I heard this quote from E.L Doctorow for the first time this week:
“You can only see as far as your headlights shine, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
Contrarianism
I think “being a contrarian” is one of those things that’s okay if you’re doing it with people who have consented to it, and Kinda Bad Form if they haven’t.
Like boxing.
More on villages!
“You can’t expect the village to show up for you if you are unwilling to be a villager.”
This also gets in a little bit to the concept of RSVPing, and also Ask/Guess culture. It is okay to RSVP “no” to an event! But it’s better to say Yes or No than to just be uncertain; that uncertainty, when multiplied by the number of guests, makes hosting very difficult.
(This is part of why I started doing nuclear hosting of events!)
Words of wisdom
Many years ago, a college frenemy said the wisest thing I have ever heard. I’ve shared it with a lot of people and I’m sharing it with you all now today. Hold it in your hearts.
This, too, shall pass.
Like a motherfucking kidney stone.
How to write an email
I’m not sure if I can embed Bluesky yet, but please see this post by my friend B:
https://bsky.app/profile/beebrookshire.bsky.social/post/3lf6cbu4uis2n
It’s not just the kids that don’t know how to write emails; it’s us, too.
Practice this. Write coherently so you can get your points across. Salutations and valedictions set boundaries around the writing, much as serifs do for a font, and make it easier to read within the guardrails.
Elf
I realized the other day that Elf is a backwards manic pixie dream girl movie and they cast Zoey Deschanel perfectly because of it
Dystopia Creep, the Torment Nexus, and Repo Man
Today I saw this skeet and thought I would share it.
Petition to call this Dystopia Creep. Torment Nexus is when media illiterate techbros make something from fiction and completely miss the point that the cool thing is bad. Dystopia Creep should be when late stage capitalism gets more evil than writers thought possible.
— Deny Defend Decrow (@corbinbelasco.bsky.social) 2024-12-22T02:59:38.890Z
I don’t believe I can embed Bluesky posts yet, so here’s the text:
Petition to call this Dystopia Creep. Torment Nexus is when media illiterate techbros make something from fiction and completely miss the point that the cool thing is bad. Dystopia Creep should be when late stage capitalism gets more evil than writers thought possible.
Here is the origin of the term Torment Nexus.
Exceptions
This Instagram video about “exceptions” to an abortion ban is surprisingly effective at getting its point across.
It is less effective to ban-with-exceptions than it is to just leave the decision up to the pregnant person and their doctor.
Differently Abled
“Differently Abled is the disability version of Separate But Equal.” That’s a brilliant observation from a comment on this very helpful video about why using terms like “differently abled” is itself feeding into the ableist narrative that we are only as valuable as our ability to produce economic value. Give it a watch.
Quote of the day
Found this on a Tumblr meme posted to Instagram:
“Among cooks, I am the best engineer; and among engineers, I am the best cook.”
I’ll remember this the next time I feel self-conscious about being an amphibian employee.
Emilybook 