On occasion, we here do a thread of random positivity, where we start with a thematic prompt and talk about things that are enjoyable just for the fun of it. Past examples:
We have also had a couple threads of educational-resource recommendations. These are marginally more serious, since they’re about gathering actually good explanations of things that sneerable people like to pontificate ignorantly on. But I’ll list them here because learning is fun:
Feel free to comment in the old threads and/or suggest new ones in the comments here.
Nagoski’s Come as You Are is quite good! She put in just enough “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” to keep her trade publisher happy, but broadly it is a model of human sexuality which is more complete than any of the pop and folk theories I have seen and more relevant to people I know. Pop psychology may be mostly bullshit and fraud but this specific book is useful.
There’s a change.org petition that’s getting some decent traction to force the Laurelhurst neighborhood in Seattle to stop blocking the neighboring children’s hospital from making full use of their helipads. You know, the ones that are only used to handle medivacs when a kid is facing a life-and-death emergency and minutes could make the difference.
I mean, I don’t have high hopes for an online petition but honestly these days I’m just glad to learn about a problem in the context of literally anything being done to solve it.
A guy I know because he invented a mechanism and I built an alternative implementation of the same behavior out of Lego and put on youtube, cited my thing in his doctoral thesis and will be defending on Monday, and I can watch that online. Can’t wait.
I got white ink in my memorial tattoo and I think it actually looks great?
For something more low-key, I bought a controller and got into Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers a couple weeks ago. Pretty damn tough kart racer, but oh so much fun.
in April I got to visit one group of friends trading thoughts on things we make with our hands, then another group to talk about the profession I trained for but can’t practice. The wannabe Malcolm Gladwells and David Brookses on Twitter and Substack and YouTube will never have either experience, because they don’t have any hard-acquired skill and knowledge that a community with the same hard-won skill and knowledge will respect them for. Communities that do things in the material world which visibly succeed or fail also have less drama than social media and communities where everything is subjective
Some of my berries and herbs are starting to sprout.
Many thanks for starting the thread!
My kids discovered Homestar Runner over the weekend and my eldest demanded that we write an email to Strong Bad right now. We asked the most natural question: “What’s your favorite pokemon?”
The email address is still alive!
Also finished Robert Brockway’s new novel “I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200.” 5/5 stars. Hug your kids and brace yourself for some real emotional extremes. Probably should do those things separately, because while the book is about lonely kids coping with the horrors, it’s not really for them. Also, you might cry. Served with good politics and graphic puppet murder.
I’m grateful for all the queer people, kinky people, and women who taught me things about intimacy that the tech bro on Twitter never seems to have learned. OJST webcomic is still around too.
