You should read - June 10

I'm taking a break from sturm und drang this week.

Just one thing

How to Be a Protagonist When You’re Not the Chosen One and the World is Unsaveable - Samit Basu, Tor.com

You’re having trouble really fitting into your protagonist role. The world you’re in looks like it can’t be saved. Nobody’s declared you the Chosen One, and your attempts to self-declare seem a little off to the people around you, or even to yourself. Don’t worry, we’re here to help.

Collected ephemera

• Bonhams Items from the estate of Siegfried & Roy: Masters of the Impossible
  As you might imagine, lots of tiger tchotchkes. But, truly, a fascinating ephemera collection.
• The Nation The Tampa Bay Rays, Pride, and the Perils of Corporate Branding

...commodification of an identity and its attendant struggle can have dramatic pitfalls. Of course, we should want and expect every aspect of our society—especially the sports world—to be welcome and opening to LGBTQ people. But one result of commodification is that we start to confuse corporate representation with actual political and social progress.

• MIC What can Star Wars do about its racism problem?
  When your source material includes things like The Searchers, racist structures are going to be embedded in your story structure. Get rid of the midicholorians and the Chosen One. Elevate the idea that anyone can become a Jedi, not just people with “the right blood”. When The Last Jedi positioned Rey as “a nobody”, we were soooooo close to a more inclusive direction. But, then, somehow, Palpatine returned.
• IEEE Standards Association Extended Reality (XR) Ethics White Papers
  Six white papers. Some cover uses of AR/VR generally. Others consider specific applications in education, healthcare, and finance.
• Input Apple’s buy now, pay later service couldn’t have come at a worse time
  Really hate this move by Apple. This isn't the right way to make its products accessible beyond the upper classes.
• Built In What If We Made Social Media Companies Nonprofits?

...these platforms still remain constrained by their structures as for-profit companies with a duty to their shareholders. Whether Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk (if the Twitter deal goes through) are acting in the best interest of the public as they lead their respective companies is missing the larger point: They should never have such unchecked power. To allow such is to enter a future where the public is vulnerable to billionaires’ whims...

• BP&O Brand Review: Forward Majority by Order
  I've seen this non-profit brand identity covered in a few places. It's big and bold and I like it a lot. I do think it could befit from a shot of color, though.
• Vox The philosopher who warned us about loneliness and totalitarianism
• The Conversation Blaming ‘evil’: a philosophical paradox, unpacked
• Fast Company Here’s the real reason why all of the crypto logos look alike
• Core 77 When a Seemingly Good Package Design Decision is the Wrong One
• Religion New Service Tallying the dead is one thing. Naming them would take an ‘inexhaustible voice’.
  From the headline, I assumed this article was about mass shooting deaths. It's about the 1 million US COVID deaths. One. Million.
• Lion's Roar Grandmother Mind

[Dogen said,] you can understand all of Buddhism, but you cannot go beyond your abilities and your intelligence unless you have robai-shin, grandmother mind, the mind of great compassion.

I've added a totally incomplete list of the website I use as sources for each week's links. Always accessible from the top navigation on westernbarbarian.com.