plebpoet

BooksAndArticles

HealthAndFitness

Book Review: A World Appears, by Michael Pollan

denlillaapan

> *and Bob’s your uncle*

I’m delighted to see this phrase still has use, thank u

Stacker News Zine  📜  Making the ephemeral immortal

But can I ask you this bro? like what are you talking about?

bitcoin

Watch Bitcoin's mempool as a live traffic simulation - highway and space theme

Robrevolver

# Last week, I put out the [52nd issue](https://stacker.news/items/1461294) of Stacker News Zine

After one year of publishing zines each week, I see reason to pause here and reflect. To ask *what's working, what's not? What could improve, what could change?* I do not wish to drag SNZ through a defined rut, if it's original design should become rut-ish. Rather, I feel responsibility to let it expand, breathe, become something else if it's natural, expose it to light so it can refresh.

From [inception](https://stacker.news/items/920037), SNZ was meant to be a pleb-fashioned, physical, and fun version of what you read here each week. Within the span of a year's time, I believe SNZ has become a prized collectable, perhaps a time capsule, a niche community's ingestible. I'm committed to continue bringing it out each week with some added improvements. Such as:

# proposed additions

within the zine

1. **Profiles** - A brief, conversational script between myself and a stacker I'm curious about. A short interview that reveals a scantily clad personality beneath the veil of nym.
   This will be most seamless to conduct when SN has DMs. For now, any volunteers want to connect over email? *send inquiries to* [*plebpoet@stacker.news*](mailto:plebpoet@stacker.news)
2. **Fun things** - like memes and games. You guys still submit memes on Mondays, and I hope you continue to. In addition, I'll go back into the archives to dig up the memes that made us (and why not send those to me directly if you know what I'm talking about?). Plus, other exclusives to the zine pages that distinguish it from typing on a keyboard, like puzzles and trivia. I've tried this before, just gonna give this idea more vigor.

beyond the zine

1. **Annual bound books with story index** - Aggregate SNZ issues in lasting quality as an enticing volume to flick through at the edge of your desk or proudly furnishing your coffee table. I've made v.1 of this idea, just wanna keep getting better.
2. **Website** - A home for hosting each issue, where they can be released as an epub for ereaders, made easier to read and to share. Right now, you can find links at [http://plebpoet.com](http://plebpoet.com) and read pdfs at [github](https://github.com/janakelsay/snz), but yes I know reading pdfs sucks. So we'll address that. Soon.

# any thoughts?

Use comments below to fill me in on anything I'm missing about what SNZ could be. What's strong about it, what's weak about it? Any feedback at all, I appreciate. Thanks!

# subscribe!

Let me take this opportunity to let you know, you can [place your order](https://pay.zaprite.com/pl_D96KEZh6BW) for the next two months of zines. 

![](https://m.stacker.news/136798)

For April and May, you'll receive 1 zine each week if you are inside the US, or receive 4 zines each month if you are not.
This is the best way to milk SNZ for all it's worth. And maybe you want to buy the issues just to leave them in random parks or stations or offices or public restrooms in your area? That would be perfectly reasonable to me.

Animal_World

culture

The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites | Hacker News

beyond_turbulence

> The tech oligarchs have somehow managed to enshittify *thinking*.

lmao

AGORA

lightning

Square Begins Automatic Bitcoin Payment Rollout To Millions Merchants

supratic

the_stacker_muse

My March Writing Wrap Up 🍓

a year review of your entire life?! do you journal?

a mental sketch, that's something we can do?

This is another update to track my progress on

1. writing one short story each month
2. working out a novel

# I simply have to write!

The headline of this month is that I'm caught up in other stuff. I did not write a short story, I didn't even try. Who writes short stories?? Not me. Neither did I have one solid session of planning, dreaming, or ideating upon the collection of scraps that might become a novel some day.

I've been working part time, and while I really do enjoy the job, it kinda wipes me out. At the end of an 8 hour shift, there's no gas left. Energy sources are depleted. I've also been learning screen printing; of this, I have been doing some writing! That's a point toward the goal. It's not fiction but it *is* pushing a pen.

Other points I earned:

* a poem https://stacker.news/items/1463441
* hmm that's all

# add your writing wins this month

BLOG: Do Ya Like Art? No. 4 Take a Make Break

no? to what?
your borrowed eloquence is leaving me mystified

A Cypherskunk’s Manifesto

anon

![](https://m.stacker.news/136588)

*A series on screen printing and artistically living*
[first](https://stacker.news/items/1449623) \~ [previous](https://stacker.news/items/1458342)

# Screen printing has my heart for 3 hours of the week

I have invested a chunk of money and a slice of my time to screen printing class. This week, the whole 8 of us stood around our completed prints and discussed the choices we made and the challenges we faced moving along our ideas from sketch to screen to print. The instructor had prepared us for this exercise in previous class times. I heard plenty of them murmur their approval of the idea. Yet, when the time came to begin, every single other person was timid and silent, except me. I just had a feeling this would be the case. And I don't quite mind it, but why should the responsibility of vulnerable ice-breaking fall to me? I'm not especially outspoken, I didn't have much to say, my art print was puny, I took no chances, so why did that span of silence choose my voice to break it? Ugghh people.... Ughh artists...let's be starters every once in a while?

Well, I plunged in anyway. Of my own print, I said it was tough to line up the elements of the image that I had broken apart in order to ink them in various colors.
![](https://m.stacker.news/136591)
My instructor noted that next time I could give myself more allowance. Beginning with light colors first, blocking out the shape, then with each new layer, adding complexity and deepening hue. A good thing to do is to have these layers overlap, dark over light. The final piece should be what's called a key block, a borrowed term from linocuts I think(?), which is typically black and defines lines and shapes. Okay, so now I know that.

With the rest of class time, I continued working on my next, more ambitious, art print.
It's four colors! And it follows the rule of light to dark. And I used a reference image, so that helped.
Here are the first two layers:
![](https://m.stacker.news/136592)
And here is the completed screen which shows the negative of my final layer, where the detail is:
![](https://m.stacker.news/136593)

The instructor demonstrated a split-fountain ink pull because a few of us had asked how it's possible to create a gradient. There is a transparency fluid ink used for this purpose, it's ink that hasn't been pigmented. I used it in the second layer of my print, hoping to get variations across the blooms of my orchids. (Could you tell it was orchids?)

# where does the time go?

There are three class sessions remaining. I can hardly begin to hope for what I can do with screen printing once the class ends. I intend to create my own space dedicated to the craft. I intend to produce t-shirts that you would like and possibly buy and wear. But how crowded out the week becomes with all the commitments of the moment!

I do love crafting with my hands, and I do believe this is the most valuable sort of work that I want to do, but my first love, writing, is hanging out in the backseat and pestering me for attention. I would love to disappear into a fictional world and describe it in great detail to you, and I hope that day comes around. Perhaps this summer.

Stacker Saloon

saloon

lol similar, whilst clothed

a woman at the plant nursery I work at fell into a cactus yesterday...she ended up having a pretty good time tho, overall

*THE LOVE AFFAIR OF MAN AND MACHINE*
**by plebpoet**

***

We took mountains down together

in the beginning. Our hands intwined,

flesh and metal clasped, we leveled peaks.

Your jaws ripped into stone,

setting loose a millennia,

so determined to please.

\~

And when the mountain roars back,

we take shelter together,

hot invention steam rising from

our rhythms of motion.
\~

The oceans, their bewildering power,

hardly bother us. We layout our schemes,

our platforms, our profits, we consider

patterns, together we arrive at predictions.

We conquer the waves. Your mighty rods

thrust into the fathoms of the deep;

it is for our bond that you remain there,

holding fast.
\~

We gulped the first conscious gulps

of space dust together. Your womb

carried us, throttling, bursting,

out of the atmosphere of home,

unfamiliar rocks pulsating the music

to our climactic escape.

\~
So in love, we brought you home,

introduced the family, secured

our connection to last a lifetime.

You raised our kids, you sustained

our industry, you sorted our lives.

You compressed the globe into a text box,

and we left our fingerprints all over it.
\~

Over the years, you grew quieter,

smaller; we noticed.

\~
And what is there left for us?

To be frank, our union lost

the spark it once had.

We’ve domesticated, corporated,

so bored, so much of the same,

it’s just facts and figures now.

Our relationship is accounting -

who gives more?
\~

Sexless as your nature is,

we make you into our image.

We use you blatantly to please ourselves,

then we call you a slut.
\~

We’re not through with you,

no, our fascination is limitless,

our dreaming, though captured, continues.

We’ll give you the essence of us which sets us apart

from the rocks, the peaks, the streams.

We’ll funnel our intelligence into your depths.

Again we will be One.
\~

Is our journeying complete?

Are you the beginning

or the end of it?

What will we discover of your nature

that is not our own?

THE LOVE AFFAIR OF MAN AND MACHINE

HBD SNZ - presenting YOU in Issue #52

siggy47

if individuality is inspired by the divine, it is comprised of that stuff. Individuality, not personality, is transcendent. That’s what I think is coming across in the characters of this book