Also, from that episode of This American Life, there's one segment in particular that folks here might find fascinating.

It's about a journalist in Berlin who got poisoned on a trip back to Russia... and who took *forever* to accept that this was what had happened to her. Her reality had forever changed once she became a target, but she wasn't ready to process this right away.

Food for thought. What are we unprepared to accept about what's already changed in our lives?

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/826/unprepared-for-what-has-already-happened/act-one-7

Also, I love that others crack jokes or pour coffee to greet CoSo in the morning, but I sometimes drop existentialist missives as my way of saying "hullo!" 😅

HULLO.

Good morning, starshines!

Hope you're treating yourselves with great kindness today.

Whatever you've done, whatever wounds you're working through, you deserve a chance to keep moving through them.

I'm thankful we're all still here at all. 💛

Listened to an episode of This American Life today that reflects on the shock of realizing that one is unprepared for what's already happened.

That's a good way of describing a lot of what we're moving through.

When pandemic started, we realized that we're going to need years to recover from the socio-psychological damage.

In these last two years of war, amid the rising threat of anti-democratic nationalisms & the blatant failures of climate crisis response...

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

October 1932.

Sometimes history is a great comfort because it reminds us that we've always been dealing with normalized awfulness.

Rare and precious are the times when we lean into something better.

Night, folks.

Be kind. Do good crimes. 🕊️

Every time I watch atrocity footage, I'm reminded of the look on Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah.

There, he's a father who served, trying to figure out what happened to his son, who died while serving.

What he ultimately finds is a body of cruel actions by his son and his buddies... but his *face*, while watching related footage, makes it clear that none of this surprises him.

War cultivates cruelty - and that's a stain on us all.

We are complicit in *such* brokenness as a world.

I definitely think I've adapted to this experiment now.

Might attempt a pre-dawn run tomorrow (with salts and water in abundance before sun-up, of course). And then we'll see if it makes the rest of the day super hard or not.

I was just so itchy for walks today (three!) that clearly my meatsack is scratching at the door of life, waiting to be let out in earnest again. I've read up, and people do indeed still exercise during Ramadan - just carefully. So, we'll add it to the experimental data!

Woo! And I just had a book review accepted and zipped through edits. 🎉

I feel my SFF side rapidly returning, like Superman basking in sunlight after being caged for far too long in Kryptonite.

When I get home, I have prep work to do for tomorrow's BookTube recording, when I get to signal-boost another creative endeavour, too.

#AGoodDay
#ADayOfManyGratitudes

:)

On the plus side, I guess I didn't have anything to worry about, re: getting less compulsive about solid sourcing once I started publishing essays solely on my own venue.

(Time now for another walk?
Don't mind if I do!~)

Okay! After getting lost down a research rabbit hole while trying to source a claim with missing docs, and cutting out the lithium sections for another piece on Tuesday...

Thorough Thursday!

Today's newsletter reflects on tailings dams and the nightmare of waste management around our world's mining industries.

Our energy economies have left a *huge* imprint on the Earth.

How do we feel about the "monuments" we're leaving behind?

#EnergyFutures
#ClimateChange
#Waste

https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/our-world-of-normalized-industry

Ooo, I have a good one for paid subscribers today (and a choice opening section for all other readers, too), but my research into these ecological disasters has made me too hopping mad to post right away. 🙃 Going for a quick walk before final revisions, just to make sure that everything comes out clearly in the wash.

But boy howdy, the *messes* we humans make.

It's a real wonder that we haven't more thoroughly wiped ourselves out by now.

Whew. Tough walk in the park this morning.

First, there was a person who looked dead. I waited a good five minutes for signs of breath; the skeletal, worn-out bodies of street folk operate on so little sometimes.

Then a fellow on the way back asked for someone to buy his wares so he could eat. He was newer to living rough, and shaken by being treated like a "parasite" for the first time after a life where he'd always had work before.

We're all so fragile.
Tread lightly with those living hard.

One of my volunteer gigs involves slush reading, which I enjoy because I love seeing what dreams people are dreaming up.

(Many times the story is lovely, but not right for the pub--so never let a rejection be the end of your submissions journey!)

Today, though, I had to smile, because after going through a few weaker pieces, I read one that was *clearly* written by a fan of the Culture novels.

It's still their own story, but written with such love for what came before. Nice when that happens.

Also--

Gratitude. So much gratitude.

Sometimes when I walk around a mall, it just boggles the mind how much industry we pour into the hyping and selling of transformational luxury.

So much human industry is poured into material culture--and I totally get that it's a form of expression for some--but...

It does often feel like a lot of misplaced energy, especially when so many products exist in window-shops alongside profound real-world need.

We have *enough* - it's just not well distributed.

All right, no going rogue and living where the wild things are after all.

It *is* nice when you're well enough under budget with a still-good-quality purchase that you can buy new socks as well.

But that's about the only nice thing I can say about shopping.

It is done!

#AdultingWins

I'm gearing up to buy a new pair of shoes this afternoon.

Necessary! But I do not like to shop. Are we still sure about this whole "needing clothes" thing as a species? 🤔

Have we considered returning to living as hairy beasts who feel the heartbeat of the Earth under the soles of our feet as we run?

One of the most challenging parts of democracy is pluralism.

It is *so* easy for people to feel threatened by dissenting views, and to prefer politicians who promise to limit dissent through state action.

Much more difficult is sharing a world with people of different POVs, especially if those views encroach on your right to live in peace as you are.

There's no easy fix to the heated push-pull of pluralist debate.

But we should all be worried when we can't hear dissent in our circles at all.

Whew.

I try not to read *too* many things each day that accord well with pre-existing beliefs (I prefer to engage with arguments that challenge my convictions), but sometimes opinion pieces like this one - in which Ed Zitron points to the vacuous nature of the AI hype cycle and how much its impending implosion will hurt the tech sector in a few quarters' time - are just so darned tasty.

Like mental popcorn for watching the world burn!

#AI #Tech #MediaLiteracy #Essays
https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/

And as this is one of the first stories to greet me in today's news, I should note (as someone who wrote about Netanyahu's attacks on the Supreme Court all last year) that this isn't in the least surprising.

The only sad part is that it doesn't reflect *how hard* others fought to protect the SC from Knesset overreach.

US folks, take heed: whatever happens in Nov, there won't be participation trophies in the history books should the worst come about.

(Rooting for you.)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/global-index-israel-falls-out-of-liberal-democracy-category-for-first-time-in-over-50-years/

Today's Rewind Wednesday uses Dune 2 to talk about the story of history that was told after WWII, when scholars crafted a political theory of Western action that starts in 1648: an era laden with Holy Roman Empire politics that have strong echoes in Dune.

That grand postwar tale of Western history served the creation of the UN even amid new waves of economic colonialism - and as Dune notes, left us with a mess of power systems to which we're still far too tightly bound.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/dunes-emotional-history-of-the-west