04.03 | let's talk about tiktok

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes
– Mark Twain (maybe)

✉️ letter #60

Hey! I'm currently out sick so I'm... surprised I even managed to finish editing this video, which is a reaction to the news about two weeks ago that the House passed a bill that would ban TikTok if it's not divested to a non-Chinese company in "six months."

The whole idea is ludicrous, expensive and obviously not going to do anything for the alleged evils it's supposed to be combating... and it very, very much reminded me of something else in our recent history that was ludicrous, expensive, and obviously did nothing for any of the allege evils it was supposed to be combating: the war on drugs. So...

🎼 the soundtrack | Float - Janelle Monae (feat Seun Kuti & Egypt 80)

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

A couple newsletters back I was touting the idea that we needed to do a better job imagining good futures for ourselves, ones that are pathways for overcoming adversity rather than self-flagellating stories of us living with our worst case scenarios. Grist now has a competition going on for writers doing just that, and it's kinda cool:

Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that envision the next decades to centuries of equitable climate progress, imagining futures of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope. We are looking for stories that are rooted in creative climate solutions and community-centered resilience, showing what can happen as solutions take root, and stories that offer gripping plots with rich characters and settings, making that future come alive.

In 2,500 to 5,000 words, show us the world you dream of building.

People should sign up! Incidentally, they also just interviewed climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert about her own book which seeks to move away from #doom and more towards the narratives we could follow and actions we can still take towards resilience.

• I... don't know if this is a good thing, but apparently if everything was normal, the Earth would be spinning slightly faster than it was a few years ago. Only, the melting ice around Greenland and Antartica is counteracting it. So thanks to the extra watery girth around the Earth's middle, we get to keep an extra second in our year at least until 2029. [Yale e360]
• The Biden administration officially revived some rules that would reinstate protections for imperiled species across the United States, reversing the Trump administration's rollback of Endangered Species Act safeguards. Now we get to wait 8 months to see if they'll be reversed again. Yippee. [Inside Climate News]

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

One of the most based things I encountered while working advertising in China was around the selling of baby formula. Not only were the Big FMCG companies not allowed to say their milk powders were "better than breast milk," they also had to devote a week every year specifically to promote breastfeeding throughout all their ad campaigns. It was the cost of doing any business at all in China's billion-dollar infant formula market.

And so we worked on campaigns that were careful to not make any major health claims, and campaigns that actively promoted not using our product, and the Big FMCG company still made money, but the amount of mothers breastfeeding went up from the early-2000s when there were no protections in place.

I'm thinking about that now as I read this investigative piece from ProPublica about how the U.S. government "repeatedly used its muscle to advance the interests of large baby formula companies while thwarting the efforts of Thailand and other developing countries to safeguard children’s health."

Like, that's some real evil empire actioning. That's deliberately ignoring your own health advisors just so some corporation can make a couple more bucks off of the health of other people's children. And when I take a look at this map, and I think about how surprised people in the United States are that people don't automatically buy in to the US GOOD CHINA BAD rhetoric they spew here... I just can't help but sigh.

[ProPublica]

• The Supreme Court is going to be hearing a case later this month by plaintiffs in Oregon who are contesting a law that criminalizes camping. At stake: basic rights of houseless people. [Jacobin]
• The cerebellum has long been thought to just control and coordinate movement - but as we keep on finding out more and more, the physical body and the emotional body are intricately merged together. [Quanta Magazine]

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

This weekend, I'm going eclipse chasing, and I'm pretty excited about it! I've never eclipse-chased before, but this year I just happened to find out this whole thing was going on enough time in advance, and I just happened to have a friend living in the line of the eclipse, and I just happened to actually have a drivers license to get to said friend.

So, stay tuned! Hopefully I do okay driving the six hours to upstate New York to see this whole thing out! And in the meantime, here's some eclipse-related links:

• Where to get free solar eclipse glasses if you're in the city. Hint: libraries. [Time Out NYC]
• Also for all of you staying in the city, get some fun eclipse-themed fast food goodies... like Oreo-donuts from Krispy Kreme. [Forbes]
• You can "possibly" take good pictures of the eclipse with your cellphone. NPR has some deets on how. [NPR]

Happy eclipse!

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