Don’t wait until you lose everything to appreciate what you have
👋 Hello again
Issue #242: wildfire policy, vibe curators, and optimizing for understanding
I’m writing this one day before you’ll receive it (Wednesday morning), and I just woke up to photos and videos of the Pacific Palisades fire — one of three fires burning in and around Los Angeles. At least 30,000 people were forced to evacuate so far. More than 1,000 homes and businesses were destroyed. Footage of the Santa Monica beach, featuring a few brave souls walking in the foreground, look unreal to me. But they’re real.
A friend just texted me a photo of the sky above their Silver Lake home: It’s eerily gray though the photo was taken at 8 a.m. “We’re writing a newsletter about this,” I text back. She’s safely working from home and part of a group chat with native Angelinos. They’re chronicling restaurants and schools lost to the fire. At least one of her friends’ homes burned down. “Find something about losing everything,” she replies.
33 years ago, during the Oakland Firestorm of 1991, Roger Magoulas’ house burned down. He decided to rebuild instead of move. After decades spent processing that loss and the rebuilding effort, he took to Medium to explain how it changed him and what he’d recommend to those in a similar position. Above all, he advises patience: The impulse to start over ASAP is so strong, but the decisions you make have a “long shadow.” “You will make mistakes, that’s inevitable, your goal is to avoid silly missteps.”
And here’s a story by Skylar Whitney, who evacuated Jasper, Alberta, along with 25,000 others last August after two wildfires erupted in a national park. It became one of the most expensive natural disasters in Canada’s history, and the rebuilding process will take years. Whitney takes the long view: “This is the worst fire Jasper has seen in 100 years. But the regrowth that comes from it will be absolutely beautiful. […] if this has made me realize anything, it’s that Jasper is my home, and I’m not going to abandon it.”
If you’re in LA, be safe.
🌳 Also worth reading
- In 2021, investor Gabe Kleinman (formerly of Obvious Corp., Medium’s early parent company) argued that California’s megafires are solvable if (a) state legislators allocate more of their budgets to forest management, and (b) federal and state agencies become more diligent about reducing wildforest biomass via prescribed burns and strategic thinning.
- Hanif Abdurraqib — poet, essayist, and music critic — listened to 825 hours of new music last year and curated his top ~7.5%, featuring ~20 indie and lesser-known EPs and mixtapes worth bookmarking.
- Old songs are more popular than new ones. The top 10 highest-grossing films of 2024 are all remakes of existing intellectual property. It’s easy to believe culture is stagnating, but maybe we just can’t see the pockets of innovation? Internet archaeologist Katherine Dee writes: “Creating mood boards on Pinterest or curating aesthetics on TikTok are evolving art forms, too. Constructing an atmosphere, or ‘vibe,’ through images and sounds, is itself a form of storytelling, one that’s been woefully misunderstood and even undermined as shallow.”
🤍 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
If you’re consistently disagreeing with someone, it’s probably because your priorities are different. You’re optimizing for different things. “When you understand what someone else is optimizing for,” writes Radical Candor author Kim Scott, “it’s easier to respect their perspective, even if you don’t agree with it.”
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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