OH! ONE MORE!

Twelve Hangry Men

Time for a lil' walk before my evening working block. 👌🏻

Quick! Change the title of a movie to make it softer. Examples:

The Good, the Bad, and the "Could Use a Little Foundation"

Apocalypse Soon-ish

Mad Max: Cranky Road

Fibber Fibber

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bath Bomb

🙃 Now you go!

Okay.

Finally letting go of this one.

This week's deep dive is on India's latest election. It has a free-to-read reflection on small-c conservative human behaviour, and an essay for paid subscribers on the wounds in India's civil society that persist even in the wake of Modi's recent loss of a dangerous monopoly on power.

The work of alleviating the socioeconomic stressors that make nationalist extremism so easy, especially amid rising climate pressures, must go on.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/unshattering-the-tea-cup-in-modis

Four people held hostage are hostages no more.

Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, all from Nova.

I sorely hope they'll be allowed to recover without a media circus. They aren't responsible for all that was done in their name to return them.

So many families will need time to heal after this horror of a war: theirs among them.

Too many have died already. There is no "winning" a damned thing here. Just the fragile hope of it ending, so all can go home.

#Economics

Just caught some tough job figures while sourcing something in my post.

Big hugs to my Canadian friends. I have folks back home who've been struggling longterm to find work, but it's so hard in our fairly socially isolated culture not to carry the stress of un- and underemployment as personal failure.

Here in Colombia, most folks know that you can work from dawn to dusk without getting ahead - without it being a moral mark against you. Dura la vuelta, etc.
https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-unemployment-still-climbing-as-population-outpaces-jobs-3x/

Okay. Time to finish that draft.

I really want to get one other task finished before bed, too, but... we'll see how the eyes hold out!

Off to teach, but #WritersOfCoSo might enjoy this read, on how "story" sometimes clashes with life.

"When I read most work that’s out now—let alone most movies—what I see, basically, is fear. A fear of boring an audience. A fear of alienating an audience. And so there’s an obsession with a clever style. There’s an obsession above all with economy—with making sure that there is nothing extraneous in a work of art, nothing that detracts from the optimized story structure."
https://open.substack.com/pub/samkahn/p/against-stories

Midday beat to let nihilism have its moment.

There was an era when people had midlife crises, but the age of hitting traditional markers (coming of age, job, marriage, house, kids), then running out steam mid-race is kind of outmoded now.

What I see instead isn't individual decline; it's a larger lost belief in the myths that bind us as a society.

Rough stuff!

But where the social contract has been undone, it can be remade. Has to be.

So we let the nihilism move through us, and begin again.

Super packed day. Newsletter half-finished after some admin tasks for another role, and now on to editing work before two evening classes. But I did step outside briefly, so do enjoy some flutterbies (no sound because the highway is just a constant awful roar).

🦋 #Nature #Colombia

(Apropos of nothing, in my next life I want a ranch, and the ability to pull off a beard and hard-bitten, suffer-no-fools stoic gaze under a wide-brimmed hat. I'll take care of the rest!)

I'm only getting through Outer Range a half episode at a time during breaks, but it is so patient and Josh Brolin's lines are deliciously intense. There's one table prayer early on that's just pitch-perfect in its descent into fury--and then there's the menace and control in the delivery of a line like:

"There are no Fritos in that hole, Karl."

Which few could growl to perfection like Josh Brolin. Don't know where the series is going, but I'm enjoying his gruff masterclass in the role! #CoSoTV

Busy one here today!

I'm going offline for the rest of it, but #Zine crew--don't forget to work on your submissions!

We're looking for happy little scribbles - fictive, poetic, how-to, visual, comic, and more - that lean into the possibility of a kinder present and future for this rotten ol' world.

Shall we aim for June 21 as a cut-off? (Sometimes we need a clear deadline to get that work done, and in!)

Be well & do good crimes!

@ACG2 😃!

Happy birthday to you! 🎉

I have a family member with a birthday today, and they've always found it strange to share space with such a powerful date in history. (I mean, another friend's birthday is September 11, so we're all doing the best we can with what we're given, eh?)

May you be feted most splendidly while our cultures also mark such a grim and important day. 🤗 💛 🕊️

Morning, CoSo!

This week's "Rewind" post is a little different--and a day late, because I wanted to get the tone just right. Here, we're reflecting on what weird coverage of South Africa's latest election tells us about how ill-prepared we are to talk about what we want in a democracy. We're so stressed out from defending against authoritarians, we don't seem as ready as we should be, to celebrate pluralist politics whenever and wherever they're on the rise.

#Politics
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/do-we-know-what-kind-of-democracy

I don't know if this was done intentionally by the designers, but the creator of this Duolingo reminder succeeds every day in getting me to finish a lesson early, just so I don't have to see this two-faced/no-ass version of Duo, the app's mascot, for at least a few more hours.

WELL PLAYED, DESIGNER.
WELL AND CREEPILY PLAYED.

Some of the news briefs & regionally curated mailouts I read every morning make me cry-laugh.

With many regional news services plagued by difficult events, you can always tell when the editor is *really* trying to even things out with at least one lighter read.

But then the page scan looks a bit like this...

Suffering suffering mass suffering imminent suffering political corruption suffering suffering HEY COOL SCIENCE HISTORY ITEM suffering suffering suffering

It just doesn't work, y'know? 🙃

This slice of today's episode of Vibe Check is on #Pride, and offers some thoughtful reflections on how to move mindfully through a month that means many things to many people, and in which many people are as much "tired" as they are "gay".

The segment runs from 29:48 to 44:45.

#LGBTQ Stay safe and kind out there. 💜

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trust-the-aunties/id1637476174

🤔

#NoContextPolls