Hey US folks!

Friendly reminder--with a big ol' hug--that you're living with institutional crisis stress.

New secret police popping up! Speakers ousted when the government should be negotiating to protect from shutdown! Ex-presidents endangering public officials by testing the limits of gag orders!

These are not normal situations.

They are attacks on your social contract.

And they're affecting your stress.

So step back if you have to.
Breathe.
And give yourselves credit for getting by. 💪

@BosmangBeratna raised the excellent concept of a "Harm check" in a recent short. Freaking love the D&D framing for an important reminder to first ask yourself if a given decision will harm others.

If we were to craft a "Revolutions & Utopias" RPG, what would be some other must-have ability checks?

Kindness? (When trying to deescalate)
Consensus? (When choosing how to allocate resources)
Inclusivity? (When planning for a successful protest - e.g., are all dietary needs met?)

What else fits?

Rain again today--
my neighbour sleeps in a shroud
of all our design.

(I'm saving up for a low-cost tent and going to give him an old cooking pot for Thanksgiving. I've been watching for weeks to see how much he'd be at risk of greater harassment for having any property at all, but the others who pass through seem friendly. They share when they can in the afternoons. Helping is a complicated but necessary affair.)

I have a four-hour window for novel-work today. 🙂 That is all. ☕🌄

That glorious feeling when you come home at day's end and close all the tabs you had open for research purposes. 👌

(Well. All the ones for today's work, anyway...)

Mubi movie time?

Mubi movie time. 🍿🎬

I'm always struck by how hard so many of us are on ourselves, when we're surrounded by people who don't bat an eye at the harm they've done, who have no capacity for self-reflection & no interest in atonement.

I think it's related, though.

I think seeing their cruelty intensifies our own ache to do better, to offset the harm in their wake. We can't afford to err, because look how much error already exists!

But controlling for all error is impossible.

It's more important to choose to be kind.

Also--

Hope you're all being good to your weary noggins today.

Today, a fellow writer messaged me to tell me how low he was feeling after getting some tough feedback on his work.

Just, out of the blue, because he knew I was a safe person to talk to about being discouraged.

I don't think he realizes how much his reaching out helped *me* feel less useless, too. It's so easy to get caught up in our own fool brains.

We uplift each other in so many ways every day.

Thank you all for yours. 💛

Sometimes I hold on to my work too tightly - as with this piece, along with a few others coming down the pipe.

When I do, it's often because I've let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

And good grief, is that tiring.

Here, I wanted to start a conversation that I can return to later on, around a site of ongoing learning about some complex and important topics.

So even though this is a chewier theme than most, difficult to cover in a single piece... it's a start. The rest will come. 👍

Oof. I've been holding on to this one for too long.

Today’s piece builds on Global Humanist Shoptalk, Season 2, where I mentioned international arbitration for "Global Finance".

This one's only partly free to read. The first part explores the dehumanization that already exists in SCOTUS cases.

The paid subscriber section then explores international arbitration: a major forum for legal disputes quietly shaping the world of law ahead.

(Next piece? Free, & much lighter!)
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/the-great-big-international-law-market

Morning, CoSo! 🕊️

I meant to have this up yesterday, but I trip into pretty deep dives whenever I write on US case law. There are just... *so* many imprecise glosses of key issues in major media reporting, eh?

The dog-bites-man story:

A right wing supermajority SCOTUS is poised to help Republicans gut regulatory agencies and restrict individual protections.

The man-bites-dog story?

That's still in the works. Can US citizens fight for the country they want instead?
https://onlysky.media/mclark/a-new-term-for-a-sorry-supreme-court/

(Also, good morning to everyone who woke ready for a fight and/or first cuppa! ☕️ For the second group, we'll see you on the fields of strife later in the day, I'm sure. 😉)

I listen to mainstream financial podcasts, and while some lingo is just silly but par for the course (e.g. calling a market "frothy"), other terms are perfect reminders that human welfare comes second.

The term "excess savings" is particularly reprehensible. It refers to the remainder of a boost US citizens received during lockdown. The financial sector *could* say "extra", but the emphasis is on this money being a problem. Lifting people even briefly out of poverty is bad for the economy. 🙃