optimism edition
A handful of reading recs for self-empowerment, brought to you by Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980).
Heather Havrilesky’s encouraging advice to a new mother re: balancing artistic work + parenting on a budget. A boatload of practical wisdom, all in one place.
OpenSecrets.org, a starting point and command center for researching money in politics. Browse explainers on lobbying, campaign finance, dark money and more; track the financial ties of your candidates, leaders, employers and unions. Great tab to keep open.
Nilay Patel’s interview of Patreon co-founder Jack Conte. A densely informative state-of-the-union re: the “creative economy,” i.e., Patreon, Substack and new financial models for independent media and artists. If you’ve yet to make sense of the sea change we’re feeling, this might help.
“I am optimistic about the future for creative people… I think what’s going to happen is while the first 20 years of the web was really about distribution and helping creators figure out how to reach people, the next 20 years of the web is going to be — as a society — rebuilding the financial engine to get creative people paid. I think that’s going to create generations of full-time professional creators, full-time professional artists.”