I flew to Minneapolis for a wedding this weekend and only got back home to Portland last night, so this post is a bit delayed.

This was my first time experiencing Minneapolis and we stayed just a few blocks away from the site of Alex Pretti’s murder. It’s hard to put into words how I feel about what was done to him and the terror that has been inflicted upon the community by the state.

Alex was a nurse whose life focused on helping others. Alex was murdered for doing something righteous. As the horrors continue to build up around us, threatening to extinguish in us the voice that compels us to do what we know to be righteous, it is important that we don’t give into the despair. We owe it to Alex and so many others to continue the work.

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." - Ursula K. Le Guin, National Book Awards speech, 2014

The wedding was beautiful.

This Week’s Collection

From Wikipedia, “Frederick William Gunn"

Frederick William Gunn (October 4, 1816 – August 16, 1881) was an American educator, abolitionist, and outdoorsman, who in 1850 founded The Frederick Gunn School (formerly known as The Gunnery), an independent school in the small town of Washington, Connecticut, and America’s first summer camp.

I grew up in Connecticut where elite private prep schools are common. In the 20-odd years I spent there, I never heard of The Frederick Gunn School (prev. The Gunnery) or it’s founder.

Gunn was a moral beacon for the wider community accepting girls, African Americans, Native Americans, and international students into his school. Among his first students were the children of abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

He was also referred to as “the founder of leisure camping” in America. He was known to have had his students march 40 miles from Washington to Welch’s Point in the town of Milford, CT where they camped. He believed that a love of nature and physical fitness was core to education.

A brief look at some of its recent notable alumni doesn’t inspire much confidence that his core message is being instilled in its students today.

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, their art library

All of their art is CC BY 2.0 licensed if you’ve ever needed something to fill out a blog post.

From TechCrunch, “Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy”

She argued that many of Silicon Valley’s “charismatic or not-so-charismatic leaders” — especially Elon Musk — seem to be ushering in a future pulled from misread pulp science fiction and comic books. “But what’s funny about Musk is, the stuff he likes actually completely defeats and defies all of his political beliefs.”

The techno-capitalist class are happy to co-opt the aesthetics of science fiction, without caring for the meaning. They’re of the same mold as self-identified “right-wing punks.” The disconnect exists in companies that draw names from Tolkien’s work like Palantir, Anduril and Mithril Capital.

The underlying message, no matter how clear it is, is irrelevant to them. They only want to emulate power or perceptions of grandeur. At the worst end up the spectrum they revel in the perversion of the thing.

I love science fiction and the ability it has to grapple with possible futures and to give us create better ones. Some people love science fiction for the fantasy of power and war.¹

“I believe that all organizing is science fiction — that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.” - adrienne maree brown