*a quick promise to you: our newsletter will always only ever be written by humans and never by robots. we wish we could say that this is out of love & respect for writing & the environment, and while those are both true, it’s mostly that we really tried a couple years ago for months on end to get the robots to write in this very weird (but always hilarious, obvi) tone and it just…has not delivered. easier AND funnier to keep it highly manual and we are very okay with that. thank you for your understanding.

while normally how a mansplainer gets his water, “well, actually” will explore the different angles of an argument or conversation & favor celebrating nuance & complexity over the short-term satisfaction of “hot take culture”.

What happens when you write a weekly newsletter and you sit down to write one week and find yourself with…nothing to say?

I’ve been working on a piece about Frito-Lay bleeding revenue. I’ve got one in the wings about the state of airline travel today, with Spirit shuttered, Delta pulling some fast ones, Southwest unable to read the room and I guess trying to target a whole new audience. I’ve been mulling over a piece on second (and third and fourth and fifth…) acts and the idea that life doesn’t need to follow an understandably connected line in order for it to be fulfilling (and often doesn’t do that at all, need or not). I’ve been deep in contemplation-teetering-on-spiral about the AI battleground, the “doomers”, the accelerationists, and how the rest of us end up being unwitting or unwilling participants in dreams of notoriety for other people who don’t really care about us. I’ve been full-on hiding from prediction markets and feeling the ghost of Pete Rose rolling over in his grave watching this unholy alliance. I’ve been thinking about barter systems and parasocial relationships and sunk cost bias and chirons and cazimis and our different preferences in how we want to hear bad news. I’ve also just been staring at my garden, willing for this shit to bloom finally, and working through huge life and career changes, and learning how to slow down and listen to my body.

And I suppose sometimes, the thoughts aren’t finished thotting (I tried) and the bakes aren’t finished baking and it’s not the worst idea to say you’re still deep in thought but not ready to say the meaningful thing (because you’re not sure if there’s meaning there yet). 

So for now, for this week, enjoy the tabs I have open and the links I’ve shared here as a little window into my brain for the last seven days, and as a bonus, I’ve tossed in some grants and jobs to round things out a bit more. I’ll be back next week and I’ll bet I have a lot more to say.

danielle has too many tabs open, but she swears they’re mostly interesting. now you can share the fun (pain)!

a statistic that made us go “hmmm” (likely not written on a bathroom stall) & some color to explain it.

full-time, part-time, contract, hybrid, remote, on-site: here are some of the opportunities we heard about this week.

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if you’re looking for grants or funding, we’re sharing some of our favorite opportunities here.

each week, we’ll end our newsletter with action item(s), or “what TF are you supposed to do about all this now?” we hope they help. 🤞🏻