Recommendations: Have Some, Need Some

Like Freecycle, but for... wait, no, that metaphor falls apart. Forget it. Let's just refer to these as Hivemind Missives.

Hello, loves. Kelly Sue here.

You doing okay? Drinking enough water? Exercising and sleeping? I worry, you know.

For my part I’m back on my powerlifting bullshit, getting 7-10k steps a day walking all the dogs (ours and my dad’s) and doing pretty well with my food and water, but my sleep hygiene suuucks. It’s not like I don’t know what I need to do, it’s just that I’m not doing it…

Tell you what, I’ll work on it and report back next time, okay? If you so desire, feel free to do the same.

Okay, moving on.

I need to do something a little different this go-round, so I’m going to postpone work updates to the next newsletter (which may come later this week, I know, I know, shocking!) in order to keep this rellllllatively brief.¹

Here’s the deal: I need some recommendations and/or guidance and I know y’all have widely varying areas of expertise so I’m hitting you up for some “Hivemind Guidance” — the idea is to poll a group of people to find out what the consensus of their experience suggests is the best route. Like stories, it’s a time-saving thing² that can also be a means of perspective-taking.

In exchange for access to your Hivemind, I’m offering a few recommendations of my own. I’ll lay those out here first, and then we’ll get to the asks. Cool?

…Cool. (I’m just assuming. I mean… you’re still reading right?)

COMICS PODCASTS.
I listen to a LOT of podcasts, but I’m not actually a big comics podcasts listener, so it’s almost dumb for me to do this. But! Considering that you’re likely reading this newsletter because we know each other through comics, seems like it would be a weird omission. So here’s a few comics podcasts you might want to check out:

• Bitches On Comics. I mean… the name says it all, no? I linked here to an episode with Taki Soma because Taki fucking rules.

• Wordballoon. Suintress is the OG guy for long conversation creator interviews. He’s got one hell of an archive. Wordballoon interviews run long and John talks to creators multiple times over the course of their careers, which means you can get to know his guests, witness their evolution and learn a bit about how they think, what matters to them or excites them and—most interestingly—how what matters to them or excites them changes over the literal years. John also comes from Radio and he’s got an old-school radio voice that I find strangely soothing.

• Off Panel. I’ve recommended this one before, I think. Harper’s affable and well-informed, and he’s able to quickly establish comfortable rapport with his guests. Dude’s got a day job, a marriage and what I think is a one-man-shop online magazine and he still manages to read more comics in a week than I do in a month.³ I don’t think he has kids…? Maybe that’s it. I know he has cats. Whatever. He says he’s a fast writer so even though he seems lovely, I do hate him a tiny bit. (Side note: he had Kyle Starks on recently and I kept thinking holy shit that guy talks fast. I’d listened for almost half an hour before I realized that 1.25x speed was selected. I’m a fucking idiot.) If you’re interested in the business side of the industry, this one’s good for that too.

• Comic News Insider. Jimmy’s just a sweetheart is all. He’s been around forever, he knows everyone and he’s got a good heart. You need a pal like that in your life, give him a listen.

• Geek in the City. Okay, this one isn’t strictly a comics podcast, but Denise, one of the hosts, is my assistant and literally one of my favorite humans, so you should check this one out too.

• BONUS: Marvel by the Month. This is a bonus because I haven’t actually listened to it, but Fraction loves it. I think he’s guested on it a few times.

OTHER PODCASTS

• Heath and Wellness.

  • Huberman Lab. Every time I listen to one of these I want to go back and relisten and take notes. I just found out that he does a newsletter that has downloadable print-outs, so I’m looking forward to checking those out.

    Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford School of Medicine.

• True Crime.
  Yeah, I know. I’m a basic middle-aged white lady: I like pumpkin spice and true crime. It is what it is.

  • Redhanded. No shade to SSDGM Murderinos, but this is my favorite of that model. Maybe it’s the accents. [One caveat: RH did a crossover with Crawlspace to promote the Dark Valley podcast last month. I tried Dark Valley and wasn’t far in before I got treated to an ad for some freaky right wing radio thing. I threw up in my mouth then unsubscribed. I kind of can’t believe the RH ladies would be down with that so I have no idea what happened, but… don’t go there.]

  • The Prosecutors. The legal perspective is interesting, but honestly, I’m there for the Alice and Brett friendship.

  • Big Mad True Crime. “Small talk sucks, let’s dive in.”

  • True Crime Bullshit. One of the smartest and most terrifying podcasts of the genre, this is a multi-season study of serial killer Isreal Keyes who, if you’re unfamiliar, was a monsterous piece of shit. The podcast never makes him palatable or treats him like a friend and it’s unafraid to engage with the very real ethical questions around true crime as entertainment. Extensively researched, adheres to journalistic standards.

• Music.

  • 50 Years of Hip Hop. Short little snacks.

  • Tetragrammaton. It’s not strictly music, but it’s Rick Rubin, so I’m putting it here.

  • Rivals. “Music’s greatest rivalries.” This podcast was actually discontinued, so no new eps, but the catalog is absolutely worth visiting. I especially enjoyed The Smiths vs. The Cure.

• Sewing and Fashion.

  • Articles of Interest. They’re all great, but Season Three has been especially spectacular. How to Dress is genuinely useful and well, the latest episode is called Fashion without Capitalism.

  • Love to Sew. My favorite sewing podcast is a partnership between the owners of Blackbird Fabrics and Helen’s Closet. They’re off season right now, but I support their patreon so I can get my off-season fix.

  • Seamwork Radio. Seamwork is also an online community (I’m a member - but I get nothing for referring you) with tons of resources and a downloadable catalog of over 200 patterns. They’re also based out of Portland, though the community is international.

  • Check Your Thread. Niche of a niche, this is a podcast about sewing and sustainability, but if you’ve ever been curious about the #memademay hashtag, this is where it came from.

• Italian Language.

  • Joy of Languages: Learn Italian. They do these tiny deep dives that I absolutely love. Like, here are all the different ways to respond to “grazie” and explanations of the subtle differences in each.

  • News in Slow Italian. I can actually understand more than 50% of this and it’s heartening. If you get the app, you can read along and up that percentage.

• History/Myths/Jung… I don’t know what to call this category.

  • The Ancients.

  • Mythic with Boston Blake. Found this when he interviewed Phil Jimenez and have enjoyed going through the rest.

  • This Jungian Life. It’s really tempting to make fun of this one because the hosts have the tone and timbre of an SNL sketch about NPR, but I confess I really enjoy it.

• Film.

  • Too Scary; Didn’t Watch. People always think I’m a big horror movie person for some reason. I’m not. Action movies, yes. Horror movies… mostly a hard no. There are a few I like but most of those have one foot solidly in some other genre. When it’s scary movie time, I can think of 9000 other things I’d rather do. THAT SAID, I want to know what happens! Especially in the ones that have made it into the cultural lexicon. So this podcast is exactly my shit. Three friends: one likes horror movies, the other two are me. The weird one watches the movies then tells the other two mes (and me) about them. It’s perfect.

APPS

• Duolingo - recommending Duolingo is like recommending, I dunno… Waze? Everybody already uses it. But whatever, I like it.

• Planta - I swear by this for keeping my plants alive. And they just added a function so I can ask Fraction or the kids to water the plants when I’m on the road.

• Indyx - $15/month personal stylist consult using clothes from your own closet.

• Semantle - Word game. I love it, Fraction hates it.

• Knotwords - Fraction recommended this one to me after I showed him Semantle. It’s good. It’s not Semantle good, but I think we’ll stay married.

INSTAGRAM FOLLOWS

• TayBeepBoop. You maximalist much? I love her.

BOOKS

• The Story of Art Without Men. I’ve enjoyed the hell out of this book and HOLY SHIT IT’S SO LONG OVERDUE. (The NYTimes review annoyed me. I should probably to get into why, but this is too long already, so… maybe we’ll get back to it later. I think Kirkus nails it.)

• Currently reading:

  

  The McCarthy book is a re-read, but I’m enjoying them all.

OTHER

• MyFahlo Bracelets. I found these in an airport gift shop and immediately bought four for gifts. They’re unisex beaded bracelets each of which features one bead representing an animal and its conservation interests. Nice, but the cool part is that which each bracelet you get a QR code that introduces you to particular animal and allows you to go online and track their movements AND a portion of your purchase price goes to support conservation agencies associated with that animal. I’ve got an elephant named Habibi, Henry Leo’s got one called Luna and Tallulah’s got a shark named Boo. (A SHARK NAMED BOO!) The shark trackers are in real time but the elephants are off-set by 4 months so as to not aid poachers. To date, MyFahlo has donated over $1.3 mil to its conservation partners.

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All right. My turn — here’s what I want from you:

1. Project Manager Software rec.

   1. FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE PLEASE. If you heard something was good, I appreciate you, but I can totally google. I *have* googled. And I’ve consulted YouTube. I’d like to hear from organic beings on this.

   2. I keep a Master Project List in Roam Research. It’s nested with the top categories being Work Life, Family Life and Personal Life. Underneath Worklife projects are cataloged largely by title and then tasks nested under each. Family Life has sections for people, pets, every room of the house, the cars, etc. Projects are under each of those, and tasks in each project. You follow?

   3. I love Roam Research but it’s not really set up to do what I used it to do. It’s hard to share, impossible to print and I can’t delegate or discuss anything in the app. Also, completed tasks and projects just stay there unless I delete them, which I don’t want to do of course because I want to keep track of dates. f

   4. Can anyone recommend FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE a simple project management software that is relatively inexpensive and has all the functionality above? To recap and expand:

      1. I need to be able to next and toggle closed so I can only look at part of the master list.

      2. I need to be able to share and delegate.

      3. I’d love to be able to print.

      4. I’d love to be able to comment on projects/tasks and respond within the software, rather than having to take conversations into text chains or Slack.

      5. I need it to be relatively simple. I’m not a tech person — I need my kids operate the television for me. I have tried Click Up like 8 times and it’s too much, too flexible, I don’t get it. (I tried Trello once and it didn’t make sense to me either, but won’t rule trying that one out again if the consensus is that’s the way to go. Microsoft To Do is close to what I want, but it’s got less functionality than what I’m hoping for.)

      6. FWIW, I’m leaning toward either Asana or MS To Do at the moment, but before I go to the trouble of porting everything in and asking my family and colleagues to buy in, I want a little bit more feedback. Do you have any thoughts?

2. I loved working with the dancers on AWAKENING. Several of them have an interest in writing and we talked about putting together a little writer’s group. That idea grew and as a gift, I offered to teach a Writing for Dancers/Writing from the Body class for them. The problem is, of course, that I went back to Oregon after opening and the performers all live in Las Vegas. I’ve outlined a structure for the class, but now I’m on the hunt for a platform or software tool to host the class.

   1. The easiest thing to do would be a Zoom meeting. But I think we can do better than that? I’d like to have a place I can post reading assignments, allow people to watch replays of classes they missed and be assigned to small groups. Being able to have students post questions would be great too.

   2. This was a gift, so I’d like to keep it free or very low cost for them. Which means, I’d like to keep it free or very low cost for me.

   3. That said, if it goes well, I might want to open it up to paying students later, so having the option to monetize would be great.

   4. Does anyone have any ideas or experience with this sort of thing? I have an inkling that Substack might actually work, but despite having used this platform for a couple years now, I know precious little about what it can do and I haven’t taken any classes on it.

   5. Have you taken a class on Substack? How did it work for you?

Okay, that’s it. I won’t even tell you how long it took me to write this. It’s truly mortifying. What is wrong with my brain?

You know what, don’t answer the brain question, but feel free to answer the others.

Also! If YOU have any questions you’d like to put before the hive mind for advice or recommendations, feel free to hit me with those as well. If this works, we’ll do more of it.

Okay, more soon. Take care of you,

Kelly Sue

1. We all know that I such at “brief,” right?

2. I’ll have to explain that another time.

3. Though he’s never read SANDMAN or LOVE AND ROCKETS. Someone should do an online SANDMAN or LOVE AND ROCKETS book club, don’t you think? Me too.