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I’ve read a lot of stuff in my life- on this platform and elsewhere. But off the top of my head, I can’t remember such an intense reading experience.

There will be plenty of time to review the data, the response, the politics, etc. But what’s undeniable is that NYC is going through some shit, and it’s happening right now. More than anything else I’ve read or seen, this transported me from where I currently am (Key West, FL) to smack dab in the heart of the Big Apple. Good Lord. God bless.

I can't shake the feeling that this was written (almost a millennium ago!) for me, right now, today. Nothing short of pure magic.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty / and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study / and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

I feel so freaking lucky to have a book of Rumi poetry (translated by Coleman Barks) with me in quarantine.

This is one of the two poems that I have been reading multiple times per day every day.

I can't get over how much of a truth bomb it is to just replace the word "screen" with "rectangle."

I think that this one will stick with me for a while.

From Readup with love 💌

Happy Sunday, everybody. Onward!

So concerned. So confused. There’s silver lining all over the place, but it’s obscured by other bigger, darker clouds with even more silvery silver lining.

Good thing I have unlimited time to just stare at the wall and think. 🙃

Intelligent, thoughtful writing about an intelligent, thoughtful person. I hadn’t even heard of Edouard Louis and I’m very happy he’s on my radar now.

This took me a full hour to read, but it’s an excellent, high-level review of the French literary and political scenes. If (like me) you don’t know Jack about France, this is a great place to start.

Fascinating. I have a million questions, but mostly I’m just stunned by the power of this art form. What a read!

Great short story. A funny, fun, thoughtful throwback to the stress and excitement of college admissions and just being a teenager. Lots of momentum.

I especially enjoyed the references to Point Pleasant, Rt. 35 North, etc. - stuff I recognize from growing up on the Jersey Shore.

This

11. I spent the first precious moments of this wonderful morning laughing my ass of at this absolute masterpiece. Don’t be fooled by the silliness; this is hella deep. (I think?) Regardless, now I need to read everything Greg Jackson has ever written.

There’s a hole in the bucket list! Life, tomorrow, the astonishing insufficiency of memory.

Excellent! Especially this paragraph. Wow:

More and more often over the last few years I find myself sitting in front of my computer, having brought up a blank browser tab, trying to do something between remembering and anticipating. Was there a piece of information that some other piece of information had reminded me I wanted to check on? Or is there some new thing to find, some new chain whose links might lead to something unexpected? I sit there with my fingers hovering over the keyboard, Ouija-like, waiting to be moved by an impulse, or an algorithm. Now entire days seem to vanish into that waiting room. People compare the internet to a drug, but this is worse, or weirder: it’s like spending all day preparing your kit in case the desire for a fix were to hit you. It’s like wanting to kill time and being unable to find it.

This morning, I yanked a book of Rumi poetry off the shelf. That was a good idea. I should do that more often.

This particular poem really knocked me over. I'm still struggling to process that it was written more than 800 (!) years ago.

“I don’t know how to deal with it,” he said. “It does not compute at all.”

If things got really desperate and society collapsed, at least his roommate, Trey, has a couple of pistols, an AR-15 and a 12-gauge shotgun.

?!?

The absence of American leadership in the current crisis is not an aberration, and it is not temporary. This is the new world order, light on the order.

Happy Sunday, folks. This was a beast. Let us know what you think. And make sure to get in the habit of hitting that Readup button! 📈🆙🤾‍♂️

This pulls together so many things I’ve been thinking about recently — the recent AOTD about The Wing; my own fraught relationship with all brands, including Patagonia; and every single thing Jia Tolentino has ever written. Such a worthy read.

The revolution is coming! After it happens, you’ll be embarrassed to be seen in new clothes. We’ll celebrate the people who do the most with the least. We can just vaguely imagine what this future world will look like, which means that it’s inevitable and coming really really soon.

Gear up! (Or, actually, gear down! ✌️)

Chris Crandall, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas, told me that people who are on the periphery of society tend to be freer to innovate and change social norms.

✌️🛸

Read this.

If you don’t have time right now, star it for later, when you have more time, but just make sure you read it.

And budget an extra 15 or 20 minutes afterwards to process - take a walk, breathe, sit, whatever.

Let’s stay free! My god, yes! This is the article I’ve been waiting for!!

The sentence of 2020:

I want to see you, even if I didn’t really think so before.

Such wild truth:

There is no such thing as FOMO when we are all missing out on absolutely everything.

Whoa!

In the end, she wasn’t sure how much she cared whether the oil Bible was real. “It has brought people closer to God, it has brought people healing, it has rekindled people’s faith and curiosity,” she said. “Even if one day it’s proven that all this was a sham.”

Is this our new world in a nutshell? Fake is okay? And real doesn’t matter?

This reminds me of a personal story: A few months ago, in New Mexico, I accidentally found myself in a dark prayer room with a bunch of Hispanic and Latina women, crying and praying to a Jesus painting that seemed to legit glow in the dark. It was profound. I saw a giant cross of light appear before my eyes (exactly as the women said I would!) and I really felt my skepticism going to war with my faith — viscerally, in my heart, gut and brain.

Afterwards, on the curb of the dirt road in front of the gift shop (that’s where the magical Jesus painting is in the magical dark room) I talked with one of the women about my bad breakup, my “sins,” how lost I felt, and then she told me about her abusive husband. She kept saying “he just keeps messing up,” and I kept thinking - !no mames! - Jesus is real and he really brings us together.

Wildly depressed? Or just kinda/sorta unhappy sometimes? This one’s for you!

I really want this to win AOTD. We all need to remember to take breaks from thinking about you-know-what.

New Yorker coverage of Coronavirus is all free, so I'm probably going to gobble it all up.

My first thought on this article: I really wish that the world's biggest thinkers were thinking even bigger.

What a week. Virtual hugs all around!

I wandered lonely as a cloud, as the CDC advised.

Sane and smart.

Bring popcorn. Bring coffee. This one's equal parts funny and fascinating.

I especially loved reading about the kitchen drama. That shit's for real. In my very first corporate job, an internship that started a few months after I was done with college, I made a name for myself by washing dishes like a mad man. It was an easy way to solve a major office "pain point" (*garbage language!)

In every company I've ever worked for there were situations were tensions got real high over kitchen messes. Now that I'm not in that world anymore, it does feel nice to have all of that brain space back. Then again: Whether or not you're in a corporate setting, life keeps bringing the dishes. __

Gelman, right now, is somewhere reading this and just thinking fuck fuck fuck i gotta learn about intersectionality fuck

Huh.

I went on Twitter for a few minutes earlier today and I saw a few hilarious, very short videos that I already can't remember. After that, there was a video that really shook me. It was of a super-angry looking black woman aggressively beating up a clerk at a pharmacy. It lasted almost forty-five seconds and I couldn't look away - the hits to the head and face were so hard and fierce. I think I said Jesus Fuck out loud a few times, and I wasn't quickly able to get back to "work" - whatever that even means right now. The caption said something about how everyone is crazy because of coronavirus. Indeed.

Beyond that, some quarantine-related hashtag was trending, but quarantine was spelled wrong. You think you know how many ways a person can shame another person, and then you look at something like #SpringBreak2020. It really breaks your heart.

“drinking bleach will cure Covid-19”

These examples are wild and stupid. They distract from the bigger point - Twitter is now deciding to partner with the government in editing the story that gets told on that platform.

“The National Guard just announced that no more shipments of food will be arriving for 2 months - run to the grocery store ASAP and buy everything!”

lol, on Readup it's more like: share the direct link to the Nat Guard announcement (that you've read) or thank u, next

This is dystopian. Required reading if you're in the Bay Area. This is the official "Shelter in Place" order, aka ORDER OF THE HEALTH OFFICER No. C19-07

Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both.

OK. So, right off the bat, we know the ground rules. They can take our money and put us in jail. Welcome to 1984.

The intent of this Order is to ensure that the maximum number of people self-isolate in their places of residence to the maximum extent feasible, while enabling essential services to continue, to slow the spread of COVID-19 to the maximum extent possible.

Okay. I get it. But this isn’t part of the contract that I want to have with my government. It infringes on my most basic human right - the right to move about the land, as I please, without explanation or permission.

Nothing in this Order prohibits the gathering of members of a household or living unit.

Wow. The fact that this even needs to be clarified is stunning. Beyond dystopian!

People must use public transit only for purposes of performing Essential Activities or to travel to and from work to operate Essential Businesses or maintain Essential Governmental Functions.

Are we all reading this, people?

Because even people without symptoms can transmit the disease, and because evidence shows the disease is easily spread, gatherings can result in preventable transmission of the virus.

I get it, but still - NO!! Driving in cars can result in preventable accidents. Flying in planes can result in preventable crashes. That doesn't mean we make cars and planes illegal. THIS IS NOT THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT.

this Order helps preserve critical and limited healthcare capacity in the County.

What a caper! First the Bureaucrats drop the cage on us, and then, in the same document, a quick reminder that they can't uphold their end of the bargain: provide basic health services.

canned food, dry goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, pet supply, fresh meats, fish, and poultry, and any other household consumer products, and products necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation, and essential operation of residences.

Meaningless details. This is how people write when they don't want you to really read something. They make it long and boring.

In the United States, freedom has always been more of an ideal than a reality, but now it really seems to be slipping away. The capitalization of "Essential" really puts shivers down my spine. The quintessence of Doublespeak - the invention of a new word. We're bigger than our authoritarian impulses, people. We’re rugged. We're individualists. We’re innovators. We just need to pay attention, or all of this might slip away.

Wow. This deserves the AOTD trophy. 🏆 I want everyone to read this.

This is slow news in all the best ways. Written in 1997, as though it was written for us, right now.

Lol. I needed this today.

The word existed in (at least) two earlier forms—apossoun and opassom—and is from a Virginia Algonquian word the exact form of which is now unknown, but that itself comes from the Algonquian *wa·p-, meaning "white," and *-aʔθemw-, meaning "dog, small animal."

You can, indeed, write opossum and say it like “possum” and be using an officially recognized pronunciation.

Please nobody ever do this.

📨 ~Sunday ReadUpdates~ 📈

Lots of great links in this one:

-Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now

-I have the coronavirus. So far, it isn’t that bad.

-Man Might Have Infected an Entire College Party

-You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus

-Q&A: James Hamblin, MD on Why You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus

&

-Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny

Read this:

If we live long enough, we are unlikely to die without having at least considered what it means to bring a new life into being. Whether or not you have children, whether you want to have a child, or dread it, or both, whether you feel confident in your desire never to procreate or find that you are not able to procreate, at some point before you reach the end you will have navigated the question of whether or not to be a biological parent. If you are reading this sentence, it is almost certain that at some point, perhaps as you are making toast in your pyjamas, or taking a bus to work while looking out at the grey right angles of a city block, or dancing barefoot, or lying awake at night with the pillow too hot against your cheek, the modern fantasy of choice and control will whisper to the age-old fantasy of ‘self’ knocking about your brain that having or not having a child is a decision. And you will make it. Or you won’t. Or you will feel – with rage, or sorrow, or relief – that it has been made for you. But the fantasy of choice quickly begins to dissipate when we acknowledge that the conditions for human flourishing are distributed so unevenly, and that, in an age of ecological catastrophe, we face a range of possible futures in which these conditions no longer reliably exist.

Writing so real it’s visceral, physical. I gasped a few times, held my breath. Had to stop and walk around and think. It’s so so much, in the best possible way.