Today I have a meeting where I'm in charge of documenting technical processes live, via minutes. This isn't something I've done in a dog's age, but it has to get done, and I'm keen to learn.

Tech folk: any useful tips for how best to structure workflow notes? We're documenting processes with an outgoing employee, without a new one in their place, so the idea is to get a clear sense of how some database automations have been organized / are being used, to pass on when the next person is hired.

Today, I offer a lighthearted counter to last Thursday's heavy piece about how difficult it is to live in a world with so much modern violence shaped by ancient religious stories.

We're going back to Mesopotamia, baby!

(Bring your cows!)

And there, hopefully a brief reflection on a popular moon deity will serve to remind us of the humanity we share.

#History #Religion #Atheism #Humanism #HumanBehaviour #Culture #War
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/a-reprieve-from-todays-gods-into

So little changes.

Fifth Avenue, 1936.

Yet we press on, not because humanity will ever magically become kinder, but because we need to stay with the trouble all the same.

Thank you for your presence in the fray.

A final guffaw before bed.

(It is, though. It is.) Night, CoSo!

#Humour #Meme

#Humanism

There will always be circumstances in which taking life is saving life.

But there's a difference between sitting with the fact of killing as a sometimes-necessary aspect of life, and crowing over it, gamifying it, & otherwise teaching others to see the thrill of killing as more important than the function it can serve.

We are walking wounded when we talk of violence in this way, because it only carries our trauma forward.

But we can do better. We're trying to, at least, every day.

#Humanism

For some of us, there's a binding thread to violent news, from domestic injustice to global atrocity:

How quickly we normalize dehumanizing others.

Every time we fixate on justifying death, we teach one another that our humanity is debatable.

And that rot runs deep. In places with the death penalty, people are more likely to see killing as a good solution.

How we discuss violence teaches those around us about the limits of our care for *everyone*, not just the villain of the day.

And before I head off, another poem that better suits the day.

Marcellus ​“Khaliifah” Williams wrote poetry while in prison, on death row.

Even the family of the victim and the prosecutor's office fought for the state not to kill him. The case against him was all wrong.

As Langston Hughes might have said, "He, too, sings America."

Or sang it, while he could.

Until tonight.

#US #DeathPenalty #Poetry
https://innocenceproject.org/marcellus-williams-on-death-row-poetry-is-a-lifeline/

Tonight's first students get some poetry, via two poems that I love to pair for my advanced learners: Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" and James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota".

Also, @LiseL, my mall had a new gift today: a lovely display dedicated to the originator of a wildly popular 18th-Centurt version of Beauty and the Beast!

I truly never know what I'm going to discover in it next. #Poetry #Literature

Bipolar II means low lows, and only moderate manias (so, no worries of me thinking I'm the second coming, etc).

But manias still manifest for me in getting so wrapped up in projects that I forget to do things like eat, leave the house, sleep. And that goes doubly so when preoccupied by the world.

So, from one nutjob to any others here:

Don't forget to move the soft animal of your body.

Feed it.

Water it. (But not after midnight.)

Then tell it to get its tea kettle offline and back to work.

Whew.

Closing all the news streams and the socials now.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Time to work.

Watch yer hearts, all. 🕊️

So take the breaks you need if you start to see tons of people rushing into propaganda mode for the next while, always worrying about optics over humanity.

Use the tools!

And try to forgive yourselves and those around you for not knowing how to do better in these awful times.

We're all just trying to do the best we can from our subject-positions - even if the best we can do happens to cause more harm.

Nobody gets out of this alive, but we can pick *some* battles along the way.

TTFN, team. 💛

#MediaLiteracy

Relatedly, there's a lot of malinformation on CoSo, but trying to correct it all is futile.

A healthier news ecosystem would be one in which it was safe to comment on the grief of more slaughter, more lost lives, more unchecked war, more leaders unable to de-escalate, more bad allies.

I would trust more people here if they were able to sit with those facts first & show care for the pain that comes from it, without rushing to spin everything.

But hey, we're only human, right? 🤷🏻‍♂️

And here are the infographs I made for this piece: a depiction of an unhealthy news cycle, and a depiction of a healthier one, both seen from the perspective of an average end-user who is going to be inundated with opinions about a given news story either way.

How can we make sure that reader gets the most informative and empowering curation of news possible?

#MediaLiteracy #Journalism #SocialMedia #Culture

Building on yesterday's piece, today we look at a deeper problem for media literacy: the lack of local journalism robust enough, in our new media economy, to provide the everyday standards we need to correct misinformation (when it inevitably arises) and to defend against more sinister forms of disinformation, too. Without this systemic fix, we're merely playing Whack-a-Mole with bad news whenever it arises.

#MediaLiteracy #Journalism #Democracy #BetterWorldsTheory

https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/the-real-challenge-for-media-literacy