is there a specific example you’re thinking of? I’m a historian, Abstractions Often Confuse Me. Which might…. only underline your point… 😬

Totally agree with this great piece—with the caveat that it is timebound: the SV-MAGA alliance bought a two year window of indifference to consumers that is soon closing.

It’s helpful for me to remember that a lot of discourse boils down to I’m really struggling or afraid or angry and don’t politically know what to do to stop it but I won’t just say that.

Quick colored pencil sketch of a boat on a calm ocean

Copied shapes from a Pinterest pin yesterday — added in some colored pencil for fun

“… conservatism on a structural level held these (democratic) norms contingently—contingent on hierarchy being viable within democratic institutional norms and frameworks. When it wasn’t, the norms went with them, quickly and comprehensively.”

I wonder if this is a kind of reverse image of the “you Must Use It or you’ll Get Left Behind” claim. They both seem rooted in deep status anxiety?

Okay I have not read this article because I lack a New Yorker subscription but this is a truly inspirational burn

If "filler words" and "small talk" were useless then people wouldn't use them

wait this is maybe an insult to dreamworks

it’s temu dreamworks

The Physical and Spiritual Art of Capoeira (Published 2018)

www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/a...

Hopefully that works — if not, let me know and I can dm you a pdf or something!

Did you get ahold of one? I have an institutional subscription to NYT and could send it if not

Collage piece made from purple decorative paper, lavender tissue paper, and ink-stained paper towel

Collage piece made from pieces of fountain pen ink drawing

Collage piece made from tan decorative paper and pieces of orange and peach ink drawings

Collage piece made from cardboard, tan decorative papers, and orange and peach ink drawing

Some art pieces from a while back

*screams in history of science*

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

This op-ed is excellent

a tabby cat's fluffy front paws standing on a wooden table, shot close-up

these are important

Hey y’all: if you use Libby and you hate them allowing generative AI content and incorporating it in other ways you can go to your profile, scroll down to “help and support”, and take a survey to tell them that you hate it

Sometimes all you can do is make the world 0.0000000000001% less awful by being a good person and it feels very meaningless but it’s also the only thing that really matters

Good morning. I'd like to invite anyone who is interested to make a small gesture of kindness today. It's up to you to decide what that can be. The key is for you to act on the idea. With so much out of our control, we can choose how to be with each other today and every day.

I repost this on every platform when I see it

The reason so many of yesterday’s free-speech champions transitioned so easily into today’s pro-Trump censors is that their definition of free speech never included the right of others to talk back. They were not defending a universal right to freedom of speech; they were defending a right to monologue. They could say what they want, and you could shut up and like it. The cynicism of the effort can be known by its fruits: an administration that issues executive orders “protecting” free speech while engaging in the most sweeping campaign of state censorship since the Red Scare.

The “free speech” and “cancel culture” panics have led to overt state censorship because that was always their purpose. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

I use duckduckgo — they’re great on privacy and I can opt out of the AI features easily enough

I really like the framing of why “can llms do x” is the wrong question and the inversion of Goodhart’s law here

I think a lot about the Jude Doyle’s line, “freedom and safety are just two names for the same desire.”

It definitely gets easier, but there’s a bit of a learning curve. Try to be patient with yourself if you can!

That makes sense! And thank you for linking to the blog post, I hadn’t seen it before. It’s definitely reassuring to hear about when experienced writers encounter similar challenges — it combats the feeling of “I don’t know what I’m doing and thus can’t do this”

It definitely does! Over time you develop the ability to knit without devoting too much direct attention to it, but that’s really challenging at the beginning. Good luck!

If I may ask — what do you focus on in the lesson? I struggle with this a lot myself and I’m always interested in ways to address the problem!