a stream

It feels like the last days of social media, looting, anarchy, the scattering of peoples and the confounding of languages, so I feel like I can post again with abandon now. Posts no longer feeling chiseled in stone, but wandering snowflakes that might melt away at any moment. Or maybe just blobs of semi-melted snow.

Prescient analysis on the events of the coming day from the New York Times.

Link: Tourism is sucking Utah dry. Now it faces a choice - growth or survival? | Gabrielle Canon, with photographs by Kim Raff

Type: News Article

Source: The Guardian

“It is getting loved to death,” [Martha Ham] said, noting the need to help tourists and locals connect more deeply to the waterways and landscapes. Time for change is running short. Without a shift, the desert ecosystems will be imperiled along with the industries and communities that have come to rely on them. “Regardless of where you live in the world, it is crucial to be in touch with the natural limits of your environment,” she said. “People who think of visiting Utah, I hope when they come they see more evidence of us being in touch with our natural limits.”

Link: Filterworld: Algorithm Cleanse | Kyle Chayka

Type: Essay / Newsletter

Source: Kyle Chayka Industries (via Substack)

“It has taken a while for my brain to get used to that novel sense of finitude, though I think the withdrawal is subsiding. Plenty of products offer a more curated, less overwhelming version of the internet, but I think we’ve actually become conditioned to its chaos and grown to expect it. It’ll take more effort to re-train ourselves to finding things without the help of algorithmic feeds and then being satisfied with what we find. We have to quieten that internal internet-pilled voice that says more, more, more, new, new, new every minute.”

Link: Student Journalists Reveal a Changing World. Let Them. | Margaret Renkl

Type: Opinion Essay

Source: The New York Times

The high school newspaper is not the enemy of frightened adults. It is one of the few windows they will ever have into what is actually happening in their own children’s world, perhaps in their own children’s hearts. Isn’t that what a parent is supposed to want?

Link: “Glass Sight” | Tyler Mitchell

Type: Poem

Source: Poetry, September 2022)

…If poets travel
from one image to the next, what comes of the ribbons
of roads breathing between letters? There are ways out of this sequencing broad shoulders flexing commas
young lungs. The crunching of leaves scrape the mind,
deer travel along the concrete. Their chance to exist,
the split second of impact when broken antlers become the page.
The crack on the window unfolds to a map…

Currently Reading: Moonwalking [29%]

by Zetta Elliot and Lyn Miller-Lachmann

[currently reading - started on 2022.08.19]

[Granite Sora ebook copy]

Currently Reading: Nightcrawling [28%]

by Leila Mottley

[currently reading - started on 2022.08.18]

[SLCO Library physical copy]

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out [66%]

by Susan Kuklin

[currently reading - started on 2022.08.15]

Link: “Summer Wind” | William Cullen Bryant

Type: Poem

Source: Poem-a-Day (poets.org)

It is a sultry day; the sun has drunk
The dew that lay upon the morning grass;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint
And interrupted murmur of the bee,
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize
Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved
…

I just like this. Matches my summer-sitting-in-my-backyard vibes but from like 190 years ago.

2022.08.11 (committed)

• Added a [more of ‘Title’] link at the bottom of the main microblogish rss index
• Added [more/less] buttons to recent updates on homepage and ‘new/now’ list pages
• Improvements to the functionality of the ‘recent images’ section of the home page
• Moved ‘links’ into their own main section

2022.07.22 (committed)

• Added Breadcrumbs to default single and list pages (https://gohugo.io/content-management/sections/#example-breadcrumb-navigation)
• Started organizing reading updates and other content into non chronological sections