Laura Moore

Halldór Laxness must be very excited!

Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Today's Reading 2

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please – it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. Thought – to call it by a prouder name than it deserved – had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until – you know the little tug – the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind – put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still.

Today’s Reading 1

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)

+ credit to Bad Friend by @tiffwattsmith.bsky.social for intro'ing me to this gender mapping reversal on friendship, which was an early spark of inspiration for my essay series.

The Category Error, Essay 1: Why gender explains less than we think The first in a multi-part series tackling the logical fallacy at the heart of our gender debates, and offering a proposal for moving forward

This is the gender category error: treating temporary cultural mappings as eternal truths.

We keep asking "what does being a woman/man mean?" when the real question is: why do we expect gender to explain so much about who we are?

New essay: www.strangeclarity.com/p/the-catego...

Aristotle believed only men could form friendships. Women lacked the necessary rationality.

Montaigne agreed—women were incapable of "this sacred bond."

By the 1800s? Complete reversal. Now we assume women are better at friendship.

What changed? Not human nature. 🧵

Nonfiction Isn’t False, but Who Says It’s True? - Electric Literature A new micro-genre turns "truth" into an investigation about how meaning gets made

Authority has become less like a marble statue and more like a quilt—provisional, hand-stitched, showing its seams. The Obsessive Investigation books don’t deliver meaning from on high; they show meaning getting made. (@strangeclarity.bsky.social)

Work is broken: Marx, alienation, and the Great Pretending How a viral post on the death of the corporate job echoes Marx’s 19th-century critique

A Substack post about meaningless corporate jobs is going viral. Marx predicted this 200 years ago. Here's why his critique still matters: www.strangeclarity.com/p/work-is-br...

“If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out.”

Zadie Smith

With a temp of 91 and dew point at 77, outside is a sauna with slightly better air circulation. At least some of us are thriving (the hydrangeas).

People liked my autism epidemic myth-busting, so I turned it into a Substack post complete with linked research and data. Share with your friends, family, enemies—anyone telling you autism is an epidemic or a social trend.

open.substack.com/pub/strangec...

What your writing reveals about you (even when you don’t know it) Sounding the alarm over a July 2025 study on LLMs and autism detection

💥 New post: What Your Writing Reveals About You

AI can now detect autism from essays with ~90% accuracy — outperforming human experts. A breakthrough for screening, but also a privacy wake-up call.

What else are our words revealing?
👉 www.strangeclarity.com/p/autism-wri...

#AI #Autism #Privacy

“My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Now THAT is a sick burn. Thankful for the small mercies… Wittgenstein will never read what I write.

Necessity being the mother of invention: turns out potato chips dipped in plain Greek yogurt is freaking delicious.

So close! (But only in this abstract sense: you're detecting a pattern.)

What do Emily Dickinson, Leonardo da Vinci, and Carl Linnaeus have in common? I have a theory. Find out here: strangeclarity.substack.com/p/could-a-dr...

Fermentation: good for your gut, good for your writing.

#WritingLife #Revision #CreativeProcess #WritersOfBluesky

It’s not just revising—it’s the rest in between. I can’t brute-force six drafts in a day and expect maturity. Each one needs time to stew in my unconscious mind.

For me, that means putting it aside for a few days.

The little idea microbes keep working even when I’m not.

There’s no shortcut, but the early drafts aren’t wasted. They’re essential.

Only by working through them can I locate the piece’s center of gravity—and then cut what’s extraneous.

Like real fermentation, there’s a temporal dimension.

In the past few months of sustained writing, I’ve noticed a pattern: it’s not until the sixth or seventh draft that a piece fully ripens.

Only then have I excavated what it’s really about, pushed the idea as far as it will go, until the -so what?- becomes clear.

Hear me out: writing is a kind of fermentation.

Like cheese, sourdough starter, preserved lemon, there’s a sweet spot of maturity you can’t force. Some essential transformation takes time.

Hi! I'm taking a nonfiction book proposal course with Penny Wincer and it's excellent so far. I'm not sure when her next course runs but she has great resources on her website: www.pennywincerwrites.com

Yes! Also this spoke to me: "A misunderstood social interaction can ruin her mood for months." Being misunderstood and having no means to correct it is my kryptonite. It's like a troubling itch that won't go away, I keep turning it over and over in my mind.

Yes, exactly. I thought my meltdowns were learned behaviors from my dad. I now finally understand that these were symptoms of innate traits in us both, of reaching a melting point without even realizing we were on the path -- I think due to alexithymia and delayed emotional processing.

This is a great piece and I recognize myself -- even as an adult. I had a special interest and then took a new job in an overlapping area and boom, lost all motivation to pursue the interest on my own. The writer is spot-on that special interests need to be protected from demand and expectation.

Agreed, this is excellent, thanks for sharing. Recognize myself completely in this. I had a special interest and then I took a job that overlapped with it, and boom -- special interest gone. It needs to be free of external demands, just like this educator argues.

Oh crap now I realize why I can't endure bracelets. It always comes back to autism.

I've just started with Bob's Burgers, about 4 seasons in. The neurodivergence is expertly handled.

Do you think it's partly demand avoidance?