04-01-2024, 02:23 PM
Just read the first 64 posts and it's well worth while, here's a sample:
inkwell.vue.540 : Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2024
permalink #59 of 64: Emily Gertz (emilyg) Wed 3 Jan 24 08:35
<snip>
The past four years have encompassed (global level) the pandemic and
the Trump administration, and understanding fairly well just how
unstable Putin has made what passes for global peace and rule of
law, and understanding very well the depths of the climate crisis
and that way too little is being done while fossil fuel companies
continue to prosper and lie; and the horror of being (as an American
Jew) implicated in and endangered by the Netanyahu government's
decisions and actions.
Personally, they've also encompassed being diagnosed with and in
treatment for metastatic recurrent cancer, my life partner's
traumatic death, and the sharp health declines and deaths of my
elderly father and his second wife.
My grandparents emigrated from "the Ukraine" between 1900 and 1924
or so. My father fought in Europe in WWII, in Patton's 3rd Army. I'm
far from personally endangered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but
personally I don't feel too distant from its implications. Rising
anti-Semitism in the US has yet to affect my daily life, but I now
think twice about wearing a Star of David necklace in public. Hamas
murdered my neighbor's cousin and the cousin's infant son on October
7. Not to overstate things - I barely know this particular neighbor
- but that's close to home in a very literal way.
Perhaps what I have is a New York City sensibility. Like many people
who live here, I try to enjoy the positive things that happen here
from day to day, like strangers making jokes together while they
wait for the light to turn, or helping someone carry their grocery
cart up the subway staircase, or my highly flawed state government
nonetheless being a bulwark for women's bodily autonomy and climate
action, or the fact that cancer treatment is working spectacularly
well so far; without blinding myself to the migrant children selling
candy on the subway in the middle of the day, or the growing number
of people sleeping on the streets, or the racism and militarization
of the NYPD and its unsurprising violent outcomes, or the Arab
teenagers pulling down posters of the Israeli hostages on the Upper
West Side while old Jews yell at them for it.
inkwell.vue.540 : Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2024
permalink #59 of 64: Emily Gertz (emilyg) Wed 3 Jan 24 08:35
<snip>
The past four years have encompassed (global level) the pandemic and
the Trump administration, and understanding fairly well just how
unstable Putin has made what passes for global peace and rule of
law, and understanding very well the depths of the climate crisis
and that way too little is being done while fossil fuel companies
continue to prosper and lie; and the horror of being (as an American
Jew) implicated in and endangered by the Netanyahu government's
decisions and actions.
Personally, they've also encompassed being diagnosed with and in
treatment for metastatic recurrent cancer, my life partner's
traumatic death, and the sharp health declines and deaths of my
elderly father and his second wife.
My grandparents emigrated from "the Ukraine" between 1900 and 1924
or so. My father fought in Europe in WWII, in Patton's 3rd Army. I'm
far from personally endangered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but
personally I don't feel too distant from its implications. Rising
anti-Semitism in the US has yet to affect my daily life, but I now
think twice about wearing a Star of David necklace in public. Hamas
murdered my neighbor's cousin and the cousin's infant son on October
7. Not to overstate things - I barely know this particular neighbor
- but that's close to home in a very literal way.
Perhaps what I have is a New York City sensibility. Like many people
who live here, I try to enjoy the positive things that happen here
from day to day, like strangers making jokes together while they
wait for the light to turn, or helping someone carry their grocery
cart up the subway staircase, or my highly flawed state government
nonetheless being a bulwark for women's bodily autonomy and climate
action, or the fact that cancer treatment is working spectacularly
well so far; without blinding myself to the migrant children selling
candy on the subway in the middle of the day, or the growing number
of people sleeping on the streets, or the racism and militarization
of the NYPD and its unsurprising violent outcomes, or the Arab
teenagers pulling down posters of the Israeli hostages on the Upper
West Side while old Jews yell at them for it.
It's not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable. The hundred-times-refuted theory of "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it - Friedrich Nietzsche