I'm just a happy passenger, but it sure seems like the month of April had some serious bumps for our captain
* Recurring d*ck pics in the firehose
* Google Play store compliance contortions/ losing days from the app store
* Strife/moderating conflict
* Heaven only knows what else he shelters us from
Please chip in what you can, folks--this place is a gift in an online landscape of sales, algos, and manipulation.
Let's do what we can to keep it. 🙏
Also:
I still haven't decided if I'll post the newsletters this week to CoSo, but if I don't, it will simply be out of respect for the *community* aspect of this space. I don't believe in just popping on to self-promote.
I know we've had a really awful week, with many folks battening down the hatches. I think I've been muted a few times, blocked once, myself?
The world outside this space is heavy with stressors, but--
We'll get through how that pain is manifesting here.
One day at a time. 💙
Okay. Patrons finally have an update, and a return to normal workflow after a couple of rough "brain" weeks there.
I've also sent off my pitch materials to one of my beta readers; I'm pretty solid on them, but another pair of eyes is always a gift.
Tomorrow, I'll post BookTube, and then I'll be off social media to steady my nerves around the difficult meeting with my agent this week. It sucks to start over, but the industry and world really suck, too.
Mass consumer credit greased wheels of mass production. Credit generated consumer demand; which encouraged industrial investment; which led to economies of scale, lower costs, and more industrial work; finally encouraging further consumer demand
https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-america-become-the-nation-of-credit-cards
😂 I've said this before, because the trial scene in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is excellent for describing the whims of the crowd, but hot dog: Dostoevsky had social media *down pat* long before our current tech.
I first read NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND as a teen, when the self-loathing protag best sings out to self-loathing youth, but I've always loved this chapter, and its description of how even educated humans will sometimes make a public spectacle of pain just to regain some agency over suffering.
I've always loved this quote, because of how seamlessly it transitions from the innocuous to the dangerous.
It starts with "instrument". It ends with "weapon". But it can be difficult to trace the shift from one to the other in the text.
I think I'll be writing on Murrow's speech next week. 1958, and yet it feels like yesterday.
We don't change as much as we think we do.
But we have to live through our moment like everything *can* change. Maybe, just maybe, this time it will.
Sometimes when I'm out doing the crucigrama with my vendor friend J, I'm left minding the stand while he's "watering the trees", which is a lot of fun because *no one* takes me for a tourist while I'm in the chair. I make tinto or cafe con leche, dole out ciggies and sweets, and only if I make a syntactic slip does anyone squint and go "Heyyyy". Otherwise, I sling street slang and confites with the best of them.
It's such a funny reminder that context cues are huge in looking like you "belong".
This piece for paid subscribers took a lot more time than I expected, in part because I think I was trying to argue myself out of a conclusion that’s hardly upbeat.
But today, for better and for worse, we look at the strange notion of “culture”, as it relates to our advocacy around saving ourselves from external threats, including climate change disaster.
What is this “us”? And what if our notion of “culture” is self-destructive by nature and design? What then?
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/building-on-culture-the-extinction
Didn't quite finish newsletter revisions before class (I quarrel with myself in the editing phase, and today came to new places with the thinking), but I'll of course have the piece up later tonight.
I'm also thinking I'll take a wee reprieve from social media after Sunday (I have a BookTube I want to share). Next week I have a rough meeting with the agent, and I should probably focus on making sure I'm ready to leap into next steps right away.
More later. Be well, all.
And tread gently, eh?
"I recently just powered through a bunch of applications for some roles I had open. As a hiring manager, I want to mention some simple things that can set you apart in your search. All of these are based on patterns I saw; way more than one candidate was doing these things."
https://seankilleen.com/2024/01/tips-to-help-yourself-stand-out-during-a-tech-job-search/
~
It takes countless hours, and so much work, to develop an accurate understanding of another person, their experience, and their perspective.
Add different capacities for emotion regulation and different sources of information, and you get an extremely steep slope to climb to achieve constructive engagement.
We have incredible resources here to help us communicate
But even with them, our fallible humanity makes it difficult.
Go gently. Patience helps.
🙏 💜
Understanding different subject-positions isn't easy work, and many people will suspect you of both-sides-ism for doing it.
But seeking to understand others protects you from two fallacies: straw man and incredulity.
Straw men are fun punching bags that tell you nothing useful about what you're resisting.
Incredulity lets you say "I can't imagine how anyone would naturally hold another POV"--& fill in the blank with conspiratorial conjecture.
Both leave us tilting at windmills.
Ha. They cut off internet at 8 on the dot.
I didn't have the full essay revised in time, so I've sent along a prelude to readers instead. Paid subscribers will get another as my home internet allows.
This piece reflects on the strangeness of thinking that what we do online matters.
It does to an extent, but this is not "the world", & what we're doing here can sometimes distract us from that fact.
This piece recommends two excellent audio reflections on "culture", too.
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/a-prelude-to-building-on-culture
Another walking thought...
As much I try to stay informed of other info silos, even if that means reading views that routinely have me shaking my head, it can be easy to forget why I do it:
1) to remember the humanity of those who disagree, and avoid making caricatures of them;
2) to temper my own opinions by routinely checking in with other points of view;
And most of all
3) to remember that the world is bigger than all of us, but we all have to live together in it.
Any other use is folly.
Writer (SFWA), translator, humanist, general odd duck • 🇨🇦n in 🇨🇴 • avoids pronouns, they/them if key