#« envelope memes: september issue »

[croupiex]

Heights & Failure

Heights: Is your muse a risk-taker?

No. Taking risks is, well, risky. Cassius thinks he's reached the peak in his life, the single highest point he can strive towards. Taking a risk at this point would be foolish, and might endanger all that he's managed to gather over the years.

Failure: Has your muse ever given up on an important dream?

Cassius has long since given up on the concept of having dreams in general. He's a broken idealist turned defeated pessimist.

[multipleservicelisting]

Meena Harris, Building That Brand

Meena Harris, a lawyer and former tech executive, used to make statement T-shirts as a side job. Her most famous read, simply, “Phenomenal Woman.” (Perhaps you saw it on Instagram, worn by celebrities including Serena Williams, Lizzo, Ciara, Viola Davis, Laverne Cox and Eva Longoria.)

She also made hats for the “Phenomenal Mother” and sweatshirts for the “Phenomenal Voter.” All benefited various charities.

But during a summer of mass protests against racism and injustice, Ms. Harris’s apparel took on new resonance. Naomi Campbell wore a “Phenomenally Black” T-shirt for a high-end fashion event in July. Regina King accepted her lead actress Emmy in September wearing a shirt by Ms. Harris, with an illustration of Breonna Taylor and the words “Say Her Name.”

Ms. Harris’s passion project became her full-time job; she left her role as head of strategy and leadership at Uber to run her own company, called Phenomenal. She also picked up another side-gig — one that brought her more visibility than any prestigious job that came before it: campaign surrogate for her aunt, Kamala Harris, now the vice president-elect.

At the time, Ms. Harris, 36, made it clear that her clothing brand was “not something that I want to be using to promote the candidacy of a family member.” In a phone interview, she added: “There’s a lot of cool people in my family that do cool stuff. And this is my thing. I’m doing my own thing.”

But her relationship to the vice president-elect is a fact that can’t be separated from her story or that of her business.

As a surrogate, Ms. Harris offered insight into her family in ways traditional (introducing her aunt in a video at the Democratic National Convention) and more novel (during the primaries, she defended her aunt’s criminal justice record against progressives who disparaged her as “a cop” in a series of Instagram stories).

She also sold several Kamala-related sweatshirts, including one with the letters “MVP,” for Madam Vice President; one emblazoned with the phrase “I’m Speaking,” referring to the much-memed moment from the vice-presidential debate; and a third with the names Sojourner (Truth), Harriet (Tubman), Shirley (Chisholm) and Barbara (Jordan) stacked above Kamala’s, released in partnership with Win With Black Women.

But putting a campaign slogan, like “Kamala for the People,” on a shirt would be too explicit, Ms. Harris said, crossing the line she’s drawn to protect her brand and establish her own identity.

“I look at her as another figure in history and someone to be celebrated,” she said of her aunt — for example, with a holiday sweatshirt reading “Deck the halls with smart, strong women, Kamala-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

‘What’s Our Message?’

The name of Ms. Harris’s company comes from a Maya Angelou poem, published in 1978: “I’m a woman / Phenomenally. / Phenomenal woman, / That’s me.”

First sold during Women’s History Month in March 2017, the “Phenomenal Woman” shirt was meant to remind people that Ms. Angelou “came before us, and it was women like her,” Ms. Harris said, “who made it possible for the Women’s March to happen in the huge way that it did.”

She planned to split profits from the shirt between seven women’s organizations. “I thought we’d sell a couple hundred shirts, if I got enough of my friends and family to support,” she said. But on release day, she sold more than 2,000, she said. (It was modeled online by friends, including Issa Rae, who was a college classmate, and America Ferrera.)

At the time, Ms. Harris didn’t know exactly what to do with the enthusiasm, she said: “How do we keep this going? What are we talking about? What are we doing? What’s our message?” So she gave herself a mission: raising awareness around issues affecting underrepresented communities.

The Breonna Taylor shirt, released in August, flooded social media, buoyed again by a flock of celebrities. On its front, the black tee read “Arrest The Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor” in pink text (Ms. King wore it backward at the virtual Emmys). Profits from the $45 shirt benefited the Breonna Taylor Foundation. (Depending on sales, other Phenomenal products raise anywhere from $5,000 to $150,000 for a nonprofit, according to Ms. Harris.)

Inevitably, the simple T-shirt company has become a multipurpose venture, with a content arm, Phenomenal Media (for publishing articles and putting out full-page newspaper ads), and a creative agency, Phenomenal Productions (which will make videos, products and other content for ideologically aligned clients). On Jan. 19, Ms. Harris will publish her second children’s book, “Ambitious Girl.” And on the following day, one of the characters in her first children’s book, “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea,” about two sisters taking on a community project, will take her oath for the second highest office in the nation.

‘Entrepreneurial Tendencies’

Kamala and Maya were raised primarily by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a scientist and activist.

When Maya was 17, she had Meena. She raised her daughter with the help of her mother and sister, while earning degrees and building a career in law and progressive policy. Maya worked as a law school dean, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Northern California, adviser to Hillary Clinton, and her sister’s campaign chairwoman — among other roles. Since 1998, she has been married to Tony West, who was the associate attorney general during the Obama administration and is now Uber’s chief legal officer.

Young Meena Harris, surrounded by lawyers, wasn’t nudged toward law. Her first job, after graduating from Stanford University in 2006, was as a community operations manager at Facebook — just as it was expanding to the general public, no longer available only to college students.

Ms. Harris also joined the 2008 Obama campaign, in youth vote organizing and grass roots fund-raising. But finally, she decided to start law school, as if it were the “path of least resistance,” she said.

In 2014, two years after she graduated from Harvard Law School, Ms. Harris was working as a cybersecurity and data privacy attorney in Washington, D.C., when she had her first “kind of fun, provocative” idea for a T-shirt, she said. Inspired by the early Mark Zuckerberg business card that said “I’m CEO, bitch,” her tee read “I’m an entrepreneur, bitch.” (These were the “Lean In” years.)

By 2015, Tyra Banks was wearing the shirt onstage during press interviews. And Ms. Harris — who’d always identified as a creative person with “entrepreneurial tendencies,” she said — was feeling, for the first time, like an entrepreneur.

Statement as Brand

T-shirts are not a new form of expression, either of values or of protest. But unrest during the Trump administration — and the steady rise of both political expression and posturing on social media — has inspired a great number of them. Mugs, onesies, pet collars, phone cases and fanny packs, too.

In September 2019, the sisters Kate and Lisa Sokolov founded Social Goods, an online boutique for activist apparel. All of their sales include a donation — on average 25 percent of the proceeds, the founders said — to various related nonprofits. Phenomenal was one of the first brands sold on their site.

The founders see merchandise as a “catalyst and entry point for change,” Kate Sokolov said — “a way to get people to start talking and keep talking about issues.”

It’s the “keep talking” part of it that Ms. Harris has been considering herself lately.

“I think this is going to be a big question for us next year. When we don’t have the constant drama and attacks that are coming out of the administration, how do we keep people engaged in a meaningful way?” she said. “Not just the people that have been doing this work, and will continue doing this work, and are literally doing it all day every day. But regular folks.”

Communicating serious messages through a medium like apparel is tricky. Tone is paramount. Nuance can be lost. There’s only so much room on a tee.

“Just because a bunch of people liked it doesn’t mean that you should go put it on a T-shirt and sell it,” Ms. Harris said, of ideas she knew would be popular but messy.

Not everything sold by Phenomenal has a social justice message. Addressing work-from-home culture, Ms. Harris released sweatshirts in 2020 that read “Can everyone mute please?” She’s also sold pieces without phrases, like a one-piece swimsuit printed with Sonia Sotomayor’s face. Proceeds from these more general items are donated to a spread of nonprofits, rather than to a specific cause or organization.

One of those nonprofits is Essie Justice Group, an organization for women with incarcerated loved ones. Gina Clayton-Johnson, the group’s founder and executive director, said working with Phenomenal has relieved some of the overwhelming pressure to fund-raise.

“My team needs to be writing policy, running healing circles and organizing outside jails and prisons. They don’t need to be setting up chairs at a fund-raiser, or putting cute little sequins in envelopes,” Ms. Clayton-Johnson said.

‘Breaking Away’

On a phone call in August, the day after making her Democratic National Convention debut, Ms. Harris described herself as happy but “running on fumes.” She’d spent that night “drinking wine in a furry bathrobe” while watching the videos and speeches, she said.

During a conversation a few months later, the election was over but the holidays were approaching, and Ms. Harris’s partner Nikolas Ajagu, who works as an executive at Facebook, had just told her that letters to Santa from their two daughters (ages 2 and 4) had gone missing. There was a pile of laundry on the couch and the house was a “mess,” she said, using an expletive.

Because of her work with Phenomenal, Ms. Harris already had a robust following before her aunt became Joe Biden’s running mate in August. But starting that month, she began gaining followers on Twitter and Instagram in droves.

Accordingly, she has faced more criticism, trolling and general scrutiny for actions associated with her family. One recurring topic is Prop 22, a California ballot measure approved by voters in November, allowing companies like Uber to continue classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than as employees.

Ms. Harris’s stepfather is the top lawyer at Uber, which spent millions trying to pass the measure. (Her aunt strongly opposed it.) Ms. Harris was dragged into the fight as well because of her former job at Uber. In November — after the election — she decided to make it clear that she voted against Prop 22.

“I think it’s a very simple thing,” she said. “I’m very lucky to be in a family of a bunch of successful people who are doing a lot of different things. There’s interesting dynamics around that, but I’m my own person with my own views and my own platform and my own aspirations.

“Sure, you can be curious about somebody’s relationship with their family, or how their communications around these things are,” she said. But at the same time, she noted, “I’m not an elected official. I’m not formally accountable as a public servant, and I think sometimes, people do kind of treat you that way if you have a public profile.” (She later added: “It’s weird to talk about yourself as having a public profile.”)

When she talked about her decision to leave Uber in June, Ms. Harris used phrases like “breaking away” and “liberating myself.” For years, she’d felt like she was on a “treadmill of checking prestige boxes” — elite schooling, a law degree, a high-powered tech career, a treadmill powered by the ambition of her first-generation immigrant family.

Still, that ambition was fairly contained to the worlds of law and activism, “which of course, are core to who I am and how I view everything,” she said.

“No one in my family, other than me, has a business-minded bone in their bodies. I was not exposed to that at all,” Ms. Harris said. (Her stepfather didn’t take a job in the corporate world until 2014.) The idea of entrepreneurship? “That was just totally foreign.”

Now, she’s on a new treadmill. “I just didn’t really know the path to getting there,” she said.

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/2LPlJfw

[popofventi]

Mental Yoga Sunday / 5 Favorite Long Form Reads This Week / Issue No. 19

"Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it."  -- Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

Mental Yoga Sunday posts are meant to be like a big mute button you aim at the rest of the world. Just you, your chair, a mug, a spot next to a dust-filled sunny spot or a rainy window. Take in a long form read...sip by sip.

1

Snopes And The Search For Facts In A Post-Fact World (Wired)

"Feeling depressed about the conflation of fiction and fact in the first few months of 2017, I steered a car into the hills of Calabasas to meet with one person whom many rely on to set things straight. This is an area near Los Angeles best known for its production of Kardashians, but there were no McMansions on the street where I was headed, only old, gnarled trees and a few modest houses. I spotted the one I was looking for—a ramshackle bungalow—because the car in the driveway gave it away. Its license plate read SNOPES.

David Mikkelson, the publisher of the fact-checking site Snopes.com, answered the door himself. He was wearing khakis and a polo shirt, his hair at an awkward length, somewhere between late-­career Robert Redford and early-­career Steve Carell. He had been working alone at the kitchen table, with just a laptop, a mouse, and the internet. The house, which he was getting ready to sell, was sparsely furnished, the most prominent feature being built-in bookcases filled with ancient hardcovers—“there’s a whole shelf devoted to the Titanic and other maritime disasters,” Mikkelson told me—and board games, his primary hobby.

Since about 2010, this house has passed for a headquarters, as Snopes has no formal offices, just 16 people sitting at their laptops in different rooms across the country, trying to swim against the tide of spin, memes, and outright lies in the American public sphere. Just that morning Mikkelson and his staff had been digging into a new presidential tweet of dubious facticity: “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” Trump had the correct total, but the overwhelming number of those detainees had been released during the George W. Bush administration. “There’s a whole lot of missing context to just that 122 number,” Mikkelson said." - Read Full Story

2

On Kindness, My Mother is Sick by Cord Jefferson

"For a few weeks one summer, when I was about eight or nine, my family and I road-tripped from our home in Tucson to the Grand Canyon and then up to Yosemite National Park. We hiked and played and slept for days amid some of the world’s most majestic natural beauty, and yet I can tell you almost nothing about what Yosemite or the Grand Canyon are like from the inside. Instead, my most powerful memory from that trip is an afternoon spent at the beach during a brief stop in Los Angeles.

On that day, the heat was the humid kind that mingles with L.A.’s smog to make everything look thick and dull, as if you were watching the world through wax paper. While my parents read paperback novels and played backgammon, I divided my time between juggling a soccer ball on the beach and swimming in the ocean to cool off. I sprinted back and forth between the two activities for hours, until the setting sun instigated a mass dispersal, when all the beachgoers turning their heads to flick sand from their towels looked like parts of some grand choreographed routine.

As my family and others packed up our bags, I noticed a group of people several plots away from us who appeared to be in no hurry to beat the traffic. It was three young men and two young women, sun-kissed and attractive in a way that they would have looked at home on a cheap picture postcard people send from Santa Monica to Cincinnati. At first I only noticed the group’s peals of laughter, hysterical and unabashed, and I considered how wonderful it must be to be old enough to go to the beach without your parents. And then I saw who they were laughing at." - Read Full Story

3 

Hot Meals and Cold Cases: Solving Crimes at the Detectives’ Lunch Club (Mental Floss)

"On a brisk day last November, law enforcement professionals and forensic scientists crowded into a dining room at the Union League in downtown Philadelphia to eat lunch and stare at photos of dead bodies. The contrast was startling: fine steaks served on white china, sumptuous wallpaper dimly lit by elegant candelabra, and blood and limbs projected onto a screen. Tucked into the back of the room, I struggled to keep down my coffee. My tablemates, most of them graying and austere, clad in smart, dark suits, seemed unbothered.

“Can you make the picture a little bigger?” shouted one.

“It’s hard to see the hands,” added another.

The hands in question belonged to David Hayes, a retiree from a small town in Nebraska. Two years earlier, in the fall of 2010, an intruder had broken into the back door of a condo owned by David and his wife, Joan.* David was savagely shot and bludgeoned to death; Joan was stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face. A pocketknife emblazoned with the logo of the Nebraska State Police was found buried in Joan’s sternum.

The details mystified police. Nothing appeared stolen. Joan was posed in a sexual way—her nightgown jimmied up around her neck, her legs splayed apart. Rings of table salt were spread in careful circles around the bodies. The pages of a rare edition of the Bible were scattered over David’s corpse, and there were multiple, careful stab wounds around his eyes.

After two years of investigation, the case was ice-cold. So in late 2012, David Schumann and Pete Webber, the Nebraska cops running the case, packed information on the Hayes murders into manila envelopes and sent them to the headquarters of the Vidocq (pronounced vee-dock) Society, a crime-solving organization founded in 1990 by a group of forensics specialists. Well-known in law enforcement circles, the Vidocq Society is a last resort—it’s where cops turn when every lead has come to naught. For Schumann and Webber, it was their best and perhaps last hope for a break. If the Vidocq Society couldn’t crack the case, nobody could." - Read Full Story

4

Going Underground: Inside the World of the Mole-Catchers (The Guardian)

"...But after he retired five years ago, Page expanded his back lawn and the moles became more persistent. As more and more molehills sprung up, Page came to feel as if their labours were engineered to produce in him the maximum anguish. He purchased traps at the garden centre, but they would often remain unsprung or – worse – sprung and empty.

He decided to escalate his counter-assault. During a stopover in Amsterdam, he bought a pungent bag of flower bulbs advertised as a natural mole deterrent. (The moles didn’t mind.) Next, he installed a solar-powered mole repeller, a torpedo-shaped device that emits vibrations that are supposed to keep the moles away. (The moles carried on.) He tried flooding them out with a water hose. (Moles are strong swimmers.) Finally, he tried suffocating them with the exhaust of his lawnmower. (Moles can survive in low‑oxygen environments.)

Page knew it wasn’t healthy to go on like this. Last September, he found the phone number of a woman named Louise Chapman, also known as the Lady Mole Catcher of Norwich..." - Read Full Story

5

Gone Girl (The Caravan)

"On the evening of 13 January, Birna Brjansdottir—a 20-year-old woman who worked as a salesperson at a department store—went out with a friend to an indie bar in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland. Brjansdottir’s friend headed home at 2 am, but Brjansdottir wanted to stay out longer. Shortly after 5 am, she left the bar on her own.

After that, Brjansdottir was filmed by at least five CCTV cameras in the downtown area. In footage that would be viewed thousands of times in the coming weeks, she walks unsteadily down a well-lit street, bumps into a man, drops a few coins and almost falls over as she collects them. In the background, a red Kia drives by. At 5.25 am, the footage shows Brjansdottir turning left at a building of the Church of Iceland. This is the last image captured of her, alive.

The next day, Brjansdottir did not show up to work. Her phone was switched off. That evening, her family reported her missing." - Read Full Story

[croupiex]

Closet Monsters; Solitude

Closet Monsters: What is one thing your muse does that identifies them with their species? Their faction?

Like other humans, the only thing that makes Cassius unique is his lack of mana and powers in a power-filled society like Kadeu. He's ordinary in a society where being ordinary is a rarity.

Like other diamonds, Cassius does enjoy dressing a little over the top from time to time, and while he does complain about highranker's ego-filled heads, he's got a small little ego of his own when it comes to his looks. The human isn't hard on the eyes, and he's well aware of that fact; rather proud of it even.

Solitude: Name 3 things your muse couldn’t live without.

Sweets. Cassius has a massive sweet tooth. Whether it's fruity cocktails or little tea pastries and biscuits, they're probably his number one indulgence.

His wardrobe (and the clothing inside of it of course). Although Cassius is generally frugal, he certainly doesn't mind splurging a bit on the latest trending fashion every once in a while.

Friendships. To an extent he's rather aware that the friendships he has are what keep him running through life. If he were truly alone, he honestly wouldn't last.

[croupiex]

the unknown + curses

The Unknown: Do you have a deity you believe in?

"Adrian here! Why yes, I, like all other romantically inclined thespians, believe and adore the goddess Aphrodite. Romance: ordained and destined by the goddess above, is that not a perfect conclusion to any love story? True lovers who are simply meant for each other in every sense?"

Curses: Does your muse believe in good/bad luck? How about karma?

Cassius believes in good luck, to an extent. He believes that to get where he is today required a great deal of good luck given where he started out (a child with a father who left him, a mother with an addiction to rage-inducing pills, and a binding role in a "protectorship"). That being said, although he may still have some good luck left, he's very tentative about testing his luck going forward; believing that he used up too much luck at the beginning of his life, and that one misstep without luck backing him up will send him to the beginning of the end.

[croupiex]

Death & disease.

Death: What does your muse consider the worst way to die?

Dying when you want to live.

Disease: What does your muse do on a sick day?

If he has to work, he'll (begrudgingly) work. Otherwise he'll dramatically curl up in bed and hope the mattress swallows him whole and spits him back out healthy after a day or so later.

[croupiex]

Fire: Would your muse rather be very cold, or very hot?

"Very cold, it's much easier to heat yourself up than cool yourself down".

( Cassius prefers the heat, it's warm and comforting in the way cold never is ).

[croupiex]

Change, Social Phobia

Change: What was a turning point in your muse’s life?

When he began to work at the casino. Even if he wasn't a croupier at the beginning, it was a turning point wherein Cassius realised that there was a true chance he wouldn't spend the rest of his life as a "protected" house servant.

Social Phobia: What’s one thing your faction does you could do without?

Sucking up to high rankers. Or, well, sucking up so obviously. Cassius thinks if a Diamond is going to suck up to a highranker they should at least put in a little more effort and attempt to sound somewhat genuine. So many others in his faction are too transparent with their bootlicking.

[croupiex]

snakes + the unknown

Snakes: Would your muse ever keep an unusual/exotic pet?

Of course not, why would he ever want to do that? He'd consider taking in a pet fish of some variation now that he's had a bit of experience in tending to them, but anything larger or more unusual is a hard pass for Cassius.

The Unknown: Does your muse have a deity they believe in?

Cassius doesn't have a particular deity that he performs ritual rites for, but he does have a general belief in the gods as a whole.

[croupiex]

Crowds: What does your muse prefer, the action of Downtown Diamonds and the Circle, or the quiet away from it?

Cassius rather likes the hustle and bustle of Downtown Diamond and the Circle. People watching is one of his favourite activities, and if he's in the right mood, he may just strike up a conversation with someone in the vicinity. Of course, the quiet away from it all can be nice too, but if he's left in the quiet for too long he may just have to confront his own thoughts and properly reflect - a preposterous notion.

[croupiex]

Boogeyman:  Name one thing your muse has lost that they wish they could get back.

Only one thing when there's so many to choose from?

The broken idealist inside of Cassius: As much as he proclaims to have lost his love for both of his parents (and his general sense of hope), there's still a part of Cassius that wishes the parents he had when he was still happy, when they were still happy, was something he could have once again. He may have fallen out of love with his mother after she started taking drugs, but a small childish part of him wishes that never had to happen.

The cruel realist inside of Cassius: He knows that there's no use in hoping for things that have been lost. Things that are lost, especially people, stay lost. There's no use in hoping or wishing for a past that will never return, and will always remain in the past. There's no use wishing for something that will never come true.

[croupiex]

SEPTEMBER MEME

Spiders: Does your muse squish bugs or put them outside?

The Dark: Did your muse sleep with a mana nightlight as a child?

Snakes: Would your muse ever keep an unusual/exotic pet?

Blood: What’s the worst injury your muse has ever had?

Clowns: Does your muse prefer comedy? Or horror?

Mirrors: What is your muse’s least favorite thing about their appearance?

Tight Space: Does your muse ever feel that they’re not living up to their own potential?

Closet Monsters: What is one thing your muse does that identifies them with their species? Their faction?

Crowds: What does your muse prefer, the action of Downtown Diamonds and the Circle, or the quiet away from it?

Death: What does your muse consider the worst way to die?

Ghosts: Has your muse ever seen something they couldn’t explain?

Needles: Does your muse have a strong stomach?

Curses: Does your muse believe in good/bad luck? How about karma?

Heights: Is your muse a risk-taker?

Solitude: Name 3 things your muse couldn’t live without.

Fire: Would your muse rather be very cold, or very hot?

Failure: Has your muse ever given up on an important dream?

Abandonment: How would your muse win back someone who left them?

The Unknown: Does your muse have a deity they believe in?

Boogeyman:  Name one thing your muse has lost that they wish they could get back.

Falling: What does your muse think about falling in love or commitment?

Disease: What does your muse do on a sick day?

Change: What was a turning point in your muse’s life?

Number 13: Does your muse believe any superstitions?

Noise: Name one sound your muse finds absolutely unbearable.

Insects: Name something your muse finds gross or annoying.

Dolls: Has your muse ever collected something?

Getting Old: Would your muse rather live 50 years loved, or 200 years alone?

Social Phobia: What’s one thing your faction does you could do without?