recomMONDAYtions #5
hello! it's january 16. here be recs.
Dear friend—
After a month of not being in Pittsburgh, it’s good to be back. There’s nothing like a week straight of skies the color of dirty dishwater to humble you a bit.
(Mostly) kidding. If not for the lack of vitamin D that I can sometimes feel in my bones, I don’t mind the grey. It just inspires me to get out of the house and get cozy in the library or a coffee shop. And the wave this winter seems to be these tiny little flurries of snow that fall like confetti from the clouds. Last Friday, for the first time in a few weeks, those little bits of confetti actually stuck to the ground.
Some of my favorite views right now arrive right around the corner from my house, with the lampposts and the sidewalks and the orange glow that turns snowflakes into something like the still-glowing ashes that fly from a campfire.
Yeah, that shit’s pretty cool.
In other non-meteorological news, I’m thinking more about this newsletter and my writing and I think it would be best to ease my foot on the gas. Instead of weekly essays and recomMONDAYtions, i’m going to aim for two essays and two recomMONDAYtions a month. I’m sure y’all get enough in your inbox—and I think I need more time and space to let the juices of my thoughts marinate.
With that said, here are be recs:
Logic magazine
Logic magazine is one of my new favorite places on the internet. Recently, one of my favorite tech/politics/culture magazines Real Life stopped publishing, and I was heartbroken. Where else would I find thoughtful, well-written and well-researched essays on how technology shapes our politics, our culture, our minds, our relationships?
Not that any magazine can replace another, but I was glad to have found Logic because it scratches a similar itch.
One of the pieces that’s stuck in my mind is “In The Shadow of Big Blue” by Ellyn Gaydos, on IBM and the way its manufacturing plants screwed over the towns in which they were sited.
The manufacturing processes behind microchips and circuit boards, for which IBM became famous, are messy and dangerous. They produce huge amounts of toxic waste, which companies often fail to dispose of safely (if there are even safe disposal methods). Gaydos:
The inputs for a microchip are 630 times the mass of the final product. After the product is made, all of these excess inputs recombine into new chemical slurries, the unsaleable byproduct of the machine. These life-altering chemicals return to the earth in indigestible ways, and creep through our basements, waterways, genomes.
In one company town, Endicott, New York, improper disposal of those chemicals had dire effects on workers and residents. A pool of toxic wastewater, nicknamed “the plume,” began growing beneath the manufacturing plant, seeping throughout the ground under Endicott.
Though IBM left the town in 2002, the health impacts of the plume have persisted. And they’ve impacted new renters, often kept in the dark about the poison in the ground until after it’s sickened them. Those impacts include babies born with malformed hearts and missing anatomy, as well as cancers and tumors among adults.
This was a difficult read, but it reminded me how everything we buy and use has an origin story; often one that the makers of these products would rather keep hidden, lest it turns us away from them.
CW: descriptions of hunting and terminal illnesses, perhaps some ableist language.
Other things from Logic I’ve been reading and thinking about:
“The Access Doctrine,” by Daniel Greene (on the narrative that we can cure poverty with skills training)
“Parliaments of the Earth,” by R. K. Upadhya (on how democratic utility governance can create new possibilities for climate action)
Charlie Squire’s Evil Female newsletter
Besides some writing that made me feel very #seen and #heard, 's newsletter is full of incisive commentary on our current cultural/societal/political moment, especially RE: gender and feminism.
I’m thinking especially of her March essay, “Contending with the Buzzfeed Bildungsroman.”
The way I understand pop feminism, especially the “Girl Boss” era of the 2010s, is that it’s about achieving gender parity or empowerment through success—by blasting through glass ceilings, making tons of money, being in the room with powerful men and overpowering them, etc. It equates succeeding in our patriarchal system with challenging or subverting that system.
Squire takes it a step further, arguing that pop feminism today is built on the idea that “the highest form of empowerment [is] being able to do whatever you want without guilt or shame.”
Choice is important, she acknowledges. Being able to freely choose how we live can be liberating and integral to what international development wonks call “human flourishing.” When choices are ripped away from you (e.g. through segregation, through restricting reproductive rights), “oftentimes just being offered the ability to choose feels like an escape from injustice,” Squire writes.
But prizing choice above all else can be very harmful, she argues. Because, for one, we don’t make choices in a vacuum—our choices and our desires are shaped by systems, often rooted in injustice or oppression. And sometimes our choices, even if made well-informed and freely, can reinforce those systems.
Notably, Squire connects this “choice feminism” to the political movement of neoliberalism and extreme individualism that came into vogue in the 80s. They have similar frames, in that power comes from getting ahead, in economic freedom, in buying what you want and doing what you want, in bootstrapping and DIY success—instead of working toward a wider vision of security, community, and care.
“When we are told that empowerment comes from doing whatever we, as individuals want and that forming emotional attachments is a disadvantage, how are we supposed to see each other as members of the same community?” Squires writes.
Other essays from her newsletter I’m reading/thinking about:
“The Political Utility of Guilt, The Political Impotence of Shame”"
“Reflections on a Starved Decade” (CW: description and discussion of an eating disorder)
The Hot Take podcast
This pod, hosted by Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt, unfortunately ended a few weeks ago. However, there’s a rich back catalog to listen to, which is what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks.
Heglar and Westervelt tackle news and ideas around the climate crisis with a surprising amount of humor and buoyancy (there are lots of dad jokes). They dig deep into parts of the climate conversation that don’t get as much press, and have some really cool guests on. Despite Hot Take’s dire subject matter, I often find myself laughing out loud to it. Some episodes I’m still thinking about:
“Tis the Season to Want Nothing” (on consumerism, especially fast fashion)
“Follow the Money, Eat the Rich” (on the role of finance and economic levers in climate change politics)
Before I go, happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! If you’re able to, I wish you lots of rest and/or study & action along Dr. King’s work and vision.
I’ll be back on Thursday with a book review of Blockchain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei Wang (who now co-runs Logic magazine; it was through them that I found Logic) and I have a few more things planned for January. Until then, keep warm & safe & healthy.
— mia xx