OMM (On My Mind) – February 2024 – #3
~ a curated selection of discoveries ~
::: The Open :::
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoy this weekly newsletter (published on Sundays).
If you’re a subscriber, please consider reaching out to a friend you think may enjoy this newsletter and encourage them to sign up.
If you can, please consider signing up as a Paid Subscriber.
I’ll be just as happy if you donate to ONE ART: a journal of poetry.
Thank you for reading and for your time.
With Gratitude,
Mark
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::: Personal Notes :::
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Working on figuring out what makes sense insofar as leading workshops.
There will be more **free** discussion sessions to come.
Turns out, it’s tricky to figure out when people who wish to be in a workshop can meet at the same time—especially if they all live in different places. No surprise, we all have different calendars and daily obligations.
Looking forward to figuring out consistent good times to meet with other poets.
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The **FREE** workshop offered by Chill Subs is ranked #21 in Education on Substack (last check). ONE ART (and myself) are mentioned quite a bit in these lessons and I’m delighted to be part of a project reaching a substantial audience.
Write or Die 101: Sorry For The Inconvenience: A Submitter's Guide to Lit Mags (Benjamin Davis)
Let me take this opportunity to once again plug the value of Chill Subs and the Sub Club newsletter. By subscribing, you’re benefiting the greater literary community and receiving invaluable (and thoughtful + informative + hilarious) information.
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I can’t recommend this substack by Heather Cox Richardson enough. She contextualizes important information each day with a historical perspective in mind.
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::: ONE ART :::
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‘Everything You Wanted To Know (and Plenty You Didn't) About Lit Mag Submission Guidelines: Let’s Fuck with Mark’ (Write or Die 101 / Benjamin Davis, Chill Subs)
I just updated the ONE ART submission guidelines with a little shout-out to Ben at Chill Subs.
“Check out this essay by Benjamin Davis (of Chill Subs). Ben unpacks ONE ART’s submission guidelines, contextualizes our guidelines, and compares them to other lit mag guidelines. It’s a fun and educational read! Plus, there’s a whole free course at Write or Die… so… Highly recommend.”
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::: Podcasts :::
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‘The Big List of Poetry Podcasts!’
Special Thanks to Tresha Faye Haefner for calling attention to this list on her Substack.
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::: Music :::
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New Release – Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You: Everasking Edition
“Caroline Polachek bulks out her star-making Desire, I Want to Turn Into You on this “Everasking Edition,” adding a Weyes Blood collaboration and more. Among the extras are fan-favorite “Dang,” a longtime staple of her DJ sets that formally premiered last year on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and covers of Operating Theatre’s “Spring Is Coming With a Strawberry in the Mouth” and Default Genders’ “Pharmacoma (For Ben Deitz),” reworked here as “Coma.”” (Pitchfork)
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This vicious review of the new Kanye… album (?) … is a pretty entertaining read.
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::: The Literary Community & Beyond :::
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Lots of Good Advice.
‘What Editors Want; A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines’ (The Review Review) – Special Thanks to Becky Tuch for calling attention to this essay.
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‘Hybrid Publishers and Paid Publishing Services: Red Flags to Watch For’ (Joel Pitney / Jane Friedman)
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‘55 Specialized Publishers Open to Manuscript Submissions’ (Authors Publish)
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‘The Scam of Book Returns Insurance’ (Writer Beware)
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Austin Kleon’s substack is consistently worth a weekly read.
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Trigger Warning: Suicide
Another look at Blake Butler’s ‘Molly’ (Bookforum)
The Plath-Hughes comparison feels unavoidable under these circumstances.
“There’s something of the Sylvia Plath–Ted Hughes marriage (or rather, its tortuous mythography) hung like a shroud over Molly.”
“According to her diaries, as Butler divulges, she was reading Plath’s Ariel in her last week (the poems were “extremely accurate,” she noted).”
“The ruptures that follow these scenes—Plath’s suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, Brodak’s by gunshot wound—are narratable, yes, but skirt flat recognition. They elide knowability.”
“Molly, in his view, performs storytelling as reparation: for those in suicide’s dark orbit, Brodak’s struggle—and, in the wake of her death, Butler’s own—might facilitate processes of curative identification, or at the very least, of recognition. As a “tragedy,” though, Butler’s version of Brodak is also a cautionary tale served raw, the story of how secrets kept can dissolve whole lives. His gambit inverts Hughes’s, but their positioning within the biographical engine is not so different—each becomes the de facto arbiter of his late wife’s story. Where Hughes is tight-lipped and discursively constrictive, Butler claims to lay everything on the table—the warts-and-all recollection of their shared time. Still, concealment and transparency are inseverable companions; every story, after all, relies on what is withheld.”
The following is something I find extremely problematic in suicide narratives:
“Suicide is made teleological. It is inevitable, the thing toward which everything before it aches.”
Also this:
“On her mental illness, for example, he lists toward a pathological reading, asking himself, “How can that last fact—took her own life—not automatically restructure all the rest?””
And here is the big question (in my opinion) about this kind of book:
“Whether this interlacing truly enables her to “speak for herself” is debatable. Molly is nominally dialogic, but the dead, we know, cannot talk back. Butler has, in his fashion, the final word.”
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At the intersection of marketing and The Arts…
‘To be well published’ (Seth Godin)
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‘Bob Edwards, the veteran broadcaster and longtime host of Morning Edition who left an indelible mark on NPR's sound, has died. He was 76 years old.’ (NPR)
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‘Bret Easton Ellis To Direct a Horror Film’ (Kirkus Reviews)
Makes sense.
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‘Memoir by Anthony Fauci Coming This Spring’ (Kirkus Reviews)
Should be extremely interesting… and frustrating… and depressing … but guaranteed to be a thought-provoking read.
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Rattle’s 2023 Readers’ Choice Award
Dusty Bryndal – No Evidence
(Full disclosure: this is the poem I voted for)
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‘True Biz,’ an adventure yarn with deaf teenagers, is the Free Library’s ‘One Book’ selection (WHYY)
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‘Pennsylvania Announces Slug In Love As The 2024 PA One Book Selection’
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::: Health & Wellness :::
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CDC Covid Guidelines Update (highly suspect)
[from] The Washington Post:
‘The CDC plans to drop its five-day covid isolation guidelines.’
“Why? To be more practical for workplaces, schools and society. The new guidance, to be shared in the coming months, will be to stop isolation 24 hours after fever and symptoms improve.”
“Zooming out: This would be the first update to CDC guidance since 2021. Infections remain high, but hospitalizations are falling and most people have a level of immunity.”
Above, “workplaces” and “schools” are mentioned first. This doesn’t seem like an accident. I just saw another article (the same morning) including that schools are encouraging kids to come to school if they sick. The article noted this was a serious reversal from pandemic era strategy. The article also noted this is because kids are missing a lot of schools post-pandemic.
We know that some workplaces are pushing employees back into the office. WFH is here to stay but only for certain positions within certain companies.
We need to figure out appropriate reasons to stay home in post-pandemic society. How many days if you’re sick? We certainly shouldn’t want anyone contagious coming into the office… right? This should have been true before covid since influenza (the flu) kills large numbers of people every year—especially those who are immunocompromised. Infants and older populations are also at increased risk when it comes to communicable diseases.
The CDC is supposed to be looking out for both individuals and The Greater Good. It might seem like a hard line to walk… though, really, I don’t think it is.
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‘They lied’: plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals (Guardian)
This isn’t really “news”. It’s also on the “Mark’s Rants” list… so… I’m going to resist going down the rabbit hole.
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::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::
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‘I'm a neuroscientist. Our presidential candidates have shrinking prefrontal cortexes.’ (Erik Hoel’s substack)
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Board games that provide teachable moments. (Slate)
“Wehrle is remarkably unperturbed about authoring these stories about other people’s pain. He is urgent, almost maniacal, about his creative endeavors.” (inappropriate dig imho)
I like the idea of playing a “game” that actually teaches you about history.
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Istanbul is so last year. (Travel + Leisure)
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The Rise of “Unhinged” Marketing (HubSpot)
“Unhinged marketing can be particularly effective at winning over Gen Z customers who prefer marketing that feels more real and less salesy. What may have been deemed unprofessional in the past is now considered more authentic and relatable.”
This is interesting because, given my work as a copywriter / content writer (and related), I’ve seen increasing posts that have made me wonder—How did this get by “legal”? (as in a company’s legal team)
“There’s another running joke on the TikTok account that highlights Duolingo’s counsel trying to stop Duo from posting (a nod to the unhinged nature of the content).”
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The National Debt (Chartr)
“The magnitude of the national debt, currently ~$34 trillion in total, means that the government is shelling out nearly $2 billion a day on interest payments (~3% of GDP) just to service the debt. Were the government to somehow magically wipe out its debt — leaving it with no interest to pay — it would have saved a whopping ~$660 billion last year, though that still wouldn't be enough to get the overall federal budget back into the black.”
There are no easy solutions.
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VR as “Empathy Machine” (LBGTQ Nation)
“So far, many VR films have sought to immerse viewers in the POVs of hospitalized medical patients, workers experiencing racism, and people living in refugee camps. While some researchers remain skeptical about the technology’s ability to inspire long-lasting empathy overall, a growing number of LGBTQ+ VR films are nonetheless immersing viewers in queer experiences as well.”
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Do you trust a bioengineered glowing houseplant?
If so… one can be yours… (Nature)
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This is disturbing… and, unfortunately, unsurprising…
“Artificial intelligence is being used to resurrect dead politicians whose avatars can mislead voters.” (Semafor, Flagship daily email)
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I’ve read two articles about this within a week… which seems to suggest this is a topical societal discussion… or else the algorithm is messing with me…
‘What Is The DINK Lifestyle And Why Are They So Popular?’ (The Zillennial Zine)
TL;DR? DINKs = Double Income, No Kids” … there’s also variations on the acronym involving people that have animal companions (aka. pets) but not kids.
I don’t think that most child-free (or childless) couples are being flippant in their choice to not have children.
The following statement also feels untrue:
“There is no longer that societal pressure of needing to do things by a certain age — marriage, buying a house, kids, and so on.”
Is that for Gen Z? Maybe.
I graduated from college in 2008 so… it was not the best moment to enter the workforce.
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Cheese in peril. (Vox)
“The soft cheese, which smells a bit like feet, is on the “verge of extinction,” according to the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Other cheeses, including brie and various blues, are under threat, too, the group has warned.”
“This looming cheese crisis, this Camembert calamity, stems from a much bigger problem: a collapse in microbial diversity.”
“Each hunk of Camembert or smear of brie is an ecosystem, an assortment of fungi and bacteria that turn milk fats and proteins into hundreds of different compounds. Those compounds produce the flavors, smells, and textures we love.”
“In recent decades, however, the genetic diversity of some of those microbes has caved. And today, some of the most famous French cheeses rely on just a single fragile strain of fungi that is at risk of dying out.”
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‘Disgraced Mom’s for Liberty co-founder was once a liberal socialite with a gaggle of gay friends’ (LGBTQ Nation)
So, one of the interesting things here is that this person is previously described as “nice” and “kind” and “warm”. Really, a lot of people clearly have a lot of nice things to say—about the person they used to know.
Ok, stay with me, I’m going somewhere with this.
I’ve listened to a number of interviews with Naomi Klein about her book ‘Doppelganger’. I found this interview for The Gray Area particularly compelling.
Basically, we’re seeing a lot of evidence of people who have been brainwashed by MAGA (and other extreme) movements. When people are brainwashed, they need deprogramming. The length of time to deprogram varies based on how indoctrinated a person has become. Time can be a factor. Four more years of Donald Trump in office means four more years of brainwashed people becoming hardened in their misguided beliefs.
Undoing the damage that Trump has done can begin as soon as the “leader” himself is out of the picture.
Unfortunately, Trump destabilized important aspects of status quo society surrounding “Truth” and consensus reality. His followers are prone to believe in conspiracy theories. QAnon doesn’t just happen.
On January 6, we learned that democracy is fragile. We also learned that people who were once reasonable can become unreasonable and dangerous.
While we’re figuring out how to begin the deprogramming process, it seems healthy to keep in mind that at least some of these individuals who became monstrous were once “nice” and “kind” and “warm”.
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‘The Most Popular Rom-Com Movie In Every State’ (Looper)
Don’t tempt me to go on a rant about this.
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[from] The Washington Post:
‘U.S. teachers are limiting lessons on political and social topics.’
“The numbers: 65% of teachers are holding back some forms of education, a new report found. And teachers in politically conservative areas are more likely to censor themselves.”
“Why? They’re worried about parents complaining. And a wave of legislation has reshaped how teachers are allowed to discuss race, history, sex and gender in classrooms.”
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‘Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA women’s basketball scoring record.’ (The Washington Post)
“How she did it: With a three-point swish just over two minutes into last night’s 106-89 Hawkeyes win over Michigan. She has 3,569 points and passed Kelsey Plum’s record.”
“That’s not all: The senior, who has become the face of women’s basketball, scored a career-high 49 points, setting team and arena records.”
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‘OpenAI launched a tool that can create realistic videos from text.’ (The Washington Post)
Open AI’s “Sora” sounds… worrisome.
“Sora can create videos of up to 60 seconds featuring highly detailed scenes, complex camera motion, and multiple characters with vibrant emotions.”
Why do we need this again?
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‘How AI is quietly changing everyday life’ (Politico)
“A growing share of businesses, schools, and medical professionals have quietly embraced generative AI, and there’s really no going back. It is being used to screen job candidates, tutor kids, buy a home and dole out medical advice.”
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‘Hurricanes becoming so strong that new category needed, study says’ (Guardian)
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‘Monkey Business: Apes Playfully Tease Each Other Just Like Humans, Study Finds’
I mean… seems obvious enough… (video)
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‘Russian influencers hunted down & forced to apologize for kissing’ (LGBTQ Nation)
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‘Greece becomes first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex civil marriage’ (AP News)
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‘Sustainability-centric search engine Ecosia reaches milestone of 200 million trees planted’ (Good Good Good)
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‘Temu promises cheap goods. Here's how the shopping app does it’ (NPR)
“"In less than a year, this business has spun up an online retailer that is, like, 75% the size of [Target.com], which is enormous…”
“Temu and Shein alone are likely responsible for more than 30% of all packages shipped to the United States daily under the de minimis provision," the committee said in its report.”
“As for the U.S.-based Temu, the company is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, which gives it a rating of C-plus. For comparison, Amazon, which is accredited, has a B rating. To earn accreditation, a business must both meet BBB standards and pay an annual fee.”
Temu & Shein are… creepy
So is TikTok…
I don’t think this is xenophobia by any means whatsoever
Wish (and it’s parent company ContextLogic), an American company, is also extremely sus.
I was (admittedly) briefly taken in by Wish and its hyper-consumerism gamified gambling-oriented strategy of tantalizing people to buy junk they don’t actually want or need.
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Yelp has the Top 100 pizza joints list that I’ve come across a few times now. It’s pretty silly as we can hopefully all agree the only way to compare slices is plain [just sauce + cheese] vs. plain [just sauce + cheese].
In my opinion, deep dish (Chicago style) is basically lasagna.
Some styles are mood-based cravings… For example: a sweeter or spicier sauce; sauce swirled on top; basically anything that isn’t “New York style”.
Artisan pizza (which is popular on this Yelp list) is more in the vein of flatbread with a salad on top … which is great… if that’s what you’re in the mood for.
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::: News of the Weird :::
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“A Frenchman spent eight long years meticulously building a 23-foot-tall Eiffel Tower using 700,000 matchsticks, only to be outright rejected by the Guinness World Records due to an unconventional reason.”
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‘Wilson’s new Airless basketball costs $2,500, but it will sell out in seconds’ (Fast Company)
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‘John Cage: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord’ (BBC)
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‘US Senator Chris Coons finds doppelganger in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ (BBC)
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Fundelivery is a company that will sell you “unclaimed/undeliverable packages” (with no returns and all sales are final). This seems like an odd business… very shady.
Here’s an article about all this wildness.
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