11.22 | the sudden end to this chapter in my life

“Most thoughts and ideas expressed by humans barely survive the present moment. History is strewn with references to those that vanished”
– Sophie Hardach

✉️ letter #44

I've had about two weeks now for the news of the very unexpected demise of my job to really soak into my consciousness and, while I still think the whole situation really sucks, I've been pleasantly surprised by how much mental space it's freed up.

Since I've had the same conversation about a dozen times about what happened and how I feel, I took some of that extra mental space to make a video. A very minor amount of tea is spilt (transcript here):

Anyway, having spent over a decade anxiously conscious of savings and scrambling for work visas, I'm not taking for granted the fact that I have a good emergency fund and I don't need one to stay in this country of mine. So I've promised myself to not even think about job hunting until after the new year.

Now that I have all this extra time and energy, I'm going to experiment with the format of these personal projects of mine, see if there's some way to make it a habit I can take with me into a life where paid work also exists. I believe that means I'll be constantly tweaking the format of this letter until it makes sense.

You few who still read it despite its sporadicalness, please let me know if there's any part you absolutely want me to keep?

🎼 the soundtrack | song - artist

A few months ago, I initiated a little group bonding thing with my team for us to share what songs we loved and wanted other people to love. I hope that despite the fact that we're all scattered to the winds now, some of us will still throw a song in this bucket every now and then. If not though, this is a time capsule of the variety of tastes running through our crew, and maybe you'll find something you haven't heard of and will newly love too:

Link in case you can't see the embed above.

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

Having only heard about the racism immediately evident in the recent-ish horrifying mass shootings at New Zealand mosques, a Texas Walmart, and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, I didn't know that there had been concerns about ecological degradation woven into each of the shooter’s manifestos.

Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand wrote that he would "kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment" through murdering Muslims. Patrick Crusius imparted that "the American lifestyle is destroying the environment," thus "the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources" - well, specifically Mexican people using resources in Texas. Payton Gendron self-identified as an "eco-fascist" Nazi, and then somehow linked black people to the "continued destruction of the natural environment" caused by immigration.

I don't think I need to take time pointing out the huge HUGE flaws in those reasonings. But Gaby Del Valle argues in The Drift Mag that we also can't immediately disentangle their genocidal ambitions from environmentalism, and we do ourselves a great disservice if we don't understand the history of how these two seemingly opposite sides of the political spectrum have been linked in the past.

I highly recommend their thorough deep dive into the "white replacement" fears that have run through American environmentalism since the beginning - from Teddy Roosevelt's worries about "race suicide" as he kicked natives out of 230 million acres of now "wild-only" public land to the anti-immigration stance of Sierra Club leaders. It's a real doozy.

And even though it is almost always right-wing ideologies that end up committing the most deadly domestic terrorist acts, "time and again, penalties enacted in the aftermath of white supremacist attacks rebound on the left." So where does that leave us who want to "put our bodies on the line to protect the planet" now?

Read it here at [The Drift Mag] and also check out this other news:

The third round of talks over a global plastics treaty meant to address their "full life cycle" has ended in frustration yet again... as so-called “low-ambition” countries hindered progress by litigating the definition of basic terms like “plastics” and “life cycle.” [Grist]
Pumped storage hydro, in which water is pumped uphill to reservoirs that release it to generate electricity, could be the key to the clean energy transition. Only problem is where to get that water. [Inside Climate News]
The use of environmentally damaging gases in air conditioners and refrigerators could become redundant if a new kind of heat pump lives up to its promise. [Nature]

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

"The ordinary lower courts are where countless people encounter the law every day. It is precisely because these courts are so ubiquitous — and the processes of dispossession they administer so pervasive — that they have become central places of contestation and organizing against debt, carceral violence, and housing insecurity in recent years. These efforts aim to turn inside out the isolation that legal processes impose on the poor and working class by building solidarity."

Amna A. Akbar asks us to look beyond the shenanigans of the Supreme Court to examine where the real fight for progressive democratic values in the justice system has been all along: in our local districts. [n+1 magazine]

As Anti-LGBTQ activists increasingly target public reading spaces, librarians have become defenders of the frontline of queer activism. [New Republic]
The U.S. relies on its police to function as mental health workers, to pretty deadly effect. Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson is trying something new to reverse this phenomenon. [Jacobin]
In fact, a lot of good work to make life better is being done all over the world by the mayors of big urban areas. Here's a compilation of some of the best projects this last year. [Bloomberg Citylab]
NASA is pausing all Mars missions, effective immediately. Here's why. [LiveScience]

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is a meditative fantasy about what happens after the typical Hero's Journey ends to people who outlive the Hero by decades. I love the quiet pace and the discussions on life, death, memory and what existence - and allegedly earth-shattering events - might feel like to you if you were almost immortal. You can watch it on Crunchyroll.

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