Eat a donut. Stay.

No Hemlock Rock (don't kill yourself)

by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself.
Don't. Eat a donut, be a blown nut.
That is, if you're going to kill yourself,
stand on a street corner rhyming
seizure with Indonesia, and wreck it with
racket. Allow medical terms.
Rave and fail. Be an absurd living ghost,
if necessary, but don't kill yourself.

Let your friends know that something has
passed, or be glad they've guessed.
But don't kill yourself. If you stay, but are
bat crazy you will batter their hearts
in blooming scores of anguish; but kill
yourself, and hundreds of other people die.

Poison yourself, it poisons the well;
shoot yourself, it cracks the bio-dome.
I will give badges to everyone who's figured
this out about suicide, and hence
refused it. I am grateful. Stay. Thank
you for staying. Please stay. You
are my hero for staying. I know
about it, and am grateful you stay.

Eat a donut. Rhyme opus with lotus.
Rope is bogus, psychosis. Stay.
Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus.
Dare not to kill yourself. I won't either.

"No Hemlock Rock (don't kill yourself)" by Jennifer Michael Hecht from Who Said. © Copper Canyon Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-monday-december-d74?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Beam us up, Sal Khan

We can dream.

"Few people may view the Star Trek universe through an economic lens, but doing so provides a window into a world that might soon be upon us. All of classical economics is based on the notion of scarcity—namely, that there isn’t usually enough of anything to give everyone everything they want or need. Because of that, we use markets and pricing to allocate those goods, services, and resources to where they might result in the highest benefit.

In Star Trek, however, there isn’t much scarcity. Technology has allowed that society to replicate any food they want, transport themselves thousands of miles in the blink of an eye, communicate over light-years, and travel among the stars. All of humanity in that world has been fully educated so that they can participate in this bounty. Everyone is an explorer, researcher, engineer, artist, doctor, or counselor. Generative AI has the potential to allow many dimensions of our own society to be similarly low scarcity or highly abundant. Do we have the will to take us to the utopia of Star Trek?"

"Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)" by Salman Khan: https://a.co/1lPYq00

read a book

When the news is one report of human suffering — or environmental degradation, or violation of democratic norms — after another, people might be forgiven for averting their eyes from the headlines in favor of getting a better night's sleep. The only problem: In a democracy, tuning out means giving the foxes full run of the henhouse.

In recent years, I've been looking for a solution to this conundrum. How is it possible to be a well-informed citizen and simultaneously a calm, mostly cheerful, more or less sane human being?

The closest thing I've found to a workaround is the right dosing. I follow the news during daylight hours. At night, I read a book...

Margaret Renkl 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/opinion/reading-novellas-short-novels.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

We are also "earthstuff..."

From Samantha Harvey's (Orbital) Booker acceptance speech:

https://www.instagram.com/share/reel/_zUtd7Vm5

Possibility, on her birthday

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

"I dwell in Possibility..." by Emily Dickinson, from The Poems of Emily Dickinson. © The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-tuesday-c93?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

English heritage

That ubiquitous internet attribution to Ben Franklin of the line that beer is proof that God loves us is surely apocryphal.

"His (London) colleagues nicknamed him the Water-American because he refused to partake in the ubiquitous beer drinking: a pint before breakfast, with breakfast, after breakfast, with the midday meal, at six, and a last one before bed. (Franklin preferred Madeira.) Franklin also prided himself on healthy habits…"

— The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss

Conversation starter

 

Twain

https://www.threads.net/@pennycees/post/DDAykSFSnWR?xmt=AQGzezWuPXDHBQ50a_pchBSxr_2GUdKK44KUf1V4yTw-ow