January 17, 2021

I always thought language was / Akin to the body

Unsent Tweets, March 2020-Jan 2021

coping with the pandemic by watching and reading and listening to work created by people so obviously brilliant and good at their jobs it’s almost physically painful

—

we’re not going to solve mis and dis-info by having everyone suddenly become a data scientist or epidemiologist. We’re experiencing a narrative crisis, a crisis of trust in institutions and people.

—

Audible trying to sell me on their service using promoted tweets featuring Michael Gladwell and Kevin Hart is…whatever that is.

—

If institutions and organizations are serious about correcting wrongs and addressing structural failures, then they must be willing to offer buyouts to people in mid-to-senior roles to create space and opportunities for folks from underrepresented groups.

And if people in positions of power in these organizations are invested in the change they claim they wish to see, they will remove themselves from the equation (and the payroll) and ensure that those who are considered to replace them are given the resources and timeline to succeed.

We cannot fix decades of structural inequity by tinkering at the margins. How many of us care enough to get out of the way?

—

so substack took VC money and pivoted to being a media company because that’s obviously a model that’s working

—

It’s all fun and games and social justice until someone asks why you don’t pay your interns.

—

folks from non status quo backgrounds working in media and tech navigating 2020 knowing full well their colleagues don’t quite think they deserve to be on that Zoom call

—

would very much like to reclaim mornings and evenings and weekends from the tyranny of the expectation that in every one of those rare hours when i’m somehow not working for my actual job that i should be working for free

—

just going to leave this here

—

curiousity is so much more interesting than righteousness and so much less well paid

—

I think constantly about the callousness of people not understanding why not being able to have or attend a wake or the other rites that accompany the death of a loved one is such a tragedy.

I think about this constantly because I know exactly what it feels like.

—

Wealth is important to me only in so far as it would allow me to redistribute it to the causes and the people making work and doing work that recognizes and reflects what’s really at stake.

Also I would like to have a single place to house all my books.

—

how many of the people upset that someone might earn a $15 minimum wage have ever worried about—or even paid!—rent.

—

Attribution:

I always thought language was
Akin to the body,
Padlocked oh so delicately to a pulse.
It tells you in the beginning was the word.
This was before 1619, before Trayvon, before Till,
Before Malcolm and Martin and Michael went still.
Before the echo that is breath’s
Pilgrimage to the start of the sound.

— from What words begin by Amanda Gorman