Not superior, but simply lucky

The Future Is Like Pie #18

Author

Lisa Maria Marquis
September 18, 2020

Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.

―N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

Did you know that a shower curtain is enough fabric to make about 25 protective masks? I found that out this past spring when fabric inventories were low. I found a spare decorative curtain hiding amongst some still-packed-from-my-last-move boxes, which kept me sewing until new fat quarters showed up.

At any rate, WEAR A MASK EVERY TIME YOU GO OUTSIDE, or unsubscribe from this newsletter now, I don't want you around. That about expresses the tenor of my [gestures wildly].

So, these last few apocalyptically feral months: I got a puppy and my husband’s pumpkin patch took over our front yard and I’ve decided to write another book. Here’s what’s been getting me through quarantine:

  • I can’t stop doing digital jigsaw puzzles. This system’s not without bugs, but it’s always adding beautiful new pictures, and, best of all, it’s collaborative. My sister-in-law and I have been chain-puzzling together since late April, and (I just counted) we’ve finished over fifty? That is too many? I can’t. Stop. Help. Someone disable my account

  • I’ve been creating and watching YouTube playlists with a small group of friends, which has been a salvation. Our viewings began as an attempt to recreate childhood Saturday mornings (and, yes, we DO call it Quarantoons), but the playlists have morphed well beyond that. If you want to watch some of my contributions, check out:

    • May 2020: Powerthirst, Homestar, Badgers, 30 Helens Agree, Numberwang, Jeepers Creepers Semi-star, Zoobilee Zoo, Space Olympics, Marcel the Shell

    • June 2020: Dinosaurs! featuring Fred Savage, Simpsons educational videos, Teen Girl Squad, Clone High, cooking shows, Aqua Teen, eggdog

    • Quarantoons The Musical: Idlewild, Anything Goes, Fugue for Tinhorns (and Brotherhorns), several tangos, 90s Disney miscellany, Channing Tatum, Dr. Horrible, The Sexy Getting-Ready Song

  • I’m obsessed with the Garbage Day newsletter, a severely weird dose of internet culture coupled with sharp analysis, both of which I love (and miss, now that I’m avoiding the major social sites). Subscribe only if you want to be able to speak knowledgeably about Gen Z memes.

  • I finished NK Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy and they were literally the three best books I have ever read in my entire life.

  • I started a small Slack group as an outlet for my Star Trek fandom; if you’re the type who enjoys camaraderie alongside loving cultural criticism of science fiction, please reach out.

Recommended reading:

Such obfuscation spills over into the solutions that companies propose. Project Lighthouse, for example, is built to examine the (Black) people who experience racism on Airbnb rather than the (white) people who are responsible for perpetuating it. This again positions race, not racism, as the problem to be overcome. By focusing on race as a category, Airbnb has inscribed the mental tricks of racecraft into its project.

—Amber M. Hamilton, “What’s missing from corporate statements on racial injustice? The real cause of racism,” September 5, MIT Technology Review

“Normal” is off the table, for the moment, as an option. Perhaps it was a fiction we made together, day by day. And perhaps we now really have to figure out what our part in that fiction can be. Our lives have been knocked fully off-kilter, however much we pantomime a normalcy that grew abnormal years ago. Normal, from here on out, is the world we are able to make together.

—Matt Thompson, “Surviving This Pandemic Isn’t Enough,” May 10, The Atlantic

Consumption was the opposite of production in Adam Smith’s “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Smith made this inquiry in 1776, when work was being relocated into factories and lives were newly divided between home and work. We still use the math of that time to subtract what is consumed at home from what is produced at work. In that crude equation, only work that earns money is productive. And as long as there’s no third quantity, like reproduction, the equation works out to zero.

—Eula Biss, “A House Is Not a Home,” August 30, The New Yorker (and this companion critique, also very good)

Excellent work from web workers:

[Tech] needs less of a glorification of wealth. It needs less of a savior complex. It needs less self-glorification overall. It needs less capitalism.

—David Dylan Thomas, September 16, the A Book Apart blog (buy his new book!)

If your project schedules and your general work atmosphere are asking you to perform this kind of self-injury, your team culture is not humane, it is not kind, and it cannot be just. We have to do better.

Cultural norms get magnified when technology gets involved…Every time we ask a question about how content is structured in one part of the world, we necessarily miss how it’s structured in another part. And the internet is currently outpacing our ability to gain the whole picture.

—Senongo Akpem, June 9, interview, The New Modality (buy his new book!)

It turns out “tomato location” is a bit of a self-reinforcing problem: people expect tomatoes to be located where they expect tomatoes to be located. A rogue, first-order logician grocer pursing their idea of categorical purity in store layout stands to lose customers—and therefore profit—if they deviate from our preexisting expectations.

—Eric Bailey, “Consider the Tomato,” September 8

Suggestions for things to do:

  • “Use your white face to deliver bad news to cops. Bad news to them is someone who cares. Be that person.” —Mikki Kendall, “What you can do to stop cops today”

  • “If you’re not going out on the streets to protest, you’re not limited to helping via petitions & donations…any successful protest NEEDS some people to stay home in order to fulfill [other] roles.” —@gendervamp

Resist capitalism, defund the police, register to vote, love fiercely.