"The major challenge to neighbourhood, as a demographic-physical construct as well as a viable social network, comes from organizations and institutions (firms and bureaucracies) whose routine functioning reorganizes urban space. The stranger to fear may not be the man of different ethnicity on the street corner, but a bank president or property management executive far from view.”

From Logan and Molotch.

My prof used to say something similar around how the person to fear is not the individual suffering from mental health illness on the corner but the executives in their big shiny buildings. This is why it's always important to be able to read the power dynamics of a community through the lens of who suffers and who benefits.

"When social media users do encounter misinformation, they largely follow accounts with whom they are likely to agree and consume outlets that reflect their perspectives. As a result, digital misinformation generally preaches to the choir, potentially making attitudes or behaviors more extreme but not acting as vectors of mass influence or persuasion. If anything, the causal arrows may face in the opposite directions: beliefs may explain digital misinformation consumption more than the other way around." (Source)

Connected to yesterday's post on one-sided conversations. This is an interesting article exploring the overall failure in how we've handled misinformation. Basically we understand what misinformation is, how it spreads, and who is most susceptible; but attempts to fact check it have been futile. The article suggests that this is due to a failure to fully and properly understand the role of this sort of communication. Rather than thinking of this as a problem between true and false, we need to be understanding how communication more broadly impacts identity, trust, and polarization.

It's a good article that touches on several things I've been thinking about lately, including what the role of helpful communication needs to be moving forward. Check it out.

"Progressives really got to figure out how to deal with this buzzkill problem." (Marc Maron, 2025)

It's a hard thing, I think, to figure out how to balance the deep anxiety and uncertainty many of us feel towards the state of the world with finding joy and appreciation in the present moment. The desperation and despair of it all often finds us turning the simplest conversations with friends and family into soap-box like diatribes, screaming about the injustices and dangers perpetuated by one's choice of hand soap. As Maron continues in his latest special, "no one can ruin a bbq quicker than a liberal."

He's not wrong.

A few years ago, I wrote a thing for an environmental coalition on how not to ruin parties by taking a more hopeful posture in these conversations rather than a doom-centric one. I might go further if I were to rewrite that today. I think the thing that Maron is addressing in this new special is that talk isn't actually making any difference. If anything, it might be making things worse. This seems to be—at least in part—why he is ending his long running podcast this year. But if talking is no longer helpful, what does that mean and what can be done?

I wonder if part of the problem is that we're all just having one-sided conversations. Now, this isn't me saying that I think we need to get better at listening—though I do. It's also not me saying that I think we need break down our silos and learn to build community across differences—though I also do. Rather, what I'm getting at here is the way we have all become pseudo-experts at sharing ourselves and our ideas as content. We've spent years now honing our ability to take a thought, craft it to compete in the attention economy, and make it connect with people based on likes and reshares. Curated personalities and opinions. It's not conversation, it's marketing.

I'm not sure if Maron would say that's what he's been doing, but he does make some pointed comments about his fans and the specific type of people who would be at one of his shows. The audience laughs. He knows who he's talking to. Which is exactly the point. Good marketing is about reaching the right audience. The ones who already want what you're selling. What it rarely does is make any meaningful change.

So much of everything right now feels like this. As though it's been made just for content. Even conversations with people can come across as either a testing ground for content or a repeating of content, like if this hasn't already been posted, it will be. But content is not designed for real conversation. It's meant to be consumed.

And the attention economy has an unyielding appetite.

I'm struggling to define what I think is needed as an alternative or resistance to this. It's not to say that no conversation can ever be helpful. But I think part of it is that we need to embrace embodiment. To inhabit our values and ideals in such a way that they are evident in how we live our lives. To practice them instead of preaching them. There's an old wisdom here that I think we have forgotten because of how disembodied our culture has become. I believe we need to reclaim the truth of it. That actions do speak louder than words.

Another part of embodiment to me is simply being more present in the world. It's about turning off and tuning out the unending deluge of content that competes for our attention and reconnecting with the natural world. Again, an ancient wisdom that is getting forgotten. Our minds and bodies need the slowness that comes with being unplugged and just experiencing the world as it is around us.

Now, will any of this make progressives more fun to be around? Probably not, but it might help us deal with some of our own anxieties about everything and move us closer to a healthier place.

Places are not discovered, they're built.

I've been working through Logan and Molotch's 'Urban Fortunes: the Political Economy of Place' over the last couple weeks. It's been a bit slow (partially because I'm also reading through the Wheel of Time in my third attempt to get through the massive 13 book series); but I'm making progress.

One argument that they are making in the book is that how we define a place, how it comes to be, is a social construction largely based upon a tension between use and exchange values. Use values are all the ways the place you live in impacts your daily life, while exchange values is what that place is worth as a commodity. These values come about through all sorts of human efforts and activities, but the main point is that what makes a place a place is a constantly evolving thing driven by social action. It is through this social action that inequalities in class are both created and maintained.

"High status within the social hierarchy can bring access to the most desirable places (for residence or investment) and a guarantee of a rewarding future for whatever place one controls. At the same time a high status for one's geographical place means the availability of resources (rents, urban services, prestige) that enhance life chances generally."

You can really get a sense of how this all works out when you look at things through the lens of raising kids in a particular locale. Home values end up being directly tied to the quality of other aspects of society (better and more available green space, school sizes and quality, daycare, proximity to pollution, etc). Your income defines your ability to afford the place you raise your kids which has an impact on the resources available to your kids to help them lead healthier, happier, and more possible lives.

While none of this is a new idea, I think what matters here is to keep Logan and Molotch's argument in front of us: this is all made through social action. And as such, can be unmade.

I've been reflecting lately about growth and change in a professional sense and how a career trajectory evolves over time. It's probably a byproduct of approaching 40. Looking back, many of the major roles I've taken in my career so far have been a response rather than a typical applying for a job sort of scenario. They often began with people I know reaching out and saying, "I think you'd be a good fit for this"—and they were usually right. It has also left me with a bit of strange looking path, taking a few seemingly random turns along the way. And if you don't know the context for how those opportunities came about, it can seem like certain steps don't make much sense or even what the big picture actually is.

The other day, I was reading a recent interview with one of my favourite vocalists, Julian Casablancas (The Strokes, the Voidz), in which he commented that keeping the Strokes together made sense only for financial reasons, but it was leaving him unfulfilled creatively.

“There’s a beautiful Miles Davis quote: ‘The real risk is not changing.’ That’s why I always want to feel like I’m searching for something unexplored. If I make money, that’s fine, but I don’t want to stay still. I’m not looking for security or the status quo. If someone wants to keep creating, they have to be ready for change. Even if it means the death of something they held dear.”

As I've already admitted, I'm a big fan of his and have been since Last Night easily became one of the most recognizable songs of the early 00s. And, while I don't love everything he's ever done, I have a certain fondness for his impulsive, self-indulgent eccentricities, despite how messy they can become. But I think that's part of what I like. He's honest in his art, even when it sucks.

Which brings me back to my own messy career. I went from running programs for youth to marketing and comms. From nonprofit to for-profit and back to nonprofit again. I went from coordinator to director to manager. And I have a decade of experience in the church + a Mdiv in church leadership and theology to now working entirely outside of that space. It adds up to a pretty bizarre resume.

This is where I find a certain resonance with Casablancas. From a coherent, linear career progression, my path doesn't always make a lot of sense. If anything, it can come across like a series of missteps or start-overs. But underneath all of these shifts and turns was a never-ending battle between playing-it-safe and staying true to my ideals. The roles I've chosen have had less to do with building a career and more to do with feeling like I can make a meaningful difference in some way. And I've left them when it began to feel like I was unable to be true to myself. I know what it is to take a role and reinvent it several times over, pushing it to the boundaries of what's possible. And I know what it is to find that the people you work with aren't always ready to take that journey with you.

Maybe a resume doesn't have to be seen only as a progression. Maybe there's a way to think of it like a playlist on shuffle. Each contribution is its own unique piece of growth and learning that plays with what comes before and after. And it's our willingness to keep exploring and keep evolving that allows us to add the next unique piece. Sometimes that's found within pushing the boundaries of our current project, and sometimes that means stepping out and trying something entirely new.