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Interesting! I've never used substack as a writer but do subscribe to a handful, even a paid one or two.

I've always found the concept of paid newsletter seductive, and this is an interesting look at the growing pains we can expect from the platform as they grapple with the question...are they really a platform, or are they a media company?

and with that question...what does that mean for content rules etc etc. Fassssscinating, if you're into media trends at least

wonder if they've made more of this switch by now or if this was all PR. My grandfather used to take my sister & I to Perdue chicken houses near his farm to pick out chicks to pamper while we visited. Pretty sure they went straight back when we left...

This feels like a good outcome from pressure by big supplier for more ethics in how we raise meat. It's not exactly free range & biologically appropriate, but it sure is a step in the right direction.

uf. great read. best mental decision i made was nuking my personal instagram, no longer wanted to send selfies to strangers for social validation. what a world

endlessly fascinating. I've got Q fans popping up in my own world (as I'm sure many of us do) and dig how AHP explores in this interview where some of that may be coming from. Second maybe only to the "wellness, instagram Q" angle, this convo is a very compelling take.

For a white Evangelical, the idea of Black Lives Matter might make sense. But the need for collective shifts of power structures doesn’t make sense — at least in their world. Of course they would jump at something like QAnon, which, instead of suggesting that the “bad guy” is actually the system, suggests that the bad guy is an actual set of bad guys, individual and malevolent bad guys, doing specific actions that you can then oppose.

wow I'm late to the party, missed this! Quite the star-studded cast signing on. Now I need the goss on the controversy around it, someone please oblige me lol

This book is my newest obsession, and the review of it here is ok. I didn't know of Elif's work until I read 10 Minutes & 38 Seconds in This Strange World recently and WOW, she is an author worth reading. Both her fiction, and now this tiny little non-fiction gem.

whoa. i just talked to a buddy who had it race through her family too, lost her g-ma and another relative. wretched.

so stoked more and more people are talking about the attention economy and how the "free lunches" we get are messed up.

And honestly, if human behavior is any indication...most people hate ads and will pay to ditch them if they can afford it. We use ad blockers, subscribe to spotify instead of using the radio, get netflix or Tivo or whatever people use today.

Long term I'm curious to see if we ever transcend this arms race, or if we just keep it up into whatever future media forms develop.

hmm. This one hits

We are overdue for a real reckoning with what it means to be degraded by our own leadership

WOW. Ok this is fantastic.

It's not a funny article, but I found it pretty amusing. My best friend had a run-in with this exact phenomenon a few months back. She's a Zero Waste advocate and her insta community is big in the consciousness, design, and high vibes space. All of a sudden they were all going on about adrenochrome, pedophiles etc...

We were v confused. She started asking questions of one gal (and sending hilarious screenshots) and this EXACT thing happened:

"These videos rarely go into specifics; they tend to reference a documentary (that they’ll share with you over DM) or encourage the viewer to really prepare their self-care regimen before they go poking around into these dark truths and finally get “woke” in an entirely different sense."

Nailed the playbook. (and btw the video is mind-numbingly long and 10x worse than gaia tv for crazy making)

But really, this normalcy fetish is concerning. To be so obsessed with normalcy that you can believe some of this. Conspiracy thinking is fascinating, but the amount of it happening lately kind of ruins it for being an interesting cultural anecdote and just makes it feel dangerous to democracy. uf.

This is a delight

You can save a lot of money on conference tickets and business cards if you use a couple well-chosen essays as a way to get warm intros from friends-of-friends who you’d want to collaborate with.

I seem to be on a kick of mildly melancholy articles with a dash of hope that we can sort out climate change. This one got bundled with a 2nd one about a wild gardener and the combo works, although the first letter on caring for mother earth hit me right in the feels. That one earned the 10

This was FANTASTIC. I love this idea of the long now vs the short, and framing how we approach the decisions we make using that characterization.

If we want to contribute to some sort of tenable future, we have to reach a frame of mind where it comes to seem unacceptable - gauche, uncivilised - to act in disregard of our descendants.

I know a lot of friends losing it over RGB's death, and I definitely feel anxiety over it. AHP nails it, per usual

The part on smoke was so relatable, so real. And dug how the author tied it into other pandemics and this weird experience as a whole. DIG.

I had managed to stay calm. Sad and sorry, but calm. But then came the smoke.

Looks like I'm super late to this article! But still, I'm so seduced by the ones who throw it all away. Who's to say who is crazier, the one bathing in an aluminum tub without power, or the ones spending hours metaphorically chained to their device and digital communication.

This is INCREDIBLE.

WOW. I learned a lot of the backstory behind plastic becoming such a major player (lobbyists per usual, ugh). It's really reminiscent of Big Tobacco back in the day...shady behind doors convos and putting a bandaid over things people know are bad just to get a short term solution. whoa nelly, what a good article.

They weren't thinking what lesson should we learn for the next 20 years. No. Solve today's problem.

Isn't that the motto for a current age

This one is interesting, i'm kind of exhausted just by the premise. This method takes SO much self-awareness and effort.

Having ditched the smartphone for now I'm delighted by the friction it adds to not be able to google or scroll on my phone. It's a really good trigger for me to stop and question why I want to distract myself. And maybe thats the kicker...some people are aware enough to self-reflect every time they get itchy, Me? nope. I need a bit more friction to remind me to wake tf up, otherwise i just fall into a trap and get stuck feeling guilty after.

What I do like is between this, and the article on The Twitter Machine, there's a way for all sorts of people to come to terms with how their life intertwines with technology

A friend visited me right before a fire hit and remarked how surreal and spooky it was...the yellow skies, burning eyes, and generally feeling like you have a low grade hangover (even when you haven't drank in years).

Perhaps we're all just too worn out by all the other disasters (inland hurricane in the midwest, for example) to wrap our brains around it anymore?

Best thing I've read in a while. Endlessly entertaining and funny, but also got the wheels spinning. Love that combo.

Rather than wondering ponderously if this is “cancel culture” or whatever, we might ask ourselves: Why the fuck were all these people tweeting? What were they thinking? What were they hoping to accomplish? What was the cost-benefit analysis that led them to think continued participation in social media was a good idea?

yesssss

I'm not choosing ignorance. I'm choosing to not watch wrestling.

Love that.

Science is always a game in cognitive dissonance, a play for how well you can hold two competing theories as entirely possible.

Two theories get explored here, maybe it's humans overgrazing, maybe it's earth wobbling. Regardless, it's fascinating and I can't get over the idea that the Sahara desert used to be, basically, the sahara jungle. what would Masanobu Fukuoka (of sowing seeds in the desert) think of this!

Breathing smoke every morning makes me very hopeful that CA can start to listen to native tribes who successfully managed fire here for centuries. A lot of cautious optimism for these partnerships.

Also, there's a mini vid from Happen Films about using goats for fire suppression that pairs well with this article. Hopefully brings it more to the forefront that the way we've been doing fire management (aka not at all) sucks.

Permission to cheat on your life with your art, granted. This is such a gem

Quite interesting. The end left such a good question that I wish more people would explore, that tension between the person someone is IRL and the one they perform online.

Also, this line was such a gem:

Of course, none of this changes the feelings and experiences of users, the actual people who use the app and offer up their data for manipulation.

why can't ethical clothing companies, or co's in general, keep themselves out of hot water? first american apparel, and now this. great missions, but mucking it up with racism and perversion.

The root cause, he argues, is the way retailers treat suppliers.

This is pretty glaring nowadays, esp as C19 trashes the garment industry and retailers refuse shipments of goods they ordered and refuse to pay suppliers. It's the garment workers that suffer.

I worry many people don't realize the true cost of their clothing. (There's a doc called The True Cost worth watching if you're curious, it's intense) I sew and knowing how long it takes to make one dress makes a $6 dress seem extra absurd.

If you get a screaming deal on apparel these days it's because someone down the supply chain got massively underpaid. I used to adore fashion, knowing about all this stuff ruined it for me but I am v glad I know!

this was infinitely entertaining

Buy less, choose sell.

inspiring work from Patagonia & others. don't love the style of Patagonia's clothes but sure do enjoy the ethos of the company and the pains they go to to create a circular lifecycle for their garments.

uf. the most vulnerable people in fashion's broken supply chain take the biggest hit.

As brands scrambled to cut costs to match declining sales, they’ve moved swiftly to cancel or postpone orders, even refusing to pay for goods that have already been produced.

Nothing H&M or other fast fashion brands do can even remotely be called "sustainable". The business model itself is too toxic.

H&M releases [two] ‘conscious collections’ a year and calls themselves sustainable... how about you make all your clothes sustainable (and properly disclose how they’re even sustainable). How about you pay your workers liveable wages and give them good working conditions.

Good suggestions for how to actually approach sustainability, but still leaves me so dismayed at the problematic impact fashion has. Ruined the entire industry for me, ugh.

More accurate would be "why slavery in fashion is making headlines YET AGAIN"

But the scrutiny resulted in no meaningful change, and today the mistreatment of garment workers remains a systemic issue for the fashion industry from Dhaka to Los Angeles. Until there is progress, fashion’s conscience cannot be clear.

fascinating

Love this, big MMM fan. The fashion industry has been laser focused on spreading a consumption and luxury fanaticism to China in the past few years as the other middle classes stopped supporting their growth. This is a delightful wrench thrown at it, altho with risks they outline.

“Worries can’t change anything,” says Wang. “I’m like a seed of wild grass that can germinate anywhere. If I get into trouble, the worst that can happen is just going back to work again.”

dig this musing on the side hustle from a guy who made two of his into successful, self-sustaining co's....eventually. reminds me that with some projects, why the rush?

So glad to stumble upon this article. It's a well balanced look at cancel & call-out culture that I needed. The author does a killer job of exploring the nuance of the issue, the why and the results.

Defo got my wheels spinning and led me to think more deeply on the pros and cons. big YES for me.

Solid arguments, I've used the same to encourage people to write on their own website. Medium used to be the darling but that is defo starting to wane, esp given the way they blanket their brand over the writers. Own your content!