Also, @A_Jay_Adler has a firecracker of a read today, on another facet of national identity. I'm deeply heartened to go from posting my own piece on the dangers of national myths to reading this sharp exploration of specific transgressions.

“Every time I heard or read about slavery being the nation’s original sin, I felt – without, in any way, discounting that truth – a stunned reminder of the utter absence from the social conversation of the nation’s ab-original sin.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/ajayadler/p/recovering-from-discovery

My heart's also a little more at rest today, thanks to successful delivery of a birthday package to a person very dear to me who's working crazy-hard in another country right now, away for what will probably be 2 years.

Life is a real challenge for so many of us. We don't all get happy endings (hur hur), but there are always opportunities to lean into care and growth with one another.

May your own opportunities for both serve you well.

And may you have the means to walk away if they don't. ❤️

Morning folks. 💫

Fever's gone. Also not sneezing relentlessly every time I try to work, and alternating between roasting and freezing.

Everyone else good?

Time to write about political theory on this end! 🎉

Morning, CoSo!

The first miniseries of Global Humanist Shoptalk, Season 2, is now up on YouTube and available through a few of the usual podcast venues.

In “Petronationalism”, we’re rethinking whether there’s really such a strong divide between state and corporate projects after all. What makes a nation a nation? And how has our answer to this question shaped the modern world?

#Podcast #Politics #Nationalism
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/on-petronationalism-rethinking-nationhood

Oh! But fever-posting aside, I have a cornerstone piece I aim to write this week about different meanings / implementations of political ideologies that get lumped together as "socialism!" during heated political contests.

Different anarchisms, communalisms, communisms, other socialist approaches to state & economy, implementations in both past and present...

Our political discourse is often *so* sorely diminished to a simplistic binary.

Do you have any bugbears you'd like to see addressed?

Figured out why I've been feeling so muddled. Fever and chills hit hard when I got home last night. I took a "nap" that turned into a night of tossing & turning from burning up. Fun! I'd forgotten illnesses that aren't COVID* still exist. I did hang out with neighbours on Saturday.

Going to quarantine awhile & just get the rest of everything up at its pace today.

Other people, man.
Love the germers, hate the germs. 😷

(*OTC tests aren't a thing here, but this feels like something else anyway.)

🙂 When my interactions in my barrio are good, they are really really good. Tonight I came across a sad moo cow who had straggled too long, and was lowing in the dark on her solo route home. An old, scruffy, two-toothed paisa stopped with me to watch her get over her fear and step into the dark stretch alone, & we talked about animal feelings and his childhood on a finca for a bit, until she pressed on. (Brave girl!)

May your chats with strangers always unite more than they estrange. 🐄💛

#Nature

Ever since grad school, I've had this curious dog-on-a-bone reluctance to let go of certain content. Finished! But from my snarling teeth someone would have to grab it until I'm good and ready to let go. 😂 No idea why!

My trick for breaking that weird brain vibe is going for a walk, and sneaking up on my computer when I get back.

Nobody warn it in my absence! 😉

---

(Two posts to go tonight, and then I want to finish a book review for BookTube. We shall see if I've the spoons for that too. 🤞)

Humanist Book Club time! ⛴️

Today for #OnlySky, I reflect on ocean transport as KSR tackled it in The Ministry for the Future. Sadly, ocean freight is both big *and* small in the climate change equation... and there are some tricky Arctic politics that undermine treating an open northern passage as a quick fix to transport needs.

That said, this is a book of ideas, to be used as a conversation starter - and there are a lot of neat ones to be had here!

#ClimateCrisis

https://onlysky.media/mclark/eco-friendly-transportation-the-good-the-bad-and-the-pipe-dreams/

#News

"A Minnesota prison has 'resolved without incident' a situation involving about 100 inmates in one housing unit who would not return to their cells Sunday in what one former inmate there called an act of ´self-preservation' amid dangerously high temperatures in the region."

The world is a hard, hard place for so many.

Be gentle. Be kind. Keep your heart up - and quit being so tough on yourself - so you can help others where you can. 🕊️

https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-stillwater-prison-lockdown-ece94ba0028ad02f4721361170728c81

This Labour Day, I hope everyone can lean into whatever exists near at hand to remind you that you are *so* much more than what you do.

Yes, even if you feel like you can't stop working.

Even if your industries, like mine, are doing poorly, and you have no idea if you'll ever be stable.

I was called a "workaholic" in Canada, but I worked the way I did out of fear. Basic need. As so many of you do, too.

We may be stuck on difficult hamster wheels.

They are still not the whole of who we are.

For now, the 6 podcasts are just going through their processing time on RSS.com, where I decided to upload them first before porting them over to Substack - no other way I trust to make sure I don't mass email each podcast individually.

Back to the other drafts now! My writing brain was all over the place this weekend, but I should have all my ducks in a line by day's end, caught up on everything. :)

🦆🦆🦆🎉

I will also say, with amusement, that there are definitely fiddly bits to these podcasts--recorded in Jan-March, delivered to me in July--that leave me convinced I'll be recording S3 on my own. My editor had some Life Challenges & only speaks a little English, which made this a terrific learning experience for us both, but...

Well, you'll see when you hear the audiobook. I've grown a lot as an A/V editor this year, thanks in large part to the brilliance of one CoSonaut. ❤️

(More on that later!)

Lesson learned from middle-of-the-night recording: I'm going to have to shift workflow completely to a nighttime schedule for a week to finish the audiobook, because what I do in the daytime after is useless. 😅

Oh well - lessons learned.

Just trying to figure out the optimal way to launch 6 episodes of the podcast on Substack without inundating inboxes, and then... we'll go from there.

Happy Monday - and Labour Day! - to all you lovely rotters near and far.

#LearningCurves