On Community

Read On Community by Casey Plett

We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it’s slipping away?

In this very long essay (or very short nonfiction book, depending on what framing you prefer), Casey Plett says she’s going to try to define community, then immediately makes it clear that it can’t be defined. Take the phrase “the [X] community.” When I read that phrase, I think: How does this person know this…

Sorry, Bro

Read Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni

When Nar’s non-Armenian boyfriend gets down on one knee and proposes to her in front of a room full of drunk San Francisco tech boys, she realizes it’s time to find someone who shares her idea of romance.
Enter her mother: armed with plenty of mom-guilt and a spreadsheet of Facebook-stalked Armenian men, she convinces Nar to attend Explore Armenia, a month-long series of events in the city. But it’s not the mom-approved playboy doctor or wealthy engineer who catches her eye—it’s Erebuni, a woman as equally immersed in the witchy arts as she is in preserving Armenian identity. Suddenly, with Erebuni as her wingwoman, the events feel like far less of a chore, and much more of an adventure. Who knew cooking up kuftes together could be so . . . sexy?
Erebuni helps Nar see the beauty of their shared culture and makes her feel understood in a way she never has before. But there’s one teeny problem: Nar’s not exactly out as bisexual. The clock is ticking on Nar’s double life—the closing event banquet is coming up, and her entire extended family will be there, along with Erebuni. Her worlds will inevitably collide, but Nar is determined to be brave, determined to claim her happiness: proudly Armenian, proudly bisexual, and proudly herself for the first time in her life.

Bisexual romance!! Bisexual romance is special. There’s your good old straight romance, also known as romance with no adjective in front of it. There’s your gay and lesbian romance, sometimes including a painful coming out, with recent examples including Rana Joon and the One and Only Now and The lesbiana’s guide to Catholic school. But…

The enshittification of the web… in 2012

Liked The Web We Lost by Anil DashAnil Dash (Anil Dash)

The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we’ve lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be.

Devastatia (NSFW website) shared this post that really made me smile. She found this 2012 post by Anil Dash called The Web We Lost. Although I had been blogging since middle school, I bought my first domain name in 2012 (actually, two of them: the personal one (Internet Archive didn’t keep the design, sad times)…