A quote by Barry Lopez from Arctic Dreams: “How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”

I carry this quote by the late Barry Lopez with me everywhere I go. It serves as an evergreen reminder and encouragement for me to stay focused on what matters in the midst of darkness, contradiction, paradox, and loneliness.

It's worth it to get a companion reader. Harvey’s *A Companion to Marx’s Capital* is good, as is Heinrich’s *An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital*

I would guess that there are some folks in the world of futures & foresight that have generated futures scenarios based on the current regime – though I can’t find them. Michael Marien generated scenarios in 2017 for the Journal of Futures Studies that were pretty compelling for that timeframe.

I've had a couple of R&B pieces for about 20 years, and they've held up really well.

It's darkly funny that everything is falling apart and no one in charge seems to be doing anything for reasons, and people are out there posting "Here's why I'm excited about AI!" without pointing to a single positive outcome, just "I fucked around with my computer in these ways".

I have so much trouble when self described "design leaders" are posting "this is why extraction and destruction are good actually".

Decision-based evidence-making at its best.

Notice that the exploration of the matrix here is Bateson’s multiple description, abduction, ecology of mind, etc. To my mind, they are pointing to similar things using different language.

Von Förster’s exploration of the etymology of pattern and matrix is fine, but to suggest that Bateson’s pattern which connects was a paternalistic idea is disingenuous. (Bateson never said “all things”, by the way.)

Please stop this train. I want to get off.

Aside: Is that wax for encaustic?

If an AI system cannot show who authorized a decision, it should not be making it. Wrote about judgment routing, signing authority, and why invisible discretion is dangerous:
makingpublicwork.com/who-holds-th...

Some to consider: Ghost, Buttondown, Beehiiv, Mighty Networks, Mailchimp, Wordpress, etc.

I'd suggest researching that on your own. I'm not an expert in this, and there are many variables including technical proficiency, cost, audience size, self-hosted vs. hosted by a service, payment integration, etc. that can influence one's decision about which platform to choose.

Substack Has a Nazi Problem The newsletter platform’s lax content moderation creates an opening for white nationalists eager to get their message out.

It has been well known for a couple of years now that Substack platforms Nazis, hate speech, and other extremist bad actors, and that has continued. Many prominent authors and thought leaders have left Substack as a result. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Please get off of Substack in favor of a different newsletter platform.

People working in tech deserve both awakening to their part in the state of the world, and also compassion for not already knowing it or knowing how to extricate themselves yet

I'm sorry for all that you’ve had to carry that shouldn’t have been yours to carry, and especially for the impact it’s had on you and yours. Andrea Gibson: “When nothing softens the grief, may grief soften me.” Thanks for sharing the tenderness.

That's helpful. Thanks.

What is considered a lifestyle intervention? And how do these kinds of interventions (or this framing of interventions) overlap with what some consider to be social determinants or social needs of health interventions?

E.g. good for the business, but bad for a customer. Good for a customer, but bad for the business. A good engineering solution, but a bad experience. Good experience, but poor infrastructure. Good for both customer and business, but bad for a community, an industry, the planet. Etc.

“Good” seems fraught. There are likely products, services, & experiences that meet a variety of heuristics for “good,” but are still perceived to be “not good,” or despite heuristically being deemed “good” are actually quite bad/harmful outside the limited context of the heuristic frame.

Always be selling. Always justify your individual value. Always be clear that you're the expert. Prove how much you've contributed yourself, distinct from others. Always show "upward" movement and progression. Never have gaps in your "career." And most importantly: always, always be positive. 🫠

Sadly, when we hold social skills as values for relating to others, we have the natural tendency to impose those values onto others. This is a violation of the sovereignty of another being. (2/2)

So much of what I've been seeing and hearing in the “systems change,” systemic design, and change-making worlds in recent years amounts to a conflation of *skills* as *values* that everyone should hold. (1/2)

So many people claim to be changemakers and refuse to give up the structural power afforded them by the system they say they want to change.

It's why that bit of jargon makes me so itchy.

Hi to Seattle. I used to live down the block from there at the corner of Queen Anne Ave and Highland.

If you evaluate a technology’s ability to do a job “better than a human”, you have to include all the benefits that the human version of the practice created, in terms of social bonds, regenerative capacity and cultural meaning.

There's a good article in the realm of this idea that you may find interesting:

Kyle Whyte (2021): Against Crisis Epistemology papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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