“People linked together by friendship, affection, or physical love found themselves reduced to hunting for tokens of their past communion within the compass of the ten-word telegram. And since, in practice, the phrases one can use in a telegram are quickly exhausted, long lives passed side by side, or passionate yearnings, soon declined to the exchange of such trite formulas as: 'Am well. Always thinking of you. Love'.”
This passage from THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus brings to mind how interaction with friends and lovers with whom hours upon hours were once upon a time regularly spent laughing, discussing, and debating have now been reduced to likes and shares. An unintended consequence of suddenly being separated by time-zones, and the Defacto mode of communication being social media: instant yet far from substantial.
“Some few of us however persisted in writing letters and gave much time to hatching plans for corresponding with the outside world.”
#reads #journal
The epic that is THE SOLAR GRID—the project I've been working on for the better part of the past 9 years—is now 91% complete.
Entering into hyperfocus mode to push through the remaining 9%.
I'm hardly ever on social media, but this reel about Chinese filmmaker Gao Xiaosong's time in an Israeli Kibbutz is too funny.
#work #comix #tsg #radar
3 days until PAGES FOR PALESTINE at Basket Books in Houston, organized by the Jewish Voice for Peace in partnership with Houston Zine Fest (who also provided the event graphic).
#journal #event
You know things are messed up when the person responsible for the monitoring and censorship of anti-genocidal material posted across Meta's platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), a userbase of almost 4 billion people worldwide, is Jordana Cutler, a person who once worked as a strategy advisor in Netanyahu's 2009 election campaign and later as his Advisor for Diaspora Affairs.
#radar
Was planning on penciling some TSG today, but the whole day was lost to scanning all 200 pages of THE MEANING OF DEATH before shipping it off to its buyer.
I note that the vibrant pink pigments I used on quite a few pages (including the one pictured), barely turn up at all in the scans. Interesting.
#work #journal
This wouldn't be the first time Egypt enters into military conflict with Ethiopia. An attempt to annex Ethiopia was made by Egypt in 1874, which really didn't go very well for Egypt.
Things may get messy because Ethiopia has some sort of military agreement with Turkiye and an arms deal with Israel in addition to a major mining deal too.
#radar
Moved my most-read blog post, THE PALESTINIAN PROBLEM, to the main dot com, and also populated a few of the sections with some work I hadn't yet uploaded. More of that over the next few days.
Penciled one page of TSG and will attempt another right after I break for some excercise.
#journal #work #writing #comix
THE SOLAR GRID #1 is completely sold out. Issues #2-8 are still in stock. I'm sure the time will come when I look upon these single-chapter editions as the strange time capsules that they are.
Started THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus. This being my third Camus, it's now very evident that Camus' writing appeals to me. Adequately sparse, just the right words in exactly the right places in a way that evokes more than what is being said. Something I don't find entirely true of most contemporary authors who lean towards the extra telegrammatic. The buildup of eerie over the first 30 pages in THE PLAGUE is really perfectly paced.
#journal #comix #tsg #reads
Newsletter scheduled to send in a few hours from now. This will be issue #213 and its title is The [Inherent] Evil of Techno-Optimism, and just as it says on the tin, its main feature is a [partial] takedown of Marc Anderseen's horrendous The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.
Inbox 63, RSS 311
A snack and dishes before tending to those. Would like to kick the weekend off with a clean slate. Sumud for Palestine tomorrow.
#journal