Digital Weekly Digest #2
Caught on the net 05.xi.23-10.xi.23
Kandace Siobhan Walker
Kandace Siobhan Walker - How I did it: Cowboy
I was very attached to a Bugs Bunny cameo that I knew wasn’t at all necessary. The brushstrokes had too wide a sweep. I left the poem in a big Google doc of works-in-progress.
The writer and artist of Jamaican-Canadian, Saltwater Geechee and Welsh heritage on her debut poetry collection.
Inside the Israeli crackdown on free speech (New Yorker)
The Jewish Israeli activists I interviewed for this story invariably noted that their troubles paled in comparison to the punishment their government was inflicting on Palestinians—in Gaza, certainly, and in the occupied West Bank, but also inside Israel. While Jewish activists are targeted by right-wing mobs with what appears to be the tacit approval of the government, Palestinians experience the full force of the government’s repressive apparatus.
Masha Gessen’s deeply reported article reminds us that freedom of speech is indivisible. Kafka, it turns out, was a realist.
The Friendship Dip (Culture Study)
Over time, your friends begin to die. Or you die. That’s just how aging works. But I also know that at some point, exact age ceases to matter. You’re either a person with time and energy for friends and community or you’re not. You’re a person with a somewhat malleable schedule or you’re not.
How many friends do you have really? Anne Helen Petersen has the facts and figures on how life gets in the way of living.
Robbie Williams’ tabloid life (Guardian)
It’s easy, when you’re commenting publicly on celebrities – whether for a newspaper or on social media – to tell yourself that you’re punching up: they are rich, they are famous, they have chosen to be judged on their art and to live their lives in public. But have they, really? And do the rewards justify the harms?
Back in the day, the TV franchise Fame regularly reminded both viewer and starstruck wannabees portrayed in the drama: “You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying… ”
Elle Hunt, in The Guardian, reminds us that this is an immortal truth.
The UK housing crash is just beginning
(New Statesman £)
For the first time since 2007, mortgage rates have moved the returns on a typical new buy-to-let into negative territory. The small landlord business is dead.
How you react to Will Dunn’s dire warning will tell you lot about about where you stand on the socio-economic ladder.