On the Range #2

I get emails so you don't have to

Welcome back to my outpost in your inbox. Today we’re hitting the open pastures to graze on what essays there sprout from the cold ground, because I obsessively read “posts” all day, and I’d like that to benefit (i.e. harm) someone other than myself (i.e. you).

First, some music. RIP to Pitchfork, which has been shoveling good music into my email inbox for some time now. In memoriam, I present you the most recently shoveled good music. Brittany Howard, noted lesbian and lead singer of Alabama Shakes, recently released her second solo album, What Now. It’s really good, and the title track is a standout.

What Now - Brittany Howard (ps if you know where this mountain is plz let me know)

Now lets get to the juicy stuff.

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Must Read

Charlotte Shane is someone who’s work, especially on Substack, I’ve really enjoyed. Not least because a lot of it is about Buddhism. This piece, though, hit me right where I live. Even many of the details are eerily similar to my own life. Importantly, she reflects on the value of writing, especially for those of us who want(ed) to use it to change people’s minds.

My disposition since childhood has been to wish almost everything were better than it is and the intractability of that to which I object is my perpetual sorrow. I’m prone to see wrongness and inadequacy in the foreground and I don’t know how others cannot when all around us are the inescapable errors of the human world. I don’t mean only the obvious ones, the genocide, or local headlines, or people living on the street, or extreme weather disasters, or cops. I mean also in every scrap of packaging, every attempt to buy a piece of clothing not made of oil or to drink non-carcinogenic water, and virtually every tweet even when I see the point the person’s trying to make because it’s made in the nastiest way possible. These are capitalist and imperialist examples because I live in a capitalist and imperial country. How can I be an exception? How can I be a rare thing that is right?

What is This Writing's Value?

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Next up, Lee Shevek, a domestic violence researcher, refutes the idea that men are taught to be less emotional than women and queers:

It is reductive to say that cis men are not allowed to experience or express their emotions under patriarchy, as is commonly claimed. Cis men are not only allowed but encouraged to express any and all emotions under patriarchy. What they are actually discouraged from doing is expressing emotions in ways that do not serve to differentiate them from women and other marginalized genders. Cis men can be angry, just not in the way women are angry. They can be sad and even cry, but just not in the way queers do. They are encouraged to have and express emotions by patriarchy, but only in ways that refer to that system of power.

And plots a way forward for men, with this banger line near the end:

The price (and gift) of authenticity is closer proximity to queerness.

Which means fellas, I have to ask, is it transgender to love and care about yourself and others?

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I quite enjoyed Julia Serano’s recent deep dive into the history of TERFs and their gametes. If you missed my rant about biological sex being fake, you’ll get a good breakdown in hers, with the bonus that it comes from someone with a PhD in Biology.

Why Are “Gender Critical” Activists So Fond of Gametes?

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If you’re an American who’s contemplated the possibility of a Civil War and/or “national divorce,” here’s a good analysis.

Some parts of the Right were never content with accepting the post-1960s reality and railed against what they saw as the acquiescence and appeasement of the forces of multiracial pluralism. Far-right forces and ideas have always shaped modern conservatism as a political project, and they have been waging war, at least metaphorically, against pluralistic America for a long time: “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America,” Pat Buchanan infamously declared in his 1992 Republican National Convention Speech. Buchanan was a leading proponent of an ascending paleo-conservative tradition and a key figure in the mainstreaming of an emerging rightwing populism that took hold of the power centers of conservative politics after the end of the Cold War. There is a clear path from there to those on the Right today who believe “conservatism is no longer enough,” that a reactionary counter-revolution by the rightfully aggrieved defenders of “real America” against nefarious “woke,” “globalist” elites is urgently needed.

Haha scary :)

Domination or Dissolution, Rule or Ruin

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Hey you’ll never believe this but right-wing freaks are still trying to justify the murder of George Floyd, and they managed to get not one but three black conservatives with ties to the Manhattan Institute to help them do it!¹

Thankfully, veteran “criminal justice” reporter Radley Balko has been completely humiliating them with facts and logic. Read part two of his breakdown, which links to the first, below.

But this also isn’t just about Hughes’s column, or the documentary. It’s about an insidious counter-narrative that has been picking up momentum on the far right for months, and is now seeping into more mainstream outlets. Hughes’s article — and the reaction to it — shows how the claims made in [The Fall of Minneapolis] are being laundered through more respectable, “heterodox” media outlets, podcasts, and pundits. Hughes himself just published a book, and was flatteringly profiled in the New York Times. He was on Bill Maher’s show, and will be moderating a panel discussion on Gaza (of all things) in New York later this month.

So I think it’s worth thoroughly explaining just how removed from reality these claims really are.

The retconning of George Floyd, part two: the autopsy

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Ending with a little enshittification analysis for you, here’s a piece from Ivan Vendrov on the kinds of incentives that destroy actually useful applications and platforms.

Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again.

Marl’s tolerance for user interface complexity is zero. As far as you can tell he only has one working thumb, and the only thing that thumb can do is flick upwards in a repetitive, zombielike scrolling motion. As a product designer concerned about the wellbeing of your users, you might wonder - does Marl really want to be hate-reading Trump articles for 6 hours every night? Is Marl okay?

The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Critique Corner

I recently read Emily Gould’s essay in The Cut about divorce, bipolar mania, and cheating on Kieth Gessen. It was well-written, and people seem to like it. I, however, found it completely unhinged, and not because of the bipolar mania, which was among the more relatable parts for me. More than anything, what I didn’t like about the piece is Gould herself, how she thinks about her relationship and her career. Writers are a strange bunch and certainly not homogeneous in any sense (some aren’t even particularly fond of writing itself, after all). That said, it does take at least one flavor of unhealthy desire to make it very far in the writing world. Generally, I think writers who want to make a career out of it should interrogate themselves about whether it’s really the writing that drives them or the reception to said writing and what that reception does for their sense of self worth. Gould’s understandable heterosexual emotional/midlife crisis is obviously compounded by her desire to be as “successful” as her husband and, as you can imagine, I think this mentality is horribly misguided.

Until next time!

1. That is, Coleman Hughes, a non-journalist writing for Bari Weiss’s blog “The Free Press,” Glenn Loury, an economist, and John McWhorter, a linguist and NYT op-ed contributor.