lqb2weekly #191 (6 jan 2024)

lawrence barriner ii

Jan 07, 2024

hey,

it’s 2024. happy new year (so sayeth pope gregory xiii)!

a few words on palestine:

remember refaat alareer
read dear friend, nadav, did some time travel and wrote to his past self. it’s a beautiful, powerful piece that i highly suggest reading (and yall know i love a good time travel situation: see post-patriarchy futures and unleashing alternative futures).
i am fasting on thursdays as a part of the growing fast for gaza. check it out if interested: bit.ly/fastforgaza

in other news, this feels like a shockingly full newsletter. many things are happening:

liberation tarot IS IN PEOPLE’S HANDS. SO WILD. if you got one, i (and all the other contributors) would love to see you opening it, using it, anythinging it. plz share! for example, my beloved sól posted a vid on IG of their “almost unboxing” and it’s :fire emoji:. if you follow them already, you can see it here. if you don’t, follow them and then watch :D
1. even though our kickstarter is way over, you can also just buy a deck over here from PM press!
i’m adding a new newsletter section: lqb2puns. FAM, i can’t believe it took me 7 years (lol check out my first newsletter from 8 jan 2017 lol) to include one of my BIGGEST loves into this newsletter: puns! i love puns so much that my closest friends and family know to send me their worst. so yea. get ready for lots of groaning and near vomit-inducing punnery. i promise to pull no punches. :P also feel free to send me bad puns. i store them all at lqb2puns.tumblr.com
1. sidenote: happy 7th birthday to lqb2weekly! 🥳🥂
i can’t remember how i stumbled on this but one subscriber to lqb2weekly put out a cool piece of writing. check out this piece from marsha. i was piqued because of the playlist included at the end. she describes it like this:
1. “Inspired by my teenage taste in music, I curated a small playlist capturing a range emotions and experiences from the 50 year history of the modern sustainability movement.” it’s a wild ride but v fun and good if you’re into movement history and music.
also, lqb2weekly is at 600 SUBSCRIBERS as of late december. i can barely believe that. and with a 61% open rate in 2023, i’m feeling pretty proud of this piece of work. i REALLY appreciate everyone’s feedback and attention on this little piece of the internet. i hope to continue to keep it going strong this year.
lastly, my first solo podcast is OUT IN THE WORLD officially! check it out: we are what we practice :D there’s a few episodes out now and the rest of season 1 will come out over jan/feb. enjoy, frands :D lmk what you think.
1. here’s the 97-second trailer (just ignore the part where i said the first episode will come out in april 2023 and it’s fully 8 months late lol).
2. sidenote: for some reason it’s not yet available on apple podcasts. will share an update here once that happens. i might also share about one episode per newsletter for the next newsletters. idk we’ll see! stay tuned.
3. another sidenote: the podcast has a patreon. if you’re a paid subscriber to lqb2weekly, you will automatically get added to the patreon free of $$. for now, there’s no bennies for that so not a big deal but someday there will be :D

on to the things!

(!!) pick of the pack

writing

some things i’ve written since the last newsletter:

Dec 27, 2023 | family vacation: an oxymoron
Dec 19, 2023 | hutch's reactive teaching
Dec 11, 2023 | movement phrases to let go: "which side of history are you on?"
Nov 26, 2023 | "whose mouth do you kiss in?"

quotes

there is nothing new under the sun. also, full transparency, many of these quotes come from james clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter (which i love).

Yet it is in these moments of defeat that hopeful, collective struggle retains its greatest power. I can transcend my dying body by hitching my future to yours. We can transcend the darkness of this moment by joining the struggles of past and future freedom fighters. — Ady Barkan

Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. — Charlie Munger

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress! — richard feynman

Arguably the most important skill is controlling your attention. This goes beyond merely avoiding distractions. The deeper skill is finding the highest and best use for your time, given what is important to you. More than anything else, controlling your attention is about being able to figure out what you should be working on and identifying what truly moves the needle. — James Clear

Jean-Georges Vongerichten showed me the value in taking away, taking things off of a plate. He always talked about two, three, four elements on a plate. That’s it. The more you put on the plate, the easier it is to hide. The more you take away, there’s nowhere to hide—it has to be good. — Wylie Dufresne