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Behind the Scenes

Now that I’ve fixed some URL rewriting settings, I think it’s safe to announce that this blog has now officially moved! I’m no longer at spencerdub.me/blog; instead, this blog now lives at blog.spencerdub.me. Also, I’ve changed the URL permalink writing rules, dropping the year and month from the URLs in favor of simply including the title of the post.

I’m announcing this mostly to keep a record. If I did it right, you shouldn’t have to do nearly anything; I’ve been wrestling with redirect rules in the hopes that most old links to my content will seamlessly lead to the new locations. I have found one strange side effect, though: spencerdub.me/blog/ now redirects to Blogathon Post #1.

Not sure what’s up there, but it’s kinda amusing. I’ll try to fix it later if I can figure it out.

Anyway, update your bookmarks!

[editor’s note, Jan. 28, 2022: This might be even more borked than it was at the time of writing, due to the recent website disaster.]

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Since I don’t yet have a cool “Reading” page like gRegor Morrill’s, I figured I’d instead share the books that are currently at the top of my to-read list.

  • What is Communist Anarchism?, by Alexander Berkman. I’m currently reading this one, and am about 80% through. It’s damn good and shockingly relevant, despite being over 90 years old. You can get it for free at The Anarchist Library, by the way.
  • Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America, by Sarah Kendzior. Sarah Kendzior is a modern-day Cassandra, who has been warning us since before the Trump presidency about the authoritarian threat he presents. This is her latest book, all about… that.
  • The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin. I learned about this one from Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios, whose ongoing video series The Alt-Right Playbook I can’t praise enough. Ian shares his research for the series in a research masterpost and occasionally on Twitter, which is how I learned about this one. I’m very eager to learn more about the history and development of modern conservatism through this book.
  • The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer. Also an Innuendo Studios recommendation, this free book consolidates decades of Bob Altemeyer’s research into the subject. Danskin recommends it as “One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far”.

I’m not expecting this to be fun reading, but I think it’s going to help me develop a more thorough understanding of our modern political moment.

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Garden beds at sunset

I woke up and started my morning on the couch, a hot mug of tea in front of me and my journal in my lap. I’ve always been a journaler, of course, but that’s taken on new importance in the last month, as I’ve felt some duty–as well as a desire–to chronicle what my life has looked like during this historic crisis. I will someday be a primary source, if for nobody more than myself and my people.

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Good evening, friends.

Today, as Rachel reported, our local hospital in Salem gave away sew-at-home kits for locals to make protective face masks. The plan was to distribute enough kits for 10,000 masks over the next two days.

The kits were completely given away within half an hour, and so many people showed up to claim some that a police officer had to direct traffic.

Many of us, especially in the US, grew up being taught a myth: that people are intrinsically selfish and lazy. Remove the monetary inventive to work, we’re told, and we’ll do nothing but sit on the couch or stare at the clouds. You have to be ready to be completely independent, we’re told, because when the chips are down, no one will want to help you.

Alexandra Erin, one of my favorite political commentators on Twitter, commented a couple years ago that our beliefs about “human nature” become manifest in a crisis. If you believe that there’s not enough for everyone and people are “naturally” going to pilfer and hoard, then your natural sense of self-preservation will encourage you to do the same. Like Vonnegut’s ice-nine, when that behavior is introduced into the community, it perpetuates itself: since you’re hoarding, your neighbors will see that there’s less to go around, and they too will be encouraged to do the same. But if you instead act as though there is enough, as if people are generally trustworthy and kind, as if the risk of being taken advantage of is existent but mitigable, then your generosity will create the conditions for its own replication.

It’s the difference between a mindset of scarcity and one of abundance.

Salemites, like many of us, have an abundance of time right now, and the natural human desire to work and help, so they cleared out those mask kits in under an hour. Last week, Divine Distillers, like many distillers across the country, recognized they had an abundance of equipment, know-how, and alcohol, so set to work creating alcohol-based sanitizer to give away for free. No one needed to be coerced. They simply saw their abundances and offered them to help their community.

Don’t believe it when someone tells you humans are naturally selfish. Look at how many people are staying home, sacrificing their free movement and their social lives so that this epidemic might be kept at bay. And don’t believe it when they say we’re naturally lazy–because look at how many of us are eager for something productive to do after only a week or two of isolation.

Take heart in the compassion of your fellow humans. Our world is nowhere near as nasty or barren as some might have you believe–if only we share our abundance.

Dream big and fight hard,
Your buddy Spencer

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This post was originally shared on my Facebook page.

Good morning, friends.

It is likely to get a lot worse this week. That’s the nature of exponential growth. Hopefully, within another week, we’ll start seeing the effects of our mitigation strategies, but given how spottily they’ve been implemented so far… I’m not confident.

This could have been prevented. So much of this could be prevented. But the president, the federal government, business owners, corporate shareholders–so many people who have the power to do something do not. They placate, they shift blame, they try to consolidate power.

Many people have spent the last four years insisting that somehow, the system will correct itself. By now, I hope that’s obviously false. All we have is each other. There’s no automatic safeguard, only people’s intentional choices.

I don’t want to encourage panic here. Panic doesn’t solve anything. But if you’ve got anger baking in your stomach, now is the time to interrogate it. Anger shows you what you value: it says there’s a gulf between where you are and where you think things ought to be. Anger is an activating emotion: it fills us with a surge of energy to try to close that gap.

So if you’re angry–what is the better world you envision? And what do you want to do to get there?

How much longer can this go on? If they give trillions of your money to bail out companies but fail to protect workers? If the federal government continues to withhold aid and refuses to order production of critical supplies? If the president keeps lying about unproven cures, lying about the disease, lying about his response–just plain lying?

How much longer will it go on before it spurs you to act?

A couple days ago, in my video on the threat response cycle, I said we’ve been freezing because neither fight nor flight are viable. But we aren’t helpless. While we still can’t punch coronavirus in the face, there ARE active things we can do. Like organizing. Like getting to know our neighbors. Like joining networks of mutual aid.

You can channel your anger and fear into those activities. Let your hands, shaking with rage, lay bricks for a better tomorrow.

It all starts with recognizing what is so broken and imagining how it could be different.

Dream big and fight hard,
Your buddy Spencer

PS: As much as you can, STAY THE FUCK HOME. ❤️

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This post was originally shared to my Facebook page.

As the federal government starts actually talking about some form of a temporary relief payment, let’s talk about means-testing.

Means-testing is the process by which the government decides who is eligible for a social service. Your income must be below X. Your family must look like Y.

How do you verify that someone’s income really is below X? Well, you have to inspect their accounts. You have to monitor them. You have to treat them with suspicion. You’re encouraged to err on the side of false positives–if you think someone might be ineligible, better to cut them off than risk letting someone “cheat the system”.

That requires extra resources.

For whatever reason, there’s a certain subset of liberals that have, this year, decided that the “universal” in “universal healthcare” and “universal basic income” should really mean “universal only for people who need it”. They welcome means-testing so that “the kids of rich billionaires don’t get free college”. And look, I understand the sentiment. It comes from a good place.

But the resources and system it would require to ensure that “only people who need it” get these benefits? They make the process so much more bloated, inefficient, and cruel.

Universal should mean universal. That’s the simplest way forward. If the government cuts you a $1000 emergency relief check and you don’t need it, then donate it to someone who does. Give it to the Americans United to Eat the Rich charity of your choice. You have many options for not keeping it. But let’s not preemptively burden a program for social good with the stipulations, bureaucracy, and inefficiency that means-testing requires.

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This post was originally shared on my Facebook page.

Good evening, friends.

I think for many of us, it’s starting to settle in that we’re in for a marathon, not a sprint. Today, Oregon Governor Kate Brown extended the state’s school closures through April 28th. Today is also the day that Oregon’s closure of dine-in restaurants and bars went into effect. Thousands of Oregonians, my brother included, are now either out of work or very near. McMenamin’s, a local brewpub and hospitality chain, is laying off 3,000 workers. It’s a temporary measure so the workers can immediately claim unemployment, but still–this is huge.

I’ll be honest: I’m feeling the weight of this today. I’m seeing clients via video chat and suspecting that I may not see them face-to-face again for a long time. There’s an enormity to this. A pandemic is beyond the human comprehension in so many ways: it is spread by invisible viruses, an effective response looks like an overreaction, and it connects us all, on a scale so much greater than we can grasp. Add to that the huge uncertainty in what comes next, the disappointment in our leaders and the decades-long decimation of our social fabric, and… oof. Yeah. I’m gonna need a good cry tonight.

Part of being in it for the long haul means recognizing that our emotions are likely to run the gamut. This isn’t like an afternoon of protest, where you’ll be driven by one or two primary feelings. This is very likely going to be part of the fabric of our lives for months. You’ll feel calm and capable for a while, you’ll feel worried or stressed or anxious, you’ll feel angry, you’ll feel hopeful, and, yeah, you may also just feel depressed. Despondent. Overwhelmed.

That’s normal. And if we expect it, we don’t need to be surprised or disappointed when we or the people we love run into it.

I don’t have much to give tonight, and that’s okay. One of my favorite quotes goes, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” In the coming months, we’re all going to have times when we’re tapped out. If this pandemic is a marathon rather than a sprint, then it behooves all of us to practice taking care of ourselves just as much as we would anyone else, and falling back when we need to regroup.

When you’re rested and ready again, there’s good work to be done as we march toward a brighter future together.

Dream big and fight hard,
Your buddy Spencer

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This post was originally shared on my Facebook page.

A couple things tonight before bed:

1. Now is a great time to pick up journaling! Even if you just log what happened in the day, it’s a good way to fight boredom. Plus, it’s not every day that you live through a pandemic–your seemingly mundane (or not) observations today might make really interesting reading in the future!

2. Even when we’re cooped up, we’re still humans, and that means we’re still creative and artistic and appreciative of things that speak to the human spirit. Now would be an awesome time to practice and share a skill with your friends. Sing! Play an instrument! Draw! Write poetry, or read it! It won’t be perfect, and that’s okay–maybe one thing we shed as we walk through this pandemic can be our inhuman perfectionistic expectations of ourselves. A big tip of the hat to my friend Meaghan Russell for inspiring this with her #SequesterSongs project.

3. Please strongly consider reaching out to your neighbors if you haven’t already. I did so on Friday via letter and have already heard from three of the households that live on my street. We are going to be so much stronger during this if we can rely on one another and form networks of mutual aid. No one knows where this is going–so try to start forming solidarity now.

4. As the effects of the pandemic intensify, practice taking stock. What do you have in abundance? That’s what you can share. What is scarce for you? That’s where you can turn to your community for help. There’s no shame in personal scarcity–it’s impossible to have everything all the time.

5. From my own experience, my anxiety is at its worse when I feel like I’m alone and have to shoulder it all myself. Don’t be silly and anxious like me. Reach out to your friends. Reach out to your neighbors. Reach out to the people who will help carry the load with you. This world was not meant to be borne on individual backs.

6. In terms of personal projects, I’m still working at getting Motley, my little social network, ready to launch. With more and more of us practicing social distancing, I realize online communication is gonna become all the more important. Believe me, I want to get Motley off the ground so that we have a little community space that’s not run by a giant untrustworthy megacorporation.

7. Also, I’m working on moving my blog, which is why I’m posting this big thing here instead of there.

8. Finally, I’ll reiterate what I said earlier this weekend: I have an open invitation to anyone who wants to chat via text, phone, or video. I’m on Marco Polo and Signal, both of which are great apps. Reach out if you’re feeling cabin fever, or if you just want to say hi.

I’ve long hated the overuse of this slogan and its endless remixes, but I think it’s more apt now than ever before in my life: keep calm and carry on. We’ll get through this together. Don’t let fear harden your heart or wall you off.

Dream big and fight hard,
Your buddy Spencer

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Radicalized by Cory DoctorowCory Doctorow
Four short stories about the near future and the dystopia we're building for ourselves.

Doctorow is quickly becoming one of my favorite sci-fi writers, because he understands how sci-fi can help us understand our present and imagine different futures. These four short stories are each grim in their own ways, but they also contain within them the seeds of better futures: futures built on cooperation and justice. I want Cory Doctorow in my commune when society collapses.

This book is a nice companion to Doctorow’s Walkaway.

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Planning Out the Next Generation of Post Kinds by Chris M.Chris M. (mrkapowski.com)

I think *my* idealised end goal would be to have an "Insert [Post Kind]" button in the Block Editor, which when I give it a URL inserts a Block with all of the correct mark-up for the information available (essentially inserting an equivalent of the current post_kinds template files). Ideally the block would give me options to toggle icons/snippets, edit some of the data, etc.

By having the Post Kinds as a Block, the user would be free to insert the information wherever they like in the post, and even have multiple "Kinds" attached to a single post.

Admittedly, I don’t know what would be needed to enable this, so I might be imagining something which isn’t realistically possible…

I like this idea a lot. On an abstract level, I don’t think there’s any reason why a single post must only contain one “kind”. If I check in at a location and say I had a nice meal and am also enjoying listening to some live music, provided those are all marked up correctly with mf2, they could all go in the same post, right?

I anticipate some difficulty, though, with WordPress, because that would be a significant change for the plugin. Right now, post kinds are their own taxonomy, which allows a quick filtered view by kind (https://mrkapowski.com/kind/reply, for example). If post kinds become blocks in the block editor, we’ll have to rethink the whole architecture.