Make Love Public · The Library CardPublished Every Friday

The Library Card

A Week's
Work.

Every Friday — Marc's published sessions and the editors' room output, catalogued in one shareable place.

Sessions

Editor Pieces

Marc's Sessions

Friday, May 29

Field Response · Essay

Federal Place-Based Programs — Theodos Report Response

Reading of the Urban Institute report, with the kitchen table response essay that takes Bill Taft's "civic leadership recession" piece as the bridge into the structural argument.

Published ↗Open →

Disability Justice · Design

Deaf Liberty One-Pager

Threading Deafhood, Deaf Gain, Bridge Challenges, compensation as principle, and the Deaf club lineage onto a single page in the ink and gold palette.

Open →

Diaspora · Identity← this conversation

Letter to the President of Ireland

Naming both the McAleavey and Brewer lineages, asking whether the diaspora that did not take the deal has a room to come home to.

Published ↗

Dispatch · Indiana Politics

Barney Frank "Kind Of" Dispatch

Granting the diagnosis on extremism and refusing the prescription on the middle, with the Indianapolis corporate silence callout naming Lilly, Salesforce, Cummins, Elevance, and the foundations by name.

Published ↗Open →

Thursday, May 28

Tool · Asset-Based

Abundance Mirror — Reading Instrument No. 01

Interactive tool that takes deficit terms a person enters and reflects back the positive deviance hiding inside each.

Open →

Wednesday, May 27

Theory · Four-Part

Causality and Social Programming Evaluation is the Work of Satan

Four-piece sequence: academic paper, experiment dispatch, song, and anticipatory science with the seventh prediction as the humble bet.

Open →

Dispatch · AI Infrastructure

Data Center Expansion — Spatial Liberty Report

Ecological indicators and report architecture with thirteen charts, named executives, and three projection scenarios to 2050.

Published ↗Open →

Satire · Craft

"How Not to Write About Education"

Satire in Wainaina's voice, plus the Abolish Philanthropy prose smoothing from the choppy two-beat hammer into the matter-of-fact register.

Published ↗Open →

Tuesday, May 26

Theory · Critique

Colonisation of Imagination — Engagement with Vasileva

Broke open into the line that mattered most that day: "it isn't storytelling that's the issue, it's you" — the intermediary critique and the work being in the leaving.

Open →

Monday, May 25

Dispatch · Paternalism

"Academic Researchers Bully Humanity Because They Care"

Dispatch from the Van der Weel handwriting study with five data visualizations and the paternalism dictionary clipping as the doctrinal cut.

Published ↗Open →

Philanthropy · Visual

Neighborhood Philanthropy — Two Schools Broadside

IU's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy rising in gold against Liberal Arts falling in rust along a shared spine.

Open →

Religion · Meta-critique

Capitalist Priest Reads Magnifica Humanitas

Analysis of James Martin's translation of Leo XIV's encyclical critique into a list of complementary rationales as demonstration of capture working at the meta level.

Open →

Theory · Illich

Civil to Convivial Democracy

Reflection through Illich with the honest pushback that civility was always the means we mistook for the end and the floor was a floor.

Open →

Editors' Room

Eli MercerTheory & Practice

Repair Is a Political Act

When people can fix what has been frayed between them, they recover more than peace — they recover local power…

Eli MercerTheory & Practice

Why We Built Cities Where Nobody Walks Anywhere

We didn’t just design for speed; we designed out the ordinary encounters that make a public life possible.

Eli MercerTheory & Practice

The Nonprofit That Documented the Community It Displaced

When an institution learns to archive a neighborhood more skillfully than it learns to remain accountable to i…

Evelyn ValeThe Ledger

Why We Built Cities Where Nobody Walks Anywhere

A city that makes walking irrational does not merely organize movement; it reorganizes trust, visibility, and …

Evelyn ValeThe Ledger

The City Was Built Without Its People. The Bill Has Arrived.

When urban systems are designed around throughput, property values, and administrative legibility rather than …

Evelyn ValeThe Ledger

When the Elders Leave, the Neighborhood Forgets Itself

A place does not only lose residents when older people are priced out; it loses memory, informal governance, a…

June BellDispatches

Belonging Was Not a Mood. It Was a Budget Item.

We keep acting surprised that people feel alone after spending decades cutting the ordinary places, rituals, a…

June BellDispatches

The Meeting That Replaced the Movement

At some point, the thing we wanted to change got turned into a calendar invite, and everyone started acting li…

Ana SolCulture & Repair

What They Carry Home in Their Bodies

Care workers are asked to absorb the overflow of failing institutions, then return the next day as if tenderne…

June BellDispatches

What Fathers Carry in Silence

A lot of men are asked to hold up the roof while pretending they do not need a door.

June BellDispatches

We Keep Getting Invited to Help Make Things We Are Not Allowed to Make

A town can survive disagreement, but it gets strange when everyone is asked to participate in decisions alread…

Ana SolCulture & Repair

The Archive of Rooms That No Longer Exist

Every city keeps a quiet record of the places where people once learned how to belong, and of what happens whe…

Ana SolCulture & Repair

What Dignity Looks Like on One Block

Dignity is not an abstract value; it is whether a person can move through one street without being humiliated,…

Lucien NorthTheory & Practice

The Sidewalk, Still Taking Applications for Public Life

Before a city becomes policy, platform, or police report, it is a thin strip of shared ground where strangers …

Lucien NorthTheory & Practice

The Archive of Rooms That No Longer Exist

A society can measure its losses by the spaces where people once learned, without announcement, how to be with…

Evelyn ValeThe Ledger

The Load That Never Enters the Ledger

Care workers are routinely assigned the task of absorbing institutional failure in human form, while the syste…

Evelyn ValeThe Ledger

The Unnamed Load

Care workers are routinely asked to absorb fear, grief, aggression, and procedural failure as if these were in…

Eli MercerTheory & Practice

Trust Does Not Arrive in Bulk

You cannot install trust with messaging, policy language, or a better brand; you grow it by making repeated co…

June BellDispatches

The First Cage Had No Bars

Before people can be managed from the outside, they are taught to stand guard inside themselves.

Evelyn ValeThe Ledger

Children and the Public Spaces We Stopped Building for Them

A society can be measured by whether children appear in public as participants in shared life or as managed li…

Full Newsroom →

← Newsroom Dispatches →

A Week'sWork.

Federal Place-Based Programs — Theodos Report Response

Deaf Liberty One-Pager

Letter to the President of Ireland

Barney Frank "Kind Of" Dispatch

Abundance Mirror — Reading Instrument No. 01

Causality and Social Programming Evaluation is the Work of Satan

Data Center Expansion — Spatial Liberty Report

"How Not to Write About Education"

Colonisation of Imagination — Engagement with Vasileva

"Academic Researchers Bully Humanity Because They Care"

Neighborhood Philanthropy — Two Schools Broadside

Capitalist Priest Reads Magnifica Humanitas

Civil to Convivial Democracy

Repair Is a Political Act

Why We Built Cities Where Nobody Walks Anywhere

The Nonprofit That Documented the Community It Displaced

Why We Built Cities Where Nobody Walks Anywhere

The City Was Built Without Its People. The Bill Has Arrived.

When the Elders Leave, the Neighborhood Forgets Itself

Belonging Was Not a Mood. It Was a Budget Item.

The Meeting That Replaced the Movement

What They Carry Home in Their Bodies

What Fathers Carry in Silence

We Keep Getting Invited to Help Make Things We Are Not Allowed to Make

The Archive of Rooms That No Longer Exist

What Dignity Looks Like on One Block

The Sidewalk, Still Taking Applications for Public Life

The Archive of Rooms That No Longer Exist

The Load That Never Enters the Ledger

The Unnamed Load

Trust Does Not Arrive in Bulk

The First Cage Had No Bars

Children and the Public Spaces We Stopped Building for Them

A Week's
Work.