Celebrating: Discovery
A roundup of captivating writing, news, and ideas that are worth your while.
Welcome to Discovery, the Celebration link roundup!
My first thought whenever I read something fascinating is, “who can I share this with?” It feels greedy to keep all that inspiration to myself; I want to spread the word. Can you relate?
This instinct usually manifests in me texting links to my friends and family, or even more casually, sending them a DM on Instagram. Now, I’d like to formalize the act—to chase the camaraderie of relishing in discovery—together.
So, while a lot of the posts in this newsletter will be thoughtful vignettes about the good stuff in life (like this one celebrating city living), just about weekly I’ll dispatch a Discovery roundup with curated content from all over the web. The goal is to read great writing, explore new ideas, keep abreast of newsy items, continuously reframe our understanding of the world—and (ahem) also laugh at memes. Let’s get this party started.
Discovery
It’s Black History Month! (And here’s one of many published explanations for people who ask WhAt aBoUt WHitE HisTOrY MOnth? In short: “every month is white history month. It’s hard to deny that the history of white people is well-served.”)
Here’s an insightful Instagram post on why slavery is not black history, it’s white history.
Vox breaks down “The Mirage of the Black Middle Class” and makes the case that reparations aren’t radical, they’re a recognition of historical inequality—economic and otherwise.
Former NFL tight end Martellus Bennett is writing and illustrating the kind of children’s literature he wishes he had as a boy. Black characters are already underrepresented in adolescent entertainment and when they do show up as protagonists, “too often it’s in service of recounting a tragedy,” and “rooted in pain.” Bennett wants his children to be able to escape into the same kind of whimsy—universes of fun, magic, and wonder—as white kids. Related: this Pop Sugar list of “28 Films to Watch During Black History Month That Aren’t about Black Trauma.”
An interesting piece to read and digest is Charles M. Blow’s article, “We Need a Second Great Migration,” in which he shares why he recently moved from NY to GA. Come for the content—a thought-provoking first-person commentary—but stay for his form and style. Blow’s writing is exceptional and I often read him as a “warm-up” to important writing I may have to complete in a given day (because then I have his supremely skilled writer’s voice in my head).
Moving on to the realm of our shared techno-dystopia—In this troubling must-read NYT opinion piece, “The Coup We Are Not Talking About,” Shoshana Zuboff, Professor at Harvard Business School, explains in painstaking detail that “we can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.” Central to the dilemma is the fact that “surveillance capitalism’s operations have no formal interest in facts. All data is welcomed as equivalent, though not all of it is equal.” Read it and weep. (And one caveat: prepare to see the word “epistemic” more times than you ever have before or will again.)
In other tech news, you’ve likely heard by now that union-busting bajillionaire, Jeff Bezos (who I once saw speak at an event and can attest to his having what I would call “nefarious comic book villain energy”) is stepping down as CEO of Amazon. In his farewell letter, he explains that now he will have more time to focus on his not at all Lex Luthor-y passion projects like colonizing space. Not surprising that Bezos’s similarity to Luthor is being heavily memed on twitter.
In the sphere of daily life—
Based on my own experiences and conversations with friends and family, I think a lot of us are struggling with managing the crush of competing priorities in a given day—even during leisure time where the warring “priorities” might be reading a book or watching TV—because the pandemic has robbed us of structure. Without anchoring social events and appointments, time can feel aimless. Even almost a year in. That’s why I found this post, “How to Structure Your Day to Accomplish More,” resonant. There’s an important conversation to be had about whether or not productivity should even be the goal of our days (or our lives)—maybe not!—but if you’re searching for clarity about what the hell to do with your time, the author advises to “decide on our top priorities and then spend 95% of our time doing only those activities, saying ‘no’ to everything else as much as possible.” Easier said than done. But, as someone with hardwired people-pleasing tendencies, I’m always drawn to content that gives me permission to say NO to things. (I also mentioned this article in the newsletter on leadership that I write as part of my day job, if you’re interested in biz topics.)
And if the monotony of pandemic routine has you missing people you didn't even know that well—like casual acquaintances and the nice lady who used to hand you your daily coffee—you are not alone. Turns out, “The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship” and in so doing has depleted some of the joys “that make up a human life—and buoy human health.”
In the department of things you already knew probably, but here’s even more evidence to support it, a major economics study has found that “50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down.” These tax cuts, in fact, only helped one group—the rich. <Shocked face.>
Speaking of the rich, Elizabeth Warren is joining the Senate Finance Committee and is going to “push wealth tax on large fortunes” of 50 million or more. It is pleasing to me. (P.S. One notable wealthy person who agrees with this idea is Warren Buffet.)
Also in government news—
In an IG live this week, AOC shared her harrowing experience inside the capitol on the day of the violent insurrection and also revealed that she—like many, many, many women—is a survivor of sexual assault. And then everyone believed her, accepted her account with grace, and offered appropriate emotional support and legislative action in response. JK! Nope. Instead, just as this tweet predicted, lots of men had a meltdown about it and are levying a slurry of insults at her in response, painting her as “manipulative” for telling the truth of her own lived trauma. This infuriating reaction to women’s survivor accounts is par for the course and Jill Filipovic breaks it down in her substack post “Who We Believe,” where she points out, “A woman's word weighs less than a man's. But when violent men tell us who they are, we don't believe them, either.”
This twitter thread adds even more texture:
Finally—reading beautifully crafted fiction is one of life’s joys and has been a balm this winter. Do you agree?
Some recent standouts:
I delighted in Andrea Lee’s colorful depiction of Madagascar in her short story “The Rivals.” An added bonus was picking up a couple words of Malagasy dialect from the richly drawn world—like “sakav,” which means food.
My adoration for semicolons runs deep—so naturally I revisit this translation of Franz Kafka’s feverish story, “A Country Doctor,” at least once a year. The first sentence, if we can call it that, is below. Enjoy.
I WAS IN A QUANDARY: my presence was urgently required; a gravely ill man was waiting for me in a village ten miles distant; a blizzard filled the space between me and my goal; I had a carriage, light, high-wheeled, eminently suited to our country roads; wrapped in my fur, with my Gladstone bag in my hand, I stood in the courtyard all ready to go; but the horse was missing, there was no horse.
I recently finished Tana French’s third book, “Faithful Place,” and her writing is consistently astonishing and superb. Mysteries are my favorite stories to read and I love how French’s mastery of prose and plotting helps to implode the false binary between “literary” fiction and “genre” fiction. Hopefully these types of limiting categories/distinctions will continue to wither into the ether and we can all just enjoy ourselves. What do you say?
Whew, we covered a lot. That’s all the discovering for this week! Please feel free and encouraged to share this email.
With appreciation,
Amy
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