help im sick and i need to be productive

david wolfpaw

Issue # 🤷

14 Jan 2022

Reading time:

5 mins

I’d like to say that I spent the past two weeks being super productive on my January project, and that’s why you didn’t hear from me last week, but that would at least partly be a lie. I have lots of notes down and I’ve been doing research, but I haven’t moved beyond the research phase yet.

Instead I’ve spent the entirety of winter so far it seems sick. I regularly get covid tests and try to keep to myself, which is a tactic that seems to have served me well the past few decades 😅

I do have some forward momentum though! I’ve cleared some other things off of my plate, and the research that I’ve done has been a good start toward a blog post outlining my goals and some specific plans, as well as to garner feedback on work in progress.

I think a harder issue to contend with is that everything still feels like a standstill. In some ways it obviously is, but it also feels like everyone is keeping on with life in a way that is unsustainable, myself included.

a tweet from @mbsocol that reads, "found this online and can't stop laughing at it. why does it work in every direction"

The image is of a circular image showing George and Jerry from Seinfeld with the image split into six slices, and text in each slice that reads, "everybody is using panels/we use slices/a sliced meme/we slice the meme/we slice the meme/a sliced meme"

📚

The Queer Farmers Reimagining American Agriculture – Emma Banks, Modern Farmer

We need farmers more than ever, and reimagining what farming (and any industry, really) looks like through a queer lens can be huge to find new ways of being.

HT to Lisa for this share!

Elyse Flayme and the final flood – Robin Sloan, MIT Technology Review

Another entertaining and thought provoking short from Sloan. What do you do when your creative work contributes to the problem that you set out to solve?

How Signal is playing with fire – Casey Newton, The Verge

What if the company that has spent the past decade trying to mainstream encrypted communication unintentionally contributes to curtailing it?

Abolish Billionaires – Farhad Manjoo, NYT

Seems straightforward, and the hardest part for me is figuring out why so many people would disagree with this idea.

The Ticking Bomb of Crypto Fascism – Omar Marques, In These Times

Great, a take on cryptocurrency speculation that I not only haven’t considered, but am now terrified of.

Could Your Child Be Neurotypical? – Aphantastic Writer

Reading this list stresses me out 😅 I’m the opposite of almost all of these behaviors.

tweet from @naderman which reads, "😂 Semiconductor shortage leads to Canon selling toner cartridges without chips which usually identify them as genuine, so Canon now instructs customers on how to override the warnings for using "counterfeit" cartridges"

📽

The Dystopian Existential Nightmare of Motel Makeover

I haven’t watched this show but they really do be out here making landlord tiktok an tv show, don’t they?

Cryptoland presentation

So there was a version of this video almost twice as long but all copies I’d found have been removed from YouTube. Even with the ten minutes left in this presentation, I would describe it as a fever dream.

Greatest game we’ve ever played: Bad Ben

It’s been a while since I watched Game Grumps play a normal game (I don’t know if this counts even), but I’d watch more episodes of this ridiculous series that seems crafted for streamers, which seems like a good method for success.

🎧

High Five – (Official Music Video)

if you give me one I’ll stop ruining your life

Vision on Vision / Undo

Just an old Roadkill Ghost Choir track that I love

♥ GOJII ♥ – SELECTED PIANO WORKS VOL. 1 (full EP)

I listened to this while taking a walk the other day and letting the sound of leaves in the wind merge in. It has a criminally low view count so go listen!

If you made it this far, why not share this newsletter with a friend? Or share with me some of the things that you found that you liked this week. Either way, I’m thrilled!