Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The men who carry the stretcher move with urgency, as if the doing of care, of gentleness, can undo what has happened to this girl, to this place, to the bodies yet to be dug from beneath the rubble. Someone nearby asks God for revenge. Perhaps God is here somewhere, also searching.

— Omar El Akkad / One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

You’ll still try to destroy me in your own way

Maybe with your hands
Maybe with your silence
Maybe with your tacit approval of this machine

— Joshua Jennifer Espinoza / “It Doesn’t Matter If I’m Understood”

. . . follower counts on social media compress your importance to a single number judged by humans and algorithms alike. Want to be a writer? Be prepared to tell publishers how many TikTok followers you have. Want to sell handcrafted soaps? The number of Instagram followers you have is likely more important than the number of weekends you spend at the local farmer’s market. I’ve seen applicants for a teaching position beat out others for an interview by having a larger YouTube following. Even the importance of politicians is now sometimes measured by the number of social media followers they have. Real impact, meaningful personal connections, and deeper forms of friendship all become secondary to this shallow game of online quantification. Social media is pushing us all to act like social influencers— whether we want to or not.

— Noah Giansiracusa / “Ruled by Numbers: How Data Dominates Every Facet of Our Daily Lives” / Lithub 

I’m a traitor. A confirmed traitor. And happy.

— Reinaldo Arenas / “Goodbye Mother” 

I can’t tell you if this is a good book or bad book. I don’t know if any of my writing is worth a damn, but the process of writing it has forced me to contend with my own complicity within the empire and how with much being within the empire has shaped me, because my knee jerk reaction has always been dependent on this idea that, no matter what, the Democratic Party is better on every issue. That no matter how awful or grotesque they may be, you should always just pick up the ballot and vote for the person with the D under their name, right? I can’t do that anymore, and that has messed me up quite a bit, both in terms of how I think about being in this part of the world, pragmatically and strategically, but also in terms of having to come to terms with my own cowardice, and my own intellectual and moral laziness. I’d been fed this story that, no matter what, you have to vote Democrat because the alternative is so much worse. Maybe that’s still true, but I can’t commit to it anymore.

I find that my fury is directed more at people who looked away than the people who actively cheered this on.

— Omar El Alkad, to Dan Sheehan /“Omar El Akkad on Genocide, Complicit Liberals, and the Terrible Wrath of the West“/ Lithub

Listen, crying bird:
To live without this grief is to see the mountain
without its weight, rivers without depth.

— Zhang Xian / Departure: To the Tune “Mu Lan Hua: Magnolia”

One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.

— Omar El Akkad / One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

What I’m Listening To:

Manifesting his destiny
He says to me, “It’s cold outside”
Cold outside
So naturally I humble thee
Who come to me to be alive
Be alive

— Ty Segall / “Alive”