For Thorough Thursday, we're reflecting on an oft-told story about a major brawl in baseball's history.

But here, I'm more interested in how the way we tell this story invites us to lean into either the worst of our nature, or ideas about how we can improve.

What kind of group species do we want to be, and what would it take to get us there?

#History #Baseball #Sportsball #HumanBehaviour #Humanism
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/and-now-another-religion-baseball

Our very own @stephen_a_allen is a finalist in Rattle's annual #Poem competition!

There will be a Reader's Choice vote among subscribers in February, and I hope everyone who follows Rattle considers participating in that review of all the finalists, to pick the piece they love best for a second financial prize.

(But even without the money, what a lovely top honour! I can't wait to read all these pieces. Congratulations, Stephen!)

#CoSoWriters #WritingCommunity #Poetry
https://www.rattle.com/prize/winners/w2024/

Home internet keeps switching off and on, so today's baseball-history* piece for the newsletter will be delayed.

Turning to an offline project, and going to work in the mall, so I don't lose my mind for now. (Well, more of it.)

---

*You know me well if that topic raised an eyebrow. It's not *really* about baseball. It's about human behaviour, as ever.

#Soon #AmEditing

Taxes finished. 👍🏻

Just trying to figure out the new "secure" (read: labyrinthine) payment system.

Always tricky in a second language, & when double-checking exchange-rate calculations for income.

2023 was also the year in which I fundraised for César, whose kids still died essentially from poverty (one from complications from pneumonia; one after a seizure from prolonged malnutrition) despite all our best efforts.

Definitely some melancholy there.

Too much senseless death in the world.

Ugh. Gotta shake of that bad meeting before sitting down for taxes and editing.

BBL. Talking to trees.

I don't always come out of professional meetings with the voice in my head suddenly sounding like Foghorn Leghorn, with all the "what-for" I want to give to whoever's around, but today I did. 🙃

"Boy, I say, boy~!"

@ACG2 Random afternoon howdy and a hug to you! 🤗🍂🍵

All right. Meeting time, then taxes, then editing.

I'm seeing a lot of hardship on the feed today, and there's probably more coming down the pike.

It'd be super-swell if being mad at ourselves for not being able to fix / prevent everything actually *did* something.

But since it doesn't, try to have grace for yourselves and each other instead.

We're all doing the best that we can with what we've got goin' on upstairs.

Hang in there, keep swimming, use the force, etc. 💙 See you 'round, pals.

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.