Wax that won’t melt

The Future Is Like Pie #22

Lisa Maria Marquis
March 29, 2021

We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.

—from “Catch a Body” by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Greetings, friends. A long year, a long winter, here we are at the end of March, still holding breath, still breathing. I’ll keep this short, once again, on account of few of us having a surplus of patience these days.

I’ve been busy with work (both IA and editorial), house projects (replacing blinds and sewing Roman shades), and finishing up the first (terrible) draft of my new book. Much like home improvement projects or changing seasons, books have a way of continuing to manifest (though words are somewhat more recalcitrant than March winds).

Wishing you a safe, enriching, and creative spring. Good reads follow.

If you've read (*obsessed over) the Locked Tomb novels, you've probably already seen this transcript from a Vox interview with author Tamsyn Muir, but, damn, is it lovely to hear her speak for herself about angry girls, homoerotic character relationships, and her peculiar mix of cultural tones:

I only get to make the highfalutin’ Rainer Maria Rilke references so long as I’m also making references to Homestar Runner.

I really dug this direct and clarified take on systems thinking—reminiscent of the "Have hay, need hay" content approach—in "Baking Your Layercake" from Paul Ford:

Yes, as an occasional systems architect with taxonomist tendencies, I know the diagram above is kind of infuriating. It doesn’t actually tell you what’s inside the systems. It doesn’t mention CRM. Where is HIPAA? Different things are much more work than other things. No arrows connect anything. What is read-only and what is read-write? What cloud will it be hosted on? You can’t just say “third-party integrations” and leave it at that. I am here to tell you that you can, and should.

Content moderation is troubled/troubling topic, and the tech industry is in dire need of better work there. Nandini Jammi points to Patreon's approach as a model worth additional exploration and adoption:

In his video explainer, Jack describes a concept called Manifest Observable Behavior, a clear-eyed, rational method for evaluating user violations…This is truly one of the most brilliant ways I’ve come across to handle thorny content moderation issues and user violations — while remaining as neutral as possible…[it] doesn’t twist itself into a pretzel to appear neutral or amoral. Rather, it’s a framework that empowers […] teams to evenly enforce the rules and values you already have on the books. In this sense, it’s better than neutral.

This Captain Awkward response to a struggling artist was, as always, sharp and compassionate, and probably something a lot of people in very different circumstances need to hear:

This is enough for now. You, still in the world, surviving, imperfectly, in your boring suburb, with your half-baked art, and your sweet husband, and the friends you miss, are enough.

Hope you're all finding enough.

If you haven’t yet, consider donating to Red Canary Song, a transnational collective of Asian and migrant sex workers. I hope everyone reading this is doing whatever they can to stop white terrorism, enact gun control, and celebrate and uplift communities of color, especially the AAPI community right now.