<commit_before>- Thanksgiving
- Ursula K. Le Guin doc
	- against Amazon
	- irony that it's on Amazon Prime Video
	- Prime Video is the first thing that should be spun out of the Amazon monopoly [link to anti-trust investigation report]<commit_msg>more noodling for today's newsletter (after autumn-y walk!)<commit_after>- Thanksgiving
- Ursula K. Le Guin doc
	- against Amazon
	- irony that it's on Amazon Prime Video
	- Prime Video is the first thing that should be spun out of the Amazon monopoly [link to anti-trust investigation report]
	- inspired to buy books: _Parable_ series, by Octavia [E?] Butler, _New and Selected Poems: Volume Two_, by <NAME>; _Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada_, edited by <NAME>, <NAME>, and <NAME>.

- speaking of other worlds...
	- ...Mars is super visible right now! look up this evening, or one of the clear evenings this week—you’ll see it in the south/southeast, a bright dot!
	- I remember a class trip to Washington back in highschool. we went to the Smithsonian [for science?], where a good friend and I looked at the Apollo moon lander. later that night, we were on the Mall. the sky was clear and the moon large, bright, looming before us. I nudged my friend and pointed up at the moon, saying, “Hey, remember that lander we saw earlier today? It went there, to the moon and back.” (of course I don't buy into planetary escapism—a dangerous dream, dreaming it is a luxury affordable only to the richest of the rich—but there's something grounding about thinking about other worlds, how we've endeavoured to learn about them, and so on. no wonder I love star trek so much.)




https://jamesshelley.com/manuscripts/simplicity/obscurity/some-high-mountain/

- Going high (the mountaintop) is one option. Another is to step aside, to be at the level of the flow but consciously turned sideways, watching it. 
- Later in the essay, Shelley offers his own thought experiment, adding the dimension of time. Another version of this, the one I favour, is to think of yourself as at the end of a long life, looking back—to look on any scene as an elderly person might, with the perspective gleaned from a long life. (Of course, we can’t really internalize such perspective without living it. But that’s what thought experiments are for!)
- This is a feeling I’ve been having with work lately: the desire to step back, see things in relation to one another, take a wider perspective. It feels hard to do when everything is in the same shape, the familiar UIs of Google Docs and Slack and email, all in the same 13in screen. 
- I’m also struck by how many of these moments for perspective imply a solitary, aloof vantage point. There’s just as much to learn by employing the attentions and efforts of community, by engaging with a group of people who push you to think more clearly about your world—I’m thinking here, to give just one example, of <NAME>’s participation in a community of sci-fi/fantasy authors over the decades, those who came up together offering a different view of what those genres could be, what issues they could address, and so on.
- > Like pinching a digital photograph, zooming out from the present increases the resolution and clarity of the moment. Just as seeing the Earth from orbit prompts astronauts to recalibrate their assumptions about life, seeing this present moment from the perspective of history invites us to reconsider our priorities, aspirations, and goals. Just as looking at a great city from an airplane window reframes the terms of our imagined self-importance, looking at today from the perspective of centuries invites to reimagine our definitions of value. Watching the great time-lapse of human history gives us invaluable perspective.

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