Thought Shrapnel

In his most recent newsletter, Warren Ellis mentioned something that I’ve been feeling, but feeling somewhat guilty about. Namely: it’s difficult to carve out space to live a flourishing life when you spend most of your days avoiding bad news.

Yes, I’m sharing some of it here — or at least, commentaries on some of it. How could I not? My feeds feature little else but people throwing their hands in the air about democracy and/or AI. But I think think thi sis good advice from Ellis.

Thing is, not only is the news all the bloody same, all about the same country and the same handful of main characters, and every news service reports all the incremental updates to the same bloody stories every sixty seconds: but that constant battering tide of zone-flooding shit compresses time and shrinks space to think. And I want this year to feel like a year and not three bloody weeks.

It’s not about “taking a break from the news,” which various newsletters have suggested is now A Thing. And, you know, if you live in certain places right now, taking a break from the news might feel a luxury at best and a wilful ignoring of alarm bells at worst. On a single evening last week I talked to three people setting plans to bug out of the US..

It’s more about putting the news in its damn place and creating more space to live in.

Source: Orbital Operations

Image: Utsav Srestha