1.10 | finding (and looking) fun in a dystopian timeline

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.
– Thomas Aquinas

✉️ letter #50

One of the last things I had to do before I ended my trip back to China was to go to my hair stylist for the last decade and have her do something wild. The original inspiration pic I gave her reminded me of graffiti - bars of yellow and green and red tinged with a dark gray that gave it a sort of gritty vibe. She opted for something more bright and fun.

The whole process took 8 hours in total, which included about an hour of sitting around with my color in a protein repairing hair mask, and when I first saw the gradient she created, I thought hot damn, that's cyberpunk!

And I love it! Not just because it looks amazing (which of course it does, my Mandy is an artist), but because it fits pretty well with how I feel about entering 2024. Every day, we get more news showing us going in the direction of the worst techno-dystopian hellscapes authors have imagined for us - rampant personal data harvesting, careless applications of artificial intelligence, eye-swimming inequality, faked news blasted all over legitimate media, platitudes plastered over increasingly horrifying destruction, that disgusting slush they call Soylent...

Someone out there has already made the joke about the bros out there who read sci-fi horror and think "that sounds awesome-I-want-it" and it's proven so actually factual that I'm not sure it's technically a joke anymore?

But there is something that I absolutely find awesome-I-want-it about that genre, and it's the ~ A E S T H E T I C ~.

You always know who to root for in a cyberpunk story because amidst that sea of gray-suited (Patagonia-vested?) blandobots there's a bright splash of off-kilter craziness. Not everyone in neon paint and DIY gear is noble - most of the time they aren't even particularly nice - but they are existing despite everything pitted against them, and they are making their existence exciting.

There's a recent social media trend where everyone's listing their INs & OUTs for 2024. It irked me a bit, mostly because I don't want to encourage the idea of "OUTs."

Like I get wanting to stop doing something you don't find ideal, but I'm increasingly of the notion that if you were spending time on it in the first place, it was serving some need of yours. Being a gossip, ordering takeout, playing dumb matchy matchy iphone games, buying fast fashion, a continuing dependence on fossil fuels... they all speak to a gap in your life you've got to fill and, let's be realistic, you're not going to stop doing those things until you figure out what that gap is. Seek solutions, but don't sweat the band-aid, basically.

But INs are fun. The INs are what you're choosing to make your existence exciting.
Here's what's IN this year:

Random short love notes to friends. No expectation of a conversation, just a "hi, you're great and I'm glad you've been in my life."
Home-made bomb ass vegetarian food - tofu and eggplant and lentil and all-those-roots dishes that look and taste so gorgeous that for most meals of the week, you can go "Meat? Who's she?"
Awesome off-the-beaten-path places in America that I'd never previously been to because I would have needed to drive myself to them.
Really cute underwear, even if the only person who sees it is me.
Survivalist skills training, because why not and who knows.
Rallies, protests, community service, civil disobedience and other more tangible, physical presentations of supporting the causes I believe in. There is no end of causes to support, it seems.
More art, more music, more theater, more fashion, more conversations where I'm just listening and in awe of what other people know.
A lower resting heart rate.

Yeah, that last one... I want my existence to be exciting but I'd also kind of like it to be a little healthier, especially since I'm kind of between health insurances at the moment. You know, since I'm still living in that technodystopian hellscape.

Read more:

🎼 the soundtrack | american troglodyte - david byrne & fat boy slim

Sadly, I didn't manage to catch the Here Lies Love musical in time during its run here on Broadway. I'm not well-versed enough in Filipino politics to really weigh in on the controversy of how you should showcase Imelda Marcos' less-than-stellar legacy, but I did give this David Byrne-written soundtrack a whirl and really fell for this song.

Having, again, not seen the musical, I don't know what the context for this song is, and why a song talking so much about what Americans do is in a program about the Phillippines in the 1970s-80s... I just love how it feels so very Talking Heads updated for the social media era, which seems to be David Byrne's whole thing these days.

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

The "godfather of climate science," James Hansen, has now warned that the internationally agreed threshold to preven the Earth from spiraling into a new "superheated era" will be "passed for all practical purposes" this year, in 2024. Yippee. [The Guardian]
There are potential pathways to significantly increase waste collection and plastic recycling rates globally, a new study says. In fact there's a whole framework now to develop national action plans for advancing waste management and you can read through it yourself while I ponder whether I want to start doing infographics on this stuff like I'm an influencer or something. [Envirotec]
Okay, the extreme weather from the hottest year on record sucked, but these pictures of those disasters look pretty cool. You know, in a "oh how horrifying but I suppose there's even beauty in data about destruction" kind of way. [Yale e360]

A false-color image of flooding left by torrential rain in the Tuscany region of Italy in November. The region saw record-high rainfall, with some parts recording eight inches of rain in a 24-hour period, more than Tuscany typically receives all November. NASA

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

I've just come back from a trip in which I chose to ride a high-speed rail that's only gotten speedier since I last used it three years ago, so railways and the absolute failure of America to provide safe infrastucture for them is really top of mind for me. Jacobin dives deep into the idea of how this could change, especially if we all seriously consider a recent manifesto by the Railroad Workers United (RWU) union that makes the case for returning rail to public ownership.

Did you know that accidents on American rail lines have increased by 30% in the last decade? That when the U.S. first started building railroads, it gave what amounted to 10% of our landmass for free to transcontinental railroad corporations? That Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is one part of duopoly on railroads in the West? Me neither.

Read for more factoids and proposed solutions to this dire mess of a rail system.

Scientists have proposed a new technique to help researchers identify oceans on exoplanets — a key step to finding life outside our planet. [LiveScience]
I basically make resolutions all throughout the year, I just speak them aloud in January since everyone else is talking about them anyway. But heck, if you feel pressure from the start of the calendar, just remember that calendars start all over the place and you've still got time, baby. [Austin Kleon]

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

I challenge you to find a work of art from this past year that more embodies the idea of finding happiness and personal fulfillment in a world going to shit than Zom 100, which has now become my favorite zombie show that has ever existed.

I'm usually not a fan of the genre because it tends to present such a dire view of humanity. Shows like The Walking Dead are so very boring to me because usually if someone isn't being cruel, they're being dumb. And the whole concept of it's proginator in modern culture, Dawn of the Dead(?), where the zombies are stand in for -oooooh- our mindless consumerism... I mean, there's really not much to say in response to that except:

What I love about Zom 100 is that, across all its episodes, it presents a more diverse view of the world. Sure, there are assholes and cheats and psychopaths out there, but there are also folks willing to do you a kindness, who can be touched by your kindness. Set in a recent zombie apocalypse, it follows two reconnected friends who decide that since they're not beholden to their horrible jobs anymore, they ought to cross as much as they can off their respective bucket lists, like getting an RV home, confessing your feelings to your crush, becoming a stand-up comedian (tough crowd though).

And they meet people along the way that sometimes do them wrong, sometimes do them a solid, but overall seem to realize that surviving requires looking out for more than just yourself, and also more than just shelter and safety.

Also, the ~ A E S T H E T I C ~. Zombie gore is bright neon colors. The soundtrack is rocking but doesn't take itself seriously. Basically, the entire series' vibe is this:

You can watch it on Crunchyroll or Netflix.

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