5/1 in the belly of the fish
continuing to read fiction, publishing an article & getting upset about technological advances when used to demean and dehumanize women
Happy June! ☀️ 🌴 🍦
I felt like May was so long and time was abundant and I am so grateful for that because I accomplished a bunch of things that I am proud of and didn’t feel like I was being chased by a cavalry force. 🐎
📜 To start, I wrote something on the idea of a lone mystic and what we can learn from one of the most famous works on the subject: Hayy Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufayl. So here is Arise to Wisdom by yours truly and an accompanying thread on Twitter with some more info!
Some other notable things include: a small but lovely Eid celebration with my family, this nasheed on repeat whenever I drive with my dad, the bloom of all the new flowers and the full force of late spring, a quick trip to New York to meet my co-workers in person for the first time, ice-cream, sushi, Thai, and Greek food with old friends, a beautiful charcuterie board, axe throwing, more than a thousand puzzle pieces, and a short state park trip. Of course, let me not forget Hot Girl Summer Sculpt by Blogilates 💪
I also read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I have been recommending it to everyone I talk to, please read it so we can talk.
I also want to include these great resources to learn about Palestinian liberation and BDS. As a Turkish proverb says, “there is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.”
Decolonize Palestine || Has an FAQ, reading list, articles, blogs and other resources.
BDS Movement || Has an FAQ, action items, boycott list, letters, global campaign info.
Articles
Mom Genes and Other Parent Science: A Book Post by Emily Oster — This is such a cool article/interview with Abigail Tucker who wrote a book called Mom Genes (Goodreads). I love moms so much!
Forging Islamic science by Sally Davies — A great piece on the recent boom of Islamic science miniatures and illustrations that are all fake and forged, and what this sort of revisionism does to the act of storytelling. I found this while designing my Hayy thread.
Rebehold the Stars by Elena Attfield — I remember writing angsty poetry about this as a high schooler, about how we have made it so we cannot see the stars. How we disconnected ourselves from the universe while chasing artificial lights. Here are the reflections of a more mature mind. ✨
The Third Wave “Dream Girl” Begs To Be Broken by Jessica Masterson — A concise and on-point critique of contemporary sexual liberation politics and how young women especially are being groomed to not just withstand but desire pain and degradation. Remember that the original WAP was Women Against Pornography 🔪
AN INTERVIEW WITH IRINA MALENKO, AUTHOR OF SOVIETICA on mltoday — This author has been on my to-read list for a while. Irina Malenko. I just downloaded her book and hope to get around to reading it soon. This interview highlights several things but my favorite was her observations about the introduction of pornography into society (in late USSR) and what it meant for women and girls.
Turks in America by Nicholas Danforth — A wistful piece about assimilation, culture shock, and community that actually made me cry.
What If Everything We Know About Gymnastics Is Wrong? by Lizzie Feidelson
The Toll of Perfectionism: On the Physical and Mental Health of Ballet Dancers by Chloe Angyal
Natalie Portman shares harrowing “sexual terrorism” experience at age 13 by Michelle Garcia (2018) — Not much to say except the reminder that the advent of technology and every new invention thereafter, has only given men more room and access to harass and demean women.
When Love Is Optimized, Is It Still Love?by Sophie Gilbert — I’d recommend this in conjunction with Merve Emre’s Longing Man. I am increasingly interested in how technology is exacerbating the problem men have with loving women as women are. We get it, men have a hard time seeing us as human to start with, but the push to replace us with animatronics is not only dystopian but also deeply unsettling.
DDT’s toxic legacy can harm granddaughters of women exposed, study shows by Rosanna Xia
Creeps and Creepiness by Eric Schwitzgebel
Simone Weil for Americans by Christy Wampole — A really great book review for The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas (Goodreads). It’s definitely made it to the top of my reading list.
The Instagram Ads Facebook Won’t Show You on Signal’s Blog — this is a bizarre collection of ads Signal tried to place with information Facebook has on you. Profiling at its finest.
Substacks & Blogs
on David Foster Wallace (please read this, I am begging you)
on how people of color can be evil too, shocking right? (link)
on Elizabeth Wurtzel (link)
on Palestine (link)
on solidarity & showing up (link)
on how everyone’s a cop in establishment progressivism (link)
this is a publication of an e-mail FdB received about one of his readers’ therapist, it is probably the most infuriating thing I read this past month (link)
on the Memeification of the Metro (link)
on pop science and self-mythologizing (link)
on playing hard to get and mimetic desire (link)