Mom said it was my turn in the box!
#catsofbluesky

Anyone else finding it difficult to focus on their corporate KPIs while wondering if our idiot president is going to nuke Iran and kill millions of people tonight setting off a new international permission structure for using nuclear weapons? Anyone? Just me?

No Clean Hands What Project Hail Mary, World War II, and the Persian Gulf tell us about living with what we've done

Hot take that isn't actually a hot take:

Nobody won World War II. They survived it.

Winning implies net positive gain. Surviving demands reckoning.

New essay on why that distinction matters more than ever right now.

anthonyscurtis.substack.com/p/no-clean-h...

There are a finite number of ways to live and be successful. There are an infinite number of ways to fuck up. Remember that odds are you should be a mess. If you’re not, you’re doing good.

Don’t forget this applies to everyone who annoys you too.

Happy 12th birthday to my kitty Mischief! Amazing that after 12 years he’s still a kitten! #catsofbluesky #KittyBirthday

You know what energy sources can’t be blockaded in the Strait of Hormuz? Solar and wind. Just saying.

A just system doesn’t rely on the kindness of individuals to patch its gaps. It closes the gaps. We can do better.

We must do better.

No matter white been, or the harm you’ve done, tomorrow is not yet written. Doing something bad does not determine that you will forever do bad. The project of you is never finished. You can always be better tomorrow.

Tried to cut the existential dread with Chappell Roan. Still don’t want to build a power point deck.

Gotta say, struggling to be motivated for work on a Monday, listening to a podcast about nihilism on the drive to the office was a less than ideal decision.

If I win the lottery I’m gonna hire a documentarian to follow this chaos goblin around like the videographer Beyoncé uses. #catsofbluesky #chaosgoblin

This is not yet who I am. But this is who I am striving to be.

I want no suffering to be required, but since mine already happened, I want whatever insight came from it to reduce suffering for others.

Even if no one ever knows it came from me.

#InternalMonologue #SelfRefinement #MeaningMaking

The massive amount of money we spend on war incentivizes the waging of war. What would American look like if we flipped war spending to education and healthcare and education and healthcare to war?

(13/13) Conservatives need to decide; do they want to keep rich people rich, or do they want the “traditional values” they love to talk about? You can’t do both, no matter how much they pretend we can. Facts don’t care about feelings.
#Truth #Economics

(12/13) How many people stopped going to church because of their demanding jobs, stopped participating because they couldn’t tithe, didn’t have the personal capacity to volunteer? I know I went through that in my deconversion.
#Religion #WorkLifeBalance

(11/13) We need robust consumer and worker productions. All the things conservatives have fought against. Even religiosity would benefit from this. To be dedicated to a faith you need time and opportunity to participate in the faith.
#WorkersRights #Faith

(10/13) We need to tax those who have benefited so much from the effort of the American worker for 50 years, and use those funds to guarantee the things that make “traditional” family life viable. Childcare. Healthcare. Housing. Education.
#TaxTheRich #Equity

(9/13) If we want “trad wives” and lots of kids, we need the economic conditions that make that possible. We need subsidized healthcare, education, and childcare. And this needs to be by choice, not force.
#Policy #Family

(8/13) Why don’t people have kids today at the rate they used to? Its not because women have equal legal standing in society, its because it is economically not viable to do for many people.
#Birthrate #Society

(7/13) Buying a home is increasingly out of reach, and no matter how well you are doing renting has inbuilt housing insecurity. How much will rent be next year? Who knows? More. It will be more. And your boss can’t afford to give you a raise due to shareholders.
#Housing #Labor

(6/13) This also affects the birthrates. What couple is going to look at having to live on less than their worth and take on the growing expense of children? Healthcare costs outstrip inflation, as does childcare and education. Not to mention housing.
#Healthcare #Childcare

(5/13) Workers produce more and make less. Costs have not stagnated though. If American workers today had incomes in line with their increased productivity median household income would be above $200K, instead of hovering under $80K.
#WageGap #CostOfLiving

(4/13) It is not viable today to live prosperously as a single earner household. For 50 years worker rights have been eroded, as well as the American worker’s incomes. Productivity and incomes used to be correlated; today productivity outstrips worker compensation by a rate of 4 to 1.
#Labor

(3/13) Trying to block access to abortion and birth control does not produce more children. Though it does make existing as a woman more difficult. This too is a goal to push women back into traditional roles, but that won’t happen and will only make life for women worse.
#WomensRights

(2/13) The problem is the economic landscape created by conservative policies have made this a luxury and inaccessible for most Americans. The solutions they come up do not work and only cause more problems.
#Politics #Economy

(1/13) The loss of “traditional values” bemoaned by conservatives has more to do with economics than anything in the culture war. A rant. Conservatives long for the days of the “traditional nuclear family” with a stay-at-home wife, children, and single earner husband.
#TraditionalValues #Economics

Maybe the way forward is as simple as:

Reject redemption
Embrace repair

A Moment to Reflect on Minneapolis Rejecting moral purity even driven by righteous anger

It’s easy to write off supporters of this cruelty as monsters. It feels good. But if we confuse "hate-shaped" outcomes with "hate-driven" motives, we miss the mechanism. We can’t stop the river of change, but we have to stop building levees and start building mills. #Minneapolis #ICE #HumanRights

Tempering the Terrible Owning the Monster Within

There's a bottle of opioids in my drawer. I caught myself thinking someone would pay for them.

That thought came from somewhere specific: watching my father do exactly that when I was twelve.

Wrote about the gap between having the impulse and acting on it.

#ethics #honesty

Radical Kindness: Empathy as Rebellion | Anthony Curtis | Substack Practical philosophy for everyday ethical decisions, without the academic jargon. Anthony Curtis develops moral frameworks through lived experience of grief, trauma, and the search for meaning not classroom theory. Click to read Radical Kindness: Empathy as Rebellion, by Anthony Curtis, a Substack publication. Launched 6 months ago.

The stories of pain and grief are often where we find our strongest moral compass. I share my most vulnerable struggles to understand how suffering creates necessary empathy. Read my memoiristic philosophy. #VulnerableWriting #GriefSupport