Hi, welcome, tell your friends
Hi! Thanks for signing up for the reading group. I'll try to keep admin infrequent and brief; I just want to outline some things you might need to know.
Timely things
Our first book will be Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin. If you haven't ordered it yet, you should place an order as soon as you can. I'm already thinking about what the next book will be, so please consider contacting me if you have suggestions.
If you already have the book, or it's en route, or you just want to support Workshops4Gaza some other way, you can buy a gift card. Or you can donate eSIMs via Crips for eSims for Gaza.
Please know that you have my unending gratitude for contributing whatever you can. Thank you so much.
I'll post about Chapter 1 of Imagination: A Manifesto from January 13-17, with the first reading group call on January 18 at 12pm ET. More on this format in a bit.
(If things go smoothly, you won't get another email from me until January 13.)
If you haven't subscribed, this is a good time to consider it:
Reading group format
I'm trying to construct this so you can get involved in any number or combination of ways and still find it rewarding. There are a few options every week:
- chat on social media (I'm on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter) throughout the week
- join zoom/jitsi reading group discussions on Saturdays
- keep up with the mailing list on Mondays and Fridays
You don't have to do all 3 things. Any single option is plenty as far as I'm concerned.
On Mondays, I'll start some discussions on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter; then I'll email the mailing list with links to those posts. You can participate in discussions there, or you can start new discussions (if you want me to see them, consider @'ing me).
On Fridays, I'll collect some of the comments I've seen that week and summarize discussions from that week's reading in an email. In that email, I'll also send a link to join a call the next day.
On Saturdays, I'll host a zoom/jitsi call where we can decompress about that week's reading, continue any conversations from the past week, or whatever people want to talk about.
I want to hear people's candid feelings and thoughts, however is easiest to express them. If the reading made you bristle, or resonated very strongly in your head, I want to hear about it. If it unlocked some problem or idea you've been stuck on, I want to hear about it. Share whatever you can, even if the words or the idea itself aren't coming together perfectly.
If the best way for you to communicate is posting threads, and you don't want to be on voice calls, that's great.
If you want to be on the call but not on social media, that's great.
If you want to follow the discussions by reading these emails, that's great.
I will say: please don't use AI - either to summarize the reading, or to make comments. I'm not going to police anyone, but I'm spending a bit of time on this, and it's all totally worth it if people share their own thoughts with others - but not if I'm reading chatbot output.
A short note about how I'm thinking about privacy:
Broadly speaking, I want to be unsurprising about privacy. I'm treating public posts visible on the web as public, and private or unlisted conversations as private (meaning they won't be included in emails). Relatedly, I don't plan to record or summarize our calls on Saturdays.
If anything changes, I'll send an update and explain why.
It's possible I'll end up including comments from people not in the reading group - people who are just replying because they saw the tweet and had thoughts. In that case, please be respectful; don't go seeking out someone to be mean to them for posting something you disagree with.
I think that was plenty. Thanks for reading. If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please let me know. Otherwise, see you in January!
PS: "Reading Group or Something" was supposed to be a placeholder; what should the name of this reading group be? Does it matter? If you read this far, you could have outsized influence on this decision. @ me and let me know.