GOOD INTENTIONS ARE A TRAP AND THE TRAPS ARE EVERYWHERE

Note I made during a grad school seminar discussion of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 2023

I don't fully know how past me landed on this thought, but it has an air of Temu Holzer that I enjoy against my better judgment.

The post office was large and I suspect that its director was either inefficient or vicious; there was something demoralized about the staff behind the counter, as if unnecessary absurdities had been added to their burden of overwork.

And our faces, my heart, brief as photos, John Berger

Submitted by Erin.

A taxidermists’ Shangri-La in which everything that was once alive has been skinned and stuffed, and regards you unblinkingly, with a meaningful glint in its bright, spurious eyes.

"Apocalypse Now and Then", Arundhati Roy for Equator

In that context, I no longer feel inspired to contribute to a commons that’s being strip-mined by massive corporations to feed the very machines whose unthinking output pollutes it.

"Why I'm No Longer Updating This Repository", Paul Battley on his personal blog

Submitted by Rusty.

“This is not the most important law in America, but this is precisely why it matters to us,” said For Our Futures founder Adam Ash, an economics major at the University of Chicago, as peers chanted and handed out onions.

"‘Free the Onions’ Rally Sparks Debate on 68-Year-Old Trading Ban", Erin Ailworth for Bloomberg

More of a "perfect summary of the deranged state of things" sentence maybe than poetry; probably enhanced by knowing that the economics students' rally about unbanning onion futures was sponsored by Kalshi.

The island where I live is peopled with cranks like myself.

Teaching a Stone To Talk, Annie Dillard

Submitted by Birgit. This essay and collection has been in the newsletter before; I enjoy when other people find their favorites in texts I also love.

Most houses sleep, and nearly all of them dream: of conflagrations and celebrations, births and buckled floors; of children's footsteps and clapboards in need of repair, of ailing pets and peeling paint, wakes and weddings and windows that no longer keep out rain and snow but welcome them, furtively, when no one is home to notice.

A Haunting on the Hill, Elizabeth Hand

Submitted by Jackie.

The U.S. naval station in Guantanamo Bay includes a McDonald's; the database, too, aims to erect a faithful model of its origins, no matter how unfamiliar its latest placement.

Seeing Like a Supply Chain: The Hidden Life of Logistics, Miriam Posner

But there’s still time to stand athwart history and shout, ‘Citation needed.’

"Wikipedia’s Pyrrhic Victory", Julian Lucas for The New Yorker

Submitted by Keith.

SYSTEMS TEND TO EXPAND TO FILL THE KNOWN UNIVERSE

The Systems Bible, John Gall

I think Meredith gave me this book in 2016? I am keeping it.