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[1][https]
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[2]Austin Kleon
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Midyear in a mid year
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Midyear in a mid year
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10 things worth sharing this week
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Jul 05, 2024
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Midyear in a mid year
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[18]
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15
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[19]
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[20]
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[https]
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Looking at my logbook and thinking, “[21]Half empty or half full?”
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[30][ ]
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Subscribe
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[32]Hey y’all,
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If you need some summer reading, the paperback of [33]Steal Like an Artist is
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still 53% off and [34]only $6.99 on Amazon.
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Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
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1. My kids love to use the slang word “[35]mid” to describe things that are
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“mediocre or of low quality” or “bad, boring, or inferior in some way.” I
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thought about the word a lot this week, and what it means to be in the
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middle of things — mid-year, middle age, etc. My slogan: “mid-life need not
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be mid.” ([36]Know Your Meme is still a great website for “[37]the olds.”)
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2. Took me five weeks, but I finally finished George Eliot’s [38]Middlemarch.
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I’m not sure it was quite [39]my cup of tea! (I love [40]reading big books
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in the summer, but I don’t think anything is ever going to top turning 40
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and reading [41]Don Quixote.) If you’d like someone to talk you into
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reading Eliot’s masterpiece, check out Rebecca Mead’s essay “[42]
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Middlemarch and Me,” which she later turned into a full-length memoir, [43]
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My Life in Middlemarch. Eliot is a great inspiration for the middle-aged
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writer: She didn’t start writing fiction until she was thirty-six!
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3. “The nineteenth century didn’t think the dash on its own was nearly
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enough,” wrote Nicholson Baker in [44]his famous essay about punctuation.
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The Victorians loved the now-extinct “dash-hybrids,” which Baker named:
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[45]
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[https]
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Eliot uses the “colash” in Middlemarch. (Thanks to my friend [46]Clive
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Thompson for pointing this out.)
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4. Eliot, by the way, is extremely quotable, and her contemporaries knew it:
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in 1872, Alexander Main published [47]Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in
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Prose and Verse Selected from the Works of George Eliot and later [48]The
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George Eliot Birthday Book, even though Eliot herself said [49]birthday
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books were “the vulgarest thing in the book stalls.” (A few years ago the
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novelist Adelle Waldman re-read Middlemarch and [50]shared her favorite
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quotes.)
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5. Speaking of quotable books, I tried reading Pascal’s [51]Pensées, as its
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influence can be felt throughout Middlemarch, but I eventually decided I
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couldn’t stand Pascal, so I picked up a similarly aphoristic and
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fragmentary book from my shelves — G.C. Lichtenberg’s [52]The Waste Books.
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Holy cow am I in love with this book! It’s the best bathroom reader ever.
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6. “The single most important question I think that one must ask one’s self
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about a character is: ‘[53]What are they really afraid of?’” RIP
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screenwriter [54]Robert Towne, who wrote [55]Chinatown, and doctored
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scripts for movies like [56]The Godfather. (He wrote the “[57]I never
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wanted this for you” scene.”)
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7. RIP artist [58]Anton Van Dalen, who was [59]the secret assistant of Saul
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Steinberg. (Here’s a tour of [60]his home in the East Village he lived in
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since 1968.)
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8. RIP calligrapher [61]Alan Blackman, whose “Letters to Myself” project is
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considered by some to be “one of the seven wonders of the world of
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calligraphy.”
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9. “How Hard Could It Be?” was the campaign slogan of the late Austin musician
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and writer [62]Kinky Friedman when he was running for Governor of Texas. I
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checked his Austin guidebook [63]The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic out
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of a Cleveland library seventeen years ago before I moved down here. I
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picked it back up this week after I heard he died — it reads like a relic
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from another era. (RIP to another ornery Austin writer, [64]Michael
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Corcoran.)
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10. Writing books, making art, recording music… it’s all a lot easier when you
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don’t know what you’re doing. Better yet if you don’t know that you don’t
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know what you’re doing. It’s when you know you don’t know what you’re doing
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that you’ve got to really get after it. Best to do what the poet Rumi
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advised: “[65]Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
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Thanks for reading. This is a hand-rolled, ad-free, anti-algorithm, completely
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reader-supported publication. You can help keep it going by becoming [66]a paid
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subscriber:
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[75][ ]
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Subscribe
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[77]xoxo,
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Austin
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PS. Here’s a page from [78]Show Your Work! to get you in the spirit of summer
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vacation:
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[79]
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[https]
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291
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Share this post
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Midyear in a mid year
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austinkleon.substack.com
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Copy link
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Facebook
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[86]
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15
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[87]
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Share
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15 Comments
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[https]
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[ ]
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[90]
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Amy Allen
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[91]Palate & Palette
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[92]Jul 5
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[89] Thank you for sharing the news about Alan Blackman, a true artist of
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[https] letters. My dad, now 93, was a calligraphy student of his many, many
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years ago. I hope he saved some of their mail correspondence!
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Expand full comment
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[94]1 reply by Austin Kleon
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[96]
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soosixty
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[97]Jul 5Liked by Austin Kleon
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[95] "Writing books, making art, recording music… it’s all a lot easier when
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[https] you don’t know what you’re doing. Better yet if you don’t know that you
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don’t know what you’re doing." So true.
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[112][ ]
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Subscribe
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© 2024 Austin Kleon
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[114]Privacy ∙ [115]Terms ∙ [116]Collection notice
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[117] Start Writing[118]Get the app
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[119]Substack is the home for great culture
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References:
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[1] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
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[2] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
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[18] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comments
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[19] javascript:void(0)
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[20] https://austinkleon.com/2021/07/02/is-the-year-half-empty-or-half-full-2/
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[21] https://austinkleon.com/2021/07/02/is-the-year-half-empty-or-half-full-2/
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[32] https://www.instagram.com/p/C8zpXe_RIpa
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[33] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
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[34] https://geni.us/pzl82v
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[35] https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/mid/
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[36] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mid-slang
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[37] https://www.dictionary.com/e/ageism-terms/#
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[38] https://geni.us/XPkAs
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[39] https://austinkleon.com/2019/02/26/not-my-cup-of-tea/
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[40] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/big-books-for-summer
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[41] https://geni.us/92NGyT
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[42] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/middlemarch-and-me
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[43] https://geni.us/oVp4OI
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[44] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/11/04/survival-of-the-fittest/
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[45] https://clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-century-punctuation-marks-you-should-try-using-49d2e2516e5e
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[46] https://clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-century-punctuation-marks-you-should-try-using-49d2e2516e5e
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[47] https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/322
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[48] https://www.loc.gov/item/46037905/
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[49] https://scolarcardiff.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/birthday-book/#:~:text=The%20birthday%20book%20was%20a,rhetoric%20of%20personalisation%20and%20intimacy.
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[50] https://themillions.com/2013/12/a-year-in-reading-adelle-waldman.html
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[51] https://geni.us/8ovu
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[52] https://geni.us/G7ltCEn
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[53] https://twitter.com/flying_lobster/status/1808759989470966157
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[54] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/movies/robert-towne-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4k0.sKPJ.p6f9J0eZ_DSP&smid=url-share
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[55] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315
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[56] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646
|
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[57] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IXVycNgGN0
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[58] https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/anton-van-dalen-artist-dead-1234710960/
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[59] https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-the-assistant-anton-van-dalen/
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[60] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/studio-visit-anton-van-dalen-2240607
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[61] https://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/755013830498828288
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[62] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/arts/music/kinky-friedman-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1
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[63] https://geni.us/io7c
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[64] https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/music/2024-07-02/michael-corcoran-has-died-and-austins-lost-a-voice-that-always-kept-things-interesting/
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[65] https://austinkleon.com/2022/06/09/embrace-bewilderment/
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[66] https://austinkleon.substack.com/subscribe
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[77] https://twitter.com/austinkleon/status/1808627459069186327
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[78] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work/
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[79] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work
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[86] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comments
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[87] javascript:void(0)
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[89] https://substack.com/profile/21027078-amy-allen
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[90] https://substack.com/profile/21027078-amy-allen
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[91] https://palateandpalette.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=comment_metadata
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[92] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comment/61015767
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[94] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comment/61015767
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[95] https://substack.com/profile/2034679-soosixty
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[96] https://substack.com/profile/2034679-soosixty
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[97] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comment/61030237
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[99] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comments
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[114] https://substack.com/privacy
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[115] https://substack.com/tos
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[116] https://substack.com/ccpa#personal-data-collected
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[117] https://substack.com/signup?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=footer
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[118] https://substack.com/app/app-store-redirect?utm_campaign=app-marketing&utm_content=web-footer-button
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[119] https://substack.com/
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[126] https://enable-javascript.com/
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