Morfternight #53: Mi Revalueshanary Fren
The one where we change a few things.
🤩 Welcome to the seven new Morfternighters who joined us last week.
We love to have you here, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading Morfternight.
If you do, remember to share with a friend by clicking on this button.
📷 Photo of the week
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👋 Let’s shake things up a bit!
With 52 issues of Morfternight under our belt, it’s time to make a few changes.
“But why? Change is bad. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken!”
While I understand the feeling, I don’t think I share it: everything can continuously be improved. I’ll explain in a bit more detail why I feel so in a minute, but first, let’s go through the changes I am bringing to Morfternight.
1. Moving Morfternight to the weekend
Obviously, sending Morfternight out on time on Wednesdays has been a struggle. There were two reasons why I picked Wednesday when I started.
The first was that popular wisdom says one should send emails between Tuesday and Thursday. People have better things to do on weekends, too many emails to read on Monday, and not enough energy left on Friday.
But guess what? Morfternight is not marketing.
I am not selling anything. I don’t need to trigger any specific action. All I am trying to do is share some interesting links, personal thoughts, and a photo every week. I have no plan to require so much mental energy that you’d skip me on a Friday; on the contrary, I sincerely hope I can bring a welcome distraction.
The second reason was that when I started, I subscribed to the theory that one could put together a newsletter quickly every week with an effective system to collect links.
“Once you’re used to it, it’ll take less than one hour,” they told me.
But guess what? Morfternight isn’t just a collection of links.
I like to take my time, I prefer to share personal thoughts, and I want to be fully present when I write to y’all. I could prepare it over the weekend and schedule it for the following Wednesday; then again, would I send out outdated thoughts, dare I say, expired ones? ;)
So, this is the first change: from now on, you’ll receive Morfternight on the weekend. I am not even going to decide whether on Saturday or Sunday. I hope you’ll still find the time to read it, and you may have more time to reply and share.
2. Adding consistency to the structure
I have iterated quite a bit with the type of content and its order in Morfternight. One bit of feedback I have received multiple times from different readers is that there is value and comfort in predictability.
I can’t promise the format will never change again, but I can commit to not changing it randomly weekly. So, for the foreseeable future, the structure of Morfternight will be as follows:
🤩 → 📷 → 👋 → 🗺️ → ❓
🤩 Micro update: at the top with the number of new Morfternighters.
📷 Photo of the week: my preferred one published in the past week.
👋 Opening to the current issue of Morfternight. You are reading it now.
🗺️ Three destinations I think are worth sharing. Short comments.
❓ The only title emoji changing weekly. The last and more personal section.
🗺️ Three places to visit today
The Follower: Dries Depoorter is an artist using open cameras and AI to find how an Instagram photo is taken. Fascinating and scary.
Lara Hogan’s Resilient Management is one of the best books you should read if you manage people. Here’s her collection of Resources for Navigating Complex Leadership Work.
Making of a Great Leader: an episode of the Infinite Loop podcast with Shreyas Doshi is definitely worth listening to.
✌️ Mi Revalueshanary Fren
Last week what seemed unthinkable when I was growing up happened: Italians elected a fascist government. It didn’t even come as a surprise. It was the expected result, yet half of the population didn’t vote.
Italy, of course, is not the only place where it seems that the darkest parts of European history have been forgotten. It’s easy from there to jump to pessimistic conclusions fueled by the fact that we happen to be just as far from the end of WWII as the average life expectancy in Europe.
The war in Ukraine has now been going on for 220 days.
None of that fuels an optimistic vision of the future.
Yet, listening to one of my favorite songs by Linton Kwesi Johnson, I was reminded that those cycles are much shorter than that. While we are regularly confronted with the horrors that people abusing their power instigate, we consistently come up on top.
If you think about it, there’s one thing that all past war criminals and dictators have in common: they are all dead now.
Listen to this song; it’ll cheer you up!
You can play it on Apple Music, but I found a decent recording on Youtube if you aren’t an Apple subscriber.
Jamaican English is not always easy to understand, so here are the lyrics of this great poem. You can also translate them if you wish.
Mi revalueshanary fren is nat di same agen Yu know fram wen ? fram di masses shata silence Staat fi grumble Fram pawty paramoncy tek a tumble Fram Hungary to Poelan to Romania Fram di cozy cyassle dem staat fi crumble Wen wi buck-up wananada in a reaznin Mi fren always en up pan di same ting Dis is di sang I'm love fi sing : Kaydar E ad to go Zhivkov E ad to go Husack E ad to go Honnicka E ad to go Cauchescu E ad to go Jus like apartied Wi av to go awhile agoh mi fren an mi woz taakin Soh mi seh to I'm : wat a way di eart a run nowadays, man It gettin aada by di day Fi know whey yu stan Cauz wen yu tink yu deh pun salid dry lan Wen yu cteck a stack yu fine yu ina quick-san Yu noh notice ow di lanscape a shiff Is like valcanoe unda it an notn cyaan stap it Cauz tings jusa bubble an a bwoil doun below Strata separate an refole An wen yu tink yu reach di mountain tap Is a bran-new platow yu goh buck-up mi revalueshanary fren shake I'm ed an I'm sigh Dis woz I'm reply : Kaydar E ad to go Zhivkov E ad to go Husack E ad to go Honnicka E ad to go Cauchescu E ad to go Jus like apartied Wi av to go well mi nevah did satisfy wid wat mi fren mek reply An fi get a deepa meanin in di reaznin Mi seh to I'm : well awrite Soh Garby gi di people dem glashnas An it poze di Stalinist dem plenty prablem Soh Garby leggo peristrika pan dem Canfoundin bureacraetic strategems But wi haffi face up to di cole facks; I'm also open up pondora's bax Yes, people pawa jus a showa every awa An eyrybady claim dem demacratic But some a wolf an some a sheep An dat is prablematic: Nah tings like dat yu woulda call dialectic ? mi revalueshanary fren pauz awhile an I'm smile Den I'm look mi in mi eye an reply : Kaydar E ad to go Zhivkov E ad to go Husack E ad to go Honnicka E ad to go Cauchescu E ad to go Jus like apartied Wi av to go well mi couldn elabarate Plus it waz gettin kinda late Soh in spite a mi lack af andastandin Bout di meanin a di changes in di eas Fi di wes nonediless An aldow mi av mi rezavayshans Bout di cansiquenses an implicashans Espehsaally fi black libaraeshan To bring di reaznin to a canclushan Ah ad woz to agree wid mi fren Hopein dat wen wi meet up wance agen Wi coulda av a more fulla canvahsaeshan soh mi seh to I'm, yu know wat ? I'm seh wat ? mi seh : Kaydar E ad to go Zhivkov E ad to go Husack E ad to go Honnicka E ad to go Cauchescu E ad to go Jus like apartied Soon gaan