I'm putting together readings for my students tonight from recent news, but this excerpt's going in just because it made me laugh:
โActually seeing this one-to-one increase, I was like, wow,โ says a study author, Kathy Willis, a marine socio-ecologist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.
(Journalists are supposed to edit quotes with some grace, but sometimes the speaker doesn't offer much to work with. ๐ I still would've written this differently.)
For todayโs Rewind Wednesday, I mark a very difficult Passover by reflecting on a diverse range of Jewish perspectives flattened by war. In times of global violence with strong ethno-religious components, it can be incredibly hard to remember our humanity amid constant pushes for groupthink to come first.
But this is still vitally important work--for human dignity now, and any hope of a better world ahead.
#GlobalHumanism
#BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/the-stories-of-judaism-lost-to-war
Todayโs Tough Times Tuesday blends literature, domestic assault, and climate economics into a broader meditation on an abiding media myth around the ability to win over people who do harm by trying to find their โlove languageโ.
Is it fair to fellow civic participants to presume that everyoneโs operating in good faith when it comes to matters as serious as tackling climate change?
#BetterWorldsTheory
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/scenes-from-our-boring-dystopia
#BlackHistory Every Day ~ Today in Black History
๐ช๐ฝ๐ช๐ฝ๐ช๐ฝ
April 23, 1872 ~ Charlotte E. Ray becomes the first Black female lawyer in US history. Born in New York City to a journalist father and a politically active mother, Ray was a brilliant student who was teaching at Howard University in D.C., by the time she was 19. By age 22 she had her law degree and was admitted to the D.C. bar. However, sexual and racial discrimination forced her to abandon her law practice and return to NY to teach.
Some schools of therapy talk about us having an "inner child". Mine is the kid from The Hours.
Sometimes, when I'm having a tough time getting through a simple task, I hear little Richie looking up helplessly at his mum trying to make a cake and barely holding it together.
That fragile, small-voiced
"Mommy, it isn't that difficult" and her answering "I know, sweet pea. I know it isn't difficult. It's just..."
gets me every time.
Some days it really is hard, though, to make the darned cake.
i switched to another keyboard app away from GBoard >> OpenBoard is a 100% foss keyboard based on AOSP, with no dependency on Google binaries, that respects your privacy.
https://github.com/dslul/openboard
Also that keyboard doesn't rely on any background data being sent or received like most other keyboards do
Download via play store
/nosanitize
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softwarevalencia.openboard.inputmethod.latin
Anyway, good morning, and good Tuesday to all of you. โ
We have *so* much psychological damage to address in the coming years.
But we're not going to heal overnight (if at all). And no coronal mass ejection is going to save us from problems online, alas.
All we can do is try not to be angry with ourselves and others for living through such stupid, cruel, and stressed-out times.
We're all doing the best we can. ๐ซ๐
Infowars are so powerful, and we're so ill-prepared to meet them.
Yesterday, I was struck by how much media illiteracy reigns. How gullible we still are in every news cycle.
Is it genuine?
Or do people know full well what they're weaponizing?
That's the kind of despair infowars breed.
One no longer knows if one's neighbours are being honestly manipulated or eager participants in their own manipulation.
All one knows is that propaganda reigns, and has made the world unsafer yet again.
Despondent, frustrated, disappointed, dismayed...
It's been a day of deep feeling for me.
Maybe for you, too.
Maybe for reasons that differ from my own.
Goodness knows, we're all over the map here, each caught up in our part of it.
Which is the real work of awful times, no? Scare and divide. Drive us deeper into silos.
My wish for us all:
May we one day feel like we can widen our circles of care again.
May we not be guided forever by all the anger, fear, and cynicism of this rotten age.
Todayโs Monday Media Review eases us gently into a new week.
Weโre going to revisit some of these themes in heavier ways later on, but for nowโฆ letโs just enjoy a nice podcast about pasta, shall we?
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/when-even-simple-histories-get-it
OFFER ACCEPTED
KEEPING HOME
COSTING ME 5K.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED AND THOUGHT OF US!!!
Supposed to be official later this week, doing an in person exchange.
Brain is still like sludge today. Finishing tasks has been hard this past week - everything takes twice or thrice as long - and even yesterday I couldn't get to sleep before 2am, so I was "off" again this morning.
Off for a wee walk to try working off the frayed nerves, and then hopefully I can catch up today on four overdue tasks.
The trick is not being extra despondent for being so behind. Being angry with myself for being depressed won't help me to get ahead in workflow again.
Brains suck.
To all our Jewish cosonauts.
Happy #Passover โ Chag Pesach Sameach.
If you have an opportunity to share Seder, may it be a peaceful and joyful moment of celebration โค๏ธ
To be clear:
There's nothing new or shocking in that piece for readers of the publication for the last year, & language like "racists" has been comfortably used by Israelis to talk about some extreme settlers & religionists for a while.
But this was just such a perfect reminder that many Jewish people are entering Passover tomorrow with a VERY complex body of sorrows and suffering.
Hold your fellow human beings in your heart this week, OK?
So many of us are going through terrible ordeals. ๐ฏ๏ธ
WHEW.
๐ A little backstory before sharing this link. Haaretz used to be the dominant pub in Israel before Netanyahu's rich buddy bankrolled a daily free pub that could promote Likud talking points, so there is NO LOVE LOST for Netanyahu in this institution of a paper, which hosts POVs across the spectrum but definitely skews left of centre.
You could've guessed that, though, from the title of its lead editorial today:
"Passover in Israel: The Ten Plagues of Netanyahu"
Writer (SFWA), translator, humanist, general odd duck โข ๐จ๐ฆn in ๐จ๐ด โข avoids pronouns, they/them if key