Digital Manticore

Two Weeks in the Life: February 16, 2025

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Lindsey / 0 Comment

Hello, friends and enemies. Let’s just get this out of the way: the shower drama is ongoing. Our contractor scheduled a plumber for Monday, but he was sick and couldn’t make it. Then I didn’t hear from the contractor all week and I was forced to email them to ask if this is the only plumber in the tri-state area or what. I’m told they are “in talks” with another plumber as if this is a Middle East peace summit. Anyway, our bathroom has been torn up for a month. Very fun and cool! In other homeownership drama—because these kinds of things tend to happen all at once—we had a totally different plumber come by this week to fix the sink in the bathroom that isn’t currently torn up because it had all but stopped draining. Fortunately that was a comparatively easy operation. Then, the spring on our garage door broke and we couldn’t get the door open. We actually keep our car in the garage, so you can understand how this could be a problem. We were able to get someone out the same day to fix it. We ended up spending quite a bit of money because we replaced the entire garage door mechanism; the repair guy pointed out that it probably only had a year or two of life left and we could visibly see the chain slackening in a significant and worrying way. I am complaining about this but I do still prefer it to living in an apartment. Hazards of the job, I guess. I would also rather replace something like the garage door opener now before the supply chain falls apart/tariffs make everything insanely expensive. Yes, this is what I’m thinking about during every transaction now.

Current Events

There’s still a lot happening and I’m assuming a lot will stay happening for the duration. I think one of the hardest things right now is not getting battered by the deluge of shit the government says it’s doing. Yes, it is tempting and seems briefly satisfying to dunk on something patently idiotic like Representative Carter (R-GA) proposing H.R. 1161 to “To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as ‘Red, White, and Blueland.'” It’s easy to look at this and be like, Republicans and everyone who supports them are stupid as fuck. However, as Sarah Kendzior often says, these people “cover crime with scandal.” The same day that Carter introduced this fucking nonsense, he also proposed H.R. 1160, which would make doctors and other medical professionals into independent contractors. This would destabilize an entire industry. We don’t need more precarity in our workforce, especially for a career that requires a lot of specialization and continued education, and that costs a lot of money to get into. Another example of stuff to not get bogged down in, in my opinion anyway, is Trump announcing he’s going to levy a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada, only to walk back the tariff the next day. The same day, Elon Musk was getting access to the Treasury’s payment system. The tariffs are definitely harmful, but to me they seem like a way to bury the much more serious issue of known grifter Elon Musk tapping into the system the government uses to pay everyone. I will note, in fairness, that a judge told Elon to stop. But, as even The New York Times explains, “If the administration fails to comply with the emergency order, it is unclear how it might be enforced.” Yeah, I bet. The president is encouraging him or at least letting him do this so … who would stop him?

There are other pieces of news I want to point out but that I’m not getting deep into:

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) act is rearing its ugly head in congress. It would require Americans to present a birth certificate or passport to prove that they are eligible to vote. This is a problem because “the reality is that more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.” It would also be a problem for any transgender people who have changed their name but don’t have a matching passport. Sounds like a great way to disenfranchise millions of people who probably won’t vote for conservatives! I don’t know how likely this is to become the law but I don’t think we can assume anything good at this point. If you can, I highly recommend getting a passport or changing your name immediately. This also alarms me in the context of Project 2025’s stated goal of ending no-fault divorce. Seems bad!
Wired reports that “The United States government has been secretly amassing a ‘large amount’ of ‘sensitive and intimate information’ on its own citizens.” Long story short: the government thinks it’s okay to purchase sensitive data about us, as long as it’s not acquiring that data directly via surveillance. Cool loophole. What could possibly go wrong.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia recently got some good press that I thought was interesting. I’m not their PR department but I am doing my part to improve the people’s encyclopedia, so it feels nice to see people say that Wikipedia is a good thing, actually. A columnist on CNN called it “one of the most reliable places on the internet.” It’s one of the internet’s most popular website and the only one not owned by a corporation. It’s troubling that so much of our time online is mediated by giant companies that make money off our attention, but that’s an essay for another day. Wikipedia was also in the news for becoming recognized as a digital public good. This means that the Digital Public Goods Alliance, a “UN-endorsed initiative that facilitates the discovery and deployment of open-source technologies,” said that Wikipedia is doing a good job and sort of acting like a public utility (to make a broad analogy).

I mention this stuff in part because I like Wikipedia and think it’s cool but also because we are heading into an information apocalypse. AI and fascism and a lack of critical thinking and reading skills are making it really hard to access information and know what’s true. That’s why people like Elon Musk are fucking mad at Wikipedia—they can’t control the narrative. There’s a great, long, explanation of the right-wing “crusade against Wikipedia” on Molly White’s newsletter [citation needed] that is a worthwhile read if you’re interested in all the details of this fight. Ultimately, Musk is mad that even being the world’s richest jackass isn’t enough to make people say nice things about him on Wikipedia (talk about “citation needed”). I think a lot of conservatives also get mad when people do things that aren’t just for themselves. Breaking out of our culture’s cult of individualism is a major threat to power. Why edit Wikipedia? To help other people find information? What’s the profit motive? Oh, there isn’t one. You can’t buy off people who are in it for the love of the game. Unfortunately, Musk isn’t the type to just leave it alone after someone tells him no. The Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit that oversees Wikipedia) is working on ways to protect editors and help maintain privacy, as 404 Media reports. I’m not very worried for myself personally since I’m not working on particularly charged topics, but this stuff is still troubling given the current environment. Part of me thinks I should do something to be more careful but I don’t know what that would be and it is super easy to figure out who I am in real life given that I’m constantly talking about my Wikipedia activities here on my blog under my real name. Access to information is important to me and I have no plans to stop what I’m doing, even as a Wikipedia editor without a tremendous amount of contributions (yet). I will be raging and writing about information literacy from the gulag if it comes to that.

Prison, honey

Speaking of the gulag, let’s check in on the fortunes of America’s private prison companies. Immediately after the election, stock prices for private prison company GEO Group jumped by 32 percent. Last week, Business Insider noted that stocks for GEO Group and Core Civic (another private prison company) are “tending” in response to the news that the “U.S. is building a massive facility to house up to 30,000 deported migrants” in Guantanamo. Forbes reports that “data from 2023 shows that some 90% of ICE detainees were being held at private institutions with an estimated 80% of those housed at CoreCivic and Geo Group facilities” and that both companies are ready to scoop up more government business if Trump deports as many people as he has promised to do.

Two pieces of prison-related news came out recently. First, Trump announced he is “sending nonviolent, ‘low-risk’ migrant detainees” the the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which they are converting into a “large-scale immigration detention site.” People will be “held there until they can be deported.” What I don’t understand—and have yet to find an explanation for—is why they want to send people to Guantanamo. Is the point to cut them off from anyone who could help them? Put them to work (don’t make me bring up AP’s Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands article again)? Are they hoping we’ll forget if it’s offshore? Is the cruelty the point?

The second news item is that El Salavdor’s president Nayib Bukele (who, by the way, per Reuters, “labels himself as the ‘coolest dictator’ and a ‘philosopher king.'” These fucking people.) has offered to let the US jail people in El Salvador’s giant prison complex that can house 40,000 people. Bukele stated, “The fee would be relatively low for the US but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.” I assume this is just another way to get in on those sweet prison profits. Even if you accept that prison is necessary, should companies be turning a profit from it? It’s also strange and troubling because it is unconstitutional to deport American citizens. I don’t know if that will stop them from doing it, but I hope it would at least slow them down. I do worry that this could become a way to remove dissidents. This may sound far-fetched at the moment but I don’t think it’s safe to assume it couldn’t happen (but we should all be raging to prevent such things from happening). President Bukele is definitely operating in the same style as Trump. El Salvador’s constitution used to say that presidents could only serve a second term after waiting ten years (seems like a great idea to me), but Bukele-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned this, paving the way for him to become president for a second consecutive term (I learned all about this from editing Wikipedia!). This is a case of dictators supporting dictators!

Books and Other Words

book: Notorious Sorcerer. Cover features the silhouette of a man in a red coat, holding a flame in his hand — Notorious Sorcerer

I really enjoyed Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans. I accidentally bought the second book in this series when I was browsing my local bookshop and then had to double back and get the first book, Notorious Sorcerer, from the library. The story follows Siyon Velo who makes his living “delving” between dimensions to acquire alchemically charted materials, which he sells to local practitioners. He’s a member of the Bravi, which seems like a cross between a gang and a theater troupe (perhaps … this is all gangs?). Alchemy is technically illegal in Siyon’s city, but rich people practice it and, if you have money—which Siyon does not—you can learn it at the university. The author’s world is very rich and has a cool magic system, which the wealthy magic practitioners think they understand, but maybe not so well as they believe. I don’t want to spoil anything but I will say there are lots of good characters—including a rich twat consigning himself to another realm because he’s in love with a creature, pretty and useless men (per the author’s description! that’s not me)—card games that may or may not be inspired by forgotten magic, and at least one trip to the opera. I’m looking forward to the other books.

book cover for Let This Radicalize You shown on Kobo ereader — Let This Radicalize You

The title of Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba’s book Let This Radicalize You comes from one of the author’s frequent sayings: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.” The book offers perspectives on organizing and activism and includes thoughts from experienced activists on various themes. I loved this book and I highlighted so much wisdom as I read (and I am resisting copying it all out here). It’s really important, especially now, to figure out what we can do to avoid despair and connect with others. Hayes and Kaba emphasize that the key to activism is caring about other people (and yourself!) and building relationships. Connecting with other people is how movements are built; just reminding people of “horrifying facts” does not change people’s minds (My number one pitfall: assuming people will change their mind with sufficient information. Alas). The authors explain that hope is something you do and that “taking action is a practice of hope.” If we want to transform the world, “the most important thing you can do … is act.” We have to fight for the world we want, in person. We don’t all have to do everything, but we all have to do something. One observation that really hit me hard was that reading the news and consuming information about politics feels like being engaged in a political practice, but it’s actually just a hobby. Scrolling twitter and getting upset about every new piece of shitty legislation or whatever Elon is doing is not the same as being politically engaged. As the authors put it, “Debating the latest headline protest is ‘no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football.'” Ouch. It’s also a good reminder to not to listen to criticism from anyone who isn’t putting in the work. It made me think of a recent article from 404 Media called You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism and, yeah, you can’t. You have to do uncomfortable things, like deal with people whose views don’t perfectly align with our own. We have to do things and connect with people. Per Hayes and Kaba, “When people delve into activism, they often grapple with questions like, ‘Am I willing to get arrested,’ when often the more pressing question for a new activist is ‘Am I willing to listen, even when it’s hard?'” The also ask “how much discomfort is the world worth?” Oof! Finally, I must share this quote on reading and educating oneself: “We urge organizers to spend more time with books and other modes of learning, not as an admonition … but to encourage you to claim an inheritance of knowledge your oppressors hope you never discover, embrace, or build from.”

Meanwhile, on the internet:

WHY ARE THERE NO FUCKING JOBS? via The Life of a Femcel. It sounds like the job market is even worse than when I graduated into the recession in 2009. I feel for these young people. From the article, “My other main point is this: we are in such late stage capitalism that even the people, perhaps especially the people, who have done everything right by interning, getting a good degree from a top university, networked, worked hard, are screwed. The only way to get a job now is through a connection, and much of that is timing, luck, and class.”
On the recipe as object via From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. A piece that asks “If recipes and cookbooks have historically been significant ways to understand people and places better, spanning geography and time, what does the digital glut and onslaught of recipes tell us about our current moment?”
How Can You Spot an Inaccurate Dinosaur? AO Wants to Know. via Atlas Obscura. This is an article about one man’s mission to illustrate the inaccuracies in dinosaur toys and show what they should look like, based on what we currently know. We love to see an autistic person (I can only assume) thriving.

Corporeal Form

Is anyone else just … feeling physically bad? I know it’s not just me because Culture Study had a whole piece a few days ago called Who Else Is Feeling This In Their Body and all the comments are like YES, ME TOO. I’ve been pretty tired and everything feels extra hard lately, even for things I want to do. I didn’t think I was sleeping that poorly since my brain never saves information about if I’m waking up at night, but a few nights ago I dreamed that I took an all-day nap. How exhausted do you have to be to need sleep in a dream? Also my knees are feeling bad, which includes my “good” knee doing something weird. I don’t know what but it doesn’t feel right and I’m a little scared to investigate. Let’s hope it’s just the weather. I cannot abide another ailment.

Doing Stuff

We had the second annual SOUPer Bowl two weeks ago. It seems like this was long enough ago that it should have been in my last post, but it just missed the cutoff. It was really great and everyone made good soup. Getting together with friends for a low-stakes food-based activity is actually amazing. I made Senegalese peanut soup from The Daily Soup Cookbook and it was well received. I can’t ask for more than that! I feel like there ought to be more to say about it, but what is there I can say about the joy of getting together with the gang and eating soup on a rainy day?

Five small cups of soup on a plate with crackers and bread — Souper bowl sampler

Several pots of soup on my stove and countertop — Souper bowl sampler

This weekend we saw the Sacramento Ballet do Romeo and Juliet and they had a live orchestra and everything! I like seeing these classic ballets in part because it’s fun to see the origin of songs I often hear in ballet class, like this one. I thought the choreography was very playful. I have no idea if that is typical for this ballet; they said they used new choreography (with the traditional Prokofiev score). I also thought it was interesting that the choreography seemed to reference the play’s dialogue, like when Romeo and Juliet first kiss, they do a bunch of moves with their hands touching and I thought that was a cool allusion to the line about letting lips do what hands do.

Kitchen Witchery

I haven’t gone too wild in the kitchen recently, continuing my trend of taking it easy. I made some good Indian food, all stuff I’ve made before: matar paneer (peas and cheese), lentils, and rice, plus some roasted cauliflower for good measure. I was very satisfied with this potato soup that I made a couple of nights ago. It’s a New York Times recipe so I will note that I added a little more seasoning, in case anyone is planning to try it.

a plate of matar paneer, rice, and roasted cauliflower and a bowl of garlic dal — peas and cheese and things

A big pot of creamy potato soup — peas and cheese and things

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. For anyone hoping for updates about Fritz’s poor litter box behavior: he is making progress. He started pooping in the bathtub instead of in places around the house, which we encouraged because that’s at least next to the litter box and maybe will make him feel better about being in the bathroom. He has been using the box more readily and even did so without anyone observing it! He normally thinks using the bathroom needs to be a family activity. Don’t let anyone tell you that cats are anti-social.

Fritz the cat inside his blanket den, looking out towards the camera — hidden baby

Fritz the cat curled up in shrimp mode on the bed, lifting his head to yawn real big — hidden baby

weekly update

Two Weeks in the Life: February 2, 2025

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. I hope we are all staying as sane as possible in these wild times. I myself am feeling a little nuts but I’m hanging in there. I’m trying to stay offline and read my books and talk to my friends. I hope you are all doing the same.

I know a lot of people get to my posts through social media, but as we know social media is crumbling and a lot of people are not using it as much. So, I’d like to remind you that you can subscribe to my blog here. You’ll get every post in your inbox as an email. You can even reply to it and it will come straight to me!

Current Events

It hasn’t even been two weeks of Trump round two and everything feels insane. There’s a pervasive sense of unreality that I think is probably very similar to what people in the USSR felt. Rules are changing, it’s about to be very hard to buy anything (including food) thanks to these tariffs, and we have no idea what kind of kleptocratic bullshit the administration is going to do next. I was commenting to my friend that we were planning a trip to Costco before their teamsters went on strike (averted at the last minute, by the way) and I was like, wow, what a Soviet-ass statement. I fear that the era of getting everything we want when we want it is coming to an end. I’ve got two books on the top of my reading list to help me think about this topic: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation and Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. I’ll let you know what I learn.

I am trying to avoid the news, not completely but enough to keep me sane. I know we need to know what’s going on but I don’t think the palace intrigue and propaganda press announcements and minuta are going to help me. I spent Trump’s first term on Twitter non-stop and, in retrospect, that was not a great choice. Unfortunately, since I work as a federal contractor, a lot of news is coming directly. They are sending notices about the executive orders Trump is issuing and the resultant policy changes to my work email. They keep saying that these messages are “legitimate and can be trusted,” which … if you have to announce that about yourself, I think you know you’ve already lost. It’s a little scary and I’m hoping my program doesn’t get canceled. I’m just glad I’m not a full federal employee because then I’d be losing all my work towards my pension and benefits if I got laid off (as it is, I just have to hope the stock market doesn’t crash and take my 401(k) with it … -desperate laughter-). There are also much bigger problems beyond one small program that supports the Affordable Care Act, like the fact that Elon now has “access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems.” For all the bad stuff that is happening, this could be seriously terrible. This is all the government’s money. I’m sure there’s no connection, but Elon did spend $44 billion buying twitter, which came from a combination of personal funds, money from investors, Qatar, and a Saudi prince. Apparently, it’s not enough to be the richest guy in the world, he also has to make sure no one else has any money at all. I hope he drops dead.

Books and Other Words

book cover for The Crescent Moon Tearoom shown on kobo ereader — The Crescent Moon Tearoom

The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski is about three magical sisters—triplets, in fact—who run a tea house in late 19th century Chicago. The girls bake nice treats and read their customers’ tea leaves, making it a very popular stop for the ladies of Chicago. The story is about the tension of discovering yourself and what you want even if that’s not what you thought your life was going to be, which of course is heightened by having identical sisters who thought they would all be together all the time. The story is cute but it’s working overtime to be “cozy” to the point that it borders on saccharine. The prose didn’t really do it for me, either. The author fell back onto the same imagery a lot (so many references to the scent of marigold and the “candy-striped” circus tent, and feeling sensations all the way down to one’s toes) and, as an editor, I unfortunately notice these things. I do appreciate that there’s a circus in this book, though it’s not the main event. One of the sisters falls for a handsome performer whose personality seems to just be trapeze artist with “inky black curls” (his job is just trapeze). But I suppose who among us would be immune to an empty-headed and attractive trapeze performer who listens to our problems? So, while I love witches and circuses and often appreciate a tale of sisterly relationships, this book was just okay in my opinion.

This is a rare post featuring just one book. I’ve been reading a lot of Don Quijote, but it’s going to be a while before I finish it. I’m about three-quarters through a quite good fantasy book, but you’ll have to wait for next time to hear about it!

Meanwhile, on the internet:

what the fuck are we doing anymore via the late review. Thoughts on the state of social media and journalism and writing, and how things are now terrifying and making us all insane.
The Social Media Sea Change via Culture Study. More thoughts on social media but more practical with musings on how it feels to be on social media less.
Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What’s Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions via The Onion. This headline speaks for itself.
If you were rich, would you fold laundry? via Inner Workings. From the article, “An ideal is emerging for me, a triad of types of work: The work you do to get paid, the life maintenance tasks like laundry, and the creative things you do for you. The economy-oriented work, the basic needs work, and the soul work, each of which brings something different to a full life. Three legs that create a solid foundation. I think the benefits of the paid work and the creative work are more obvious, but I would argue the maintenance work also has benefits. The role of these tasks in this triad is to anchor me to the world. They remind me how life is sustained. They remind me to value such work at the level it should be valued.”

Now That’s What I Call Shower Drama vol. 8

Regular readers are well acquainted with our ongoing shower saga (original saga: 1, 2, 3. extended saga: 1, 2, 3, 4). Because apparently nothing can be easy, it continued this week. We were originally slated to start last Thursday—we signed a contract for the work in October but had been waiting for all the materials to arrive and then the holidays to end—but they had to push it back slightly and I was told they would tentatively start on Monday. On Sunday night, I texted the project manager to ask what was going on and he said he’d been furloughed and didn’t know. I kind of assumed the work would be further delayed since no one had confirmed with me, but in fact people showed up bright and early on Monday morning to rip out the shower. It was Wednesday before I got ahold of anyone at the construction company to find out what was going on. We have a new project manager who wanted to come over and “talk through” the project. I was very cross when he said he needed to check if they had all the materials and that the job started “earlier than [I] expected.” There’s a huge difference between that and people showing up without letting me know that they were for sure coming. I still am not certain when someone is next planning to come over and continue working on this shit, which means we’ve had a full week without using this bathroom because people can’t fucking communicate. Fortunately we have a second bathroom, but that’s where we keep the cat’s litter box so it’s not like I want to leave my toothbrush in there! I am having a bad time!

The space where my shower has been removed, exposing the inner walls, pipes, and insulation — here we go again

Doing Stuff

A shelf of bound periodicals with five volumes of "Lesbian Connection" — I went to the Lesbian Connection and everyone knew you

After the election, one of the things I wrote was “Pick one cause to put your effort into. There will be many things that need attention (I mean, there already are!) in the coming years. Pick one thing in your community that you want to support and volunteer for that.” I may have discovered my thing. Yesterday I went to volunteer orientation at the Lavender Library, Sacramento’s queer library and archive. It’s completely run by volunteers, and people can go there to read, check out books, or participate in community programs. I think it’s really cool and I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this sooner. All the volunteers work the circulation desk to keep the library open, and there is the option of joining committees and doing other activities to keep the library going. I may finally put my masters in library and information science to use, some ten years later.

Big neon sign announcing the Crest theater with the marquee listing "Maria Bamford" — Maria Bamford at the Crest

Abby invited me to see comedian Maria Bamford with her. I went in knowing nothing about Bamford, just trusting Abby’s taste, and it was so hilarious. I mean, she opened with a bit where she rolls on the ground and says “I’m doing my job … I’m clocking in to work.” Yeah, that’s how it feels to work lately. I’m rolling on the ground. I am a worm. None of this makes sense but I’m here to put on my little show and get paid. It was good to just laugh for an hour and a half and be in a group where everyone is just as mad about how much everything sucks. Both Bamford and her opener hit us with a few comments about how much everything is insane and the crowd was like WOO YEAH. We’re all feeling it. We are not alone in this. So yeah, go out and laugh and be reminded that you are not an island.

Pump up the (Monster) Jam

me standing in front of a Scooby Doo-themed monster truck at Monster Jam — Monster Jam

A monster truck rally is probably one of the last places you’d expect to find me; yet, I went to one last weekend. My “niece” (biologically speaking: my friend Mandy’s kid. spiritually speaking: my niece) has been talking about monster trucks and how much she wants to see them for a while so we womaned up and took her to see Monster Jam! My niece had a great time but we were kind of bored by the whole thing. It’s just … big trucks? I don’t know. I’m not in the target demographic, I guess. I was surprised to notice that the primary audience is children, and probably autistic children, if I’m any judge of such things. The crowd mostly consisted of families with young kids. At the venue, they were selling ear protection in the form of headphones shaped like monster truck tires that light up, and little constellations of LED lights dotted the arena.

I found it fairly boring that the show was each car coming out, doing a trick, then ceding the floor to the next one. I was expecting a race, or perhaps a battle of some sort? It turns out the trucks do not fight. In between these stunts, there was a lot of commentary, which I found kind of grating. I felt like only one of the drivers, the woman piloting the shark-themed Megalodon, really understood the assignment. She seemed to get the cartoonish nature of the whole affair and really played up to the crowd. In contrast, the lady driving the Scooby Doo truck looked kind of dead behind the eyes. Lady, it’s a truck shaped like a dog and the tail wags. Get into it! Anyway, I’ve now seen for myself the kind of thing that could only be popular in America.

Nostalgia!!

In an effort to stay off the internet, I’ve been playing a lot of original Super Nintendo games over the last couple weeks. I signed up for Nintendo Online on the Switch (sidebar: why is everything a fucking subscription now? A rant for another day) so I could play old games. I actually still have my old Super Nintendo, but there’s no way to hook it up to a modern TV. I have been delighted to realize I still remember where all the secrets are in Super Mario 3. That shit is just in my brain for life. When I was a kid, there was a year when we got a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine and at the time they included a guidebook to Super Mario All-Stars (consisting of Mario games one through three plus Lost Levels) that showed the layout of each level and what was in it. I absolutely revered this book. “Cheating!” some might say. Well, we didn’t have YouTube back then so this was one of the few ways to really learn everything in the game. The other day I searched online to see if anyone had preserved it, and of course someone has! It’s in the Internet Archive. Thank you to whoever put this online for me to enjoy.

The Passamackey Mystery

I am encountering lots of new terms as I read Don Quijote and there are about a billion footnotes in the Spanish edition to explain the archaic usage of many words (I passed lucky footnote number 1,000 this week). Surprisingly, my friends reading in English are also finding some unfamiliar words. Lito brought up the word “passamackey,” which appears in the John Rutherford translation and apparently literally nowhere else on the internet, in our group chat. The text reads “… all the Turkish sailors and soldiers were convinced that they were going to be attacked there, and had their close and their passamackeys, or shoes, ready to flee over land without waiting for the assault.” We could tell from context that it’s a type of shoe but we had no idea where this word came from. I checked the Spanish version to see if we could figure it out, but the it wasn’t a whole lot more useful, it uses the word “pasamaques,” which suggests that the translator merely anglicized the word and called it a day. The Spanish version did have a helpful footnote explaining that passamaques are a type of sandal. I had to dig deep on the internet to get more information, but I eventually found a document called Notas etimológicas a “El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha”, dated 1899, in Wikisource (thank you Wikipedia). It explains that the term comes from the Turkish word بشامق‎ or baxámac, which is a type of sandal that “even Turkish emperors used.” Lito also confirmed with a Turkish friend that the modern word is paşmak, formerly written as başmak (Turkish during the Ottoman empire was written in the Arabic script, which does not have a p, so it would have been written with a b instead. This is why the word appears to change from başmak to paşmak), which means shoe, although the word originally referred to a palace, as that is where they were worn. This was hard-won knowledge so I am writing it down for the next poor soul who is trying to figure out where the hell this word came from. You’re welcome!

Kitchen Witchery

I’ve been cooking normal stuff and I’m still trying new tofu recipes. I revisited the orange tofu and broccoli, which I previously mentioned came out terribly, and used the Panda Express-branded orange sauce that they sell at the grocery store. This was a good choice. It tastes good and the result is a very easy meal, since you just roast the tofu and broccoli together in the oven then apply the sauce. On Friday night, I tried the kung pao tofu recipe from Bean by Bean and we loved it. I was pleasantly surprised by how good this recipe is. It’s a great time to find more tofu recipes to love considering the cost of groceries (laugh/cry)! Finally, it’s been cold, so I made stew and biscuits! I use the recipe from How to Cook Everything as a starting point, but I use the slow cooker and add some extra stuff for flavor like a packet of Lipton onion soup.

A bowl of stew, a big pot of stew, and biscuits cooling on a wire rack. All positioned near each other on the kitchen counter — stew and biscuits

A bowl of orange tofu and broccoli over rice next to a plate of gyoza — stew and biscuits

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. Fritz has truly been serving lately.

Fritz the cat with his head sticking out from a sea of blankets. He looks faintly alarmed — Tucked in

Fritz the cat peeking his head between levels of the cat tree — Tucked in

How To

How to Find Books to Read

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. Given the abysmal state of the internet, I’m writing a few posts about how to find information, starting with this one about how to find and access books. There are a lot of reasons to read books, and not just get lost in reading bits and pieces on the internet (although that has its place). I’m not going to make this into an essay on the importance of reading, but I will note that academics have noted that “higher levels of educational attainment appear to mitigate the tendency toward authoritarian preferences and attitudes” and that reading more “is a significant predictor of democratic citizenship.” Plus—this may be controversial—reading is fun! It gives us things to think about and to discuss with our friends. Telling stories is part of being human and reading can connect us with our cultural heritage. Or, as one author recently put it, “I think people who care about literature need to make this argument, relentlessly: that everybody deserves to have access to these stories, that they’re cool and good and fun, that not everything in the world needs to help advance you up the ladder, that there’s more to being alive than work and posting and gaining influence, that winning isn’t in fact everything.”

comic panel from "Persepolis." A woman is smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. The caption reads "Once again, I arrived at my usual conclusion: One must educate oneself." — from Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”

This post discusses what are two separate, but connected, concepts: discovering interesting things to read and figuring out how to access those things. I explain how I find out about books and provide information about where you can get the books, often for free.

Local Public Library

Of course I am starting by recommending your public library! It’s the easiest way to get free books and support access to books for your community. The majority of public libraries let you sign up online and you can get ebooks and e-audiobooks too. If you don’t know where your library is in the world or on the internet, get online and search “[city name] public library.” If you’re in California, you can also use this tool from the California State Library to find your local library.

If there’s a specific book you want but the library doesn’t have it, you can probably ask the library to buy it for you. Most public libraries let you request materials. It’s possible that they will deny your request (it has happened to me), but they are likely to grant it (this has also happened to me!). Here’s the Sacramento Public Library request form, for example. If you can’t figure out how to request materials, search the library website (not the catalog), or go talk to a librarian. I promise librarians want nothing more than to help people find out about things, so they will be happy to help you.

Beyond simply browsing for books, I subscribe to the Sacramento library’s new book alerts newsletter. I find out about new things and I know the library has them! It’s very convenient and I’m sure many libraries have a similar service.

screenshot of the kobo website's page for a book with the library extension displaying the book's availability at the Sacramento library

I have installed a web browser tool called Library Extension to easily find out if my library has a book available. After setting up the extension, it asks for your local library. Whenever you’re on a page about a book, the extension checks if your library has it and if it’s available. You can add multiple libraries, including the Internet Archive Open Library. It is a great reminder to use the library and it helps me spend less money on books!

Physical bookshops

Independent bookstores are also a great place to find books. The people there are usually very well informed and there are bookstores that specialize in certain genres or subjects, like The Ripped Bodice for romance books, Mysterious Galaxy for science fiction and fantasy, or Book Larder for cookbooks. Go walk around the bookstore and see what you find! If you don’t know if there are any independent bookstores near you, you can check the Indiebound bookstore finder or bookshop.org’s bookstore map.

Your local bookstore probably also has a newsletter that talks about new books and events. I subscribe to newsletters for a few bookstores, so I hear about a lot of new books that way.

Don’t forget about local used bookstores! Second-hand bookshops seem to have the wildest treasures and they are not as focused on stocking new releases as other bookstores.

Internet Libraries and eBooks

I love that the internet makes it possible to access so many cool things! There are online libraries available, with a wide variety of books and materials. If I’m buying ebooks online, I usually use kobo, but you do not have to buy books at all The public library has ebooks, and many free online libraries exist. Here are some of the big ones:

image of a frog on top of a stack of books with the text "reading for pleasure? Nope. I read for PAIN." — art by Frogwitch

Queer Liberation Library: You have to join to access the library but it is totally free. The site describes it’s collection as “Queer books! That’s it.”
Open Library by the Internet Archive. This is a huge collection that you can borrow from and read online. There are lots of out-of-print works, but plenty of modern stuff too.You have to make an account, but it’s free.
JSTOR is a site for academic works and they have a collection of over 13,000 open access books, which means they are freely available to everyone. I’ve been using JSTOR for a while because they let you access their scholarly articles even if you’re not connected to an academic institution as long as you make an account (you can read 100 per month!), but I only just learned they had such a big collection of books.
US Press E-books Collection is a repository of books published by the University of California Press. True sickos like me love this kind of stuff because I will get into any academic niche, but even non-sickos can perhaps enjoy becoming curious about works like this Egyptian novel translated into English or a cultural history of hysteria.
Open Culture: A selection of mostly classics that you can read online or in other ebook formats. Open Culture has a lot of media beyond books, too.
Project MUSE: Another repository of academic work. This one focuses on humanities and social sciences.
Open Research Library is a collection of over 14,000 open access books. The main page looks a little off-putting to me but I assure you there are real books here.
Directory of Open Access Books, more mostly academic reading. This might seem repetitive, but open-access academic work is important. A lot of these books can be difficult to find and very expensive, so the more repositories we have, the better.

Publisher Newsletters

Another way I find books to read is through publisher newsletters. Publishers want you to know about their books, so basically every publisher has some kind of service to let you know what is new. If you don’t want newsletters, most of them have social media of one form or another that you can follow too. If you aren’t sure who publishes the books you read, just check the cover page of a book and it will tell you, then you can look them up.

Here are some that I follow:

The University of Chicago Press has gives newsletter subscribers a free ebook every month!
I like science fiction so I subscribe to the newsletters for both Tor and Orbit Books.
Haymarket Books has a lot of great nonfiction on the state of the world and what to do about it. They often run sales and you can get ebooks for cheap. Sometimes they give ebooks away, like these books about Palestine.
I’ve recently started following AK Press. It has a similar vibe to Haymarket but with a slightly different focus.

Follow Authors Online

Authors are readers as much as they are writers. They often post about what they’re reading and what they liked. If I like a book, I look up the author on BlueSky or instagram (or whatever social media we’re using) and follow them. If I love an author, I’ll find their website (just search “[author name]” or “[author name] website”) and sign up for their newsletter. Basically every published author has a newsletter to at least announce new books. I find a lot to read from what authors are talking about online. Some authors, like Cory Doctorow or Mary Robinette Kowal go out of their way to share interviews and reviews, which is also a great source for finding interesting things to read.

Organizing Your Reading List

It is probably impossible to read all the books that I have saved in my TBR (to be read) list. My method of keeping my reading wishlist organized these days is to add things to my “to read” list on StoryGraph, which you can sort and filter. Sometimes I use it to browse books I’ve indicated that I own and want to read. It’s a good way to see what I already have, especially since many of my books are digital.

Talk to Your Friends

Even though reading is something you do by yourself, it doesn’t need to be something you do alone. I get tons of reading recommendations from my friends because they also like to read! We often joke in the group chat about the never-ending TBR. Talking about what you read with people you enjoy is one of life’s great pleasures! Ask your friends what they’ve been reading! Share your thoughts about the books you read! Sometimes we plan to read a book together and discuss it as we go, which is also very enjoyable. You can also follow your friends on social reading sites, like StoryGraph, to see what your friends are reading (here’s my profile!). I find out about a lot of books this way.

Coming Soon

I am hoping to make this into a series about using the internet and finding information today. I am thinking about writing about how to search and find things online, and how to avoid misinformation. I know plenty of people have covered these topics, but I hope I can add something to the conversation. If there’s something specific you want to see me explain, let me know!

weekly update

Two Weeks in the Life: January 19, 2025

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. Hey, so, everything is happening. 2025 really decided to start with a bang. I would love to believe that we’re getting the year’s madness out of the way and it is going to be smooth sailing from now to December. Unfortunately, Trump is being inaugurated for his second term on Monday so I have no illusions about what is to come.

L.A. Is on Fire

Two huge fires started in the Los Angeles metro after a windstorm snapped power lines. The fires are still burning. Cal Fire reports that the Palisades fire has burned almost 24,000 acres and is 39% contained; the Eaton fire in Alta Dena burned over 14,000 acres but is about two-thirds contained. That’s a tremendous amount of destruction and a huge health risk for everyone in the valley breathing that air.

Disasters are happening everywhere all the time but it feels much more emotionally close to home to see L.A. on fire. I grew up in southern California and I still live in the state so it is feels very real to see it on fire. A lot of people, Californians and non-Californians alike are emotionally attached to the area since we’ve been seeing it on TV our whole lives (one friend sent me a link about the status of the house they used for the Golden Girls being at risk, for example). It’s also very scary to see a disaster affect such a populated area and feel totally powerless about it. This tweet I included in the emergency kit post last week basically sums up the mood. L.A. is not that far away from me! And it’s very close to some of my family.

Tweet that reads "climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it" from user @PerthsireMags dated July 19, 2022

Aside from the global warming of it all, I remain concerned about housing issues. I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I will say again that we are operating in a climate where homelessness is criminalized and forced prison labor is legal. The Onion has already published an article titled LAPD Arrests Everyone Who Lost Home In Fire, so I’m far from the only one thinking about this. We already have a housing crisis in this state and a bunch of working-class people’s homes just burned down. Seems like that could end badly! Where will all those people go? Will the replacement houses be affordable? Landlords are already price gouging. It’s despicable behavior. If your reaction to a natural disaster is to immediately raise rents, you should not be allowed to be a landlord ever again and should probably get in line for the guillotine.

I hope that the state finds the political will after this disaster to raise wages for incarcerated fire fighters and make it possible for them to get firefighting jobs upon release. If the state government can’t figure it out now, when there’s more good feelings for firefighters than ever, then we’re never going to get it. Even Kim Kardashian wants them to get paid more. If this fire had come before the election, maybe the subject would have gotten enough people to vote for ending involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know it’s hard for me to do nothing when things are bothering me. Last weekend I wrote this emergency kit post about how to be ready to go if something terrible happens. I hope I never need it but I feel better knowing I’m reasonably prepared to deal with a disaster. I’ve also seen a lot of ways to donate to people affected by the fires. A number of people have already aggregated a lot of GoFundMe campaigns and other ways to directly support people because it takes a long time to get insurance and FEMA money. Here are some ways you can send money to people who need it right now.

Directory of GoFundMes for displaced Black families, displaced Latine families, displaced Filipino families, and displaced disabled people.
The Anti-Recidivism Coalition is running a campaign to give money to incarcerated fire crews.
Pasadena Humane Society, which has taken in lots of animals displaced from the fire in Alta Dena, is taking donations.
The Open Air Worker Emergency Fund is offering one-time cash assistance to outdoor workers impacted by the fires.
A big list of fundraising campaigns and ways to help in the Culture Study newsletter. People have shared a lot in the comments too.

For anyone affected by the fires, I am not the best source but I wanted to share a couple of things I’ve seen:

Mutual Aid L.A. resource list organized by date and location. There are lots of clothing drives and other distribution events.
The LA Times published a big list of places giving out free or discounted goods and services to anyone displaced by the fires.

Just about all these campaigns and resources are mutual aid. This is us being here for our fellow citizens. The government is not prepared to help at the scale and speed that is needed (I saw on instagram that the city of LA was asking a mutual aid group for masks. What? Doesn’t the city have money for this shit?). Consider this yet another reminder that we all have to take care of each other. Donating even five dollars to someone who needs it can help. We can’t all do everything for everyone, but if we all do something for someone, we’re going to get through this.

Social Media Apocalypse

Meta and TikTok have both been serving as sources of concern and insanity.

Moderation is Over

Facebook declared this week that content moderation is over, offering us more evidence that we cannot rely on tech companies to mediate our human relationships. If you missed it, Zuckerberg said Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) said it will replace fact checking with “a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes.” The platform will no longer be moderating hate speech, which includes “removing rules that forbid insults about a person’s appearance based on race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease.” This means that the internet experience is about to get really ugly for anyone other than heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender white men. A former Meta employee said that they “really think this is a precursor for genocide.” This is not hyperbole given that facebook has played a role in fanning genocidal flames before. Some experts are saying that Meta is basically repeating the behavior that led to the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, and “laying the narrative ground work for … mass deportations” here in the US.

We really have to stop using services that are taking advantage of us and making the world worse on purpose. I thought for sure I had written about this in detail before but the closest posts I had were about not using Spotify anymore and some information about internet privacy when the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. Facebook is a shambolic mess of a platform that is forcing AI slop into our feeds and keeping our friends from seeing our posts. I’ve been trying to organize events through facebook recently and many people told me that facebook didn’t even show them the event that they were explicitly invited to. It’s not even doing the thing it was ostensibly built to do.

I know the concept of not using facebook or instagram is daunting and scary. What if my friends never talk to me again? I get it! I quick facebook in 2014 and stayed away for a year or two until roller derby dragged my ass back into the ecosystem. However, using social media is not a sustainable way to live or connect with others. We trade our data and sanity and convenience. It’s so easy to see a funny video and send it to my friends and when they say “haha so true,” we are strengthening our friendship. We also didn’t have to make any effort and, it turns out, relationships take energy, even if they’re with our most favorite people. Effort is at a premium because it is so difficult to live. We’re all working a ton and managing our households and trying to clean and cook and exercise and go to the dentist every six months. No one was meant to do all this alone (or even with just one other person). Our social lives are what we end up sacrificing. Facebook and instagram and tiktok are here to sweep up the little pieces of socialization we can fit into the day.

I have a few suggestions for how to reduce our dependence on Meta and other social media. I think the hardest thing to replace is groups. We used to have forums! Anyone could start a website and put a forum in it. Then Reddit and facebook replaced them all. I don’t know how to replace the local Buy Nothing group that operates through facebook or the Rancho Gordo Bean Club group. That’s okay. I don’t have to know everything, but I do know that spending less time on social media and finding real ways to interact with your people is a net good. Any time we spend outside of the Meta (or Twitter or whatever) ecosystem is time that belongs to ourselves.

Here are some suggestions for connecting with friends and family without a technocratic middleman. I know they require more work than giving a heart to a post, but the upside is you will get to have a real conversation instead of feeling like you’re posting into an empty void. Call me a diva, but I would rather have a conversation with three people than get 50 likes on my post.

Text or instant messaging: I am surely dating myself, but remember hanging out on AIM, MSN messenger, or ICQ and chatting with your friends? Wasn’t that great? Good news, this technology is still available and you can talk to your friends all the time (and I do!). Get phone numbers and use your phone’s text message or use a dedicated, encrypted messaging app like Signal. I enjoy Signal because the things I say don’t get turned into ads!
Letters or email: Yes, I am basically just suggesting long text messages (lol). Honestly, even sending birthday cards or holiday cards is a good way to stay in touch. I realized this year that I could send holiday cards just to tell people I’m glad they’re my friends. That was always allowed! If managing your address book feels too hard, you can use Postable to get your friends’ addresses and send cards. Though, in my experience, if you just ask a friend for their address and tell them you want to send them something, no one will be mad. In fact, they’re going to be happy that you want to send them something!
Federated social media is supposed to be an antidote to corporate sites like facebook. I’m not an expert on this, but the idea is that you can leave a social media site and take all your connections and history with you, even if your friends don’t leave. This might sound crazy after 15+ years of facebook use, but it is possible using the magic of computers. Cory Doctorow has two posts that explain the concept well, one using the metaphor of a fire escape and another that talks about the benefits of federation more broadly. So far, the only federated social media spaces I know about are Pixelfed, an instagram replacement, and Mastadon.
Make real-world plans with your friends. Again, I know this is very hard because we are all busy. But this is the “community” they’re talking about when they say “you need to build community.” Your friends are your community! One of the best things to do is have a standing activity. You know I get tired fast, so I, personally, would not commit to anything weekly, but I love this article on having a weekly spaghetti night with whoever wants to show up. I have been hosting quarterly food parties with my friend (Souper Bowl II is coming up!). I have another friend who comes over for dinner every other week. Facebook can’t and shouldn’t attempt to replace this shit! Make plans to get ice cream when a new flavor comes out at your favorite shop! Go see every new Keanu Reeves movie! I don’t know! There are literally no rules and life is supposed to be fun.
Start your own blog or website. I am definitely biased because I’m running my own blog on a website that I own(!) and I think this is a great way to put thoughts into the world. I recognize that not everyone has the interest or technical knowledge to do all that. However, there are some easy options to set up your own blog or site. First, you can make a WordPress blog for free (WordPress is the system I use for my blog). Second, you can make a free website on neocities. Fellow internet natives probably remember GeoCities; neocities is using the same concept in an attempt to revive the internet and make it fun and interesting instead of a group of five websites containing screenshots of the other four.

screenshot of a tweet that reads "I'm old enough to remember when the internet wasn't a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four" from user @tveastman dated December 3, 2018.

Sign up for newsletters. This one isn’t really a “family and friends” suggestion, but any artist, author, academic, local shop, etc. you follow on social media almost certainly has a newsletter and they are probably exhausted with trying to appease the algorithm. You can subscribe to their newsletters to keep up with them! Shameless reminder: you can subscribe to this blog and get it delivered to your email! Here’s the subscription page.

Just in case it needs to be said: I am also not perfect at any of this. It’s so much easier to use social media but I do think it isn’t helping us as much as we think. I say that as a low-energy being who really loves the internet and probably wouldn’t have nearly as many or as good friends as I do without it. I think it’s important that we are continuously interrogating how we use this technology that didn’t exist 20 years ago (I know facebook literally existed 20 years ago but the way it is now is unrecognizable from, say, 2004 facebook). We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to put some effort in the right direction.

The Propaganda Isn’t Working Like It Used To

TikTok, the preferred social media app of young people and people with ADHD (I assume. All those short videos have to be doing something for my neurodivergent comrades but I find them overwhelming), is being shut down in the U.S. as of today. I have not been following this story very closely because I don’t use TikTok, yet I do find it troubling that our government would rather ban a company from doing business here instead of pass actual regulations that would protect our data online. If TikTok is letting China access our data, why don’t we make it harder for any corporation to take our data? Ah, but then we have to regulate the Silicon Valley companies and they make too many campaign contributions.

Multiple people have argued that the real reason the US wants to ban TikTok is “because it has become a hub for progressive activism” In User Mag, Taylor Lorenz relays the findings from a study that found “TikTok is the only platform where left-leaning news influencers outnumber right-leaning ones. TikTok also has more than double the concentration of news content creators who identify as LGBTQ+ or advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and 73% of teens who identify as Democrats or lean left use TikTok, compared to 52% of teens who identify as Republican.” I think TikTok has shown people in the US a lot of information about other places that we wouldn’t have seen, or that would have been filtered through a different perspective. Through social media, and TikTok specifically, a lot of us heard directly from Palestinians, something we probably would not have been able to do otherwise. I’m sure this played a big part in motivating the student protests last spring, which seemed to really freak out our institutions and people in power.

There also seems to be a very real argument to be made that TikTok is being banned because Meta can’t compete with it (but … the free market! [sarcasm]) and has been spending tons of money to lobby against it. We know that Zuckerberg buys companies he can’t compete with or builds a copycat in the Meta ecosystem when he can’t. That’s why it’s so deeply hilarious that “In only two days, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu,” or Red Note, in English, which is kind of like a Chinese version of Instagram. The app is in Mandarin. It’s for Chinese people. TikTok users’ reactions can basically be summed up as:

There’s no telling if this will last, but the memes, for now, are extremely funny (lots of “My Chinese spy is here! I thought I’d lost you!”). People are apparently attempting to learn at least a little Mandarin to use the app, if Duolingo is any indication. This also seems to be the first time that Chinese people and Americans have been able to directly talk to each other en masse and we seem to be discovering that we’re not so different after all. Chinese people are asking questions like “is it true that Americans have to work two jobs, or is that just propaganda?” I appreciate that Chinese people, unlike many Americans, understand that they are subject to a lot of government propaganda, but unfortunately, we’re not beating the “need two jobs to live” allegations.

As funny as this all is, I am concerned that, especially for younger users, that they may not just be ironically embracing China. I get that the US is doing some terrible stuff and China and the US have an adversarial relationship. However, opposing the US doesn’t automatically make China good. I think individual people from our respective countries interacting is a straightforward good thing. China as a country though is actively committing genocide against the Uyghur people. The government is anti-LGBT (I also read a bit about this topic a few years ago in Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China). And have people already forgotten about the protests in Hong Kong? I am far from an expert on China and I know the US is not doing much better on human rights issues (we, too, are bankrolling a genocide, backsliding on LGBTQ rights, and squashing protest). I know we all love to be online, but I hope everyone can temper their China enthusiasm with a little reality. Although for now, we can at least enjoy the memes and envy their functioning rail system.

Books and Other Words

Book cover for La nostalgia de la Mujer Anfibio shown on Kobo ereader — La nostalgia de la Mujer Anfibio

I am feeling good about having already read a whole book in Spanish this year (although I admittedly started it in December)! La nostalgia de la Mujer Anfibio by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade starts with a shipwreck on the shores of the Island in Sálvora off of Spain’s western coast the morning of Lucha’s wedding. Lucha does not want to get married and hooks up with one of the shipwrecked men, but goes on with the wedding anyway (wild choice!). The story goes on to narrate Lucha’s lack of connection to her daughter, who later moves to England, and the stronger connection she forges with her granddaughter, whom her daughter delivers to Lucha shortly before passing away. It’s still a little hard for me to get all the finer points of a novel in Spanish but I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to keep track of the plot a lot better than I have with books in the past. Perhaps I am learning something! The gist of the story is that all these old people in this small town are simmering with old grudges and secrets and it seems to be making them all miserable. Lucha’s daughter left because she was a lesbian (huge, open secret), Lucha’s husband always knew that their daughter wasn’t biologically his (big secret), and Lucha’s letters from her “shipwrecked lover” are forgeries (secrets and betrayal!). Things start to change when a hippy calling himself Ziggy Stardust comes to town and starts playing records for everyone in the town square to jog their memories. Cheers to the power of gay men bearing pop music?

book cover for Beans: A History shown on Kobo ereader — Beans: A History

I was unfortunately disappointed by Beans: A History by Ken Albala. You may think that a history of beans would be inherently boring, but no, I am interested in beans. I think this book should actually be called Beans: A Western Cultural History. It is organized into chapters about different types of beans, but nearly every chapter is stuck on the same thesis that beans in western culture have traditionally been a low-status food that people eschew when they can afford something better. Every chapter also came back around to any given bean’s usage in Europe or the US. Even the chapter on Phaseolus vulgaris, beans that originated in the Americas, mostly talks about Europe. We get a few pages about beans originating somewhere then we’re back to white people. Truly maddening. The closest this book gets to focusing on somewhere else is the chapter on soy, but even that does eventually migrate to what we’re doing with it in the west. I was interested in the parts that were about the history of a bean but how can there be a whole book about beans that glosses over so many parts of the world?

Meanwhile, on the internet:

Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors via Forward. Great, I can’t wait to get targeted for editing Wikipedia. I love (sarcasm again) the dichotomy of “Wikipedia is unreliable!” versus “People editing Wikipedia are actively harming us and should be targeted.” So stupid.
The Year I Embraced the Potluck via Eater. 2024 was also the year I embraced the potluck and I loved it. I can’t wait for Souper Bowl II.
Third Space? You Can’t Handle a Third Space. via Midwesthetic. Everyone says they want a third space (a community place that is not work or home), but people are unwilling to deal with the inherent discomfort of being in public. Community is necessary but not always easy.
2024 Word of the Year Is “Rawdog” via the American Dialect Society. I remain out here, rawdogging life.
Threads of resistance: Knitting and embroidery are laden with stereotypes of domestic femininity – and the subversive potential for protest via Aeon. Fiber arts are art and they are cool and important.

Languages

I know I said I planned to read more in Spanish this year, and I am, but I did not plan to read Don Quijote in the original Spanish. Yet, here I am. My dear friend Lito wanted to read it this year and I decided to come along for the ride and the discussion (which, by the way, has been so much fun, even though I’m very behind on the reading). Since I can’t be normal about anything, I’m reading in Spanish. It is challenging but also not quite as terrible as I expected. I also didn’t expect it to be as funny as it is. I guess these classic works have staying power for a reason. It is definitely going to take me months to get through this, but I wanted to get it on the record that this is happening, as insane as that is.

Kitchen Witchery

I tried a baked oatmeal recipe because I eat oatmeal for breakfast but sometimes struggle to find the motivation to make a bowl of oatmeal every morning. This photo doesn’t look like much, but I was happy with how it turned out. I skipped the prescribed fruit and just did nuts on top, plus mixed in some flax meal. I had a version of this I was making with steel-cut oats but I realized that I don’t think those oats are doing my apparently extremely sensitive guts any favors.

A square ceramic pan of baked oatmeal topped with walnuts — baked oatmeal topped with walnuts

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. I remain obsessed with this creature.

Fritz the cat lounging in the lower level of his cat tree. His leg is hanging all the way out and his tail is dropping down — Big lounging

Fritz the cat on the windowsill with all his paws and his tail tucked underneath him. He's shaped a little like a butternut squash. — Big lounging

How To

The Emergency Kit Post

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Lindsey

In Monica Byrne’s novel The Actual Star, a novel partially set in a post-apocalyptic future where humans have made serious modifications to their bodies and culture to survive, she uses the term “Age of Emergency” to refer to the period “when unchecked capitalism led to an unprecedented spike in accumulations of capital, wealth, populations, and computing power worldwide, resulting in mass extinction, catastrophic climate change, and human displacement on a global scale.” I keep coming back to this term because it seems to be such an apt description of the current poly-crisis. All science fiction is commentary on the present, and Byrne intentionally described the our era a time of emergency. We’re in it. We see disaster every week. At the moment, half of Los Angeles is on fire and the south-eastern US is frozen. I can’t do anything about that, but it does make me feel better to think about being prepared for an emergency and to help my friends with the same.

Unfortunately, we are all of us stuck with the task of surviving our negligent (at best) institutions while the world burns. One thing that helps me feel less anxious is being prepared for disaster. Obviously, I’m not talking about building a bunker, but just having some essentials ready to go in case there’s a fire, flood, earthquake, a cyber-terrorism event that knocks out the power grid, or you know, other unforeseen horror.

By popular demand (at least two people said they would use this information), I am making a list of what’s in my emergency kit and what I am planning to add to my kit. My kit isn’t fully assembled, so this is half stuff I have and half stuff I still need. I like sifting through this kind of information, but it does take time and mental energy that not everyone has, especially for people who don’t respond to potential crisis by wanting to read more.

A few of my assumptions into this are that no one is using a kit to survive long-term in the woods or whatever. I assume we are in community in some way and not doing everything totally alone, even if it means you’re in an evacuation shelter or somewhere non-ideal. However, emergencies can isolate us so we need to be able to survive for a short while until we can rejoin others. I also don’t think you need to go drop $1000 and buy everything new and right now. Spread out the purchases over time—better to have something than nothing (again, survival is going to be collaborative). Check out your local second-hand sources or buy-nothing group to see if there’s anything you can use. I am putting together a kit for me and Kirk as well as my close friend Mandy and her young daughter who live close to us. So some of the links in the list are multi-packs for the whole fam. You can adjust for your situation and buy individual things or help your chosen family build their kits!

Sources

I used the following guides for inspiration because I’m not an expert. I just like looking things up and organizing them (and writing these things helps me too). You could refer to these and figure out your own kit if you like! I am including links for the specific stuff I have or intend to acquire to make it easier for anyone who doesn’t have the time or energy for all that.

The Best Emergency Preparedness Supplies via Wirecutter. They do update this list so just note things might change.
Get yourself a go bag via Margaret Killjoy.
Build a kit via Ready.gov.
Emergency pet evaluation pack via Autodesk instructables.

Go Bag versus Emergency Kit

It’s probably helpful to distinguish between a go bag and an emergency kit. Most of the survival-type stuff and basics in the following list are things I keep in a backpack that I could grab on my way out the door if I had zero notice and had to leave now. The rest of the stuff is what I think of as an extended emergency kit. It’s what you’d grab if you had 15 minutes to get out of the house. For me, this would of course involve the go bags and collecting my cat. I would get my purse, laptop and phone, box of important documents, medication, and probably my CPAP because I need that to live. We have a box of camping stuff in our garage so that would also go into the car along with any water container (I have been meaning to get one to put in the garage). If you don’t have a garage, you could keep everything together in a closet. Personally, because I am fat, I would also throw as many clothes as possible into a suitcase because I do not imagine any clothes getting donated in an emergency response are things I would be able to wear. Maybe that’s just anxiety but I have lived as a fat person long enough to know it’s not always easy to find something to wear! I’m not saying I need to be fashionable in an emergency.

I will add here that I’m not really writing about food to add to an emergency kit because I know I will not rotate it regularly. I treat my pantry as emergency food supplies. I know I have enough beans and rice and flour and cooking oil to get through a few days of crisis (at least). I’m not putting weird dehydrated food in my garage about it. Keeping your pantry stocked with ramen packets also counts as emergency preparedness. The important thing is you have a little extra food of whatever you actually eat on hand.

The Stuff

Here is stuff I have bought or plan to buy for my kit. None of these are affiliate links. There are some Amazon links because it’s unfortunately the easiest place to buy random shit like this also people act like their gift cards are cash so I had some store credit. You should get things from whatever is most accesible for you.

Basics

A bag to put things in. You do not need a fancy backpack but I bought backpacks in bright orange that hang just inside our garage so we could theoretically grab them on the way to the car. I checked a few sites to see what bags they have on sale. Here’s a yellow backpack from Columbia on sale right now. I’ve noticed bright-orange and yellow bags are often on sale. They are not necessarily fashionable but they will be easy to spot! You could alternately get a big box to put things in, but I prefer the idea of having everything in a portable bag in case we have to walk.
Safety whistle. presumably so you don’t have to scream to be found if it comes to that.
Glasses, I keep a pair of old glasses and sunglasses in my emergency kit (because the last thing I want is to be fucking blind when everything is on fire) and lens wipes or cleaning cloth. I use the little wet wipe lens cleaners because I have issues with my glasses getting scratched up otherwise. I used to use these little cloths that bundle up into a pouch.
Tampons, pads, menstrual cup, or whatever you use to manage your period.
Respirator so you can breathe when there is a fire. We have the 3M 6502QL masks, currently on sale for $24 at the link.
KN95 masks in case you have to shelter with others in an ongoing pandemic. They are also better than nothing if you don’t have a respirator. We buy these in bulk since we mask in public.
Hand sanitizer, any kind is fine.
A first aid kit that includes any over-the-counter medications that are important for you. I am going to include some voltaren gel for artritis into mine because I am effectively an old woman. My stomach is always fucked up so I’m also going to make sure I have pepto bismol and emesis bags.
Water bottles. I put old Nalgene bottles in our go bags and bought a Life Straw for each. The life straw is a water filter that you can insert to the bottle and screw in with a lid. Any water you already have will work for your kit and you can compatible Life Straws for most types. Another lightweight water bottle, if you need a suggestion, is Sigg. I have some that I don’t use anymore so that is another kit option for me.
Compact microfiber towel. I have the regular full-sized towel and washcloth sizes for everyone. You can probably find them on sale if you look around. These are also nice to take if you’re traveling (and following the guidance of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
Emergency crank weather radio, so you can get updates if everything else is down. You only need one of these for your group, so coordinate with your friends or family.
Leatherman skeletool RX. These are a little expensive, but it’s seven tools in one tiny package, so it’s handy for any situations you may find yourself in. This is another item that I assume would be shared among your group.
Solar lantern. We have this inflatable solar lantern. I haven’t actually used it yet, but it seems like a light-weight way to keep a source of illumination handy.
Fresnel lens to use the sun for lighting a fire (it’s basically a magnifying glass).
Weird military can opener, and a video on how to use said can opener (I had to look it up).
Emergency blankets. This is a four-back of “huge” blankets, which seems like a nice idea to me because it sounds miserable not to have enough emergency blanket to wrap around my fat bod if it comes to that.
Headlamp or flashlight. I’m a big fan of headlamps, and I actually have one I use around the house when light is needed. The headlamp in the link looks good because it won’t turn on by accident in your bag and you can recharge it or use AAA batteries.
Rain poncho. Some people recommend converting a plastic bag into a poncho if you need one. Sure, this is an option, but if it’s flooding and raining like crazy, I’d rather spend the extra five dollars and not wear a trash bag. I don’t know what kind we have because we bought them on one of our many ill-fated rainy camping trips, but you can get the super cheap disposable ones here. If a rain-based crisis is likely in your area, it might be worth having a slightly nicer poncho.
Hygiene stuff: Travel toothbrush (like this or this), toothpaste tablets (I like these from Lush but I am bougie) or travel toothpaste, hair ties, ear plugs, soap strips, chapstick, nail clippers, floss, deodorant, sunscreen, tiny hair brush (this one folds and has a little mirror), dry shampoo, wet wipes, qtips, and whatever you need to not feel disgusting.
An extra copy of your house key. I haven’t done this yet, but I think keeping an extra key is a good idea in case you need to leave in a hurry and can’t find your keys.
A change of clothes. I’ve got a tank top, not-my-favorite-but-still-good socks and underwear, and these pants from Alder apparel that are for hiking and camping or whatever. They are good pants, I just don’t wear them that often so they’re in the bag.
Cash money. Remember when all the computers broke that one weekend? Keep a little cash handy just in case.

Miscellaneous Handy Items

What is handy to you may depend a lot on where you are and what disasters are likely, plus what is important for your health and comfort, but here are some general ideas:

Multi-charger cable. Charge multiple things on one USB cable.
Insect repellent because I will go insane if I have to be in a disaster AND get mosquito bites.
Sunscreen. Again, if I have to be horrifically sunburned in a crisis, I will fucking lose it. SPF 50 is recommended.
Portable power station. This is effectively a giant battery because I can’t sleep without my CPAP. I bought it after the last time the power was out all night and I stayed awake until it came back on at 5 am. It’s definitely too big for the go bag, but it is something I would want if I was loading up my car.
Portable CPAP. This is highly specific to me and expensive. I have been meaning to buy one of these mini CPAPs for travel or emergency situations. You should get whatever you need for your circumstances.
Mess kit. I bought one of these Light My Fire mess kits years ago to use when traveling and I’ve found them to be extremely handy! This is also a reminder that your emergency stuff doesn’t have to only be for emergencies. I’ve taken this with me to RollerCon, for example. If you don’t want the whole kit, it might be useful to at least have your own spork.
Duct tape. She does it all!
Paracord in case you need to tie or hang something. Black and neon yellow are the cheapest as of this writing.
Carabiner, probably useful for something. Why would you not want to have a carabiner?
Matches in a waterproof container. You could also get some kind of flint or other fire starter but, realistically, it’s matches for me.
Sun hat. I am thinking of getting one of these or something like it so the sun doesn’t destroy my delicate constitution. Depending on where you live, a storm hat might be a better choice.
A mini sewing kit, available in basic or slightly fancy.
Compass and local maps. You might need to navigate to an emergency shelter without Google maps. The Thomas Maps are probably too cumbersome to keep in a backpack, but are good to keep in the car. You could also get a smaller local map to keep in your go bag.
Heavy-duty trash bags.
Pen and a small notepad.

Pets

I only know about cats. If you have a dog or other pet, adjust accordingly. People with dogs are probably more used to taking their dog places and may not need all this advice.

Pet water bottle. This seems so useful. Instead of needing a water bowl and having to put water back in the bottle after, you can release a little water into the connected dish for your pet to drink from! Navy blue is currently the cheapest color.
Collapsible bowls for food.
Cat harness, which is probably worth trying to get the cat used to before any crisis, but I haven’t tried it with Fritz at all. I used to put it on Huey and let her flop in the sun on the back patio.
I don’t have a dedicated cat carrier in the kit, but I know where mine is and I leave it out in the house all the time so Fritz doesn’t think it’s something that only shows up when it’s time to do something scary. Sometimes he hangs out in there. I know this may be harder to do if you live in a small space.
Any favorite, small toys and treats are good to add to the kit too.

Documents

I’m planning to scan (but you could also take a phone photo) all my important documents and add them to my laptop, which I would presumably grab in an emergency, and to an encrypted USB drive. Here are instructions for encrypting a USB drive: https://nordvpn.com/blog/how-to-encrypt-flash-drive/

Have copies of:

Passport
Drivers license
Immunization (you and your pets)
Pet license or chip info
Car, house, or health insurance info
Prescriptions for medication, glasses, etc.
Deeds to your car, house, etc.
Bank account information
If you use a password safe program, a copy of your passwords

Additionally, it’s good to have a list of contact numbers for your home/renters insurance, doctor, health insurance, and vet. You could put that in a list on your phone or simply add them to your contacts. You also want to have contact information available for a friend or family member outside of your area so you can let them know your status or get help. We can either bring back memorizing phone numbers, keep your contacts on your drive, or make a list and keep it in a plastic pouch in your bag.

I’ve also made a list on my phone of everything in my go bag so I know what’s in there and don’t have to guess.

Sanity

I get the impression that a lot of time during a crisis is spent waiting around and being anxious. It is not frivolous to pack a few things to help you de-stress and relax. Everyone will have their own ideas about what to pack for entertainment, but here are some ideas that I quite like:

A paper book, probably something you already know you like like and don’t mind re-reading, maybe even something that would be fun to read aloud.
If you still have one, an old MP3 player or iPod and some wired headphones. They do still make MP3 players, but you could also probably pick up an iPod for cheap on ebay, or even load up an old cell phone with music to listen to offline (and if you don’t have any MP3 music anymore and would like some, please talk to me privately!).
I saw a suggestion for these handheld retro game emulators (basically a modern gameboy that has all the games built in) and am now obsessed with it and want one. Kirk says we would of course take the Nintendo Switch in an emergency, but what if we both want to play games at the same time? What if I just want video games in my purse?
A deck of cards, or Uno cards, or any small games you enjoy. You could throw in a travel Scrabble or whatever is going to keep you entertained.

You Made it to the End

This is an ongoing process for me. My emergency kit isn’t “done” but going through this list has helped me take stock of what I have and what I still need. It’s weird to think about this stuff because it’s important to have just in case but we hope to never need it at all, but as I said earlier, I think the odds of any of us never experiencing a disaster are getting lower all the time.

I hope this guide helps you feel ready for disasters and eases your anxiety, as it has mine. If you think I missed anything important, please let me know! Remember to include your close and local friends in your emergency plans. No one survives alone!

weekly update

Two Weeks in the Life: January 5, 2025

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. I like to think that I am not as much of a creature of routine as I am. Sure, I’m autistic and appreciate my routine, but I don’t need it. Well, there’s nothing like the last week or so of the year to disabuse me of that notion. The other night I was freaking out a little bit even though nothing was really wrong and I was feeling generally disregulated. I think exercising—showing up to dance class regularly, for the most part—is doing a huge amount of work in keeping my nervous system from getting too nervous. A week and a half of lying around seems like a great idea until my brain is like “what if … things bad?” Just to be clear, I wasn’t in a dire state but I did start feeling general anxiety and dread. Fortunately, I got Kirk to install some lights in our garage this week so I could go out there and work out even when it’s dark (which, right now, is any time after work). I did a little work out and felt fine the next day. The body is so complex but then all you have to do is run around for a while* and it’s mostly fine (*and take an SSRI).

My now well-lit garage. Three long lights hang from the ceiling — new garage lighting

Another thing I found stressful this week was I had to set up a 401(k) account because, as of January 1, I now work for the new corporate overlords that acquired the company I work. I’ve written about this before, but it’s essentially impossible to invest in any ethical way. The best performing funds always consist of oil, dystopian tech companies, pharmaceutical companies that are ripping us all off, funds about to start another subprime mortgage crisis, and, like, Blackrock. Unfortunately, our economy is set up to make money on things that are extractive and exhibit “growth,” which is not anything that’s long-term sustainable for us as a species or culture. Yet, it’s the only avenue available to me, and to many of us, to save for retirement. We still don’t know if 401(k)s even work for retirement savings because they were only introduced in the early 1980s, so no one has successfully made it through their retirement on a 401(k) alone. I literally don’t think it’s possible for the vast majority of us to save enough to retire. Per Investopedia, “If you need $100,000 per year to live and you can expect an average return of 5% per year from your 401(k) assets, you would need more than $2 million saved up.” Cool. People (media, rich people, Boomers) often complain about how no one has loyalty to their job anymore. Well, jobs have no loyalty to us. I would stay in a job that offered me a pension, a reliable way to retire. The State of California has a pension and you don’t see many people leaving state service for exactly that reason. So, I did not have fun reckoning with the fact that the only way to provide for my retirement is to invest money in things that I find morally reprehensible and that investment probably won’t even be enough to live out my days.

Doing Holiday Stuff (apparently just making food)

Apparently my last regular post was before Christmas, so here are some updates about the holidays. Kirk’s dad came for dinner on Christmas eve and I made clam chowder (by request, since that’s what his family usually does). Clam chowder is not a complete meal so I also made rolls; a broccoli, onion, and blue cheese tart; and then a Danish almond torte (recipe from The Nordic Baking Book) for dessert because my father in law loves marzipan. The cake was very interesting because I’d never made a yeasted cake or a lattice before, but it turned out quite good. On Christmas itself, Kirk and I just like to hang out. I got some nice things and I mostly spent the day reading my books and watching the Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas special. For breakfast, I decided to make my life easy and made a french toast casserole and some bacon. Kirk makes dinner on Christmas day so I didn’t have to do anything! It was kind of weird and annoying having Christmas on a Wednesday because it’s got two days of work on either side of it and barely feels like a big holiday. Alas. Modern life.

A broccoli, onion, and blue cheese tart. Strands of red onion and broccoli florets are visible through the custard — Broccoli, onion, and blue cheese tart

A round cake with a lattice top that is covered with sugar and slivered almonds. The cake's sugary filling has caramelized around the edges. — Broccoli, onion, and blue cheese tart

New Year’s Eve is kind of my favorite holiday as regular readers can probably tell from my end-of-year posts. The new year always feels full of potential, even though I recognize that the transition from one year to the next is completely arbitrary. Three of my friends came over to hang out and we continued our tradition of watching “weird” movies with a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’d only seen it once and it was quite a while ago, so it was fun to watch it again with friends. It also had me reminiscing about how some of my friends in middle school knew all the songs so I learned the lyrics just from them, singing it while having literally no clue what it was from or about (hazards of a religious upbringing). Because New Year’s Eve was also Hannukah, we made latkes just before midnight. So we rung in the new year eating potatoes and talking about what we want to do in 2025. This is as it should be.

A sheet pan of pizza with a reglar, round pizza hiding in the corner of the picture — NYE pizza

Freshly fried latkes on a wire rack above a sheet pan. The picture is kinda ugly to be honest but the latkes were good — NYE pizza

Books and Other Words

cover for the book The First Bright Thing shown on kobo ereader — The First Bright Thing

The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson has a lot of things I love, like a circus and time-traveling lesbians. It’s a story about creating the life you want for yourself, which is a message I strongly subscribe to. The protagonist, Ringmaster, aka Rin, neé Ruth, is a “spark,” someone with a magical ability. She can teleport and time travel. Her abusive ex, the Circus King, can make people do what he wants just by telling them to do it. The story is set after World War I and shows the characters trying to figure out how to live after experiencing the greatest trauma they can imagine and, in the case of Rin and her wife and their best friend, trying to figure out if there’s anything they can do to avoid the next war. They use their circus as a way to spread joy and good feelings wherever they go. Most of us don’t have the ability to personally foresee and attempt avert a war, but we can all aim to encourage our fellow humans to be a little better—and to be better for ourselves and our chosen families.

book cover for The City in Glass shown on Kobo ereader — The City in Glass

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo is about a demon, Vitrine, who loves a city and all the people in it. She’s spent years nudging the city’s development and is on the cusp of finally having a great library built there when a posse of angels arrive to raze the whole place for reasons known only to them. Vitrine is mad as hell about this and curses one of the angels. She stays in the ruins and slowly starts trying to make the city a place where people could live, but she holds a grudge the whole time. She keeps crossing paths with her cursed angel throughout the years and he attempts to pull her out of her grief. He eventually brings her new people to inhabit the city too. That is the basic plot but I don’t feel it describes the book very well. It’s very atmospheric and moody. It made me think a little bit of Good Omens in terms of an unlikely demon-angel relationship, but it isn’t campy like Good Omens is. I enjoyed it and thought it was an interesting short novel.

cover for the book Shoestring Theory shown on kobo ereader — Shoestring Theory

I loved Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa, which is a wonderfully entry to a sub-genre that I call “gay wizards” (sibling of “time-traveling lesbians“). Sad magic man and disgraced court mage Cyril is basically yearning for death in a blighted kingdom but casts a spell that might work or might just be suicide to go back in time and keep his husband, the king, from going off the rails and ruining it all. This book was super fun to read. We got the foppish magic boy and his cat familiar, his besties Prince Euphrates and Princess Tigris, evil plots, court gossip. I mean, it’s just good stuff. I must recommend it to all gay magic enjoyers.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

Secret Service Admits It Didn’t Check if People Really Consented to Being Tracked via 404 Media. Uh … yikes. I seriously cannot stress enough that you should keep your phone location off as much as you can. I only turn mine on when I need a map.
Elon Musk Urged People to Stop Donating to Wikipedia. Here’s Why via Snopes. Fuck Elon. Counterpoint: you should start or continue donating to Wikipedia because it’s a huge repository of knowledge that individuals in many fields contribute to. It’s one of the last free internet places that hasn’t rotted in this era of the web.
Wading Into 2025: How to Begin via Organizing My Thoughts. I really liked this collection of several activists’ perspectives on things to think about heading into the new year.
Translation-adjacent via Words Without Borders. A few thoughts on all the work that translators do beyond the work of translating a text.
Never Forgive Them via Where’s Your Ed At. This is a long essay about how the internet sucks now and that a number of high-powered, rich people in tech chose to make it suck. They have made using the internet, something we all now need to function in society, hostile and adversarial and we’re all suffering from tiny psychic traumas every day because some people are obsessed with “growth” for their stupid companies. From the article, “Our digital lives are actively abusive and hostile, riddled with subtle and overt cons. Our apps are ever-changing, adapting not to our needs or conditions, but to the demands of investors and internal stakeholders that have reduced who we are and what we do to an ever-growing selection of manipulatable metrics. It isn’t that you don’t “get” tech, it’s that the tech you use every day is no longer built for you, and as a result feels a very specific kind of insane.”

TV and Music

You may not believe it but I saw two whole movies in the last two weeks. Lemon and I went to see Queer without knowing much about it other than gay, 1940s, set in Mexico. It ended up being a pretty fucking weird one because it’s based on a William S. Bourroughs novel. It’s a movie that’s uncomfortable on purpose, but knowing the discomfort is intentional doesn’t make it any better. Still, I did like the movie, especially with its anachronistic soundtrack and use of Jason Schwartzman as a bear.

Like everyone, I also saw Wicked, which I obviously liked. I read the books years ago and I have listened to the soundtrack but hadn’t seen the show, so it was nice to see it in movie form with super lush sets and costumes. I can’t believe they’re making it two movies though. But sure, why not. Maybe two movies will help people understand the concept of fascism.

The most fun album of the year appeared at the end of December: Best of Bootie 2024! It’s a collection of mashups featuring popular songs from this year and it is my preferred way of consuming most pop music.

Corporeal Form

My hand hidden in an Iron Man-looking device that massages my hand and wrist — cyborg hand

Kirk bought me a really nice gift to try to alleviate my carpal tunnel. It’s a hand massager that sort of looks like an Iron Man prop. I was a little skeptical but it actually feels quite nice. It seems like it’s helping but I have not yet tried to do any knitting. The massager recommends using it twice a day for 15 minutes, so I’ve been doing that for the last week, plus being a good citizen and doing my hand exercises. I’ve been spending an hour of my evenings watching TV, doing my hand stuff, drinking my electrolyes, and maybe doing some feet exercises while I sit there. I find this whole process kind of annoying but I’m trying to make it as enjoyable as possible. I am very tired of body maintenance but there isn’t really an alternative.

Kitchen Witchery

I tried a recipe for prebranac (Serbian baked beans) with my Christmas lima beans because I’m always trying to keep up with my bean subscription! I liked this recipe but the texture of stringy, cooked down onions is not my favorite (it’s fine but after a while I’m like, okay, I get it). I eventually decided pasta could fix this for me, so I mixed some of the leftover beans with noodles, topped that with gruyère and stuck it under the broiler. That was really good gave me some textural variety along with the onions.

I was so mad because I thought this orange tofu and broccoli was going to rule but I hated it! The sauce tasted really astringent to me. Kirk liked it though so that’s something. I liked the idea of the tofu and broccoli cooked together on the sheet pan so I am going to make this again but with a sauce from the store. That will be easier to make anyway.

A dutch oven of Serbian baked beans, baked down so the beans and onions on top are caramelized and there is barely any broth remaining — Serbian baked beans

A bowl of serbian baked beans mixed with pasta then topped with melty cheese — Serbian baked beans

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. Fritz has started hanging out on the couch again but only if he gets to be on the top, not on a cushion like a normal creature.

Fritz the cat snoozing in his pants on the bed — sleepy boy

Fritz the cat sitting on the back of the couch and resting his paw and head on top of my hand — sleepy boy

books

2024: The 17th Annual Year in Books

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Lindsey

Well, friends and enemies, I have finished all the books I can hope to finish before we ring in the new year so it must be time for one of my favorite traditions: the annual year in books post. It felt like I spent a lot of time reading this year, but I guess it was just an average amount of time because I ended up reading around what I normally read: I finished 69 books and about 25,000 pages. I do wish that the publishing industry would take a year off and give me some time to catch up and that I could take a year off work and all life responsibilities to read every day and knock out my to-read pile. Alas, life marches on and I can’t spend all my time reading. I say this, but it’s clear I wouldn’t spent all my time reading anyway. I am split between a number of hobbies, which is great, but it means reading is just one of many and I can only do so much!

This year I made it a goal to read a little bit every single day, and I did! I’m currently on a 381-day streak, which I plan to continue in 2025. I also abandoned the goal of reading a certain number of books and decided to set a page number goal and try to focus on some longer books. And I did read some long ones this year!

I post about my reading because I like talking about what I read and I am proud of myself for engaging in art and for learning more about the world. I would like to think that I might inspire other people to read too! Even though I am deeply invested in my own metrics, I think reading any amount at all is a good thing. If you read one book a month, you are doing more than most!

Before I get to my stats and the full list, I have two things to promote. First: your local library! The best way to keep the library funded and relevant is by using it. I love checking out ebooks from the library but they have music, movies, video games, and even musical instruments and seeds. Second: Story Graph! I’ve been using it the last few years and really like it. It’s a very nice way to track your reading. It’s run by one woman who loves to read and I think that’s great. If you join Story Graph, you can follow me @linzomatic.

Reading Stats

Pages read: According to what I logged on Story Graph, I read 25,095 pages. This number includes books I haven’t finished yet. If I only count pages from books I finished, it’s 24,705 pages.
Longest book: Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott at 728 pages. This is book two in The Sun Chronicles. The longest non-fiction book was Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen at 576 pages. I only read 22 books that had fewer than 300 pages.
Shortest book: The Lights of Ystrac’s Wood by Alexandra Rowland, which is only 85 pages long.
Library use: I read 34 books from the library and 26 of those were ebooks. Thank you library for saving me literally hundreds of dollars every year.
First book: I finished Network Effect by Martha Wells on January 7.
Last book: I finished The City in Glass by Nghi Vo on December 31 (today!).
Fiction and non-fiction: Of the 69 books I read, one-third (23) were non-fiction, and the other two-thirds were fiction. I think my non-fiction reading increases a little year. I’m might become one of those old people who only reads non-fiction.
Most-read Authors: Alexandra Rowland with six(!) books, then Francis Spufford, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Martha Wells with three books each.
Gender gap: I kept track of how many books I read by men compared to women this year, as I normally do, but I didn’t purposely focus too hard on reading books by women like I have done in years past. I read 22 books by men this year. That’s one of the highest shares of male authors since I started tracking. It feels excessive. I will be recommitting to reading more women in 2025.
Other languages: I read just two books in Spanish this year, but that’s better than zero! They were Chiapas, la rebelión indígena de México and El beso de la mujer araña.

I’m having a hard time naming many favorites this year. All the books I read are good, but they don’t all always form a new groove in my brain. The only favorites I immediately thought of were Alexandra Rowland’s books, which had me literally laughing out loud while reading. For the rest, I looked at what I rated five stars on Story Graph. I liked them a lot, I’m just not obsessed with them all! I’m not going to-rehash my thoughts on all of these books, search previous posts if you want to see what I thought about them.

cover for Yield Under Great Persuasion shown in greyscale on kobo ereader — Yield Under Great Persuasion

cover for Indigenous Continent shown on kobo ereader — Yield Under Great Persuasion

The Books of 2024

Here is the list of this year’s books! If you want to see what I read in previous years, you can click the books of the year tag to see all my past annual book posts.

Title	Author
Network Effect	Martha Wells
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media	Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
The Future	Naomi Alderman
Fugitive Telemetry	Martha Wells
Yellowface	R. F. Kuang
Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery	Annie Liontas
System Collapse	Martha Wells
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business	Roxane Gay
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi	Shannon Chakraborty
Cheese Sex Death: A Bible for the Cheese Obsessed	Erika Kubick
A Secret History of Witches	Louisa Morgan
January Fifteenth	Rachel Swirsky
The Palestine Laboratory	Antony Loewenstein
Chiapas, la rebelión indígena de México	Carlos Montemayor
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation	Cory Doctorow
The Book of Love	Kelly Link
Shards of Earth	Adrian Tchaikovsky
People Collide	Isle McElroy
Fathomfolk	Eliza Chan
Eyes of the Void	Adrian Tchaikovsky
Cahokia Jazz	Francis Spufford
Lords of Uncreation	Adrian Tchaikovsky
Chain Gang All-Stars	Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Magician’s Daughter	H. G. Parry
The Venture of Islam, Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam	Marshall G. S. Hodgson
The Immortal King Rao	Vauhini Vara
Doppleganger: A Trip into the Mirror World	Naomi Klein
The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center	Rhaina Choen
Devil’s Gun	Cat Rambo
Unconquerable Sun	Kate Elliott
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture	Jenny Odell
Furious Heaven	Kate Elliott
Translating Myself and Others	Jhumpa Lahiri
Running Close to the Wind	Alexandra Rowland
A Taste of Gold and Iron	Alexandra Rowland
The Centre	Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
The Ministry of Time	Kaliane Bradley
The End of Drum Time	Hanna Pylväinen
Tadek and the Princess	Alexandra Rowland
Hench	Nina Zine Walschots
El beso de la mujer araña	Manuel Puig
Moonbound	Robin Sloan
The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide	Steven W. Thrasher
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America	Pekka Hämäläinen
Light Perpetual	Francis Spufford
Bunny	Mona Awad
Some by Virtue Fall	Alexandra Rowland
The Lights of Ystrac’s Wood	Alexandra Rowland
How Infrastructure Works	Deb Chachra
Vita Nostra	Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It	Janina Ramírez
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation	Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics	Olivia Waite
Assassin of Reality	Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko
Yield under Great Persuasion	Alexandra Rowland
Swordcrossed	Freya Marske
Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism	Joanne Limburg
Dracula	Bram Stoker
Red Plenty	Francis Spufford
They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent	Sarah Kendzior
Sistersong	Lucy Holland
The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America	Barrett Holmes Pitner
The Teleportation Accident	Ned Beauman
Monsignor Quixote	Graham Green
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need	Naomi Klein
Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition	Debt Collective, Astra Taylor
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times	Katherine May
The First Bright Thing	J. R. Dawson
The City in Glass	Nghi Vo

Cats and Books

It feels right to end this post with cats as I do with my other posts. I thought for sure I would have more pictures of cats with books from the year, but apparently not. It’s going to take time to get Fritz into the high-brow academic shit that Huey read with me.

book cover for Assassin of Reality shown on kobo ereader. Fritz the cat has his head covered by his pants and his paws stretched out near the book — Assassin of Reality

cover for Shards of Earth shown on kobo ereader. Fritz the cat is in the background looking unimpressed — Assassin of Reality

weekly update

Give It up for 2024. Welcome to the Stage: 2025!

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. Another year is coming to an end and the new year is once again upon us. I wrote quite a lot on the blog this year. WordPress keeps track for me, so I know that I published 32 posts consisting of about 79,000 words (not including this post). That’s basically a novel’s worth of words! I looked through the year’s posts and saw that I spilled a lot of ink on current events. I’m sure four voter guide posts (English and Spanish for the primaries and general election) added a notable chunk to the word count. I never set out to make this a blog about the wider world, but I am unfortunately cursed with a need to make my opinions public and, in the case of the voter guides, I am cursed by popular demand. I’m not trying to be an essayist, but it is starting to seem like the essay life may have chosen me. We are living in an era with plenty to discuss (derogatory). I am of course planning to continue writing next year and I like my every-other-week schedule; more frequently was too stressful and less frequently means the posts will feel way too long to write. Maybe I’ll get really wild and develop an essay collection. Who knows.

I am continuing the beloved tradition of creating an annual mood board. Here are the vibes going in to 2025. We are keeping it fabulous, reveling in the company of our loved ones, and raging. Life hard, but I’m harder.

a wide collage of images from the internet, including cats in various states of fabulousness, tumblr screenshots of notes like "I will stay alive as performance art," and Miss Piggy — 2025 Mood Board

Books and Other Words

I will post my books of the year list (the 17th annual!) soon. When I do, I’ll add a link here.

One of my goals in 2024 was to read at least a page of a book every day. There were some days that I did literally read one page, just enough to keep the streak going all year! I’m on day 378 right now because I started in mid-December 2023. I’m really proud of this. I read a lot but in the past I’ve gone a few days in a row without touching a book because I’m tired or annoyed or whatever. Having the daily reading goal was helpful in getting me to stop scrolling and read, and it wasn’t annoying or stressful like I was worried it might be. I’m definitely planning to keep my reading streak going into 2025.

My new reading goal this year is to read more in Spanish. I’m not committing to every day but I am aiming for most days. I am going to set a lower reading goal (this year’s goal was 30,000 pages and I’m probably going to make it to around 25,000, so a lower goal is something like 20,000 words) to allow for being a slower reader in Spanish than English. I just want to get good and fluent and confident and I know the way to do this is read more. I’ve been testing this plan for the last week or two and it’s going well so far. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes and how my Spanish feels after a year of focusing on reading.

Doing Stuff

I managed to do quite a lot of things this year! I feel like I’m always in my house (and I like it that way) but I do actually get out. In February I went to New Jersey to visit Lito and we spent a day in New York. I also visited my sister in southern California during the summer. We had season tickets to the Sacramento Ballet again this year, plus Abby and I saw a flamenco performance, and I went to see Vision Video in concert with Lemon. This year, Lemon and I revived a version of our cookbook club and hosted themed food parties like the souper bowl. So, I am doing a lot of things I want to do. I wish I could see my friends more but work and energy levels are limiting factors. Here’s to more cultural outings and friend visits in 2025.

Lito and I holding a holy grail cutout and grinning in front of a "Monty Python's Spamalot" backdrop — we found the grail

a ticket for Cinderella held up in front of the closed stage curtain — we found the grail

Languages

It was definitely a big year for language studying. I got really into translating Wikipedia and I have no plans to stop. I reached 100 edits on English Wikipedia in March and I’m now over 700. It’s not all from translating—there’s a lot of copy editing too—but translating is the part I’m enjoying the most. I’ve been translating articles from Spanish to English without supervision and I am very proud of the articles I translated on LGBT literature in Argentina and Mexico, respectively. I translated some English articles into Spanish and Ana and I spent quite a long time on the 2000 Supreme Court case, Bush v. Gore article. In Icelandic, Robert and I worked through something like 60 short articles that I translated from Icelandic into English. The translation itself is a bit of work but I think I am getting at least as much practice from tracking down citations since Icelandic Wikipedia is impoverished in references ([heimild vantar] is [citation needed])! This stuff honestly brings me a lot of joy and feels really fun and satisfying to do. For next year, I want to keep working through translating some of the queer literature articles from Spanish to English. In Icelandic, I just want to finish my self-imposed quest of translating all the articles about the Skagafjörður region. Although I am sure once we finish, I’m going to pick a new region of Iceland. Hopefully by then I can do some of these on my own without help.

a screenshot of my wikipedia notifications that says "You just made your hundredth edit; thank you very much!" — 100 Wikipedia edits

Aside from the Wikipedia quest, I’m planning to read more in Spanish, as previously mentioned. Otherwise, I don’t think I’m going to set any very specific goals for my language learning. Letting myself be curious and get hyperfixated on Wikipedia has been fun and educational, so I’m going to let my whims dictate my learning process like I’m a kid in a Montessori school. It seems to be working for me.

Corporeal Form

I feel like this year I spent the most time just dealing with the physical tasks of existence and various health issues. I got diagnosed with fatty liver at the very end of last year, and this year had to talk to the doctor about it a lot and get a biopsy (my liver is not that bad, per the biopsy). This lead to working with a dietician and eventually learning that eating raw produce causes me stomach issues. I spent a month of my life feeling sick before figuring it out. I sprained my fucking ankle and it took months to heal. In fact, it seems that I’ve only recently gotten it back to being fully functional. I found out I am hypermobile and probably have dysautonomia of some form (these issues often appear together). My carpal tunnel started becoming a real issue. Oh, and I almost forgot that devil perimenopause. I got my first hot flash in May and my body temperature has been utterly whack all year. All this to say: I’m tired. Each of these problems requires some kind of adjustment or exercise or preventative thing. I end up reading up on everything myself because the doctors are not always very helpful or don’t connect multiple issues or want me to do something that is “good” for whatever condition but is bad for me specifically. It’s a lot. It’s taken a lot of my time this year and I don’t see this requiring any less of my time and effort in the future. It feels hard to have so much to manage at only 38 years old (but maybe it’s not and I’m just louder about it than other 38-year-olds?). This list isn’t even all of my ongoing health stuff, it’s just the issues that came up or escalated this year. We only get one life and one body, so I gotta work with it and make this one count.

In the coming year, I am going to try to adjust my outlook on my health and how I manage it. I think I have to treat it as almost like a hobby (or a part-time job, but I’d rather think of it as a hobby) in terms of time and knowledge and planning required to take care of everything. Doing my hand exercises and my ankle exercises, drinking my electrolytes, making sure I have food I can eat and that is what I need for my health, staying active but not getting so worn out from holding my body up that I can’t do anything the next day! I have to accept that this level of work is just how it is going to be for me and figure out how to spread it out so I can deal with everything and not feel like it’s preventing me from doing stuff I want to do. Taking care of myself is what enables me to do what I want! It’s just lot of work and I wish I could fecklessly go through life without worrying about this shit.

Knitting and Crafts

I was able to answer for myself the question of “Why aren’t I knitting?” Fucking carpal tunnel. My hand goes numb after about five minutes, which is not enough time to do much of anything. This year, I have almost knit one whole, very tiny shawl. I have been working hard on figuring out how to knit ergonomically and taking care of my carpal tunnel, so I am hoping I will be able to knit a little more in 2025.

A small sample of knitting (the beginnings of a shawl in thin blue yarn). Huey cat lounging in the background — The beginnings of the tiny shawl

Moving It

For 2024, I set myself the goal of learning to do a consistent pirouette in ballet and to lift weights twice a week. The ankle sprain situation really derailed me, but I think I did get a lot better at turning, even though I am not yet a master of the single pirouette. I did, however, improve my jazz turn a lot (it’s a little easier because it’s not turned out). I ended up with a few solo classes this year when other students didn’t show up, and I asked to work on turns every time. So, I got a lot of tips and perspective from different teachers. Perhaps in 2025 I will finally figure out the pirouette! As for lifting weights, I am just planning to get out and lift when I can. Once a week would be nice, but I know once it gets hot in the summer, I’m really at the mercy of the temperature. I was kind of beating myself up about not lifting much this year because I was thinking I’d wasted a bunch of money setting up a garage gym and barely using it. However, Kirk pointed out that it’s paid for itself because if I had been paying for a gym membership all this time, I’d have nothing to show for it. At least I have my own equipment and I can work out when the mood takes me and the energy is available.

Kitchen Witchery

Looking back through my posts and photos, I mostly made just regular food this year. I didn’t get into anything complex or fancy, but I did add some really good meals to my regular rotation like pasta e fagioli, peanut butter chicken, and corn and asparagus pasta with ricotta. I spent a lot of kitchen energy on figuring out how to implement my dietician’s suggestions. I’m trying to get more omega-3 through flax, more vegetables, more whole grains, and less red meat (not that I was eating so much, but still). I’m always torn with wanting to do the most in the kitchen because I find the process enjoyable versus wanting to do very little because I am increasingly tired with the act of bustling around for long periods of time. For 2025, I am going to keep working on figuring out how to enjoy cooking with the level of energy currently available to me. I am trying not to overcomplicate things and make sure I eat the stuff I’m supposed to eat. I also want to cook some fun stuff and try new breads and pastries and, of course, new bean recipes to keep up with my subscription.

Here are some of my favorites from this year.

a bowl of turkey and dumplings with bits of carrot and peas visible in the broth — turkey and dumplings

A bowl of pasta and bean soup topped with grated parmesan and bits of parsley — turkey and dumplings

Cat Therapy

It was very hard to lose Huey cat this year. Between losing her and her sister Viola a few years ago, it feels like an era of my life is gone. I adopted them in 2008 when I was still in college and I had them with me through some difficult years. Fortunately, Fritz is still with us and he seems to revel in being an only child. Huey and Viola live on in our hearts (and blog posts). I also got to see my feline nephews and niece this year, visiting my sister and her cat Neo, and Lito and his cats Riff and Maggie. We can only hope that 2025 brings more opportunities to pet all the cats.

Finally, here are some my favorite cat photos from the last year for your nerves.

Huey the cat lounging on her pillow with her paws demurely crossed in front of her — Huey is a lady

Huey the cat lying on me with her paw over my finger — Huey is a lady

weekly update

Two Weeks in the Life: December 21, 2024

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. I really considered not posting anything today, but you know I love to stay on a schedule, so I’ve womaned up and done the dang thing. The last two weeks have been surprisingly busy at work, which, unfortunately, makes it pretty much impossible for me to have energy to do other things (because autism is a disability!). Last week, I did a big certification for accessibility compliance, which is cool and good and important to my job, but it was time consuming. This week I unexpectedly had a bunch of work involving creating an formatting a 50-page form. It is part of my job to do things like this but FIFTY PAGES of form is my personal hell. Especially when I’m informed it needs to be done immediately and I end up working until nine at night! Hateful! Ebeneezer Scrooge-ass behavior! I am contracted to the federal government, so they’ve been freaking out this week under the treat of government shutdown and the impending regime change. It’s a whole thing. I’m hoping everyone will chill out this week and I can have energy to get caught up on the things I actually care about like my Wikipedia translations and my reading. I had planned to do way more reading this week but alas!

Current Events

In my last post, I wrote about the United Health Care CEO’s killing and how the police hadn’t identified a suspect. As anyone who is at all online knows, the police have since arrested Luigi Mangione and charged him with multiple crimes, including terrorism. Mangione has already fully converted into a folk hero and the jokes and discourse over the last two weeks have truly been a source of delight. However, I have to remind everyone (including myself) that we don’t know if he actually did this. We have to assume he is innocent until/if he is found guilty. There are many documented cases of police planting evidence on people. The police say that they found Luigi with a gun and a manifesto, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. It may be real, but we don’t know.

It’s insane to me that the killing of literally one man with no apparent threats to anyone else is considered terrorism. According to the K-12 School Shooting Database (the bleakest website name in human history), there have been 327 school shootings this year alone. Where are the terrorism charges for school shooters? Where are the terrorism charges for the NRA lobbyists who insist that we can’t have gun control? Where are the terrorism charges for congress, who is not doing anything to stop this problem? Or for congress again for sending $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel in a year to support their genocide? Is this not terrorism? Our country is obsessed with terrorism, but it’s only terrorism when it threatens the status quo or can be used to whip up the populace into a jingoistic frenzy and erode our freedoms (shout out to the Patriot Act and the Transportation and Security Administration). I don’t know anyone who feels terrorized by a CEO’s death. The mood on the ground is everyone shrugging and saying “good.” However, many people feel terrorized by violence in schools or other public places. A whole generation of children has grown up with the omnipresent treat of violence at school. This whole fucking country is terroristic, but sure, let’s charge one guy with terrorism. That will fix the problem (big sarcasm).

Whether or not Mangione killed the CEO is now totally irrelevant. He is now a symbol for standing up to class warfare. The last year in particular (and I guess the last 30 years in general, from Reagan and neo-liberalism onward) has really worn people in this country down. Groceries are fucking expensive. Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy (the United States is not quite the only country with this problem, but we’re the only one having it on such a large scale). Productivity continues to outpace wages and the federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009 and it’s impossible for most people to afford their rent. Meanwhile, the US is spending more on its military than the next nine countries combined, and the top ten richest guys in the world doubled their wealth during the pandemic. This is our money. All of these funds should be paying for society but instead we’re funneling it to a handful of rich assholes and the world’s biggest war machine. This is a sustainable way to run a society. Whether or not Luigi did it, can we be surprised if, under these conditions, he is the spark that burns the whole place down?

Books and Other Words

book cover of Can't Pay Won't Pay shown on kobo ereader — Can’t Pay Won’t Pay

Can’t Pay Won’t Pay by the Debt Collective is a treatise exploring why we should stop paying our bills. Specifically, the Debt Collective calls for debtors to unionize and stop paying off exploitative debts like student loans and medical debt. It’s a form of collective action that “fights against predatory financial contracts and for the universal provision of public goods, including healthcare, education, housing, and retirement.” The argument is that our society has privatized things that should be public, which is part of why we’re all broke and in debt. One way to fight back would be to just … stop paying. The Collective suggests that people who owe the same creditors can form unions together. While an individual is, so to speak, owned by the bank, many individuals can bring any given bank or creditor to their knees. It may sound radical but consider that this idea was basically seen as a joke just ten years ago, yet we did see Biden attempt to pardon some student debt, a reminder that activism is a long game. The authors point out that forming a collective of debtors isn’t that radical; the “creditors are already organized—that’s why they got bailed out in 2008 and 2020.” The book also goes into a brief history of debt and privatization in the US. One painful example is that tuition at the University of California used to be totally free, but Reagan (when he was our governor), pushed for charging. This is generally seen as a response to Black people in particular and people of color in general seeking higher education. Reagan and racism strike again! The Debt Collective reminds us that bankers are profiting from our debts while the average American dies thousands of dollars in debt. It doesn’t make sense and people are suffering, which is why we need a radical change in how we approach financing public goods.

book cover of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times shown on kobo ereader — Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

I read Katherine May’s Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times because I kept seeing people online rave about how transformative it is. I did like the book and thought the writing itself was lovely, but the idea that sometimes we just have to rest is not particularly new to me. I’ve already engaged with this concept through books like How to Do Nothing, so while I agree with this book’s concept, it didn’t bring about a major paradigm shift for me. What actually stuck out most to me in this book is that this a chronicle of a highly masked autistic woman who reaches a breaking point. I’m not giving May an armchair diagnosis by the way—she mentions early in the book that she was undiagnosed growing up. That really framed this whole book for me. She is beset by a mysterious illness that is forcing her to rest and take it easy and not go to work as a university professor. Yeah, girl, it’s probably the autism! Being a teacher is a high-masking gig and it will take a toll. She says that, when she had to begin “wintering” herself, “I couldn’t do as much as I’d hoped. I couldn’t be the person I’d imagined: cheerful, energetic, summery. I struggled.” A few paragraphs later, she says she saw this episode coming and, in anticipation, “I began to treat myself like a favoured child: with kindness and love … I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important.” Baby, that is autistic burnout!! Thinking of periods of burnout like this sounds like it’s helpful for the author, but I wonder if she would be better served by recognizing that she has a whole-ass disability and her needs are reasonable even during her personal summers so the winter doesn’t hit her like a ton of bricks.

I don’t have a lot of internet reading to share this week (see above re: busy) but I will say that this woman living in the mountains and inventing cheeses is living one of my dreams.

Instead of links to read, here are some things you can do or donate to:

Top Ten EFF Digital Security Resources for People Concerned About the Incoming Trump Administration
California Tribal Fund, supporting California Native non-profits and tribal programs.
Donate or get involved in the Debt Collective. They use funds for organizing and to purchase and forgive debts.
Books not Bars for the holidays. This is a fundraiser to get books to people in prison.

Doing Stuff

Last Sunday, my friend Lemon and I had a holiday cookie party to finish out this year’s series of food-themed gatherings. We asked everyone to bring a cookie and Lemon and I made some actual food so we didn’t go into a sugar coma. I made this lentil baked ziti recipe, which was really good (though I did add more ricotta than the recipe called for and extra seasonings). For treats, I brought some extra-Christmassy rice krispie treats and toffee (not pictured). Everyone made great cookies and it was fun to hang out. I also have to point out that I finally wore one of the things I knitted a couple of years ago. For whatever reason, this sweater vest had never made it into an actual outfit before, so here it is.

A pan of lentil pasta topped with browned, melty cheese and another pan of lasagna — real food so we can eat lots of cookies

a pan of rice krispie treats made with christmas-colored cereal and topped with red and green m&ms and sprinkles — real food so we can eat lots of cookies

Kitchen Witchery

I’ve managed to make some normal food among all the treats. We enjoyed this butternut squash and caramelized onion galette with some red beans and rice (recipe from The Bean Book). I also tried this NYT Cooking recipe for cheesy chili crisp white beans (because NYT is obsessed with cheesy, beany things right now, but I’m not mad). I ate it for lunch for a few days and I enjoyed it. Although I think it’s more of an idea than something that really needs a recipe. It’s just beans and seasoning with cheese on top! I tried making a new treat, this salted maple honeycomb. It’s very good but super crumbly! I think I am going to embrace the crumblies and put it on top of ice cream. I also returned to everyone’s favorite treat, million peso shortbread, based on this recipe. I finally realized that I have to slice it before the chocolate is hard and fully set so that I can get it into nice squares instead of random shards. Not sure why it took me so long to figure that out, but we’re here now.

a freshly baked caramelized onion and butternut squash galette resting on parchment paper — caramelized onion and butternut squash galette

a plate with a pile of red beans and rice and a slice of butternut squash galette — caramelized onion and butternut squash galette

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. It’s been cold so Fritz has been in my biz. The results are very cute.

I'm lying on my stomach and Fritz the cat is sitting on top of me with his feet curled under him — best seat in the house

Fritz the cat cuddling against my chest. I'm looking at the camera but he's beatifically looking into the distance — best seat in the house

weekly update

Two Weeks in the Life: December 8, 2024

Posted on December 8, 2024 by Lindsey

Hello, friends and enemies. I don’t have any opening thoughts today. Let’s get into it.

Current Events

This week, as presumably everyone already knows, the CEO of United Healthcare was assassinated in New York City. The mood on the internet is probably as festive as when those billionaires died on that stupid submarine last summer. I understand that it’s gauche to cheer someone’s death. What I don’t get is why some people are clutching their pearls over this when United Healthcare is certainly killing people every day by denying claims “with a rate nearly double the industry average.” They’re currently the subject of a lawsuit for using an AI model to approve claims, “Though few patients appeal coverage denials generally, when UnitedHealth members appeal denials … over 90 percent of the denials are reversed, the lawsuit claims. This makes it obvious that the algorithm is wrongly denying coverage, it argues.” I’m not rooting for anyone to die, but the people at the top of our system seem like they are, on some level, rooting for our demise, even if they might not think about it in a tangible way. They make money denying claims, providing shitty health coverage, and generally making it difficult to fucking live. So, it doesn’t surprise me that all types of working-class people are feeling a little cheerful right now. It has felt like things might never change and we’re all stuck here being ground down day in and day out. Seeing that a CEO who gets millions of dollars every year while providing terrible healthcare die, well … sorry, but I can’t be upset.

What’s also wild is this has clearly spooked the executive class, which is to say, it worked. A man offed a single healthcare CEO and now, as 404 Media reports, “United Healthcare removed a page from its website listing the rest of its executive leadership, and several other health insurance companies have done the same, hiding the names and photos of their executives from easy public access.” There was also a Wikipedia debate about deleting the article for CVS’s current CEO, which spawned many conspiracy theories due to the timing of the proposal (they decided to keep the article). The best part is that this event actually shifted at least one policy. The same day at the killing, Anthem Blue Cross had announced it was going to “limit the amount of time it would cover anesthesia used in surgeries and procedures.” However, the next day, the company stated “it would no longer move forward with the policy change.” Yeah, I fucking bet.

Here are some memes for posterity. I don’t know what weird setting here is making the edges of the pictures blurry, but you can click on any of them to see the full thing.

A tweet of two graphs, one showing "wealth distribution in France, 1760–1790" and the other "Wealth distribution in the US, 2016." It shows that the top 20 percent in the US have a greater share of wealth than the top 20 in France. The tweet reads "Why are Americans celebrating the assassination of Healthcare CEOs?" — Wealth distribution comparison

stylized illustration of a field with the text "One less healthcare CEO, the world is healing" — Wealth distribution comparison

Books and Other Words

book cover for The Teleportation Accident shown on kobo ereader — The Teleportation Accident

I almost quit reading Ned Beauman’s The Teleportation Accident but ultimately persevered. I will admit that I didn’t know much about the book going into it but the title suggests science fiction and the cover art suggests jazz age, so I thought it would be a good time. However, there is no actual teleportation in this story, and the titular accident refers to a piece of epic stagecraft used in 17th century Venice that blew a giant hole in a theater and killed two dozen people. The story focuses on Egon Loeser, a man who is the 1930s equivalent of an incel. He lives in Berlin in 1930, works as a set designer, is always trying to find a party with good cocaine, refuses to read the news or engage in politics, and is obsessed with the fact that he’s not getting laid. I am sure this character is unsympathetic on purpose but, holy shit, is this guy deeply fucking unsympathetic. The plot kind of just happens to Loeser and he complains the whole time and is an asshole to everyone, including people who are apparently his friends. He becomes abruptly obsessed with a pretty girl and follows her to Paris and then Los Angeles, where he ends up living for almost a decade before finally crossing her path again. She’s not even into him! I get appreciating an anti-hero and I’m sure there’s some political commentary available to us about people who are indifferent to politics in times of serious political upheaval, but this was simply not the book for me here in the year of our lord 2024.

cover of the book Monsignor Quixote — Monsignor Quixote

My friend Lito invited me to a sort-of public book club read of Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene, which is not a book I would have picked up myself but I did appreciate it. The story is a modern (“modern” as in 20th century) take on Don Quijote and features a road trip with Father Quixote (who becomes elevated to a monsignor at the beginning of the story) and his friend, the staunch communist and former town mayor “Sancho.” It’s a philosophical novel with a lot of wine (and drunk driving!). I get Father Quixote because he is trying really hard to do what he thinks is right according to his religion. However, what seems morally correct to him does not always align with what the Catholic church thinks is right and he runs afoul of his bishop. There’s definitely a way to read this book in which Quixote is autistic and doesn’t get why everyone thinks he’s acting super weird. He’s living in his own world and not hurting anyone! Let him be! One thing I did find annoying about this book is that the communist former mayor, who is also an atheist, is often portrayed as having as much faith as Father Quixote. It does not take faith to be an atheist. But, I suppose Father Quixote (and Greene) is projecting. Quixote struggles with his belief, so he assumes that it must also require an act of faith to have no god. In any case, there is a fair amount of madcap antics amid the philosophical discussions that make the story fairly amusing even if you don’t want to think too hard about Catholicism and communism.

cover for the book No Is Not Enough shown on kobo ereader — No Is Not Enough

Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need was published in 2017, right after Trump became president the first time (I hoped I would never need to refer to Trump’s “first” term, but alas). The thesis of the book is, as the title suggests, that we can’t just say no to Trump and what he represents, we need to create a vision of the future we want and start fighting for that. Activists have spent years saying no to climate change and a dozen other crises, but all these issues are connected, and part of the work of activism is to provide a compelling alternative so that people believe and invest in the cause. Klein begins with explaining the multi-crisis we’re living through via the lens of her previous works, considering Trump as an entity of pure branding and describing how capitalists seize on disaster to make our lives worse while they profit. She goes on to talk about her work in drafting the Leap Manifesto, a foundational document of a group of Canadian activists who are pushing for radical change. Reading this book was a little funny at times because it referenced the early Trump era. I realized that I had already forgotten about so much of the stupid shit we lived through; his administration was constant mania. The book also felt like foreshadowing at times, like with the mention of Linda McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration under Trump, and who is returning for this season of Trumpism to play the secretary of education. It seems like these people come from nowhere but they were, in fact, already here. This is a very good book for anyone looking to ground themselves for a second term (ugh) of Trump or wanting to go beyond mere resistance.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

Must-Reads and Some Ways to Support Native People This Weekend via Organizing My Thoughts. I think it’s important that those of us who can afford it provide monetary support to Native people and causes, especially at this time of year, do so. This newsletter has some great suggestions for organizations to support.
Everyone’s a theater kid now via Garbage Day. It used to take a lot more effort to be a theater kid. Now, it’s easier to access the arts but harder to engage with them. “One of the bizarre side effects of our streaming- and platform-driven digital media environment is that, even though your favorite TV shows and movies have never been so accessible, audiences are also more likely to not actually experience them in full … Algorithmic social platforms like Facebook and X have been suppressing outgoing links for years, prioritizing the conversation about a thing over actually going and seeing the thing.”
Britain and Australia have a spy shortage and recruiting the next generation is proving difficult via ABC.au. Young people do not want to support empires!
Orcas start wearing dead salmon hats again after ditching the trend for 37 years via Live Science. Salmon hats are back!! Fashion truly is cyclical.

Rampant Consumerism

I got a new phone, which was rather overdue since I kept accidentally abusing my old phone and it was getting very slow (it should not take ten or more seconds to open the camera. The cat has already moved!). I love the new phone because it has a stylus built in (it’s a Moto G stylus)! I also got a pop socket that looks like a composition book cover, so that brings me joy.

Since I’ve grown my hair out, I’ve been struggling with major tangling after I wash it and it’s been making me insane and literally snapping combs in half. I finally figured out that they make combs specifically for detangling wet hair. I’ve only been using it for a few days but it’s been a marked life improvement. No more tanglies! Let me live my life in peace!

Moving It

My dance recital was yesterday! It was a lot of fun as always. I do appreciate opportunities to be on stage, even if the audience is mostly parents of the kids who are dancing—I’m not picky though. I don’t have any photos because I was busy! I just want to let everyone know that I’m having a good time. If you missed it, you missed out, but you’ll have another chance to see me at the next recital in May.

Kitchen Witchery

It was Thanksgiving last week! It seems like a month ago already. My dad and sister came to visit for the day, which was very nice. I went all out and made a big turkey, plus all my usual sides. One new dish was a bean and fennel gratin from The Bean Book. This may shock you, but I didn’t like it. It had too many bits of things in with all the fennel and leeks. However, everyone else said it was good. I also made a hibiscus-ginger punch, which was really tasty. Since I’m banned from alcohol on account of my fatty liver, we have to find something else interesting to drink on special occasions, and this was a great choice. After Thanksgiving, I made some turkey broth and used the leftover meat into turkey and dumplings, which tasted amazing. It’s a recipe I’ve made before, but Kirk was like “I don’t know what you did to make it so good.” I don’t either but my guess is it was the whole head of garlic in the broth!

a big roasted turkey, nicely bronzed, sitting on a cutting board waiting to be carved — thanksgiving turkey

buffet presentation of mashed potatoes, stuffing, and macaroni and cheese — thanksgiving turkey

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.

Fritz the cat sunk down into a round cat bed with just his eyes and top of his head peeking out — lurk mode

Fritz the cat half-asleep on the top of the couch — lurk mode