be present for one another for as long as we can. 🌎

Anything less, and I'd even go so far as to say that we aren't looking at it right.

#Space #Milton
https://youtube.com/shorts/GZORg0fS1bw?si=kfblU1BAU4jRnw6h

There is way too much shaving cream going in the world today.

Offline for a bit, to run errands and finish an editing job. Will try to find a *kinder* approach to Tough Times Tuesday for the newsletter later today, but right now it's all just... a lot.

Watch your hearts.

Adjust your expectations.

Forgive yourselves and those around you for not being at your/their best with so much nervous energy and trauma blasted everywhere.

To be here at all in the struggle is *enough*.

It has to be. 🕊️

Two of my students are, respectively, a forestry engineer and a psychologist. This means that when I pick an article like this for one of our classes, we get to work on vocabulary for them both: first, for the forestry engineer, in using phrases of relevance to his field; then, for the psychologist, as we come up with vocabulary for coping with watching the world fall apart in ever so many ways.

Sucks for the planet (and us)!
But great English class material, thanks! 🙃
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/deforestation-destruction-demolition-beef-soy-palm-oil-nickel

@ShaneArtBooks

🫂 It's so good to see you back. I hope you've been keeping safe and well.

@matuzalem

And not even one of the nice children, who share their toys with others in the sandbox. :/