Your sense of time is broken
On my mind
Hello friends!
Did you miss me? Probably not, because your inbox has 520 unread emails and you had an extra week to get through the last newsletter I sent you. It’s okay. I understand. My time in California was short and sweet but served as a good reminder that taking breaks is very important even if you think you don’t have time. Life is overwhelming, is it not?
What I’m noting
The 2010s Broke Our Sense of Time // Take a deeeeep breath before reading this piece.
“This long and wearying decade is coming to a close, though, even if there’s no sense of an ending. People are always saying stuff like: Time has melted; my brain has melted; Donald Trump has melted my brain; I can’t remember if that was two weeks ago or two months ago or two years ago; what a year this week has been. Donald Trump tells the story of 2016 again. Your Facebook feed won’t stop showing you a post from four days ago, about someone you haven’t seen in three years. The Office, six years after it ended, might be the most popular show in the United States. Donald Trump tells the story of 2016 again. One high schooler dances to a Mariah Carey song from 2009 (“Why you so obsessed with me?”) in a video that loops in 15-second increments on TikTok; then other teens do it; then a high school dance team dances that dance to this Mariah Carey song as a gym full of teens sings along, in a video that loops in 15-second increments on TikTok. Donald Trump tells the story of 2016 again. What was here yesterday no longer is.”
Listen: The View from Somewhere // This is a new podcast that interrogates the idea of “objectivity” in journalism and how it’s been used to hurt marginalized communities. You’ll hear from different journalists and their experiences standing up for justice while balancing their professional obligations. The host, Lewis Raven Wallace, was fired from the public radio show Marketplace, for writing a personal piece about being a trans journalist trying to write ethical stories in the Trump administration.
Listen: How to Resist // I went to a live taping this week for The Intercept’s Deconstructed podcast hosted by Mehdi Hasan. He interviewed Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michael Moore about defeating Trump in 2020, why they endorsed Bernie Sanders for president, and the challenges progressives face in the country. It was a fascinating and unexpectedly funny conversation about the strange point in history we are in.
Watch: Modern Love // I binge-watched this series on Amazon Prime over the weekend based off real-life messy, sad, joyful, weird love stories from the New York Times’s “Modern Love” column. My favorite episodes were the first three. I cried a lot (probably also from exhaustion). I just read that the show has been renewed for season two! While I enjoyed the series, I also agree with this critical review of how it adapted the personal essays. Don’t read it until you’ve watched, because spoilers.
Watch: Fleabag // I also finished this brilliant show last week, which sadly only has two seasons and will only ever have two seasons. I don’t want to ruin what it’s about, but essentially it follows a British woman navigating her work, weird family, relationships and the loss of her loved ones. I am now such a fan of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and how she wrote about grief, love and anger with wit and style.
Read: Children of Blood and Bone // This young adult book has gotten so much buzz since it published for getting a huge book and movie deal for the now 25-year-old author, Tomi Adeyemi. It’s a dystopian fantasy set in the land of Orisha (inspired by Nigeria) and involves a quest to return magic to its oppressed people. I liked the unique incorporation of West African myths and the analogy to racism and police brutality. At times, I found the writing to be simple and repetitive (there are multiple narrators) and would have wanted stronger descriptions of the world and how magic actually works. It’s very obvious the author was inspired by books like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and Divergent, but overall it’s a light (albeit long) read if you’re up for it.
That’s it for me. Hope you all have a good weekend. Keep sending me your thoughts and what you’re noting.
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— Nesima