OMM (On My Mind) -- August 2023 -- #2
findings & research
::: Recommended Podcasts Episodes :::
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Hidden Brain: How to break out of a rut
Great episode with lots to offer writers about how to think and re-think how you go about your writing routine.
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The Gray Area – The new crisis of masculinity
Super interesting episode. So many thoughts on this. It’s doesn’t stay entirely on the binary throughout. A lot of time is spent, with good reason, on how the Right (politically speaking) will provide a roadmap to masculinity and the Left needs to work on this (as opposed to being vague and saying, essentially, “just be a good person” since some men, especially young men, are actively seeking figures who are representative figures of manhood.
The trouble with Jordan Peterson is discussed as is the toxicity of people like Andrew Tate and others like him who are poisoning the minds of young men.
Rudyard Kipling’s Poem “If—” (noted as problematic) is mentioned in the discussion.
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Planet Money is running a summer services of “Summer School” episodes that they pitch as kind of like a getting a fakie MBA. I’ve listened to a few episodes and they’re super interesting.
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::: Music :::
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After a long wait, ††† (Crosses) has a new album coming out this fall (October 13).
Apparently, Robert Smith (The Cure) and El-P (Run The Jewels) have features. (Pitchfork)
If you haven’t heard the first album… it’s wild… and definitely not for everyone.
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::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::
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“Forever Chemicals” (PFAS)…
To ban or to limit… that is one of the many questions
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This reminds me that new laws definitely get passed fairly frequently while we (citizens) are not paying close attention or necessarily being made aware of changes. Good or bad, new laws are new laws… they should probably be “shouted from the rooftops” so to speak.
Write me if (in your humble opinion… iyho) a strange or disconcerting or wonderful or horrific law was recently passed in your neck of the woods.
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There’s a lot of “interesting” pull quotes in this piece. (The Guardian)
Here’s one:
“Trump is likely to seize on the charges and try to spin them to his advantage. “They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” he said in Pennsylvania last weekend. “Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it actually a great badge of honor … Because I’m being indicted for you.””
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“Personas” that are guaranteed not to be uncanny valley or anything like that… may be rolled out by Meta soon…
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The New York Times called attention to the fact that entrance fees for museums $30+ is, well, problematic. There are systems in place that allow people with low incomes, students, veterans, older folks to enter art spaces with low(er) fees… but this doesn’t feel like a good answer. Instead, why are we not subsidizing art institutions so that they are widely accessible to the general public?
Utilitarians like Mill and Kant (in some writings at least) didn’t get it all figured out… but they had some good ideas about accessibility. The Arts are for everyone to enjoy and we shouldn’t make access to them prohibitive. If you want to go to the museum, it should be free or a token fee (or donation). Much like vices, we should charge for options that go in the other direction. Sure, free day at the art museum, orchestra, ballet, opera, or theatrical performance… if you want to go to a bareknuckle boxing match that’s going to cost you.
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Talk of boundaries and therapy speak and Russia
“Russian famously has no word for “privacy,” the concept at the core of most boundaries.” (The Atlantic)
“One therapist speculated to me that perhaps people are talking about boundaries more because Donald Trump has made politics so polarized and sensitive. Why learn to argue better with your conservative uncle when you can simply tell him, “I don’t have the capacity for this conversation right now”? If hell is other people, boundaries seem like a rope ladder back to purgatory.”
“Boundaries are often thought of as rules for other people, but in reality, they’re rules for ourselves. They’re our own definition of what we’re comfortable with, and our own choice about what we’ll do if someone ignores the boundary.”
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The tired trope of the gay best friend. Gonna go out on a limb and surmise that gay men lead complete lives that don’t require being a sounding board for a cis white woman.
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Does “the body keep score”, yes, definitely. Should we take therapy ideas outside therapy sessions? Almost always, no. (NY Mag)
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The Sealey Challenge would be great… in January (imho). Great way to start out the year fresh. Even if you don’t succeed, hopefully you begin the year reading a whole bunch of poetry (collections and chapbooks). Feeds into my concept of “precrastination”— getting tasks out of the way early. Not that you should want to get your poetry reading “out of the way”; that being said, this high intensity start to the new year might boost your confidence is being a “good reader” that can carry through the rest of the year. (Lit Hub)
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Breaking the Habit of People-Pleasing (Psychology Today)
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Another reminder that the U.S. gets way too much of our resources from China.
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Taylor Swift Just Gave Tour Employees Bonuses Totaling an Estimated $55 Million. It's a Lesson in Leadership (Inc.)
I really loved this article. I was thinking recently that it must be quite a feat / undertaking (and yes, a joy) to follow Taylor Swift around the world on tour. Clearly, for all those involved in a TS tour, this becomes their entire life for a relatively long period of time. They deserve to be well-compensated. It’s really nice to hear when that actually happens.
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There are soooo many articles recently about the physical and mental health issues that result from exposure to extreme heat. This is not going away. We need to start getting this through our heads and fast. (NPR)
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How Much Time Does the Average American Spend on Their Phone in 2023?
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Exercise Could Help Alleviate Chronic Pain Symptoms, Study Suggests
There’s a fairly obvious catch-22 issue at hand here. Still, if you can begin with any level of exercise, the hope would be to build on that.
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Blame the dealer, not the addict.
The plastic straw ban… mostly misses the point.
Also, note the very understandable pushback from the disability community. Unsurprisingly, a group that is too often overlooked.
We need to go beyond straws. We need to go beyond plastic bags.
There’s a way out of this, a way to break the cycle of abuse (to stick with the addiction metaphor).
Yes to personal responsibility. With that in mind, as usual, the main culprit here are large corporations. Corporate greed, capitalism run amok, the ouroboros culture we’ve created around as “good consumers”.
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How mobile teams on Skid Row use oxygen to prevent overdoses and save lives
This is a great example of stepping outside the box.
Clearly, we are so focused on the end that we failed to consider a preventative measure.
In this case, before a person overdoses, providing oxygen, keeping them breathing, prevents one of the factors that can lead to an overdose.
Naloxone (Narcan) is a last resort for many reasons. Yes, it’s a life-saver but there are costs. For one thing, you have to catch someone at the right moment. And there isn’t really a “right moment”. Their brain has been deprived of oxygen for too long no matter what. A person is going to suffer a degree of brain damage. Further, administering naloxone wipes the body of opioids…at least, in theory. It does, and yet, if a dose didn’t finish working it’s way through the bloodstream, through the body, then a person can still overdose again and will need additional doses of naloxone. If the body goes from 100% full of opiates to being completely depleted of opiates, a very common response is for a person with an addiction to immediately begin drug-seeking. Why? Because they are in a state of rapid withdrawal. A person is going to feel sick and not in a sensible state of mind in these moments. They are in great danger. There’s a high possibility that a person who was recently brought back from the edge of death with naloxone will go out and take an extra large dose, larger than usual, and put themselves at risk of overdosing again and, the worst case scenario, dying as a result.
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Moving:
Watch Taylor Swift's moment with Kobe Bryant's daughter
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Malaria is still killing massive numbers of people every year.
Chance discovery helps fight against malaria.
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Oh, the irony.
Zoom is making its workers return to the office
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39 Colors You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
To be clear, only a few of these make any sense to use in poems. Unless coquelicot just so happens to be in your everyday vocabulary.
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Seth Godin on Truth, Hope, and Marketing.
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The 10 Most Popular Wedding Songs (Mental Floss)
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How Old Memories Help Us Learn New Things, According to Science (and Snails)
"The takeaway: Change in perception can help “link past and future memory storage,” per the study. With this awareness, a subject can be alerted to “learning-rich periods” and take advantage of those times to stimulate focused learning that is ideal for long-term memory formation and robust learning."
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‘Everything you’ve been told is a lie!’ Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline (The Guardian)
Disturbing and unsurprising but understandable. Doctors don’t always listen to women, especially with misunderstood diagnoses or those that considered ambiguous or difficult to fully comprehend. Questions of “is this all in your head”… But no, whatever we call something, placeholder or otherwise, is a stand in for something. CFS, fibro, NOS issues involving GI, inflammation, fatigue, anxiety, depression, mood instability… the list goes on. I’m all too familiar, personally, but as this article discusses, women can be more susceptible and are less heard.
You can imagine how falling down one rabbit hole seeking answers might accidentally lead you down other rabbit holes.
Not unrelated, the Far Right is finding music that speaks to them… and their problematic believe systems.
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Best and Worst States to Drive In
I think we all have ideas about how this might be ordered or reordered.
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The coverage of Lil Tay is unnerving and sad. We know social media has lots of problems. There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m not even going to link to a specific article here because it’s an evolving story.
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Do big cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have a future?
In short, yes.
We could stand to reimagine how was want cities to operate and best serve those who live in them.
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