Learning

What I'm Reading/Listening To

Articles, books, blog posts, podcasts, music, and other media that expand my perspectives.

Nicole Speer

05 Jan 2025 — 17 min read

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič / Unsplash

Week of March 10, 2025

*We need to ensure that these ideas and strategies — developed by the people most affected — aren’t just heard but actually implemented.*

*No one should resign themselves to this government’s malicious plans. But to keep our country, you must abandon old delusions.*

*Your breathlessness is a sign of your bravery. It means you are awake to what's happening right now.*

*In a crisis, our need for each other will not be dictated by how much we like each other. We have to be able to work in concert with people who aren't of our own choosing.*

*The decision closes a chapter in a decades-long debate over zoning regulations many criticized as outdated and discriminatory.*

Week of March 3, 2025

*Government and nonprofit resources are stretched too thin to meet growing need for help*

Debate over how to pay tipped workers in Colorado's priciest cities

This isn't fair to our city council members who spent months listening to and working with our community to get input on what minimum wage on what minimum wage was best for our city,” added Kade Smith, who works in the restaurant industry in Boulder. “More importantly, this isn't fair to our tipped workers who are better able to pay for their rent and groceries thanks to Boulder's minimum wage increase this year.

*A Boulder County Democratic vacancy committee will convene on March 18 to select a successor to former Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis of Longmont.*

Week of February 24, 2025

*I hope that this offers the beginning of a bridge between information and action.*

*...the illegal seizure of power isn’t just another story to be swept away in the deluge of other stories. It’s the foundational framing to understanding everything.*

*In April 2015, the IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial addressed the issue of how to spell antisemitism.*

*...as institutional investors snap up affordable, entry-level homes, they push working-class families, particularly those from minority communities, further out of the housing market.*

The US Has Deported Immigrants En Masse Before. Here’s What Happened.

As history shows us, mass deportations are nothing new in this country.

Week of February 17, 2025

*In 2025, we are facing some truly existential issues, and we need to solve them together.*

*Like ancient Rome, which crumbled under the weight of its own contradictions, America — still a young nation — now faces growing fractures.*

*Remember, you cannot organize people you hold in contempt.*

*...those who monopolize resources monopolize imagination.*

Voters were right about the economy. The data was wrong.

... you could be homeless on the streets, making an intermittent income and functionally incapable of keeping your family fed, and the government would still count you as “employed...” If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today...

Week of February 10, 2025

*My two January trips to Eldora were the first time I’d skied in over 15 years...*

*By focusing on policies that empower workers and create equitable opportunities, Boulder can become a city where everyone — regardless of income — has a stake in its success.*

*The work of collective survival requires us to build bonds of fellowship and defy the isolating, alienating norms of this system.*

...means and ends must cohere because the end is pre-existent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

*There are new miners in America now, mining your social security number and your privacy and your rights and freedom. Mining the Treasury, which they will pocket.*

Week of February 3, 2025

*Boulder has the same amount of money as Longmont to deal with twice the amount of snow.*

*With so much at stake, developers rarely gamble on unique designs.*

*Many in the “opposition” prefer to profit off the threat rather than prevent it.*

*It’s easier than you might think to make a real difference...*

*Colorado is a hotbed of activity for employee-owned companies...*

Week of January 27, 2025

Week of January 20, 2025

Feel. Then do. Our work in this new era.

...when you give yourself the chance to grieve and rage and cry and feel, you open up the space to get through past denial into acceptance... in order to grasp, clearly, what is, now. When we give ourselves space to feel the loss, we can get over to the place of understanding what is happening, without illusion, without pretending, and without telling ourselves that there's nothing that we can do. Because that is another lie.

Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the 21st century

...economic inequality is one of the strongest predictors of where and when democracy erodes. Even wealthy and longstanding democracies are vulnerable if they are highly unequal... For concerned citizens seeking to understand why so many democracies are eroding and how to stop this process, our study indicates that policies for ameliorating inequality are a promising path forward.

Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?

Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance... It would be grossly unfair to omit recognition of a minority of whites who genuinely want authentic equality... But they are balanced at the other end of the pole by the unregenerate segregationists who have declared that democracy is not worth having if it involves equality... The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.

Leadership on the line

The strain on solidarity in diversity is palpable around the world. We need to break this vicious cycle. Citizens need to face the complexity and consequences of their demands. But politicians need to engage citizens more honestly and artfully to lead that process. It's not enough for office holders to work hard to comprehend the issues if they then shield their constituents from tough choices. Profound change is more honest than grandiose, more incremental than the experience of it, and builds from the enduring values of individuals of human beings and the orienting values of human communities.

Is Boulder ready for the next big wildfire? An interview with Wildland Fire Division Chief Brian Oliver

Fire is the only natural disaster where humans are arrogant enough to think we can change the outcome...We don’t send a battalion of troops down to Florida when the hurricane is coming to turn the hurricane around. We know it’s a natural disaster. We evacuate everybody and then go back and see where we can clean up.