Hanif Abdurraqib interviewed by Ruth Awad: Joy Is Not Promised to You

11:57 pm January 1

Reading a book to sleep to night

Before the day ended I made sure to stretch in bed.

Mary Oliver, "When Did It Happen?", Felicity

Hi Iris how have you been! A long time ago you were reading a book on the consulting economy, do you remember the title? I hope you're doing well

hello!! omg haven't gotten a message on here in AGES! i think this might be Mission Economy by Mariana Mazzucatto? this one was partially about the trend of public sector services being outsourced to private sector/professional services/consulting firms

Credit supposes that which we cannot afford today will be able to be paid back by tomorrow’s wealthier self—a self who is wealthier because of riches leveraged by these debts. Perhaps no form of credit better embodies the myth of a future, richer self than student loans. Under the vision of the free-market economist Milton Friedman, student loans emerged in the nineteen-fifties as an outgrowth of “human capital” theory, which posits the self as, above all, a unit of investment. Lending money for people to be educated was not only a sound investment—borrowers were sure to get high-paying jobs that would allow them to repay the loan—but smart macroeconomics: more educated people would increase the nation’s G.D.P. Education would be an incidental benefit.

Eleni Schirmer, “The Aging Student Debtors of America“

if pangea were still a thing id be walking everywhere for my girl mutuals ❤️……. 🚶..

It takes work to curate your online spaces, but if you don't do it, corporations will do it for you using a couple harmful key principles. 1) Negative emotions hold your attention better than positive emotions. 2) Calm/contented people are less likely to spend money.

“A striking aspect of the footage that has emerged since Tuesday involves bystanders’ behavior during and after the shooting. Many responded as humans often do in dramatic situations—they tried to help. Many also responded as no one should ever do in an active-shooter scenario—when presented with an escape route, they instead stopped to record videos. Decades’ worth of U.S. gun violence has proved the critical importance of immediately fleeing the danger zone if it is safe to do so, yet Tuesday’s footage shows people lingering, at their own peril, in order to capture images on their cell phones. The New York City emergency-management department offers explicit instructions regarding active shooter situations, in a Web slide titled “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”” 

paige williams, “the grim journey of the accused brooklyn subway shooter” 

Jennifer Diehl, Everything and the Kitchen Sink, 2019, Oil

zoë heller, “how everyone got so lonely” for the new yorker

the left will fail and keep failing as long as it doesn't offer joy or a vision of the future. Like chris smalls and the union organizers didn't win by writing scathing op-eds about Amazon and sending out long dry newsletters with donation links about Amazon's unfair labor practices to employees, they won by literally meeting people where they were at, at the bus stop where the workers gathered to go home, and hosting cookouts and bonfires. He ate with people and smoked with them and talked to them about their lives and the job, about their rights as workers and how life could be better. He brought joy to them!!! And food and community!! And that's how one of the biggest victories for labor in a century was won. If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution

karlya shelton-benjamin photographed rehearsing as a swan for swan lake by anthony barboza

«Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine» by Anne Applebaum (2017)