A Weekly List

a list of 3's for the week of April 13th

What I’ve been thinking about:

1. Kairos versus Chronos Time

2. The fact that GLP-1 medications “have been identified as promising candidates for modulating the neural circuits involved in addiction.”¹ This seems good at first glance. But this med class is essentially turning down the “food noise” or, it seems, the noise of compulsions in general. But compulsion is related to desire; so if we’re turning down the desire to eat, the desire to do drugs, the desire to…what else? If these drugs are impacting dopaminergic, glutamatergic, and GABAergic neurotransmission in our brain, that has potentially far reaching consequences.

3. Bronnie Ware’s Regrets of the Dying² - a list of the top 5 things people say on their death bed.

Things I’ve been reading:

1. Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde - one of the most important pieces, ever. Literally never gets old, I come back to it often.

2. 25. It’s Not Only The Violence: Women are Enraged by Men’s Cultivated Ignorance - It’s long. Please read it anyway. Especially if the title offends you.

3. How to Make your Brain your Best Friend: A Neuroscientist’s guide to a healthier, happier life by Rachel Barr

Things I’ve been watching:

1. I have watched no TV or movies this week, I was too busy attending panels at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado. All the panels are available to rewatch for free, and there are so many great speakers. On the subject of film, I learned about:

2. Black Film Archive/Black Film Archive by Maya S. Cade, who sat on one of the panels I attended about Independent Films. I’m looking forward to exploring this site.

3. IndieCollect, a non profit that rescues, restores, and brings to audiences independent films that are at risk of being lost forever.

Things I’ve loved recently:

All from the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado:

1. Listening to Hadar Harris speak on multiple panels, including Trad Wives and the Conservative Movement, Empowering Citizens: Civic Education, Information and YOU, People Before Papers: Embracing the Stories of Migration. Favorite quote: “The demonization of the other is a political tactic to consolidate power and operate under the optics of fear.”

2. Alexa Mohsenzadeh, cofounder of HerDrive, making me aware of the field of feminist neuroscience. (Neurofeminism and feminist neurosciences: a critical review of contemporary brain research).

3. Ty Tashiro talking about a student forming The Luddite Club in an attempt to get offline and cultivate more in-person human connection. This was during the Beyond Digital Isolationism: Reclaiming Human Connection panel in which multiple panelists teared up.

Things I’ve Bought Recently:

1. I try to not buy lots of things, which I’m realizing makes this section difficult…

2. Cerave Moisturizing Cream ~ the only thing I buy consistently besides food, are moisturizing things to put on my face and body. My cousin’s 17-year-old introduced me to this when I was in Berlin and now I can’t use anything else. Thanks, Lio.

3. $600 worth of repairs on my car. Which it needs because I’m about to drive it to the West Coast.

Tools:

1. Activist Checklist: Security Essentials - I’m not an activist, but this list is helpful if you just want to (somewhat) extricate yourself from the companies that are constantly spying on you, tracking you, and mining your data. "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

2. Freeze your credit to protect yourself from identity theft - you have to go to the websites of all three credit bureaus, but it’s relatively easy.

3. Brick - just got this to help manage screen time…I’ll let you know how it goes as I start to use it more.

Poem:

Dreamwood by Adrienne Rich 

In the old, scratched, cheap wood of the typing stand
there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see
or the child’s older self, a poet,
a woman dreaming when she should be typing
the last report of the day. If this were a map,
she thinks, a map laid down to memorize
because she might be walking it, it shows
ridge upon ridge fading into hazed desert
here and there a sign of aquifers
and one possible watering-hole. If this were a map
it would be the map of the last age of her life,
not a map of choices but a map of variations
on the one great choice. It would be the map by which
she could see the end of touristic choices,
of distances blued and purpled by romance,
by which she would recognize that poetry
isn’t revolution but a way of knowing
why it must come. If this cheap, mass-produced
wooden stand from the Brooklyn Union Gas Co.,
mass-produced yet durable, being here now,
is what it is yet a dream-map
so obdurate, so plain,
she thinks, the material and the dream can join
and that is the poem and that is the late report.

Quote:

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
― Anais Nin

Song:

The world is rough, and this week has been particularly difficult for survivors, with the Rape Academy story breaking. It’s hard to not hate it here. Princess Nokia’s song gets at some kind of rage that a lot of people are feeling right now.

Meme(or…tweet? or random photos from my camera roll):

the local wine merchant subtly giving the finger to Whole Foods next door, a sticker at a protest, a coloring book at a grocery store, a flyer in a portland bookstore, the costar astrology app trolling me, the only thing I spend money on besides food

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12372146/

2. Bronnie Ware spent several years caring for dying people in their homes. Her full-length memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, shares further wisdom from dying people and how Bronnie’s own life was transformed through this learning. It is available in 32 languages. http://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying