JNL

Architectural humanities and economic geography; ordained socially progressive (as in liberation focused) faith leader

I understand myself to be here, by which I mean on the planet, to love well and probably helplessly but also accountably, to do the best thinking and imagining that we can together, and to notice and tell stories about our delight and awe and wonder and grief.

I am against genocide in all its forms.

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npub143j8zsk3phntfuc8rdmduf52z8vecaej48ntj60wsq0fnfjla79qu7lag6

NIP-05 Address

jnl@hcommons-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs2cer3gtgsme457vr3kak7y69prkvuwue2ne4ed8hgq85e5e07lzspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgjhrgaj

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relay.nostr.band

Author Public Key

npub143j8zsk3phntfuc8rdmduf52z8vecaej48ntj60wsq0fnfjla79qu7lag6

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Last Notes

2025-06-02 02:31:16

It's honestly very annoying (and unhelpful) that home ec has been dropped from basically every public junior high school. Those skills were important and BOY am I seeing their lack in our teens.
We have, as a case in point, a rising 9th grader who has taught himself to do incredible things in the kitchen (the best cheeseburger, filet mignon, and french omelettes that I have ever had have been from his hands) but he doesn't know how to use a butter knife to check for brownie doneness or how to level a measuring cup without making a giant mess or how to integrate basic clean up into prep.
Yes, these things can be taught piecemeal as they pop up, but it's really an issue of missing basics.
Those were once taught as a social leveler for all kids, whether they were also coached at home or not.

2025-05-31 21:38:59

social scientists stop uncritically using Malthus and Garrett Hardin in undergrad courses challenge

2025-05-31 19:00:28

It feels like we went right from "we can do cultural sex saturation EVERYWHERE but only Esther Perel gets to talk about sex in long term partnership" to "we are all going to be reactive pious prudes but also women's bodies are only for childbearing" and I HATE IT because what I actually want us to talk about is "wow, married sex is such a free gift, provided you give it time and attention, and it's frankly radical in all of the ways to recognize that"

2025-05-05 12:51:51

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Where we went: Finhaut, Valais canton, Switzerland; Haarlem, the Netherlands
Hugely recommend both. The Swiss Alps in July is the toughest of acts to follow and Haarlem so rose to the task that we loved it equally. Two just wonderful places to be, and I recommend in each case staying long enough to really get a feel for how you might live there.

2025-05-05 12:47:07

A year ago we were putting pieces in place to spend a month in Europe with our teens (who were traveling overseas for the first time).
We picked two places, one a small town in a rural mountain area with a small city accessible down the mountain, and one a small-medium sized city in close proximity to a huge city. We chose these places because they were public transit served as a way of life and we wanted to see what that looked like. We wanted our teens to see what different infrastructure could mean.
We all wanted to know what else was possible.
This summer our travels will be on this side of the Atlantic, but we are watching, as we hoped, the roots of faith in "something better" grow in our kids.
It was the trip of a family lifetime, the trip of a childhood, and also the trip of the future.
So much more could be possible if more of us could see what alternatives truly look like.
It's not even a huge goal, but preventing its realization is what this fight is really about.

2025-05-05 00:35:16

Last night I got a splinter in my foot before bed and then gasped because the flip flops I'd been wearing left the bottoms of my feet black 😂
My spouse went and got a basin of water, a cloth, and a bar of soap and sat on the floor and washed my feet. (!)
Readers, it was unexpected and funny and also SUPER HOT.
Maybe a partnering gold star move to keep in your back pocket 😮

2025-04-09 15:04:03

Y'all, I laughed so hard.
https://spaces.hcommons.social/media_attachments/files/114/308/609/769/167/776/original/c7eceb9686149865.jpg

2025-03-15 17:04:59

Sometimes the grief just hits, and it's super weird- like not thought connected at all. Walking around trying to get things picked up and laundry done and, like, crying.
We are all going to need so much therapy to process all of this.
Or something.

2025-03-11 14:49:57

This article says these two (bonkers) sentences and then goes right on as if making people carry registration docs everywhere they go or risk imprisonment is just an ordinary expected part of travel
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/heres-how-new-us-rules-will-affect-canadian-snowbirds/
https://spaces.hcommons.social/media_attachments/files/114/144/350/034/343/621/original/5abb647a4139509a.png

2025-02-24 20:43:46

Today I was actually told by an organizer, and not because I asked- they just said it as we were working on a food insecurity issue- that "it's probably actually better for the US to die; we just have to help people through."
So yeah. This is a take, if not the take, among US leftists.
Don't personally love it.

2025-02-18 21:12:35

Grocery store food in Spain (like we experienced in the Netherlands this past summer) is SO MUCH CHEAPER and also beautiful and fresh and delicious that I wonder if we should run an import export business.

2025-02-18 21:12:35

2025-02-13 03:48:15

I appreciated knowing this. Thanks General Mills, Airbnb, Clorox and Whirlpool.
https://popular.info/p/10-corporations-that-kept-their-promises

2025-02-10 21:51:33

I was shoveling a whole lot of snow and feeling moderately Alone In the World and then a guy I don't know (Rod from Georgetown, Newfoundland, in town to play hockey tonight) slow-rolled up to the front of my house, jumped out, and said if I'd hand him my shovel he'd help me. He suggested I go inside and get warm, but who does that and anyway I have a second shovel, so we worked together and I was SO GRATEFUL that I was glad to have the 'get the other shovel' excuse so I could get it together for a second. 😭
Then as we worked together another guy, this one driving a loader, cheerfully asked if we wanted him to dig us out. So then we both watched, and five minutes later: job done.
I have better, kinder neighbor stories about 'snow shoveling in Newfoundland' ...and a whole bunch of them ...than almost anything else. People just SHOW UP and get it done, both in town (whew buddy, and do not miss that) and out around the bay.
But I think also that we can all BE this kind of neighbor. 🥰

2025-02-07 03:39:02

Make jam, they said. It'll be fun, they said.
1.5 hours, 2 boil overs, very much stirring, a probably incomplete set up, and for real I think I liked them better as strawberries
I think I'm out of the jam business 🤷🏻‍♀️

2025-01-12 03:21:13

I am now making a list of what sounds so delicious and magical and wantable that my spirit is leaning toward it IN LONGING and if you would like to do this too I'd love to hear what you discover

2025-01-02 04:36:01

Yesterday we were at a horrifying megaplex shopping center with 10k cars but also only exterior walking spaces and the very loud outdoor music started playing "Start Spreading the News." Our 14 year old was next to me and said, "Does this make you want to dance?" and I said yes, and he threw out his arm and I took it and we did a can-can through the parking lot.
He's also our violinist and diva of a chef and person whose most cherished book (sort of a joke but sort of not) is the home fabric and wallpaper style guide that he grabbed from a little free library a few years ago.
ALL TO SAY I keep wondering if our rad, absolutely fabulous kid (who is demanding, upon our return home, 'a red beret; I get to choose it') is going to come out officially or if that's a 90s thing or hurdle faced by kids with non-accepting families.

2024-12-24 16:01:13

SO COOL that this funded history project is happening ... if you've wanted to be a PhD student in Canada and you're into archival research, the Mining Danger Project might be for you.
https://niche-canada.org/2024/12/16/graduate-student-opportunities-mining-danger-project-call-for-students-2/

2024-12-17 23:57:41

Did anyone else grow up in a family that occasionally buttered saltines?
Yes, you can make peanut butter crackers. But you can also, much less reasonably, make BUTTER crackers.

2024-11-27 03:03:42

We were just notified of the death by suicide of my spouse's closest cousin today. His adolescent son found him. They also have two other kids.

2024-11-20 02:06:04

Paypal realllllly wants me to put their app on my phone which makes me think I should never put their app on my phone

2024-11-12 22:21:11

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@npub1dts…6798 I have actually also been to Helsinki in November. 😂 I have in fact ONLY been to Helsinki in November.

2024-11-06 22:43:42

In your heart is a knife
but also a harvest
use one to protect
the other
https://spaces.hcommons.social/media_attachments/files/113/438/420/897/327/628/original/a089d2862cee7af4.png

2024-11-02 23:34:56

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To put a really fine point on it, the superiority complex you've been encouraged to cultivate (largely because it's politically expedient to those dismantling your various social safety nets) never lands particularly well with me and it will land worse this week.

2024-11-02 23:20:56

Dear Canadians, people from the US are very stressed right now and to be honest you aren't doing such a great job tending your own fences either. A little care in speaking re: US politics (or you know, just not weighing in) will go a long way in the next few days.
Toward me not blocking you.

2024-10-14 01:58:50

Y'all, no one here deserves to watch another human being burned alive. Just as no human deserves to be burned.
I am 100% with you on stop the genocide. I have been with you from moment 1. Since before that, in fact. Advocating. Literally.
I am angry, too. I am gutted, too. I am astonished, too. I am outraged, too.
This does not mean that other people HERE deserve to suffer. It doesn't help. It only numbs. But it's also just such a crappy thing to do.
This is a long way of saying I am horrified already, and you will not be putting further horror in my TL.

2024-10-13 11:42:18

Arundhati Roy, speaking at the British Library 3 days ago
https://thewire.in/rights/palestine-israel-apartheid-arundhati-roy-pen-pinter-prize
https://spaces.hcommons.social/media_attachments/files/113/299/924/674/443/943/original/a8abffd102564ac2.png

2024-10-13 11:29:48

Louise Adler, writing in The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/13/howard-jacobson-gaza-israel-cruelty-louise-adler

2024-10-07 01:11:49

I just attended a gorgeous online vigil for ceasefire and mourning ... and truly and utterly lost my shit sobbing. Still not done, I can tell.
I am fine, to the extent that any of us are, but I did not see this body response coming AT ALL.
But should have.
Tomorrow my words and my day will be for my Jewish friends and loved ones.
Tonight what I have to say is that some of us caught in the in between are also carrying a lot, and I think we forget that ... I forget that ... because we are constantly surrounded by so much incredible pain that is not ours. In many of our cases, 'on both sides,' though I hate that phrase and its flattenings.
Those of us who love (people) and who know (people) and who advocate (for people and their futures) and risk (reactions and response and retribution- again, from people) have had a hell of a year.
It is not a contest. Tomorrow, in my heart at least, belongs to a particular thing.
But this year: it has been hell.
Take care of yourself. ❤️ 💔 🕯️

2024-10-06 22:04:20

Lower trail at Brimstone Head, Fogo Island September 2024
#fogoisland
https://spaces.hcommons.social/media_attachments/files/113/262/732/136/706/646/original/1d351d44e62f7784.jpeg

2024-10-04 12:00:21

I was planning to wake up and choose violence but my Masto timeline is too full of tree roots, moss, snails, puppies, and regenerative ag

2024-09-30 21:39:49

If you're thinking about it, you should know that the US federal flood insurance program is easier and cheaper to sign up for than it used to be, and I say that having experience of both the harder thing and the more recent thing. There is now a cap of $250,000 for your dwelling and $100,000 for your furnishings/personal property--that is what changed. For the vast majority of us, that is only very partial coverage. That said, it's WAY more affordable, guaranteed by the US government, and WAY better than nothing. It cost us $1000 to insure our coastal property at this level for a year. We also had the option (which our insurer connected us with directly) to choose private insurance to cover the balance. We opted not to do this and to just self-insure for the remainder, but you choose what works.
Don't let people tell you that US flood insurance is unavailable, though- it is not. And you should probably look into it.

2024-09-27 12:14:49

Mastodon nerds, this is an urgent message: please keep nerding out on things you are passionate about and then taking us along on your deep dives. Share your pics and discoveries. Muse. Show us dust motes and explain how you learned that no two are the same.
A passionate engagement with the beauty and weirdness of the world we have is a hope project. It is a meaning-making project.
It is a resistance project.

2024-09-27 00:23:00

The microwave in the house where I'm staying has 'soften' and 'melt' where I keep expecting to find 'start' and 'clear' and I find this commanding, poetic, and mystifying

2024-09-26 22:13:12

Holy shit
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cornell-graduate-student-deportation-palestine-protest/

2024-09-23 13:31:49

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Oh, but they were just targeting Hezbollah
Does 'Oh, but they were just targeting the power structure that continues to oppress and kill Palestinians' sound ok as a justification for attacks inside of Israel?
Terrorism is terrorism. It's shrapnel and blood and fear and screaming.
This isn't hard. Your human heart ALREADY UNDERSTANDS.
Keep it soft; it is only fascism and fear that wants you to say that some people are ok to kill.

2024-09-23 13:27:46

If the thing that just happened to moms and dads and kids and grandmothers in Lebanon and Palestine would be horrible and unthinkable and a hate crime if it happened in Israel, it is horrible and unthinkable and a hate crime for it to happen to any ethnic groups of humans; hope this helps

2024-09-18 20:20:36

If Israel's actions don't scare the shit out of you, it might be because you have been carefully taught to fear brown people and those who call their god Allah much more than you have been taught to fear genocide, the electronically-enabled surveillance state, and the kill-on-demand state-social ecosystem that has now been unleashed on us all

2024-09-13 12:59:20

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@npub1y3m…r6lg Free State Brewery in Lawrence KS has been known to make small batch pawpaw ice cream when they are in season

2024-09-12 22:20:18

Holy crap.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/12/entire-earth-vibrated-climate-triggered-mega-tsunami
https://spaces.hcommons.social/media_attachments/files/113/126/905/463/460/867/original/bdd2fb872febc080.png

2024-09-05 01:27:26

Teen boys who are so lonely, disaffected, disconnected from social care, and psychologically disturbed that they dream of slaughtering their peers are victims of the US system, too. This is a country losing its kids, both ways.

2024-08-31 02:26:35

This has got to be the only place on the planet where a mass of people, asked which muppet they relate to, choose 'Statler and Waldorf,' followed by 'Gonzo.'
Never change, Mastodon. 🤷‍♀️

2024-08-26 17:51:38

Sort of relatedly, this month I got retinal scanned at the airport for the first time (I am a stalwart 'I refuse'er), and the people who sold me to the devil were the laid-back-but-nefarious folx at Amsterdam Schiphol. You get fish-funneled into the section of departure screening that is unmanned, in which you stand finally before a locked automatic door that doesn't open until you let the screen scan your face. It was utter nonsense. I had wondered when I would simply be forced ... the very fine people who also gave us Elsevier just went ahead and did it.