Maybe I’m published
It’s slow, still. Co-op members are kind of waiting around for things to start to move. Contracts to be signed. Emails to be returned. Spring to unfurl. Waiting. We are not great at waiting. I’m not great at waiting, although I am totally fine at waiting in waiting rooms. Somewhere along the line I made some Waiting Room Rules, and now, for whatever reason, the dentist, the doctor, the candlestick maker, don’t break my rules. I swear they broke them before I had them.
Perhaps just defining your boundaries is enough movement on the cosmic fabric to also establish those boundaries.
Friends of the Earth published our report on Harnessing AI for Environmental Justice, and we’ve published a couple of blog posts to accompany it. We pull out salient points and give a briefer look into social and power dynamics we considered. We had all this stuff ready to go, as we’ve been waiting for this report to hit the interwebs since early January.
Someone on LinkedIn called it “beautifully nuanced”, which made me smile because while writing, we had quite some discussions about nuance. It’s not easy, you know, to walk the nuance line when you have active distain for how money and power create narratives that do not serve us or our planet and are otherwise breaking literally everything all the damn time.
- Understanding Predominant Narratives in AI > https://blog.weareopen.coop/understanding-predominant-narratives-in-ai-90f5cbfd7aab
- Systemic complexities with AI > https://blog.weareopen.coop/systemic-complexities-with-ai-d7985f6fbb46
- Full report > https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/reports/harnessing-ai-environmental-justice
- Against AI-Shaming > https://blog.mahabali.me/educational-technology-2/against-ai-shaming/
- Helen Beetham and Audrey Waters talking about money, power and AI > https://helenbeetham.substack.com/p/the-audrey-watters-episode
Maybe I’m insane
I want to write to you about psychological defense mechanisms because mine seem to be in full gear. I’m not sure if I’m forcing myself to be ambivalent or oblivious to all the stuff that is happening. I haven’t cried in a long time, so clearly I’m avoiding, dismissing or otherwise utterly ignoring the reality of existence. Going about my life as if everything is ok. When, clearly, it’s all going to end badly.
Lately I’ve been reminded and am reminding people that there are a lot of people who are active in fighting some of the stupid we’re seeing. There are people who are doing what they can, and those people have always existed and will always exist. I’ve been reminding people what activism is. What it means. How it works.
I spent an hour reading about the life of Emma Goldman, an anarchist and activist who spent much of her life encouraging others to see the shackles the people in power put around the rest of us. It’s a lot to take in intellectually, her life. What it meant that she was a woman in that time, your own stance on revolutionary violence, on state power, on collectivism, communal living, solidarity, workers rights…Anarchism, nihilism, activism. Nuance. There is so much nuance in the intellectual life.
Where does your own activism and your own interest begin and end? How do we live a good life? How much we choose to sacrifice in service of a greater good? What do we say out loud versus what do we ignore? When do we choose to be right over choosing to be safe? It’s a hard balance to strike and one that many people likely never bother to think about.
Sacrifice for a better world.
The word alone means that we are giving something up, but what if we change our relationship to what we “own”. What if the idea of ownership is inherently repressive? “You wouldn’t steal a car” pops into my head. We don’t sacrifice our ideas, we give them away. Maybe if I stop seeing my sanity as something being sacrificed in this current socio-political climate and start rejecting the idea that I am even sane, it would help.
“Sanity is a full time job in a world that is always changing.” Bad Religion
- Ursula’s list > https://www.wrecka.ge/ursulas-list/
- Emma Goldman > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
- Tom Robbins, Whose Comic Novels Drew a Cult Following, Dies at 92 > https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/obituaries/tom-robbins-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk4.LXOK.Q61JCDfVf12M
- Doing Nothing With Your Favorite People Is Really, Really Good for You > https://www.self.com/story/benefits-doing-nothing-with-loved-ones
- Nominalism > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
Maybe I need help
Oh you know it! But maybe you need a friend? Hit reply or gimme a call or something.