Spent the day looking for clothes to wear to a wedding. I am too wide for the suits at the second hand shops. But I ended up with two nice pieces that fit and will work just fine.
Shopping for clothes may never not be weird for me. Oh well.
Here are some drawing resources, thoughts about third spaces on the web and an essay about new forms of Luddism.
A question that is always worth asking about stories of social change is where they begin and end. Does the story of the French Revolution end with Napoleon, the independence of Haiti, or the fall of Vichy? Did the civil rights movement begin with Rosa Parks on a bus, or with the strikes of sleeping-car porters, or with the songs and whispers among slaves? Have we heard the last, really, of movements like the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street? When we draw and redraw those lines, movement histories impart very different messages.
Recently a friend asked if I was writing a newsletter again. I am sorely tempted, but I can not do what I did back then. Time does not permit.
I do like rediscovering bands. It brings back memories. Way back in 2014 or even earlier I interviewed the singer of Wolves Like Us a band from Norway. It was a cool interview. Seasoned people making music for seasoned listeners. Songs about child induced sleeplessness and disconnection from family members.
Listened to them while doing deadlifts today. Worked just fine.
A band that stayed with me and on my music devices. Looking for their music now I can only find their most recent record: Brittle Bones. And that one is new to me! What a find!
Friday is another bandcamp friday and this is earmarked.
I moved more than a month ago. Spent a lot of time losing books, sorting and putting away. Bringing them to the little free libraries around the place. Now I went to St. Georges in Berlin and brought home two new books. One because it is beautiful and one because it is one I've always wanted to read.
And the greatest sin of all might be a tech industry that’s exploiting your loneliness by offering you friends that don’t exist. If a tech company can pull the plug on your relationship with a software update, it’s not a relationship. And if you are promising broken, lonely people that you can deliver software solace that doesn’t require them to leave their house, you’ve jettisoned your own humanity.
If you are lonely inside, go outside. People are interesting. And most of them are outside.
and
“Wanna do dinner tomorrow?” is better than scheduling something far off in the future, which gives you both too much time to flake on.
“I’m going to see Backrooms tomorrow. Wanna come?” is better than a vague plan about seeing a movie sometime in the future.
“Been missing you. Wanna catch up?” is a wonderful thing to text a friend.
Or maybe rather than talking about screen free classrooms (or weekends or whatever) – a phrase that emphasizes the absence of devices but is easily twisted into some sort of lack – we talk about all the things that we are doing instead of staring and scrolling and clicking. This does mean, of course – and this is truly paramount – that we plan for those things, that we reclaim public space for kids, that we fund activities and resources for them and with them. And not because we think they’re broken without their phones, but because we believe that they are whole people, worthy people regardless.
I did pitch the head of my school on banning AI in school and she was not interested. Gonna keep at it.
Diese KI, die für mich Romane schreiben will, ist wie eine KI, die für mich tanzt, wie eine KI, die für mich isst, die für mich lacht, die für mich Sex hat, die für mich draußen Fotos macht, die sich für mich mit Freund:innen trifft, die sich für mich verliebt. Das, was mir Freude macht, nimmt sie mir ab. Wenn künstliche Intelligenzen unsere Bücher schreiben, wenn sie unsere Kunst kreieren und unsere Lieder singen: Was machen wir dann? Führen wir dann nur noch diese Zivilisationsaktivitäten aus, die unseren Alltag bestimmen? Leeren wir dann nur noch den Briefkasten, gehen zur Arbeit (und weisen da schlimmstenfalls auch eine KI an), putzen, waschen Wäsche und kaufen Sachen?
This sounds worse than it is. Anika Pyle used to sing and write in Chumped a rad punk band from a while ago. It is good to check in with artists whom one has fallen out of touch with once in a while. So:
Beautiful stuff!
And then there is a band from Berlin that has released on EP to date called Sterben as in “Dying”. The EP is called “Bleibende Schäden” which translates to “permanent damage”. Heavy music and well worth taking a listen if you like intricate tunes and shouts.
Very clean and great for a first EP!
Trae Stephens & Gwyneth Paltrow on the GOOP Podcast. Stephens is co-founder of a military tech company that stole a fine name from Tolkien.
Things got particularly odd when the two dug into religion. Stephens, a devout Christian, brought up the Pope’s Palm Sunday homily, in which Leo XIV declared that “Jesus does not listen to the prayers of those that wage war.”
and then
Stephens liked that. Warmongering can be good, he seemed to interpret, if only done with a pure heart, and without against-ness. “And so if you’re approaching it with a heart of peace, I think it’s very different on a mystical level than approaching it with a heart at war.”
In school, in my work, I have come to the conclusion that being a child is hard work. Being a teacher is also hard work. And the same goes for being a parent and many other things. But all of those have a simple baseline of not being an asshole. If I can stay above that line I am not doing so bad.
Actively building and designing weapons and then profiting from war makes you an asshole. NO matter what you think you hold in your heart. Because all I can see in there is evil and piles of shit.