Finished reading: James by Percival Everett 📚
Microposts
Currently reading: 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories by Lorrie Moore 📚
Watch House
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Last week I joined an old friend on a road trip through Wisconsin. We saw a folk show, stayed at a vintage motel, and camped in the crook of Green Bay.
In our early years, we were both shit-kicking dirtbags, rebels, people who thumbed our noses at convention and were told (and fully believed) we wouldn’t amount to much. Today, we’re regular middle-aged ladies secure in our work, home and ambition, figuring out what the rest of our lives will look like. In that way, this trip was a fun reset: a reminder of where I’ve been and where I’m going.
I’m grateful to be surrounded by so many incredible women.
⚡ Acceleration
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
This has a bad headline, but the gist is that AI is already beginning to be used to power racketeering and ransom business models against vulnerable human enterprises. The net effect is a general erosion of the trustworthiness of written communication, especially online, as the same tools we use to perform our work and extend our social lives are increasingly used to scam us.
I read this again after a twenty year break. It holds up, but wowzers, my takeaways were different in 2024. Finished reading: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant 📚
“Again and again, I sought out high-challenge, high-stress jobs. I thrived when I felt bad.”
In relationship to collectors, purchases of physical media are on the rise, with vinyl outselling everything, and cassette tapes, CDs and DVDs making a comeback. I’m a longtime downloader and streamer, but have been buying vinyl lately myself. Indicative of lost trust in Big Tech?
61% of Americans are self-proclaimed collectors. 83% of collectors think their collection will be worth something someday. Young people identify as collectors more than ever, with Gen Z at 76% and millennials at 72%.
Starting to see some best practices emerging around AI capabilities in the higher ed space. Here’s a table of AI vs human capabilities in the Bloom’s hierarchy of cognitive tasks from Oregon State.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading so much, maybe it’s because I’m in a reflective stage of life, but I have the writing bug again. It’s been a long, long time since I felt the urge to write.
A clever look at feminist theory through celebrity case studies. My favorite chapters were on humor, leadership and nudity.
Finished reading: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen 📚
All the women I know are reading and gardening at a feral clip.
From the Garbage Day newsletter, my fav newsletter on internet trends and marketing, this blog post on looking for federated blog alternatives to Wordpress which links out to this handy dashboard measuring total users on federated platforms.
Why are divorce memoirs stuck in the 1960s? A fair question, I say. www.nytimes.com/2024/05/2…
The relevance of these authors, imo, is about women’s buying power in the ex-evangelical and ex-Mormon movement. But I think it’s pretty difficult to think publicly about ideas like liberation or, say, bodily autonomy when you aren’t regularly entertaining trans politics or questioning carceral politics.
My posts from micro.blog are pushing to Mastodon but not Bluesky. Why?
Two new media publishers are looking to build out their presence in the Fediverse: digiday.com/media/why…
I very much enjoyed this book. Despite the heavy subjects, ultimately culminating in a reflection on the ongoing conflict in Palestine that can’t be missed, it was a compelling read that I’ve returned to many times as a reference. The mirror as metaphor for the inexplicable stories in the news.
Finished reading: Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein 📚
Currently watching how AI will affect SEO and search: www.forbes.com/sites/for…
It’s spring, so my lizard brain is locked on the excitement of garden-planning. The backyard is a blank slate, virtually untouched for ten years until we moved in and removed a wild grapevine so overgrown it looked like a hedge. I have my work cut out for me.
Just finished rereading “Station Eleven” for my beloved book club. It’s so well-written that I find myself annoyed and jealous by it, it’s that good. It makes me consider the legacy of art-making - grassroots, human-made art - and its role in crafting meaning and beauty out of the grind of living.
I got to eat at my first Michelin star restaurant this weekend, Kasama in Chicago, which you may recognize from The Bear. We braved the line during the day to try their daytime menu, including a hearty breakfast and a selection of lovely, delicate pastries. Beautiful food, worth a wait.
Light and clever enough for an easy read, while serious enough to hold my attention. Love the demonstrations of mutual care on the margins of polite society.
Finished reading: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 📚
A couple of years ago I was featured on the LGM podcast, as a speaker on the oral history of the blogosphere. Posting it here for posterity: www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/07/o…
Also in arts and crafts: On the revival of blacksmithing in Kentucky.
Embarking on a little side quest, which shifts my normal reading list from whatever it is now to a list of water metaphors.
The new provost is an interesting person and an ultra-charismatic speaker, which makes for a p good podcast. madison.citycast.fm/podcasts/…
I had a great birthday yesterday.
- The kiddo and I have been going to the gym together. We could do most of these workouts at home, but she likes the novelty of going to work out in public, people watching, and noodling with electronics while you’re on the elliptical. I enjoy her company there and it’s an incentive for me to keep going. Plus it really does elevate my mood (annoying).
- I leveled up from walking to jogging yesterday. Time well spent.
- I finished my Halloween 2021 quilt, which used the spooky darlings prints from Ruby Star Society. It’s not my best work, but she’s cute anyway.
- I felt loved.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
I don’t need a WYSIWYG editor on micro.blog, but some buttons for linking and styling on new posts would be a no-brainer addition to this app.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
This is the kind of book that connects the dots on some big ideas, primarily how traditional gender roles intersect with capitalism to produce the economy, and in turn, how these systems, tensions and behaviors then reproduce inequality. It’s also, at the root, about how ideas form reality. By reframing some of the feminist classics - and the Marxist ones, too - the writers recast some of our old stories about how the world works, and set up a framework for future scholarship across a number of disciplines.
This is an intensely academic and dialectical book by some of the best thinkers who work at the intersection of Marxism and feminism, and worthwhile for anyone thinking about how work, labor, gender, sex, and culture press on the individual and the collective alike.
If this feels too heavy but you like the subject, check out the editor’s prior book, “Feminism for the 99%.” It’s similar in form to bell hooks’ classic “Feminism is for Everybody” but with a clear collectivist and activist call to action.
Finished reading: Social Reproduction Theory by Tithi Bhattacharya 📚