and YOU get a zine and YOU get a zine and YOU
print your own! find me in person and i'll give you one! pay me to mail you one! EVERY BODY GETS A ZINE
ok first of all it’s pronounced ZEEN, like a mag-a-zine. it’s a thing cool kids did in the 80s and that cool kids are still doing
(my hip little town has a Zine Fest! does yours??)
it’s deliciously analog; deliciously ai-resistent; deliciously connection-forming. a folded piece of paper! the mass-broadcast mechanism of yester-century! so cute, so retro!
i wanted one specifically of Animist Gratitude Prayers, so that i could hold my zine in my folded thumbs like a prayer book while i sit cross legged in some cemetery, watching the sunrise, recounting my blessings. do you want to hold a PHONE while you root into your source? of course not! don’t bring the torment nexus to the spiritual practice!
bring a zine!
go forth and print!
→ github.com/scientificanimism/animist-gratitude-prayers ←
instructions & printable webpage link at the GitHub link above!
yes, a printable webpage! a GitHub!
my sickday-birthday DIY cut-paper-pasted-on-paper-bag zine…
…made me want to DIY some HTML+CSS for, first of all, a mass-printable version of the zine because ~fUcK cAnVa~ (omg can we just tell things where to go with WORDS please instead of POINTING and CLICKING and DRAGGING a fussy CURSOR around a STUPID AI-RIDDEN WEB APP) amirite?
…but then also i wanted to keep on DIYing some HTML+CSS and finally make a cute lil webpage for Scientific Animism! because also that QR code that i put in there—when you point your iPhone camera at it your iPhone will tell you simply that the QR code is going to take you to “Substack” and 😖
that won’t do.
That won’t do!
I want it to say “scientificanimism.org”
So now scientificanimism.org is a place you can go!
It’s hilariously useless for now, but you can follow my progress on GitHub or, tbh, i’ll probably tell you right here, on—that’s right, NOT scientificanimism.substack.com, but on newsletter.scientificanimism.org!!!
I like that this also nods to a post-Substack future. We’re all getting tired of it here, aren’t we? (For now, I have no plans to abandon this platform; newsletter.scientificanimism.org will continue to be powered by Substack.)
things i wish
• i wish the background image of my zine wasn’t slop
it’s the ai slop from the (re)introducing post.
i threw it in there because
texture
sorta matches the white-paper-on-brown-paper-bag energy of my prototype
i had already spent the energetic resources to create that image; it already existed; no new trees were burned or ecosystems desolated for the creation of this artifact
honestly i DO find this image super interesting
purity is a vice
and it did match the content better than i could have come up with quickly on my own. the written content on many of the pages sorta slant-rhymes with the visual content—spirals for galaxies; slugbird for creatures.
but i HAVE started to feel much more annoyed by ai since i used it to make the image for that post. getting quite fed up with all this bullshit.
if you have a better image or images to offer, i’d happily take suggestions! feel free to reply to this email, to comment on this post, or send me a pull request!
• i wish you would get one of these zines!
print one at the link above, or!
pay me and i’ll send you one! all paid tiers on this here newsletter now come with ZINES!!!
• i wish you would tell me what other posts to turn into zines!
Gratitude Prayers was my first choice because it doesn’t even feel like a zine, it feels like a devotional. and i love it.
Reverse Ecclesiastes might have a similar feel.
A lot of my other poetry is more self-narrative, which doesn’t feel like quite the same devotional category, but maybe that’s ok? Some of my favorites:
(👆🏼 the one that started it all!)
Or maybe something else? You tell me!
one last thing
while we’re on the topic of “the web presence is growing up 🥹”, you can also now LISTEN to Scientific Animism in your favorite podcast/listening app! For example, here it is on PocketCasts, on Spotify, on Apple. If you notice problems, or if you can’t find it on your preferred platform, let me know!
ok that’s all for this time!
thanks for being here. hope you enjoy the zine. catch you next time.