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.
Wealth distribution comparisonThe world is healingplay the hand you’re dealtassemble!the boycott!
Books and Other Words
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.
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.
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.”
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!
Hello, friends and enemies. I’ve been seeing a lot online lately about the importance of building community. I always feel like I’m doing it wrong because this advice always includes “talk to your neighbors!” Sorry, but that’s not who I am as a person. I’m not talking to the neighbors. I’ve wondered if that means community is something I can’t do or am doing incorrectly. However, I read something this week that made me think maybe I’m already contributing to building community with my blog. It sparks conversations with people and I’ve had some people tell me it inspired them to action. I’m sharing what I learn from the books I read (and maybe encouraging others to read and learn more?) and other tidbits from my online travels and maybe that is a way of doing community. When people say we need community now more than ever I think I’m supposed to be, like, … outside? I don’t know. I’m not trying to absolve myself from doing the work, but I am realizing the work I already do may be accomplishing more than I think. I’m sure I’ll be thinking and writing about this more as time goes on.
Another question I’ve been rotating in my mind this week is what brings me joy. Inspired by Lito asking our group chat what we think the difference is between “joy” and “delight,” and when do we feel those things, I spent some time mulling this over. It is often quite difficult for me to explain emotions and what causes them (I recall when I was getting evaluated for autism and the psychologist asked me to explain “happiness” and I just cried because I couldn’t but I didn’t want her to think I was never happy), so it was a bit of a challenge. I liked what I came eventually came up with so I decided to share it publicly here. Delight seems to me a subset of joy. Delight is fleeting and its arrival is often a surprise. Joy happens when I am doing things that align with how I see myself as a person (or the kind of person I want to be) and what’s important to me. I feel joy doing my Wikipedia editing and translating and I am delighted when I phrase a bit of translation in a way that sits just right. I feel joy riding my bike to the library and delighted when I find something cool on the nee books shelf. Joy is cuddling my cat (or other people’s cats) and delight is when he comes up to me and goes mrrrp. Joy is quality time with my logical family in the real or online in our various chats. Delight is the unexpected group chat callback or in-joke. It’s so important that we cultivate joy now (and always). It feels, once again, like the world is ending, but I’m a firm believer in the idea that life is what you make it. So many things suck. You can go along with that and let everything in your life suck too or rage against the dying of the light and wrest some joy from this would-be wretched existence. In conclusion:
Side note: Did you know that you can subscribe to my blog and get every post delivered to your inbox? Click the Subscribe tab on the top-right corner or click here. You can save yourself the trouble of checking your medium of choice to find out if I’ve posted. You can also reply to the emails if you want to tell me something! Yes, it does come back to me and not into some void.
Books and Other Words
I pre-ordered Sarah Kendzior’s They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent before it was published in 2022, but only just got around to reading it (draw your own conclusions about why). The theme of Kendzior’s work as a whole is that people in power are failing us and the history of their misdeeds is in the public domain for anyone who cares to look. Unfortunately, assembling this sort of information tends to get you labeled a conspiracy theorist. However, these issues “are not conspiracy theories. These are conspiracy facts.” It is true both that people in power can and do conspire and our culture is rife with conspiracy theories because “of course people will flock to conspiracy theories when nearly every powerful actor is lying, obfuscating, or profiteering off pain” (emphasis in the original). Kendzior has been chronicling the “transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government” for years and uses They Knew to link together some of the overarching problems that many of our country’s elite are wrapped up in, like Trump and his ties to the Russian oligarchs, or apparently everyone’s connections to the late Jeffrey Epstein. She bemoans the tendency on both the left and the right to wait to be rescued—in recent years, by the mysterious “Q” for MAGA adherents or Mueller for liberals—thanks to “the belief that somehow everything will work out on its own, because we could not have possibly gotten to a place where so many severe cataclysms intersect and feed off each other at once.” Kendzior is giving us permission to not trust the government. It’s not a conspiracy theory to point out that the government, especially on the federal level, is not often acting in the best interests of regular people. We have to talk about these issues. We can’t deal with these problems without discussing them. We deserve a government that actually cares about us and we have to acknowledge that there are real and deep-seated problems with our current leadership before we can move on.
Sistersong by Lucy Holland is set in the British kingdom of Dunmonia—I looked it up and this was a real place!—sometime between when the Romans abandoned Britain and the Normans invaded it. The story focuses on and is told through the perspectives of three sisters, the king’s daughters, who are grappling with the expectations of coming of age and with their diminishing magical abilities. The story finds the Dunmonian people at a crossroads; they have welcomed a Christian priest into their midst and the old ways of the Celtic religion are falling away, but abandoning the old ways is causing them to lose their connection to the land and their magic. I like this story a lot but it did take some dark turns, so be warned. It’s great for people who like books about sisters, exploring one’s queerness, or historical fiction/historical fantasy.
I think Barret Holmes Pitner’s The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America might have rewired my brain. The book’s thesis is that we need a name for the concept of “[destroying] a people’s culture while keeping the people,” and that word, a sister to genocide, is ethnocide. This word makes it possible to describe, for example, what this country did to Black people through the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. Black people remain, but their original cultures are lost. This book goes extremely hard on American culture. Just look at this: “American ethnocide represents an inversion of culture so severe that one must question if American society even has a culture.” Pitner continues with “American culture was never a collective culture focused on existence, but a divided culture that valued money more than human life.” This book helped me better understand an idea I have long held to be true: that white people in the US abdicated their history and culture to become homogeneously “white” rather than Italian, Polish, French, Danish, etc. White people perpetrated ethnocide on Black people and then turned around and did it to themselves to maintain power, which has left many people feeling lonely, with a void where their culture ought to be. Whiteness, per Pitner, is about essence over existence, that is, maintaining the idea of whiteness is more important than valuing human life. Look at how mad white culture gets when there is property damage, or how we refer to people as “consumers” rather than “citizens.” Our definition of freedom in this country is the freedom to own things (or, at certain points in history, to own people). Pitner also draws from a variety of other traditions and languages to find ways to describe his ideas and give us the vocabulary to understand them, pulling from existentialism and referencing Camus and Beckett, meditating on the German idea of the soul Geist, and defining a certain kind of vulgarity with the Russian word poshlyi. This book gave me so much to think about and I really appreciated every word. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of American culture and how we can begin to heal it.
They KnewSistersongThe Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America
Meanwhile, on the internet:
Controversial Prop. 65 warning labels about toxic chemicals are effective, study says via the LA Times. You know those warning labels that say something contains “chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects”? They’re actually helping us. From the article, “Now, a new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives has concluded that Proposition 65 has curbed exposure to toxic substances in California — and nationally.”
So What Does That Mean in Practice? via How Things Work. Democrats need to stop focusing on superficial things like slogans and actually do something to improve people’s lives if they ever want to win an election.
Interdependence is a Survival Skill, But Shouldn’t Feel Like Building a Bunker via Group Hug! I liked these thoughts on community building, especially this: “Community isn’t just about trying hard enough; it’s about what we are willing to feel.” The author mentions that right now many people are talking about building community like they would make a New Year’s resolution, but that is not going to work in the long term. The author offers some good questions to reflect on as we continue the work of connecting with others.
Maximizing Time for Reading via Dividual. Some thoughts on how and why to read more. One bit I liked from the article: “In general, aiming to ‘understand’ or even have concrete takeaways for what you read is getting the cart before the horse. Again, no one wakes up reading Pynchon and converting it to gold; that’s not the point. The point, if there is one, as with looking at a painting, is that you are exposing your mind to being nourished without needing to define it another way. Too often we try to read with purpose, as if everything we do must have a takeaway; instead, letting the words wash over you, taking what you take from them, and carrying forward tends for me to be a much more effective way of being ‘in’ the book, letting the soul of the book into my consciousness.”
One of my favorite new shows right now is Gastronauts on Dropout. It’s a cooking show but a goofy one. Three comedians set off-the-wall cooking challenges for chefs who have 30 minutes to carry them out. The stakes are basically non-existent. Everyone is funny and the food challenges are delightful. In the latest episode, someone asked for food that they could wear as a hat. I mean, so silly. So great. If you’re curious, the first episode is on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYj9Wso2Tbc
Moving It
My next dance recital is coming up on December 7! If you are reading this, you are invited. You can get a ticket here: https://www.etix.com/ticket/o/10638/galaxydancearts. I’ll be performing in tap, jazz, and ballet as usual. There will also be adorable small children and some highly talented older children to watch!
Kitchen Witchery
Most of my kitchen efforts have been in service of Thanksgiving preparation (don’t sleep on using the freezer!) but I have made a few things of note. I made lasagna based on the recipe in How to Cook Everything. I normally make the “American-style” version, which has lots of ricotta and mozzarella, but this time I tried the traditional version with bechamel. It was good! Both versions are good for different reasons and it’s nice to have options. I also made this handsome cocoa-yogurt cake from Snacking Cakes. Honestly, a rainbow sprinkle makes everything more festive.
lasagna for dinnercocoa yogurt bundt cake
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
Hello, friends and enemies. Please allow me to start with something completely trivial today before we get into the heavy stuff: it makes me crazy when people get mad about the fall time change. “It’s dark by the time work is over!” they cry. “I hate it!” they exclaim. The problem is not the end of daylight saving time. The problem is the Earth’s axis. Winter has less light, no matter how you distribute it. The other problem is capitalism. Unfortunately, we are all expected to maintain the same working pace in the winter when we should clearly be doing only a little work and being cozy at home the rest of the day. Shifting the time an hour isn’t the cause of your woes. Get a grip. Start a revolution or something.
With everything else, I almost forgot that it was Halloween just a week ago. We actually got a few trick-or-treaters this year! Not a lot, mind you, but just enough to justify buying candy and avoid Kirk clowning me for buying a bunch of candy that we didn’t give out (which is what happened last year). I tried turning on some string lights in one of our front windows to emphasize that we are home and handing out treats and maybe that helped. It was also suggested to me that having non-participating Jehovah’s Witnesses as our neighbors on one side might be discouraging people from bothering with the houses in our immediate area, which is a bummer if true.
On with the show.
Current Events
Current events is becoming a permanent feature, I fear. I would rather not spend my energies on this shit but, alas, we play the hand we’re dealt. I have things to say about it all, god help me. The next paragraph is a bit graphic, so skip to the one after if you don’t want to hear about body things.
My period began the day before the election and, thanks to perimenopause, it’s become very heavy. When I woke up on election day, I had bled through my tampon and stained the sheets. There was blood dripping down my legs by the time I made it to the bathroom. I’m not sharing this because I think it’s horrific—on the contrary, women are very familiar with their own blood—but because that morning I watched blood droplets pool on the floor and thought, I hope this is mere coincidence and not an omen. I don’t truly believe in omens; I believe in the chaos and randomness of the universe. Yet, the pull to narrativize this kind of image is so strong. It does feel like it means something that I woke up covered in blood on the day this country elected Trump a second time. It’s hard not to feel like my body was communicating a dire warning.
I’m sure the whole world knows already that Donald Trump won the election. I thought for sure it would be like 2016 where he only won because of the electoral college, or maybe it would be like 2000 and he would win because of the Supreme Court with a little help from the three justices he installed for just this purpose. But no, he won the old-fashioned way with a plurality of the popular vote. Trump received 72.76 million votes to Harris’s 68.09 million (note that millions of eligible Americans do not vote at all). I find it interesting that both the Democrats and Republicans received fewer votes overall than they did in 2020, when Trump lost with 74.22 million votes and Biden won with 81.28 million votes. I’m far from the first person to point this out but I feel it’s an important part of this election’s story. This means 15 million fewer people voted this year election than in 2020. If everyone who voted for Biden showed up to vote for Harris this time, she would have won handily, but they didn’t. Why not? We are about to be subject to months (or years) of pontificating on this subject—including my own (haha)!
In my opinion, several big, interlocking issues made Harris lose to Trump. America remains sexist and racist. Voters do not want to vote for a woman (see: 2016 and, I suppose, all of US history), let alone a Black/Indian woman. Let us not forget that Obama is half-white, which I really think made him more palatable for some voters. The other issue is that Harris and her campaign made weird and bad choices. She started off fun with Brat summer but her campaign website (that’s an archive.org link to the pre-election-day version) was vague on many issues. It says, for just one example, that she planned to “protect Social Security and Medicare,” but didn’t offer any vision for how to improve on what we already have. I get that, running against Trump, the important message is that government matters and we’re not going to let this asshole tear everything apart. But you have to go a step beyond and say government matters and here’s what we’re going to do to strengthen it and make everyone’s lives better. She didn’t do that. She also never translated her website into Spanish and I think that’s criminally negligent! The Biden administration should have done more to resolve the issues that brought Trump to power the first time and Trump should have faced some actual consequences for inciting a fucking attempted coup in 2021. When people see the government acting like it’s business as usual, they assume there isn’t a real or serious problem, which translated into a lot of people wrongly thinking there’s nothing wrong with voting for Trump because it’s just another election.
I also blame Democrats’ propensity to pander to an imagined base of Republican-leaning centerists who will vote Democrat and save the day. Somehow. Allegedly. Why did Harris campaign with Liz Cheney? Who is that for? This alienates the people who are supposed to be the actual Democratic base. If people want to vote for a Republican, that option is available. Why would they vote for Kamala Harris, neoliberal, diet-Republican? I believe Harris would have won if she had campaigned hard on things people actually want like embargoing weapons sales to Israel. The Intercept reports that “a June poll from CBS … showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans” For all the rhetoric about a “divided” nation, we sure seem to agree on not sending weapons to Israel! Additionally, Congresswoman Rashida Talib, a Palestinian-American and critic of the Biden administration’s support of Israel, won her reelection with a two-thirds majority. Other progressive issues won throughout the country, too. Missouri and other states voted to end their abortion bans. People show up when you give them something worth showing up for. The Democrats didn’t give us anything to root for. They’ve been beating us with the “Republicans will repeal Roe v. Wade” stick for the last 15 years and, guess what, they finally did that and Democrats have not been able to save us. We save us. Missouri and other states did it. So, I don’t think any particular minority demographic is to blame and I don’t believe third-party voters are to blame either because their votes were less than the vote differential between Harris and Trump. We need a party that is going to do what people want! The Democrats are ignoring our phone calls and telling people to shut up when they bring up the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza. Why would we get excited about voting for her? The Democratic establishment did this to themselves.
Here in California, we had some important things on the ballot (here’s the summary of results from the L.A. Times). We passed propositions 2, 3 and 4, to fund schools, legally confirm that marriage doesn’t need to be heterosexual, and allow the state to issue bonds and spend money on climate-resilliancy projects. That’s all good stuff. I am disappointed that we did not vote to raise minimum wage or end rent control, however I am not surprised about the rent control one because we keep having opportunities to vote for it and landlords keep spending millions to convince us we shouldn’t do it. I am genuinely upset that we did not vote to end slavery for people in prison. We also voted to lower the threshold for felonies, which will no doubt put more people in our overcrowded prisons to do forced labor. As I wrote in my voter guide:
It’s hard not to see forced, low-wage prison labor as a way for corporations to evade hiring non-incarcerated workers and paying them a normal wage. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I must point out the Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year that effectively criminalized homelessness. It seems like an excuse to put homeless people in prison and make them work instead of finding ways to make housing more accessible.
It’s especially troubling that Californians affirmed support for the prison-industrial complex on the eve of Trump’s ascension. He has long threatened to jail political enemies (and I don’t love how loosely that may eventually be defined) and there is no reason to think he won’t do this. Private prison companies are certainly ecstatic over a second Trump term. Geo Group, which has over 100 facilities, saw it’s stock price rise by 32 percent after the election was called for Trump. Isn’t it bleak that we live in a world not only with private prisons, but with publicly traded private prisons? These decisions may haunt us in the years to come.
All that said, I wanted to address the issue of what we might do about it all. I think it’s going to get pretty bad. If Trump’s administration does even a quarter of the shit in Project 2025, things will be rough for us. I am personally worried that I may eventually lose my job because it depends on the Affordable Care Act and I’m indirectly contracted to the federal government. Lots of people are worried about lots of things and although my job is certainly not the most serious potential problem, it’s personal and important to me. Here are some things I’m thinking about as a form of disaster preparedness, if you will.
Post-election thought from Chuck Tingle
Find joy in this life. Do not preemptively cede your joy to this political moment. Doing things for yourself that make you happy, spending time with your friends and family, engaging in hobbies, and doing things just for fun are all important. Joy is radical. Try not to give up things you like in advance. Loving yourself and enjoying life is a protest. Don’t let this grind you down any more than you must.
I know I sound like an old woman who lived through the depression when I say things like this, but stock your pantry, have backups of any important things you need to live (for me, CPAP parts), and order your medication refills as early as you can so you can have a little buffer. I think we are in for supply chain chaos and Trump’s tariffs are going to make things a lot more expensive. The best defense against inflation is a full pantry. Kirk and I are strategizing about any big house-related purchases we may need to make before Trump gets into office and starts ripping us off. I think if you can afford to do so, make sure you have a little extra of whatever you normally use on hand, it will alleviate some difficulty. I will never forget how insane people went with hoarding toilet paper during the pandemic in 2020 and I am adjusting my purchasing habits accordingly.
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. If you can, pick some organizations to support with a monthly donation too. I personally donate to the Elk Grove Food Bank, NorCal Resist, and Women’s Health Specialists (and the Wikimedia Foundation, but that’s not local). I am looking into volunteering for the Sacramento Public Library because that’s something important to me and a volunteer gig that I think I could manage.
Read, read, read as much as you can. Learn about how we got here, how other people have dealt with these times in history, and to figure out how we get to the other side of this. Read fiction to escape from this reality for a while. Go to the library! Build your personal book collection that does not depend on services like Kindle Unlimited (Amazon can cut you off anytime)! Share books and magazines with your friends! We have to educate ourselves because no one is going to do it for us. I get a lot of good political non-fiction from Haymarket Books (and they often have ebook sales so you can get them for cheap. They have ebooks on sale for $2 right now) and AK Press has some free ebooks available right now. I also highly recommend Sarah Kendzior’s newsletter and books (Hiding in Plain Sight and They Knew are important works). She’s an expert on authoritarianism and the only person who has correctly predicted all of the garbage we’re dealing with because authoritarians always follow the same script. These people suck and they are not creative.
Don’t over-rely on the internet and digital world. Websites can easily disappear. Cloud services can be shut down. If you need information, save it to your computer or archive it somehow. You may have noticed I am using some archive.org links in this post instead of linking directly to news stories. This probably sounds alarmist, but who knows if that information will stay online! The internet isn’t as permanent as it seems. Download an archive of your facebook account so you have all your photos in a place that isn’t just facebook. Don’t exclusively rely on the cloud (which is just other computers, by the way). Also, it’s getting harder to navigate a lot of digital spaces and trust the information there because of AI (note that facebook is actively pushing AI content). Figure out which sources you can trust and don’t believe everything you read online, especially if it’s something that gets a big emotional reaction from you.
Related to the previous bullet: connect with people offline. We are halfway to a surveillance state already and god only knows how much worse it’s going to get. Don’t hold all your conversations through facebook messenger or instagram. Talk to people in the real world or use a private, encrypted messaging service like Signal. Hang out with your friends in real life! Eat snacks outside and feel the breeze.
Let me just say: I hope I’m wrong. I hope all the “it won’t be that bad” people are right and that you fill up your pantry for no good reason. I would love to be wrong about all this. However, I don’t think I will be. Experts in history, politics, and authoritarianism are super worried right now. There are many ways for things to go badly and very few pathways of minimal suffering. I’ll end on this: I was looking for something in an old post and found that I love saying “I would love to be wrong,” which I noted in my post after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade (by the way there are some good suggestions in that post too, if you’re looking for something to do about everything). Unfortunately, I wasnot wrong.
Books and Other Words
I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the first time (although I did attempt to read it via Dracula Daily last year, but discovered that I don’t like reading books incrementally in my email inbox) in anticipation of seeing the Sacramento Ballet perform it. It’s interesting to read something that has taken on such a life of its own in pop culture. I thought I knew the story but it turned out I didn’t know much at all, just the sense of Dracula is a character. I’m not going to recap a 100-year-old book, but I want to say that it is obvious to me that Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra are lesbians! Mina is always writing about how good and kind men are and how we couldn’t make it without them. Girl, you’re overselling it. Calm down. I also maintain that Mina is autistic. She has every fucking train schedule for England and the continent memorized. She even tells Van Helsing that she is the “train fiend” when he expresses disbelief that she would know all these train times off the top of her head. A train FIEND. Who but an autistic person would do this and describe themselves that way? FIEND!
Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty is situated somewhere in the borderlands between fiction and non-fiction. It’s a novel about the USSR that illuminates how it felt to live through it by imagining what’s in the minds of various real historical figures. We don’t necessarily know if that’s how they thought and what they felt, but Spufford extrapolates from the historical record to give us a sense of the optimism that some people felt at the outset of the USSR, and the pervasive cynicism present by the end. Spufford is insanely talented when it comes to historical and speculative fiction (see this year’s Cahokia Jazz, for example). I learned a lot from it despite it being “fiction,” and I even looked up some of the people and places afterwards to get a stronger picture in my mind. It was very interesting and worth reading.
What does UNRWA do and why has Israel banned it from West Bank, Gaza? via Al Jazeera. This news is almost two weeks old now but I wanted to note it anyway. Israel is banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency “from conducting activities within Israel’s borders.” It’s grotesque to ban a humanitarian aid organization while they continue their genocide.
Too many Democrats in Sacramento? The downsides of political dominance in California via the LA Times. This article made me laugh. We actually have too many Democrats in the state legislature. Apparently. Well … that’s who we voted for! I think it’s clear we do not want Republican governance in California. If there isn’t enough tension to keep people on their toes, the next step is for the party to splinter so we can get a left-wing branch into office. Just a thought!
25 Years of Indecision With Jon Stewart via The Nation. I appreciated this long profile on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show and its influence on political discourse as we now know it. The article also brought to my attention that the quote about reality having “a well-known liberal bias” is from Steven Colbert’s White House Correspondents’ dinner speech, which I either forgot or never knew, despite the fact that I think of this statement often.
Doing Stuff
Sac Ballet Dracula
Last weekend, I went with my friends to see Sacramento Ballet perform Dracula. I didn’t even know they had a ballet of that, but I guess you can ballet anything (I mean the Royal Ballet is adapting Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam, which is a wild choice and I wish I could see it). It was a very cool production and I’m glad we got to see it! The costumes were cool (I want a giant Dracula cloak), the dancing was great although there was an awful lot of slithering around (it’s how we know Dracula is evil, I guess). I think there ought to be more seasonally themed productions. Sure, Christmas has The Nutcracker, but we should get a spooky Halloween ballet every year too.
Wikipedia
I am proud to report that Ana and I finished reviewing my translation of the Bush v. Gore (2000) Wikipedia article and I published in on Spanish Wikipedia here. I thought it might be relevant to the election so I translated it. It turned out not to be relevant, but now Spanish-speakers can understand what the hell happened in that election. I also learned a lot in the process, so it was good for me if nothing else. Wikipedia says that there have been 251 visits to the page though, so at least someone is looking at it.
Rather than watch election news on Tuesday and Wednesday, I decided to copy edit some long Wikipedia articles. You may not think this is a good way to distract myself from the horrors, but I edited the 2024 Salvadoran general election article. This reminded me that things really could be worse. It is also 14,000 words long so it kept my attention for quite a while so I didn’t spend Tuesday doom scrolling.
I’m still slowly working through translating some articles about the Skagafjörður region in Iceland. Here’s a recent one: Hrolleifsdalur (it’s a valley). I also found that there are some articles connected to this subject in Spanish but not English, like this one about Hjalti Þórðarson, so I have started translating some of those to work on the topic from multiple directions. Doing this stuff is genuinely fun to me and makes me happy. I love filling in the links between articles I’ve worked on. I’m having a good time!
Corporeal Form
For everyone who has told me I am a “high-functioning” autistic person, I want to explain that I have been paying out of pocket for my CPAP supplies since I got diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2018. I have insurance. Insurance would be for these things. I do not understand how to order them through my insurance and, when I first got the CPAP, Kaiser wasn’t paying for the mask I wanted, so I’ve been buying the masks and everything else that insurance probably does have online with my own money like an idiot for years because navigating this stuff is too hard. However, I recently womaned up and figured it out (after six years of not figuring it out lol). I had to talk to five different people on the phone and I did cry at one point but we got it sorted out. I had to get my doctor to tell the sleep clinic people that I still need a CPAP (apparently they stop authorizing you for equipment if you don’t order it every so often which kinda makes sense but also sleep apnea doesn’t just go away??). I finally found out that Kaiser has a third-party company that I have to order through so I am doing this now. This felt extremely difficult but I’m glad it’s done because I literally spend hundreds of dollars a year on it.
I haven’t been doing anything too thrilling in the kitchen lately, but of course I am still cooking because, you know, gotta eat every day. Last weekend I roasted a chicken. It’s both a good meal and part of my Thanksgiving preparations because I like to use homemade broth to punch up my holiday recipes. I a;sp made baked farro and lentils with feta, which I’ve done before but it has become part of my weeknight repertoire. I used this roasted acorn squash recipe to accompany the lentils and I liked it a lot. The squash came out great. Finally, it is soup season so I tried a new-to-me soup recipe from The Daily Soup cookbook: chickpeas with penne and gorgonzola. I thought I would love this recipe but it was just okay to me. The instructions didn’t call for blending it, but it was so oniony and I knew I was not going to like it if I had to keep eating tons and tons of little wisps of wilted onion and leek. Onions are great but I don’t always like how they feel. I probably won’t make this one again but I am planning to keep delving into that cookbook because there are many soups that I haven’t made before.
Of course, we cannot forget that last week was Día de los Muertos, so I had to make a traditional pan de muerto for the occasion. It was good! I love bread!
chicken dinnerfarro and lentils with acorn squashchickpea, penne, and gorgonzola soupannual pan de muerto
Cat Therapy
I’ve been missing Huey a lot lately. Whenever I came home, she would be near the door to shout at me, so I was in the habit of looking for her. Since she was black and it’s been getting darker earlier, I keep scanning for her when I open the door so I don’t run into her but, of course, she’s not there. Here’s a Huey photo from the archives.
miss you, Huey cat
Finally, here is Fritz for your nerves.
Fritz wilding out on the cat treefritz the cuddle catFritz being cozy
Hello, friends and enemies. I have spent the last few months waging war on the moths that have taken up residence in our pantry because it’s always fucking something. We noticed them a little while ago and then realized they were emanating from an area near my bread machine (gross). We bought moth traps and that seemed to solve the problem. Unfortunately, we were then hit with a second generation of moths, so I’ve had to go wild on cleaning the pantry. The only thing saving me from declaring pantry bankruptcy is that most of my ingredients were already stored in airtight containers, but the moths had wormed their way into things like bags of nuts secured with a twist tie or a half-used bar of chocolate for cooking (why do moths want chocolate??). In the last two weeks I vacuumed and wiped down all the pantry shelves, fully cleaned out the pantry, and made sure everything is in a sealed container. We already get ants regularly so it doesn’t really hurt to tighten up the pantry situation but it is annoying. If anyone is looking for a recommendation, I’m using some of these Home Edit containers and I have a lot of ProKeeper bins for my flours, sugars, etc.
On the topic of house drama, our shower saga continues (original saga: 1, 2, 3. extended saga: 1, 2, 3). We signed a contract last weekend for work on getting our shower remodeled (again). In looking back through my old posts to link for background, I see I wrote in December 2019, “I look forward to never remodeling a shower again.” Oh, how young I was. How naive! The good news is our new contractor has things like a schedule and a project manager so this should all go more smoothly than the last time. I hope these words won’t come back to haunt me.
Unrelated to all that, I finally caved in and joined Blue Sky, a twitter replacement. What ultimately swayed me is that someone has created a feed of all the gift links to various publications that people share. If you want to follow me there you can find me @linzmatic.
Current Events
Unfortunately, I am once again being forced to comment on current events because everything is too weird and stupid and sad to ignore it.
First, the big story: Israel is directly attacking Iran now, and not just anywhere in Iran, but the capital Tehran, among other locations. Israel “also launched simultaneous strikes on Iraq and Syria, ostensibly targeting Iran-linked interests.” Even though Israel escalated hostilities a year ago in response to Hamas taking hostages from a concert, it’s clear that the “getting the hostages back” is only a pretext. Al-Jazeera reported this month that “Israeli forces had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” but “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war is ‘not over’ and pledged that Israeli forces would operate in Gaza for ‘years to come’.” Israel has no plans to stop and they’re able to continue because, at a conservative estimate, the U.S. has provided them with over $22 billion in the last year. This is our money that should be going to improving lives here, but no, we are paying for war in countries that have nothing to do with us (just kidding I know they have oil. laugh/cry).
The other story on my mind is that rich people are killing the free press. Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, stopped the Post’s editorial board from running their endorsement of Kamala Harris. The LA Times unfortunately made the same move, with their billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, “block[ing] thee editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.” The Times’ editorials editor resigned in protest. There’s a lot that’s shitty and annoying about this, but what sticks out to me is these rich media owners are doing this in anticipation of a Trump administration that would retaliate against them. There is nothing preventing them from endorsing Harris, but they are scared of theoretical consequences if Trump wins. Amazon doesn’t want to lose lucrative federal contracts for cloud services and the like. As Parker Molloy wrote on the subject yesterday, “These instances suggest a media landscape increasingly hesitant to challenge power—a dangerous precedent in any democracy. When the press begins to police itself out of fear, it relinquishes its role as a watchdog and becomes complicit in undermining democratic norms.” It’s not looking good for the good old U S of A! Anyway, the Washington Post’s humor columnist endorsed Harris because we live in the stupidest version of this world.
That said, the election will be here in less than two weeks. I’ve got voter guides in English and Spanish. My non-professional opinion is that anyone who is thinking about voting for Trump should just sit this one out, but unfortunately I can’t stop anyone from being an idiot.
Books and Other Words
Those of us who enjoy pseudo-historical (or fantasy I guess but it’s not really magic? It’s just another pre-industrial kind of world) m/m romance are eating good these days. In my last post, I mentioned Yield Under Great Persuasion, which falls into this category. This week it’s Freya Marske’s new book, Swordcrossed. I’ve loved Marke’s other books and of course enjoyed this one too. It’s billed as a much lower-stakes story. There’s no big magic, end-of-the-world stuff, just a guy trying to get married to save his family’s fortunes and falling for his fencing instructor instead. Whoops! It could happen to any of us, honestly. It’s a fun book, there is intrigue, mystery, and a highly ADHD-coded fencing instructor. It was a good read!
Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism by Joanne Limburg is in conversation with historical women who may have been autistic. In a way, it reminded me of Femina, in that it is offering a close read on women of the past. The book is a collection of four “letters” (essays, really) that serve as memoir and commentary on autism, feminism, and disability. There are a lot of poignant observations here on being weird, which Limburg notes “is not the same as conscious rebellion or resistance, though it may come to inform it,” and especially being weird as a woman. One such example, “The whole point of the work that goes into the presentation of girlhood and then womanhood is to erase itself, and by doing it incompetently we are drawing attention to it, and to the unruly animal body.” Ouch, Joanne. I related to a lot of the author’s experiences about being weird and not performing girlhood or womanhood correctly. She tells a story about sitting at the adults’ table at a dinner party and thinking she really won at socializing correclty, only to go home and have her mother tear into her “for taking up so much attention.” Like, beat for beat that happened to me with my step-mom on my ass for not asking enough questions of other people during a dinner. That’s something that always shocks me reading other people’s (especially other women’s) accounts of autism. I grew up thinking I was the only broken weirdo like me on this Earth and yet I’m reading these stories and seeing that tons of women have felt the same and had eerily similar experiences. It’s criminal that we all feel this way while there’s such a sisterhood there, just out of reach. Limburg’s work bridges some of that gap for us here in the present and attempts to reach into the past to offer our spiritual ancestors the same.
How to find helpful content in a sea of made-for-Google BS via HouseFresh. I appreciated this guide on the current best methods for figuring out which websites are useful and which ones are full of SEO and AI slop. I consider myself fairly savvy on such topics but I did learn some new things here.
How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why via Just Pack. This is on the same topic as the previous article but from a different perspective. Google spent years encouraging bloggers to write and structure content in a certain way, and is now using all the information it gathered to provide abbreviated explanations directly in the search results instead of sending people to websites—and that’s ruining small sites. The internet sucks now!
Who Gets Shipped and Why? via The Pudding. I thought this article on fanfiction and shipping (the concept of deciding in your own mind which of the characters in a work should be a couple. For example, imagining that Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock [“Spirk”] are a couple) was really interesting. The authors run the numbers on some of the most popular ships in fanfiction, noting that they are overwhelmingly gay male pairings. They posit that many popular shows and books are lacking in-depth portrayals of women, so women fans ship male characters. It also opens a fandom space for women and the queer community in a unique way.
White House announces first California marine sanctuary managed by Indigenous peoples via The LA Times. A coastal area between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara is now under the administrative auspices of the Chumash Indians. From the article, “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is responsible for managing the preserve, but Indigenous tribes will directly advise the agency. The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, which has territory overlapping with the sanctuary and is the only federally recognized Chumash tribe, has been designated as NOAA’s key Indigenous partner.” Pretty cool!
TV and Music
Kirk and I have been watching The Silo on Apple TV. Our timing was good because the second season is coming in a few weeks. We were discussing that this is basically a cop/mystery show, which we don’t normally care for, but it’s in a science fiction context, so that makes it interesting. I don’t need to see cops in the real world! How dull! Show me cops locked in a gigantic, silo-shaped fallout shelter (I assume?) who are running against the surveillance state. We have also been yelling at the show demanding to see more of the logistics. How do all those people live underground? Show us the farms, you cowards! Show us the air filtration system! So yeah, it’s a good show.
Rampant Anti-Consumerism
I came across some suggestions for getting rid of some of the junk that Windows 10 and 11 saddle us with. I swear every tech company is committed to making full-on surveillance machines. It makes me mad. We pay for this shit. We shouldn’t have to deal with the crap too. I downloaded two free programs from O&O Sfotware: ShutUp and AppBuster. ShutUp gives you a way to turn off some of the most offensive Windows features and AppBuster makes it possible to remove some of the built-in programs that you don’t need. It takes five minutes and works great! The other thing I did, which admittedly requires a little bit of computering skill, is disabled the Bing search that Windows gratuitously includes in the Start menu. I do not need or want this. The instructions made it very simple and now I don’t have Windows suggesting random garbage to me all the time.
Languages
Yes, I am still translating things on Wikipedia and it brings me joy to share what I’ve translated so here we go. I’m chipping away at all the articles linked in the LGBT literature of Mexico article that I translated into English a few months ago. After translating the page for the author Luis González de Alba into English, I had to do the page on his book Los días y los años. I showed that to Ana and she suggested I translated the article on the Olimpia Batallion, which was involved in suppressing Mexico’s 1968 student protests. I might take on some more articles in this subject because it’s important and interesting, if rather heavy. Then, I doubled back to my gay authors and translated the page on Wenceslao Bruciaga, who has some books with very interesting names like Un amigo para la orgía del fin del mundo (A Friend for the Orgy at the End of the World). I mean, that’s a good title. I’m intrigued.
Corporeal Form
I am delighted to report that I finally found a good primary care doctor. She was actually helpful and even said it was a good thing that I read up on my ailments and come prepared to my appointments. This is an extremely welcome change of pace after being told many stupid things like that I shouldn’t rely on “Dr. Google” (first of all, I don’t even use google anymore). I wrote this part of the blog on Thursday, then spent half of Friday having an absolute FIT because I got a letter from Kaiser saying my doctor is moving into an administrative job so she can’t be my doctor anymore and I have been reassigned “for my convenience.” I concluded that my life is apparently a joke. However, there is a happy ending. I emailed my doctor to ask if she could recommend someone I should see instead of her and she said she could stay with her as long as I’m okay with reduced availability. Totally fine. Thank god because I fear I could not endure another round of trial and error looking for someone who won’t tell me that the reason I’m hot all the time is that I’m fat (spoiler: it was perimenopause).
My new doctor confirmed that I am hypermobile—something I wrote about last month—and said it does sound like the problems I’m describing are dysautonomia. This was really validating news because I know something is wrong with me and that really did sound like the thing. You may recall that a few months ago I was fairly convinced I had POTS. While I probably don’t have that specifically, it is a form of dysautonomia, so I was on the right track.
Dysautonomia is an umbrella term for disorders in which the autonomic nervous system (the part of the nervous system running the organs) is out of whack. Symptoms include things like fatigue, nausea, shortness of breath, and a variety of other things. I think this is something I’ve always had but it has been intensifying lately. The doctor suggested that perimenopause, which also wreaks havoc on the body in many little-understood ways, could be having an unwholesome reaction with the dysautonomia. Unfortunately, the only things I can really do about it are eat more salt (yes, more), wear compression socks (side bar: I’m liking the Apolla socks), and maybe take to my fainting couch regularly, I don’t know. I’m only half-joking about the fainting couch. I’m not fainting but I am definitely experiencing “orthostatic intolerance,” which is the body just kinda having a hard time standing up. Blood is not getting where it needs to go when I’m standing! It wants to relax in my feet, which is not very useful (this is where the compression socks come in). I’ve always noticed that blood pools in my hands when I’m out for a walk or doing things (my personal term for this phenomenon is “sausage fingers”), so it is makes sense and I am not surprised to learn that the same thing is happening in my feet.
The hypermobility conspiracy
Dysautonomia and hypermobility and autism are all connected! I’m going slightly insane with the number of ailments apparently correlated to hypermobility. Hypermobile people are more likely to have carpal tunnel! I’m just like … free will doesn’t exist and the choices I make barely matter. It’s fine!
Kitchen Witchery
Last weekend, my friend Lemon and I hosted another food-themed party—the sequel to the Souper Bowl and the Dip n Dip—dumplings of the world! Everyone was invited to make some kind of dumpling. Is a pop tart a dumpling? Ravioli? That is for the individual cook to decide. It was a nice time having people hang out and eating good food. One great thing about being an adult is that I can get my friends together for any reason I want. That reason can be eating dumplings. I made a cheese and vegetable pasty from the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook (one of the books I got from my late mother-in-law’s collection). I thought they were quite good! The recipe has turnips in them and I am not sure that I have ever bought or cooked a turnip before. Behold, the humble turnip!
Unrelated to dumplings I tried the carne en su jugo (“meat in its juice”) recipe from The Bean Book. Kirk remarked that it was very good but then said “it’s just steak and bacon.” It’s steak and bacon in a chili sauce over beans so yes, there’s no reason it would be bad.
dumpling bonanzadessert dumplingscheese and vegetable pastiescarne en su jugo
Cat Therapy
We got Fritz his expensive prescription food and thankfully he is not the kind of cat to be very fussy about dry food (however, he has zero interest in the wet stuff). We also got him a fancy water fountain for him to drink out of but this little idiot is scared of the spooky moving water. I’ve been keeping his regular bowl filled just in case and I’m glad I did because he would probably be completely dehydrated right now. For those following his litter box saga, we did finally get him to poop in the box. In fact, he’s done it two days in a row now. I don’t know if the food is helping or if it’s our campaign of telling him he’s a wonderful and handsome boy every time he gets near the box. In any case, it’s progress. We need him to figure this out again because it’s very annoying.
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
Hello, friends and enemies. I’ve got an assortment of unrelated topics here at the top of the post today.
The election is less than a month away (thank god. Let’s get this over with). I’m proud to say that I got my voter guide done early! Here’s the English version and here is the Spanish version. I know my Spanish is getting better because it only took Ana and I about three hours to review my translation this time. NorCal Resist also posted a guide to the propositions and had the same recommendations as me, so I feel like I got them all right (something that is normal to want and possible to achieve).
If you have ever done a genetic test through 23andMe, it’s a good time to download your data and delete your account. The company is probably going to declare bankruptcy soon, and that opens up the possibility of some other company buying all that genetic data. We don’t know who that would be or what they would use it for, but it’s really a lot of very personal information (and that information isn’t protected by HIPAA). I was considering the fact that 23andMe going out of business means the main company doing DNA tests for people who are just curious about their family history would be ancestry.com, which is run by Mormons. For anyone who isn’t aware, Mormons are obsessed with their genealogy because they believe in posthumously baptizing and performing other religious rites for people so they can get into the top-tier heaven. This reminds me that I really need to write a post about Mormonism and my Mormon upbringing one of these times.
A new report from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service warns that the last 11 months in a row have all seen global average temperatures above the 1.5 C threshold. And the last 12 have all been characterized by record-breaking monthly heat; temperatures last month hovered about 1.52 degrees above Earth’s preindustrial average.
And “there’s an 80 percent chance at least one of the next five calendar years will exceed a 1.5 C average. Nearly a decade ago — in 2015 — that chance was nearly zero.” The 1.5 C number comes from the Paris Climate Accords, which “has a long-term temperature goal … to keep the rise in global surface temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels. The treaty also states that preferably the limit of the increase should only be 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).” I can’t help but think about how the shitty wars the U.S. funds are a big part of the problem. Research published in June found that “the emissions from the first 120 days of the conflict alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries and territories.” We’re sponsoring war to secure oil but the war is setting the Earth on fire faster and using the oil is also going to heat the Earth. What’s the plan here? What’s the end game? The U.S. is just five arms companies in a trench coat and we’re all being sacrificed on the altar of shareholder profits. Where is the option to vote my way out of being a country whose economy is fully intertwined with making weapons? I have no answers here but I am publicly logging my opposition.
Books and Other Words
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez goes deep into the history of the American evangelical Christian movement and how it has “embrace[d] militant masculinity” and a become vehicle for nationalism. Evangelicalism is a major proponent of “complementarianism,” a doctrine that states women and men have separate responsibilities and men are the head of the household. This has given way to an obsession with a certain kind of masculinity, with a framing of Jesus as a “badass” and “warrior,” and thinking of the United States as a country that needs protecting from bad guys, that is, non-Christians and Christians who aren’t Christian enough. This leads to a lot of wild beliefs, like that women who don’t practice this specific brand of gendered behavior aren’t worthy of men’s “protection,” (protection from whom??), which is basically the idea that women who don’t submit to men deserve to be sexually assaulted. Unfortunately for the rest of us, as Du Mez chronicles, evangelicals have embedded themselves into the country’s political scene. For example, James Dobson’s political activism in the 1990s resulted in a million callers contacting their representatives about proposed legislation that would require “homeschool teachers to obtain state certification in each subject that they taught, a requirement that would make homeschooling prohibitively difficult.” The bill did not go through and Congress instead passed legislation “guaranteeing greater protections to homeschooling families.” The book also goes into how evangelicals ended up supporting Trump, which seems hypocritical to us on the outside. However, Du Mez explains that Trump’s brand of masculinity aligned with what evangelicals think a leader needs to be, so rather than a contradiction, for many, Trump made total sense, especially in response to eight years of the Obama administration. The book ends with a bleak litany of evangelical pastors, authors, and other high-ranking men of the evangelical movement who had sexual assault allegations levied against them. This leads one man to ask himself if complementarianism is “‘just camouflage for abusive males,'” but he concludes no, it’s not. Self-awareness: not even once. This book is very good for understanding another aspect of how we got here as a culture, but it will probably make you mad and upset, so proceed with caution.
The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics is a sapphic romance set it what I think is the Victorian era, but we are a little fuzzy on the details here and honestly it’s not important. This is an enjoyable, romantic tale about two ladies falling in love and doing their best to stick it to patriarchal society in their own way. One of the main characters, Lucy, wants to be an astronomer and has worked with her dad for years in his observatory. When he dies, none of the men in the scientific establishment take her seriously. However, she receives a message from our other protagonist, Lady Moth, who is looking for a translator for an important work on astronomy. The two get together for this project … and other activities. I thought it was well written and I liked both the sexy and non-sexy components of the story.
Assassin of Reality by husband and wife duo Sergey and Marina Dyachenko is the sequel to Vita Nostra, which I read two weeks ago. Although I thought it felt less like a sequel and more like the rest of the book, which is a distinction that may not make sense for everyone but it does to me. I am still incapable of actually describing this book but I will say I think this one is about whether we have free will, but expressed through the medium of depressed 20-year-olds who are at a university to learn their potential as words in the Great Speech (yes, really). I liked it.
Alexandra Rowland’s latest book, Yield Under Great Persuasion was so fun and sweet. It’s set in the same world as all of her books, a pre-industrial alternate reality where gods are real and may choose to get involved in people’s day-to-day lives. This story is part of Rowland’s Seven Gods series, which seems to be exploring the people who are favored of each god, but that makes this book sound a lot more serious than it is. The story is about Tam Beckett, who basically hates himself and assumes everyone else must hate him too. This does not stop him from hooking up with local lord of the manor Nicolau Lyford. It’s clear to everyone but Tam that Nicolau loves him and it’s mutual, but Tam is deeply invested in hating Nicolau and has been nursing a grudge for years because young Nicolau knocked over Tam’s plant in some kind of country fair-type competition. I deeply appreciated that, although Tam hates himself, he does not hate himself for being gay, which is a frequent enough trope in certain stories. Rowland’s world is truly neutral on homosexuality (though the author herself is clearly very pro considering her oeuvre so far—and aren’t we the better off for it). This is a great book for someone who wants to read a gay romance with small-town drama and enjoys characters who are just kind of stupidly in their own way, but somehow manage to grow as people anyway.
Jesus and John WayneThe Lady’s Guide to Celestial MechanicsAssassin of RealityYield Under Great Persuasion
Meanwhile, on the internet:
California’s COVID surge is finally over. But expect another spike in the coming months via the LA Times. Make sure to get your flu and covid vaccines! The article notes that “More than 95% of adults hospitalized last year due to COVID-19 hadn’t received an updated vaccine.” The vaccine majorly reduces the severity of a covid infection, if you do get it. By the way, for anyone thinking covid is no worse than the flu, “Since Oct. 1, 2023, at least 56,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported nationally, the CDC said. There were at least 17,000 flu deaths over the same time period, according to the agency’s latest estimate.”
The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes via 404 Media. AI-generated text has been working its way into Wikipedia, so of course Wikipedians have organized a project around detecting and getting rid of it. I don’t think most people realize how pernicious AI is right now and how close we are to a full-on information apocalypse (side note: the Internet Archive getting hacked this week feels like another harbinger of the end of the internet). Someone pointed out this week that google is dead based on google image search returning a bunch of AI images for “baby peacock.” The internet is about to be over.
On Friday, we saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and we really liked it! Hollywood is unreasonably obsessed with sequels but this one was actually good. I thought the plot was very well put together and of course Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara were great. I liked that the story showed us more of the bureaucracy and nonsense and just fucking Looney Tunes-ass behavior in the afterlife. Unrelated to the actual movie, I found myself looking up why Jeffrey Jones, who plays Catherine O’Hara’s husband in the original Beetlejuice, wasn’t in this movie. Like did he die or what (I also had to look up this actor’s name because I didn’t know it lol)? His character appears in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice but his head and shoulders have been bitten off by a shark, so we see his headless corpse roaming the afterlife (this is barely a spoiler; it happens in the first ten minutes). This actor is not actually dead but, according to IMDB, is now a sex offender! Why are so many people so disgusting! Please stop!
Corporeal Form
It’s been over six months since I sprained my ankle, and it’s still not fully functional, so this week I visited my physical therapist about it. She said my ankle and the inside of my calf is still really tight, but she did a little bit of massage and some cupping, and that’s already made a big difference. Apparently you can buy suction cups to do cupping to yourself, so I’m supposed to do that and a few other exercises for foot and ankle strength. I’ve been having a hard time jumping because bending my ankle in the landing is not working, but in class today I already felt a lot better, so that’s a relief. It’s not going to be permanent damage.
new glasses
I also got my eyes checked this week and I’m happy to report that they’re in good health and my prescription didn’t get any worse. I bought some new frames anyway because it’s been two years since I got new glasses. Getting glasses is complicated now because I need Neurolens for my binocular vision issues, but my optometrist doesn’t have it (it’s a huge, expensive machine and not that many people really need it). So, I get frames from her (she has the better selection), then take the frames and prescription to another doctor for the Neurolens. Unfortunately, the practice in my neighborhood that offered this no longer does so I’m going to have to schlepp to Roseville or something to get my dang prescription filled. Everything is annoying!
Kitchen Witchery
Although I don’t restrict soup to a particular time of year, I do believe that fall is soup season, or at least peak soup season and it is definitely the most enjoyable time of year for soup. To that end, I made pasta e fagioli (noodles and beans) from The Bean Book. We liked it a lot and, in fact, Kirk has already requested I make it again, so I think this is going into the regular rotation. As in previous weeks, I have been into that Smitten Kitchen archive. This week I made her chicken chili, although I did make a few adjustments because that’s who I am. Chili is something I don’t usually follow a recipe for (my dad taught me to make this and he’s the type to add spices based on vibes and not measurements), but I have been trying to improve my chili and try different versions (I always add too much liquid if I’m not following instructions), so it was good to have a recipe as a starting point. I left out the crushed tomatoes because I hate them, but I added sweet potato and corn because vegetables. I used good mother stallard and whipple for the beans because that’s what I had and felt like using. It was really good! Finally, one of my friends requested chocolate muffins so I made the NYT’s version of the “olympic” chocolate muffins that people were going wild for over the summer. I left out the ganache filling, but they are still very good and super chocolatey.
Pasta e fagiolichicken chilimolten chocolate muffins
Cat Therapy
We took Fritz to the vet this week try to rule out any physical causes for his rogue pooping. I thought it would probably be a behavioral issue, but the vet said that they did find some issues with his bladder; it’s inflamed and crystals have formed, which may be the cause of his distress. We had to leave him at the vet for a few hours so they could get a urine sample, which I found really stressful since we just lost Huey a few months ago. I know rationally it didn’t mean Fritz was about to die, but the emotional part of my brain does not care about that kind of information. Fritz also didn’t seem pleased about his time at the vet, so it was a hard day for all. The vet has recommended prescription food to help the urinary issues and his anxiety (surprisingly there is a food formula for both of those problems together) and getting Fritz to drink more water. Unfortunately, you can’t just tell a cat to stay hydrated, so I’ve ordered a water fountain for him in hopes that moving water entices him to drink more. Also unfortunate: the food is very expensive. I guess I have to stay employed to feed my cat. If this doesn’t work, the vet said Fritz may benefit from prozac. My son has anxiety just like me.
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
Hola amigos y enemigos. No sé cómo te sientes, pero para mí, no puedo esperar al fin de la elección. Hay de ser la elección más ridícula en mi vida hasta ahora, pero no hay opción sino perseverar. Por favor recuerda que, aun si te sientes desilusionado, ¡es importante votar! Si no votas en la elección para presidente, al menos vota en las elecciones locales y estatales, las cuales tendrán un efecto mucho más grande en tu vida diaria.
Looking for the English version of the voter guide? It’s here.
Recordatorios y recursos para los votantes californianos
Inscríbete para votar. El último día que te puedes inscribir es el lunes 21 de octubre. Aún puedes inscribirte después del 21 de octubre, pero necesitas seguir el proceso para el registro del votante en el mismo día (hay una opción para buscar en español. Elige el idioma del menú desplegable debajo de “choose language”).
Descargo de responsabilidad: No soy experta en la política ni el gobierno. Soy solo una persona quien tiene habilidades de leer y buscar información. Si confías en mí, puedes votar como yo. También puedes usar esta guía como un punto de partida para decidir cómo quieres votar.
Consulta rápida
Este cuadro resume mis votos para la elección. Sigue leyendo para ver mis explicaciones.
Oficina o propuesta
Mi voto
Presidente de los Estados Unidos
Claudia de la Cruz
Senador – Periodo completo
Adam Schiff
Senador – Periodo parcial/restante
Adam Schiff
Propuesta 2
Sí
Propuesta 3
Sí
Propuesta 4
Sí
Propuesta 5
Sí
Propuesta 6
Sí
Propuesta 32
Sí
Propuesta 33
Sí
Propuesta 34
No
Propuesta 35
Sí
Propuesta 36
No
Distrito 7 del Congreso
Doris Matsui
Distrito 10 de la Asamblea
Stephanie Nguyen
Alcalde de Elk Grove
Bobbie Singh-Allen
Miembro, Consejo Municipal, Distrito 1
Darren Suen
Distrito escolar unificado Elk Grove Measure N
Sí
Cargos nominados por el partido
Presidente de los Estados Unidos
Mi voto: Claudia de la Cruz
Me he sentido en conflicto por meses sobre esta decisión. Estoy segura que no necesito decir que me opongo profundamente a Trump, en particular al Proyecto 2025 (del que escribí un poco en esta entrada) que se ha desarrollado alrededor de él. Ya sabemos cómo sería una presidencia de Trump y la rechazamos en 2020. No hay ninguna razón para votar a este hombre.
Lo que me causa sentir en conflicto es si debo votar a Kamala Harris. Creo que es loco que Dick Cheney la respaldó y que ella se siente “honrada” de su respaldo (también hablé un poco de este asunto anteriormente). Se comporta incontroladamente conservadora sobre la inmigración. Está firme en su apoyo a Israel, aunque ahora el país ataca a Líbano. Creo que algunas de sus políticas domésticas son buenas, como apoyo financiero para los que compran casas por primera vez y su plan de restaurar el crédito tributario por hijos. Pero también ha dicho cosas como “no voy a prohibir el fracking“, y quiere dar aún más dinero a la policía. Hace quince años, ¡hubiera sido una plataforma republicana! Me preocupa que no votar por Harris culmine en otro término de Trump. Tanto como no apoyo a Harris, no cabe duda que Trump sería mucho peor.
Debido a que vivo en California y hay efectivamente ninguna probabilidad de que este estado vaya a votar a Trump, he decidido votar por una candidata de un partido tercero. No estoy segura que hubiera tomado la misma decisión si viviera en un estado más competitivo, electoralmente dicho. Claudia de la Cruz es la candidata del partido Peace and Freedom (Paz y Libertad). Es socialista, apoya a Palestina y el cese inmediato del envío de fondos a Israel, quiere desarmar el presupuesto militar, y transformar nuestra sociedad para evitar los efectos más graves del cambio climático. No creo que tenga ninguna probabilidad de ganar, pero es el tipo de persona que yo quisiera que fuera presidenta, entonces la voto.
Aquí están algunos pensamientos breves sobre los otros candidatos:
Jill Stein (partido Green): Rusia usó a Jill Stein como una candidata para tomar votos que iban para Hillary Clinton en 2016.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (candidato independiente): Tal vez no votemos al hombre que tuvo un gusano parasitario en su cerebro y que se opone al uso de vacunas. Digo otra vez que alguien que cree que las vacunas causan el autismo sugiere que prefiere que las personas autistas mueran de enfermedades prevenibles, a que vivan y sean autistas. Como una persona autista, encuentro esta creencia muy ofensiva.
Chase Oliver (partido Libertario): Creo que los libertarios son ridículos. Este artículo más o menos resume mis sentimientos: el libertarismo “Expulsa cualquier responsabilidad para nuestro derecho mutuo a la vida, donde todos son creados aproximadamente iguales. Este pondría la libertad y los derechos de propiedad antes de nuestros menesteres básicos, en lugar de al contrario”.
Cargos nominados por los votantes
Senador de los Estados Unidos: Periodo completo y periodo parcial/restante
Mi voto: Adam Schiff
Es posible que recuerdes de la elección primaria que tenemos esta situación confusa entre el periodo completo y periodo parcial/restante del cargo de senador. Los dos votos son para el mismo puesto. Uno de nuestros senadores es Alex Padilla, quien va a cumplir su término en 2029. Votamos a llenar la posición de Diane Feinstein. Después de que falleció el año pasado, el Gobernador Newsom nombró a Laphonza Butler para reemplazarla. Butler no busca la reelección como senadora. Entonces el periodo parcial/restante es para escoger a alguien que termine el resto del periodo original de Feinstein, el cual finaliza en enero 2025. La posición de periodo completo es la elección programada regularmente para el periodo que empieza en 2025. Podrías votar por personas diferentes en cada cargo, pero no sería muy útil porque habría un senador que sirva por dos meses y alguien nuevo que se haga cargo en enero.
Voto por Schiff porque obviamente no voto a algún republicano cuya única habilidad es jugar al béisbol. Sin embargo, Schiff no fue para nada mi primera opción para ser nuestro senador. Fue uno de los muy pocos demócratas que votaron para apoyar el proyecto de la ley independiente que los republicanos propusieron para dar a Israel $17.6 mil millones en febrero. Su estrategia para ganar la elección primaria fue engañosa, en mi opinión. La forma en que el sistema de elecciones primarias es estructurada en California, gracias aDos Candidatos Principales – Ley de Primaria Abierta, significa que podríamos tener dos candidatos demócratas compitiendo para este puesto en cambio de un demócrata y un republicano. No obstante, como explica el LA Times, “En un esfuerzo de cerrar el rebote a Porter, Schiff y sus aliados montaron lo que equivale a una campaña publicitaria gratis para Garvey, emitiendo anuncios políticos a través del estado que llamaron el primera base anterior de los Dodgers y los Padres ‘demasiado conservador para California’—fijando la atención de votantes conservadores a él—y planteando la elección como un certamen de dos hombres”. Entonces ahora tenemos Schiff versus Garvey y ningún otro candidato demócrata quien podría empujar el certamen a la izquierda.
Dicho esto, creo que Schiff tiene algunas políticas decentes en su plataforma, aunque su imagen es fijada en ser el hombre anti-Trump (¿quién va a ser si [¿cuándo?] Trump pierde en noviembre?). Quiere que California edifique más viviendas para aliviar la crisis de personas sin hogar y quiere que el gobierno termine subsidios para los combustibles fósiles, lo que es genial. Aun así espero que pudiera votar por Katie Porter o Barbara Lee para el puesto de senadora.
Medidas presentadas a los votantes
Propuesta 2
AUTORIZA BONOS PARA INSTALACIONES DE ESCUELAS PÚBLICAS Y UNIVERSIDADES COMUNITARIAS. LEY LEGISLATIVA.
Mi voto: Sí
Lo he dicho antes y lo diré otra vez, siempre voy a votar a favor de la educación. Esta propuesta “Autoriza $10 mil millones en bonos de obligaciones generales para la reparación, modernización y construcción de instalaciones” e incluye fondos para “la mejora de las condiciones de salud y seguridad”. Sí, cuesta dinero pero no es un aumento de impuestos, se paga por bonos que el estado emite. Si vamos a insistir que los niños vayan a escuela todos los días, lo mínimo que podemos hacer es asegurar que su entorno está en buen estado. El texto de la ley cita un estudio que dice que el 40 por ciento de aulas tiene 50 o más años y que “Los estudios sobre las condiciones de los edificios escolares y los resultados del alumnado encuentran una relación continuada entre la mala calidad de las instalaciones y el bajo rendimiento del alumnado”, entonces este es importante. Los fondos pagarán cosas como comprar aires acondicionados (muy importante en nuestro mundo cada vez más caluroso), identificar y quitar el asbesto, y más. La última vez que los votantes autorizaron un bono para escuelas fue en 2016, y se ha gastado todo este fondo.
Propuesta 3
DERECHO CONSTITUCIONAL AL MATRIMONIO. ENMIENDA LEGISLATIVA CONSTITUCIONAL.
Mi voto: Sí
Esta propuesta es fácil. No cuesta nada de dinero y codifica en nuestra constitución estatal el derecho al matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo. Un voto de “sí” indica que el estado va a actualizar la constitución de “En California solo es válido o reconocido el matrimonio entre un hombre y una mujer” a “El derecho a casarse es un derecho fundamental”. Permitir que otras personas se casen no te hace daño ¡aun si no quieres casarte en un matrimonio gay! Por favor nota que, a pesar de lo que los oponentes de esta propuesta podrían decir, la propuesta no cambiará las leyes sobre la edad legal para casarse.
Propuesta 4
AUTORIZA LOS BONOS PARA AGUA POTABLE SEGURA, PREVENCIÓN DE INCENDIOS FORESTALES Y PROTECCIÓN DE LAS COMUNIDADES Y LAS TIERRAS NATURALES CONTRA LOS RIESGOS CLIMÁTICOS. LEY LEGISLATIVA.
Mi voto: Sí
Puedes decir que yo estoy loca, pero tener acceso a agua potable segura y protección de los incendios parecen algunas de las cosas más importantes en que el gobierno puede gastar dinero. Es otra propuesta pagada por los bonos, lo que significa que no pagamos directamente con un aumento de impuestos, sino que el estado va a emitir bonos para financiarla. Según el LA Times, “$3.8 mil millones sería repartido a proyectos de agua, incluso los que proveen agua potable segura, reciclan aguas residuales, guardan agua subterránea y controlan las inundaciones. Una cantidad adicional de $1.5 mil millones se gastaría en protección de incendios forestales, y $1.2 mil millones iría a proteger la costa del aumento de nivel del mar”. Considerando que ya miramos los efectos del cambio climático en la forma de incendios más fuertes y frecuentes y sequías más largas, creo que es importante votar en favor de esta propuesta para que California pueda hacer lo que puede para protegernos.
Propuesta 5
PERMITE BONOS LOCALES PARA VIVIENDAS ASEQUIBLES E INFRAESTRUCTURAS PÚBLICAS CON LA APROBACIÓN DEL 55 % DE LOS VOTANTES. ENMIENDA LEGISLATIVA CONSTITUCIONAL.
Mi voto: Sí
Aprobar la propuesta 5 hace posible que bonos locales propuestos puedan estar aprobados con un voto del 55 por ciento, en cambio de un voto de dos tercios para algunos tipos de proyectos, incluso viviendas asequibles y parques. Para bonos de escuelas y construcciones locales, ya hemos bajado el umbral de aprobación al 55 por ciento. Parece que la oposición a esta propuesta tiene base en que podría aumentar los impuestos porque los gobiernos locales podrían emitir bonos (y el gobierno eventualmente tiene que devolver el bono). A esta inflexión, creo que necesitamos intentar todo lo que podamos para obtener más viviendas asequibles, entonces voto a favor de esta propuesta.
Propuesta 6
ELIMINA LA DISPOSICIÓN CONSTITUCIONAL QUE PERMITE LA SERVIDUMBRE INVOLUNTARIA PARA LAS PERSONAS EN PRISIÓN. ENMIENDA LEGISLATIVA CONSTITUCIONAL.
Mi voto: Sí
Aunque la esclavitud es ilegal por lo general, la constitución de California dice que “la servidumbre involuntaria está prohibida excepto para castigar un delito”. Significa que las personas en prisión pueden ser obligadas a trabajar, y por un salario increíblemente pequeño. Al menos desde 2017, los prisioneros californianos podían ganar 95 centavos por hora como máximo. El salario para prisioneros ha estado estancado por 40 años. Este salario bajo apoya a muchas corporaciones estadounidenses. Como AP News informó más temprano este año, “Los productos que estos prisioneros producen acaban en las cadenas de suministro de una diversidad vertiginosa de productos encontrados en la mayor cantidad de cocinas americanas, del cereal Frosted Flakes, a hot dogs de Ball Park, a la harina Gold Medal, Coca-Cola, y arroz Riceland. Están en las estanterías de virtualmente cada supermercado en el país, incluso Kroger, Target, Aldi, y Whole Foods”. Es difícil no ver al trabajo forzado penal como una forma de evadir contratar personas no encarceladas y pagarles un salario típico. A riesgo de sonar como una conspiracionista, tengo que notar que un fallo de la Corte Suprema de a principios de este año efectivamente criminalizó el sinhogarismo. Parece una excusa para encarcelar a las personas sin hogar y forzarlas a trabajar en cambio de buscar métodos de hacer el alojamiento más asequible. Creo que convertir el trabajo forzado penal ilegal quita un poco de este incentivo.
Propuesta 32
AUMENTA EL SALARIO MÍNIMO. INICIATIVA DE LEY.
Mi voto: Sí
Debido a que los “beneficios corporativos representaron alrededor de 53% de la inflación durante el segundo y tercer cuatrimestre del año pasado” y los beneficios corporativos aumentaron $132 mil millones en el segundo cuatrimestre de este año, creo que las corporaciones se pueden permitir pagar salarios más altos. El aumento del salario será introducido gradualmente durante dos años, y dependerá de cuántos empleados una compañía tenga: “Para empresas de 26 o más empleados, [el salario mínimo aumenta a] $17 inmediatamente, $18 el 1 de enero de 2025. Para empresas con 25 o menos empleados, [el salario mínimo aumenta a] $17 el 1 de enero de 2025, $18 el 1 de enero de 2026”. Investigaciones han demostrado que necesitarás ganar $47 por hora para poder rentar un apartamento de dos cuartos en California, entonces aumentar el salario mínimo hasta $18 es el mínimo necesario. Según el texto de la ley propuesta, si el salario mínimo federal “hubiera aumentado a la tasa de crecimiento de productividad desde 1960, sería $24 ahora mismo”.
Propuesta 33
EXPANDE LA AUTORIDAD DE LOS GOBIERNOS LOCALES DE PROMULGAR EL CONTROL DE LA RENTA EN PROPIEDADES RESIDENCIALES. INICIATIVA DE LEY.
Mi voto: Sí
No es la primera propuesta de intentar anular el Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 (Ley de vivienda de alquiler Costa-Hawkins de 1995), que previene que las municipalidades promulguen el control de alquileres. La propuesta 21 de 2020 hubiera anulado parte de la Ley Costa-Hawkins, y la propuesta 10 de 2018 la hubiera anulado por completo, pero los votantes rechazaron las dos. A pesar del aumento de alquileres, seguimos votando contra el control de alquileres. Asumo que tiene relación con la cantidad de dinero que la industria de inmuebles ha gastado para oponerse En las elecciones actuales, a partir de fines de septiembre, esta propuesta ha inspirado la mayor parte de gastos, con $37.7 millones gastados a favor y $75.1 millones en contra. ¡No hay ninguna razón por la que no deberíamos el control de alquileres! La Guía Oficial de Información para el Votante dice que el efecto fiscal de aprobar esta propuesta sería una “reducción de ingresos de impuestos locales de inmuebles de al menos decenas de millones de dólares”, pero es dinero imaginario. Perdimos el potencial de más ingresos públicos de los impuestos de inmuebles porque los alquileres tal vez no aumentarían tanto. No perdemos dinero, solo no ganaría más dinero. Hay una diferencia.
Propuesta 34
RESTRINGE EL GASTO DE LOS INGRESOS DE MEDICAMENTOS RECETADOS POR PARTE DE CIERTOS PROVEEDORES DEL CUIDADO DE LA SALUD. INICIATIVA DE LEY.
Mi voto: No
Esta propuesta es todo sobre el drama electoral. Es un esfuerzo de la California Apartment Association (Asociación de Apartamentos de California), que es el patrocinador de la ley propuesta, para limitar los gastos políticos de la AIDS Healthcare Foundation (la Fundación de Asistencia Médica para el SIDA). El LA Times la explica mejor de lo que yo puedo:
La medida es financiada por la California Apartment Assn., la cual se ha peleado con la AIDS Healthcare Foundation por años sobre sus esfuerzos para activar leyes más estrictas para el control de alquileres a través de iniciativas electorales.
La AIDS Healthcare Foundation gana $2 mil millones por año, en su mayoría de su cadena de farmacias y clínicas. Su incursión en la vivienda ha suscitado críticas de que se ha alejado de la misión de ayudar a las personas viviendo con VIH o SIDA.
En años recientes, la fundación de asistencia médica ha gastado más de $300 millones para financiar iniciativas de control de alquileres y comprar edificios de apartamentos a lo largo del país, incluso en y en torno de Skid Row, diciendo que podría abarcar el sinhogarismo crónico donde otros fallaron.
Al final de septiembre, los proponentes de esta propuesta han gastado justo debajo de $30 millones, con la California Apartment Association “contribuyendo casi la mayoría de los fondos de apoyo”.
Propuesta 35
PROPORCIONA FONDOS PERMANENTES PARA LOS SERVICIOS DE SALUD DE MEDI-CAL. INICIATIVA DE LEY.
Mi voto: Sí
Esta propuesta tiene literalmente ningún oponente y nadie ha gastado dinero para oponerse la ella. Sería permanente un impuesto sobre los planes de seguro de salud de cuidado controlado (como Kaiser) que está actualmente programado para expirar en 2026. Aumentaría la financiación para tipos específicos de servicios médicos (hay una gráfica útil en página 54 de la Guía Oficial que muestra cómo las asignaciones cambiarían).
Propuesta 36
PERMITE CARGOS DE DELITO GRAVE Y AUMENTA LAS SENTENCIAS POR CIERTOS DELITOS RELACIONADOS CON DROGAS Y HURTO. INICIATIVA DE LEY.
Mi voto: No
La propuesta 36 acusaría a “un delincuente con dos condenas previas por robo, podría ser acusado de un delito grave, sin importar el valor de la propiedad robada”, según el texto de la ley propuesta, y convertir algunos delitos relacionados con drogas a cargos de delito grave. Actualmente, un valor de un hurto hasta $950 se considera un delito menor, pero sí la propuesta 36 pasara, si alguien robara $900 de productos y tuviera dos condenas previas, sería un cargo de delito grave.
Esta ley propuesta parece ser una reacción al pánico moral sobre el hurto, pero “hay pocos datos para sugerir que hay un problema a nivel nacional necesitado una respuesta inmediata de los concejos municipales y legislaturas estatales”. Walmart “es el patrocinador más grande de la propuesta 36, con $3.6 millones en contribuciones. Otros de los contribuyentes más grandes son minoristas como Home Depot y Target, con $1 millón cada uno, y 7-Eleven y comités asociados con más de $600,000″. Así que para mí parece que estos minoristas están enojados sobre el hurto y quieren convertir el castigo en algo más grave.
Un informe de 2014 del California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Departamento Correccional y Rehabilitativo de California que se encarga las prisiones estatales) encontró que la tasa de reincidencia de tres años (la cantidad de personas quienes son detenidas otra vez dentro de tres años) para personas condenadas por un delito grave fue alrededor de 60 a 70 por ciento de 2002 a 2009. En comparación, la tasa nacional de reincidencia (que incluye los delitos menores y los graves) es un poco más de 40 por ciento. La duración de reclusión también está relacionada a un aumento de reincidencia, con personas sentenciadas por un delito grave cumplen penas más largas, lo cual sugiere que clasificar más delitos como delitos graves resultaría en una tasa más alta de reincidencia. Nuestras prisiones ya están abarrotadas. Es una mala razón para empeorarlas.
Posiciones y medidas locales
Distrito 7 del Congreso
Mi voto: Doris Matsui
Como escribí en la guía para votantes para la elección primaria este año, Doris Matsui tiene 79 años. ¿A qué punto van estas personas a retirarse? Yo definitivamente no me inscribiría otro periodo a su edad. También creo que es desdeñoso que ella no se tomó la molestia de entregar una declaración para la Guía Oficial de Información.
Por lo general, ella vota en una forma con que estoy de acuerdo. Sin embargo, sigue votando a favor de enviar más dinero a Israel. El apoyo de este país para Israel es inadmisible a este punto, pero ¿qué podría hacer yo? ¿Debería votar a un republicano que va a apoyar a Israel y empeorar las cosas aquí en los Estados Unidos? No.
Distrito 10 de la Asamblea
Mi voto: Stephanie Nguyen
Stephanie Ngyuen es nuestra miembra en ejercicio de la asamblea estatal. Parece que hace un buen trabajo. Recibo sus boletines informativos y siempre veo que ella está haciendo eventos locales y parece que conecta con muchas personas en una forma genuina. Por ejemplo, una vez vi que anunció planes para caminar en un barrio y que la gente pueda reunirse con ella para discutir asuntos. Creo que es genial. Su oponente, el republicano Vinaya Singh, tiene un sitio web con el lema “Make California great again” (“Que California vuelva a ser grande”), que parece una forma muy carente de sutileza para emitir un amor a Trump y sus políticas destructivas. Gracias, pero no.
Alcalde de Elk Grove
Mi voto: Bobbie Singh-Allen
Deseo mucho que tengamos una prensa local aquí en Elk Grove porque honestamente no tengo ninguna idea de qué está haciendo Singh-Allen como nuestra alcaldesa. La única cosa que sé que ha hecho es enarbolar la bandera arcoiris en el ayuntamiento durante el mes del orgullo gay (y por eso, yay), pero no es exactamente sustancial. La mayoría de las noticias que pude encontrar sobre ella fue de la cobertura de la elección de 2020 en el Sacramento Bee, lo que no es muy relevante ahora. Me gustaría saber qué tan significativo fue su papel en el rechazo de vivienda asequible, lo que llegó a una demanda (y el acuerdo subsecuente) del estado de California contra la ciudad. También sabemos que ella está a favor de la propuesta 36, lo que no agradezco. Aún así, creo que elecciones locales son esencialmente cuestiones de la calidad de la vida, y sé que no puedo esperar izquierdismo real en un gobierno municipal local, en particular en una ciudad con muchos grupos diferentes de personas como en Elk Grove.
Con respecto a los contendientes de Singh-Allen, creo que Brian Pastor es un conspiracionista de 5G. Su sitio web tiene una sección de preguntas y respuestas y una de las preguntas es “¿Cuáles son tus opiniones sobre la tecnología 5G y nuestra infraestructura de internet?” Escribe “tenemos que considerar la ciencia cuando se trata de telecomunicaciones de alta frecuencia y sus efectos sobre nuestra salud. Voy a urgir que prevenga la utilización de 5G cerca de nuestros hogares y parques infantiles”. Sin embargo, la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos dice que “no hay ninguna evidencia consistente ni creíble de problemas causados por la exposición a la energía de frecuencias de radio emitidas por teléfonos móviles”. Con respecto a Lynn Wheat, todo lo que pude encontrar fue este video de hace los 12 años en youtube. No estoy segura cual es su plataforma, y su sitio web dice que “va a lanzar pronto”. ¡Nos falta mucho tiempo, Lynn!
Miembro, Consejo Municipal, Distrito 1
Mi voto: Darren Suen
Darren Suen se presenta como candidato sin oposición y ha sido un miembro del Consejo desde 2014. Entonces, tiene mi voto.
Distrito escolar unificado Elk Grove Medida N
Para reparar, modernizar y construir aulas, laboratorios, instalaciones escolares.
Mi voto: Sí
No tengo hijos, pero a pesar de eso creo que una de las tareas más importante para la sociedad es asegurar que los niños obtengan una educación buena. La financiación para esta medida vendrá de los impuestos a la propiedad, “Mejoras a las instalaciones y actualizaciones serán financiadas por evaluaciones de impuestos a la propiedad. La Medida N gravaría una tarifa anual de $34 a $100,000 de valor tasado,” que es honestamente no mucho. Estoy dispuesta a gastar $100 cada año para las escuelas.
¡Comparte esta guía!
¡Has llegado al final! Te aliento a compartir esta guía si la encontraste útil. Por favor deja un comentario si crees que olvidé algo importante. ¡Gracias por votar!
Hello, friends and enemies! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for this election to end. This has to be the most ridiculous election of my life so far, but there’s nothing to do but persevere. Please remember that, even if you feel disillusioned by the presidential race, it’s important to vote! Even if you skip voting for the president, make sure to vote on local elections and issues, which will have a much bigger impact on your day-to-day life.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on politics or government. I’m just a person who’s good at reading and looking things up. If you trust my judgment, you can vote how I vote. You can also use my guide as a starting point for your own research.
Quick Reference
This table summarizes how I’m planning to vote in this election. I explain my choices below!
Position/Proposition
My Vote
President of the United States
Claudia de la Cruz
United States Senate: Full Term
Adam Schiff
United States Senate: Partial/Unexpired Term
Adam Schiff
Proposition 2
Yes
Proposition 3
Yes
Proposition 4
Yes
Proposition 5
Yes
Proposition 6
Yes
Proposition 32
Yes
Proposition 33
Yes
Proposition 34
No
Proposition 35
Yes
Proposition 36
No
United States House of Representatives: District 7
Doris Matsui
California State Assembly District 10
Stephanie Nguyen
Mayor of Elk Grove
Bobbie Singh-Allen
Elk Gove City Council Member, District 1
Darren Suen
Elk Grove Unified School District Measure N
Yes
Party-nominated offices
President of the United States
My vote: Claudia de la Cruz
I have felt fraught about this choice for months. I’m sure it goes without saying that I am deeply opposed to Trump, especially now that Project 2025 (which I wrote a little bit about in this post) has built up around him. We already know what a Trump presidency looks like and we rejected it in 2020. There is no reason to vote for that man.
What I’m conflicted about is whether I should vote for Kamala Harris. I think it’s insane that Dick Cheney endorsed her and she feels “honored” by that (which I also discussed previously). She’s being wildly conservative on immigration. She is firm in her support of Israel, even though the country is now attacking Lebanon. I do think some of her domestic policies like support for first-time home buyers and restoring the Child Tax Credit are good. But then, she says things like “I will not ban fracking,” and she wants to give the police even more money. Fifteen years ago, this would have been a Republican platform! I am worried that not voting for Harris will result in another Trump presidency. As much as I do not support Harris, I fully believe that Trump will be much worse.
Given that I live in California and there is essentially zero chance that this state will vote for Trump, I have decided to vote for a third-party presidential candidate. I am not sure that I would make this same choice if I lived in a more electorally contentious state. Claudia de la Cruz is the candidate the Peace and Freedom party backs (that’s the party I’m registered with). She’s a socialist, she supports Palestine and immediately ending aid to Israel, she wants to gut the military budget, and transform our society to avoid the worst effects of climate change. I don’t think she has any chance of winning, but she is the kind of person I would want to be president, so she’s who I’m voting for.
Here are some brief thoughts on the other candidates:
Jill Stein: In 2016, Russia used Jill Stein as a spoiler candidate to pull votes away from Hillary Clinton.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Maybe lets not vote for the guy who had a parasitic worm in his brain and who is anti-vaccines. I will say again that anyone who thinks vaccines cause autism is suggesting they would rather let autistic people die of preventable disease than live and be autistic. As an autistic person, I find this deeply offensive.
Chase Oliver: I think libertarians are ridiculous. This article basically sums up my feelings: Libertarianism “ejects any responsibility for our mutual right to life, where we are all created approximately equal. It would put freedom and property rights ahead of our basic needs, rather than the other way around.”
Voter-nominated offices
United States Senate: Full Term and Partial/Unexpired Term
My vote: Adam Schiff
You may remember from the primary election that we have this confusing situation with the full term and partial/unexpired term senate seats. Both of these votes are for the same position. One of our California senators is Alex Padilla who will serve until 2029. We are voting to fill Diane Feinstein’s position. After her death last year, Governor Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler to her seat. Butler is not seeking election to the Senate. Voting for the Partial/Unexpired Term is picking a senator to finish the rest of Feinstein’s original senate term, which ends in January 2025. The Full Term position is our regularly scheduled senate election for the term starting in 2025. You could vote for different people for each of these positions, but that would not be super helpful because you’d have a senator coming in for two months then a new senator taking over in January.
I am voting for Schiff because I’m not voting for a Republican whose only skill is playing baseball. However, Schiff was not at all my first choice for this senate seat. He was one of the very few Democrats to vote to support the Republican’s standalone bill to give Israel $17.6 billion back in February. His strategy for winning the primary was underhanded in my opinion. The way California’s primary system is structured, thanks to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, means that we could have had two Democrats running for the senate seat instead of a Democrat and a Republican. However, as the LA Times explains, “In an effort to box Porter out, Schiff and his allies staged what amounted to a free advertising campaign for Garvey, running political ads across the state calling the former Dodgers and Padres first baseman ‘too conservative for California’ — focusing conservative voters’ attention on him — and framing the election as a two-man race.” So, now we have Schiff v. Garvey and no second Democratic candidate to push the race to the left.
All that said, I do think Schiff has some decent policy in his platform, even though his whole image is kind of focused on being an anti-Trump guy (who will he be if [when?] Trump loses in November?). He wants California to build more housing to alleviate the homelessness crisis and he wants to end subsidies for fossil fuels, which I think is great. Still, I wish I were voting for Katie Porter or Barbara Lee for our senator.
Propositions
Proposition 2
AUTHORIZES BONDS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACILITIES. LEGISLATIVE STATUTE.
My vote:Yes
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am always going to vote for education. This proposition “authorizes $10 billion in general obligation bonds for repair, upgrade, and construction of facilities”, and this includes funds “for improvement of health and safety conditions.” Yes, it costs money, but it’s not a tax increase, it’s being paid for through the state issuing bonds. If we’re going to make kids go to school every day, the least we can do is make sure the environment is in good shape. The text of the law cites a study that 40 percent of classrooms are 50 or more years old and that “Research on school building conditions and student outcomes finds a consistent relationship between poor facilities and poor performance by students,” so this stuff is important. The funds will go to things like purchasing air conditioning (very important in our increasingly hot world), identifying and getting rid of asbestos, and more. The last time voters authorized a school bond like this was in 2016, and that money has been spent.
Proposition 3
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO MARRIAGE. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
My vote:Yes
This one is easy. It doesn’t cost any money and it codifies the right to same-sex marriage in our state constitution. A “yes” vote means that the state will update the constitution from “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” to “The right to marry is a fundamental right.” Allowing other people to get married doesn’t hurt you even if you don’t personally want to get gay married! Please note that, despite what the opponents of this proposition may say, it will not change the laws about the age at which people can get married.
Proposition 4
AUTHORIZES BONDS FOR SAFE DRINKING WATER, WILDFIRE PREVENTION, AND PROTECTING COMMUNITIES AND NATURAL LANDS FROM CLIMATE RISKS. LEGISLATIVE STATUTE.
My vote:Yes
Call me crazy, but safe drinking water and wild fire protection seem like some of the most important things for the government to spend money on. This is another bond measure, which means we won’t pay through it directly with a tax increase, but the state will issue bonds to fund it. According to the LA Times, “$3.8 billion would be allocated to water projects, including those that provide for safe drinking water, recycle wastewater, store groundwater and control flooding. An additional $1.5 billion would be spent on wildfire protection, and $1.2 billion would go toward protecting the coast from sea level rise.” Considering how we’re already seeing increased effects of climate change in the form of more frequent and stronger fires, longer droughts, and rising sea levels, I think it’s important to vote yes on this proposition so California can do what it can to keep us safe.
Proposition 5
ALLOWS LOCAL BONDS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE WITH 55% VOTER APPROVAL. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
My vote:Yes
Approving proposition 5 makes it possible for local bond proposals to pass with a 55 percent vote, instead of a two-thirds vote for certain types of projects, including low-income housing and parks. For local school construction bonds, we have already lowered the approval threshold to 55 percent. It seems like the main opposition to this proposition is on the grounds that taxes could increase because local governments could issue bonds (and the government has to eventually pay the bonds back). At this point, I think we need to try whatever we can do get more affordable housing, so I am voting yes on this.
Even though slavery is generally illegal, the California constitution states that “Involuntary servitude is prohibited except to punish crime.” This means that people in prison can be forced to work, and for incredibly low wages. As of 2017, California prisoners could, at most, make 95 cents per hour. Prison wages have been stagnant for 40 years. These low wages are propping up lots of American companies, as AP News reported earlier this year, “The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods.” It’s hard not to see forced, low-wage prison labor as a way for corporations to evade hiring non-incarcerated workers and paying them a normal wage. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I must point out the Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year that effectively criminalized homelessness. It seems like an excuse to put homeless people in prison and make them work instead of finding ways to make housing more accessible. I think making forced prison labor illegal removes some of that incentive.
Proposition 32
RAISES MINIMUM WAGE. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
My vote:Yes
Given that “corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters” and corporate profits increased $132.5 billion in quarter two this year, I think corporations can afford to pay higher wages. The wage increase will be phased in over two years, and depend on how many employees a company has: “For employers with 26 or more employees, to $17 immediately, $18 on January 1, 2025. For employers with 25 or fewer employees, to $17 on January 1, 2025, $18 on January 1, 2026.” Studies show that you would need to make $47 an hour to afford a two-bedroom rental in California, so, raising the minimum wage to $18 is the bare minimum. According to the text of the law, if federal minimum wage “had increased at the rate of productivity growth since 1960, it would be $24 right now.”
Proposition 33
EXPANDS LOCAL GOVERNMENTS’ AUTHORITY TO ENACT RENT CONTROL ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
My vote:Yes
This is not the first ballot initiative to attempt to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, which prevents municipalities from enacting rent control. Proposition 21 in 2020 would have repealed some of the Costa-Hawkins Act, and 2018’s proposition 10 would have repealed it entirely, but voters rejected both. Despite rising rents, we keep voting against rent control measures. I assume this has a lot to do with how much money the real estate industry has spent to oppose it. For the current election cycle, as of the end of September, this proposition was on the one that had inspired the most spending, with $37.7 million spent in favor and $75.1 million against. There is no reason we shouldn’t have rent control! The voter information guide says that the fiscal impact of passing this would be a “reduction in local property tax revenues of at least tens of millions of dollars,” but that’s imaginary money. We would lose the potential for increased property tax revenues because rent might not go up as much. We’re not losing money, we just wouldn’t be gaining more money. There’s a difference.
Proposition 34
RESTRICTS SPENDING OF PRESCRIPTION DRUG REVENUES BY CERTAIN HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
My vote: No
This proposition is all about election drama. It is an effort by the California Apartment Association, who is sponsoring the legislation, to limit the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s political spending. The LA Times explains this better than I can:
The measure is sponsored by the California Apartment Assn., which has tangled with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation for years over its efforts to enable stricter rent control laws through ballot initiatives.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation takes in $2 billion a year, mostly from its chain of pharmacies and clinics. Its foray into housing has drawn criticism that it has strayed from its mission of helping those living with HIV or AIDS.
In recent years, the healthcare foundation has spent more than $300 million to fund rent control initiatives and buy apartment buildings across the country, including in and around Skid Row, saying it could address chronic homelessness where others failed.
As of the end of September, proponents of this proposition have spent just under $30 million, with the California Apartment Association “contributing nearly all of the supporting funds.”
Proposition 35
PROVIDES PERMANENT FUNDING FOR MEDI-CAL HEALTH CARE SERVICES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
My vote:Yes
This proposition has literally no opponents and no one has spent any money to oppose it. It would make permanent a tax on managed health care insurance plans (like Kaiser) that is currently set to expire in 2026. This will increase funding to certain types of medical services (there’s a handy chart here showing how the funding allocations would change).
Proposition 36
ALLOWS FELONY CHARGES AND INCREASES SENTENCES FOR CERTAIN DRUG AND THEFT CRIMES. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
My vote:No
Proposition 36 would charge “an offender with two prior convictions for theft with a felony, regardless of the value of the stolen property,” according to the text of the proposed law, and make certain drug-related crimes into felonies. Currently, $950 worth of theft counts as a misdemeanor, but Proposition 36 would mean that if someone stole $900 worth of goods and had two prior convictions, they would be a felon.
This legislation seems to be a reaction to the moral panic about shoplifting, but “there’s little data to suggest that there’s a nationwide problem in need of an immediate response from city councils or state legislatures.” Walmart “is proposition 36’s biggest supporter with $3.5 million in contributions. Other top donors include retailers such as Home Depot and Target with $1 million each and 7-Eleven and associated committees with more than $600,000.” So this sounds to me like retailers are mad about shoplifting and are trying to make the punishment more serious.
A 2014 report from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation found that the three-year recidivism rate (the number of people who are arrested again within three years) for felons was in the 60 to 70 percent range from 2002 through 2009. In comparison, the nationwide recidivism rate (which includes misdemeanors and felonies) is a little over 40 percent. The length of incarceration is also related to an increase in recidivism, and with felons serving longer sentences, which suggests that classifying more crimes as felonies would result in higher rates of recidivism. Our prisons are already overcrowded. This is a bad reason to make it worse.
Local Candidates and Issues
United States House of Representatives: District 7
My vote: Doris Matsui
As I wrote in this year’s primary election voter guide, Doris Matsui is 79 years old. At what point are these people going to retire? I certainly wouldn’t be signing up for another term at her age. I also still think it’s dismissive of her to not bother putting a statement in the voter information guide. In general, she does vote in ways I agree with. However, she keeps voting to send more money to Israel. This country’s support for Israel is unconscionable at this point, but what am I going to do, vote for a Republican who will support Israel and make things worse for me here in the U.S.?
California State Assembly District 10
My vote: Stephanie Nguyen
Stephanie Nguyen is our incumbent assembly member. She seems like she’s doing a good job. I’m on her mailing list and I always see her doing local events that seem like she is genuinely connecting with people, like announcing she’ll be going for a walk in a certain area and that people are welcome to join her to discuss issues. I think that’s cool. Her opponent, Republican Vinaya Singh, has a website with the slogan “Make California great again,” which seems a very unsubtle way to broadcast a love for Trump and his destructive policies. No thanks.
Mayor of Elk Grove
My vote: Bobbie Singh-Allen
I really wish we had local press here in Elk Grove because I honestly have no idea how Singh-Allen has been as our mayor. The only thing I know that she’s done is put up the rainbow flag at city hall during pride month (which, yay), but that’s not exactly substantive. Most of the news I could find about her was from the Sac Bee coverage of the 2020 election, which is not particularly relevant now. I’d like to know how much of a role she played in rejecting affordable housing, which led to the state suing (and subsequently settling with) the city. We also know she supports Proposition 36, which I don’t appreciate. Still, I think local elections come down to quality of life issues and I know I can’t expect actual leftism in a local municipal government, especially for a city with mixed demographics like Elk Grove.
As to Singh-Allen’s challengers, I think Brian Pastor is a 5G conspiracy theorist. His website has a question-and-answer section and one of the questions is “What are your opinions on 5g technology and our internet services infrastructure?” He writes, “We have to consider the science when it comes to high-frequency telecommunication technology and its impact on our health. I’ll push to prevent 5g deployment near residential areas, keeping the broadcasting range at least 1200 feet away from homes and playgrounds.” However, per the FDA, “there is no consistent or credible scientific evidence of health problems caused by the exposure to radio frequency energy emitted by cell phones.” As for Lynn Wheat, all I could find was this 12-year-old youtube video. I’m not really sure what her deal is and her website says it’s “launching soon.” There’s not a lot of time left, Lynn!
Elk Gove City Council Member, District 1
My vote: Darren Suen
Darren Suen is running unopposed and has been on the city council since 2014. So, I guess he’s got my vote.
Elk Grove Unified School District Measure N
To repair, modernize, and construct classrooms, labs, school
My vote: Yes
I don’t have kids, but I still believe that making sure kids can get a good education is one of the most important functions of society. The funding for this will come from property taxes, “Facility improvements and upgrades will be funded through property tax assessments. Measure N will levy a yearly fee of $34 per $100,000 assessed value,” which is honestly not that much. I’m willing to shell out an extra $100 per year for schools.
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Hello, friends and enemies. It’s officially fall! We survived another summer. Sure, it still hit 100 degrees (38 Celsius) this week, but we have technically left summer behind us. Even though it’s been warm in the day, it’s cooling off quickly at night (thank you, longer nights), so it’s easier to tolerate. I haven’t gotten into any autumnal baking yet (see: the heat), but we did observe the turning of the seasons by getting our flu and covid vaccines this week. I hope you’ll get your shots too to avoid getting sick and help limit the spread of these illnesses. As a fringe benefit, research has found that getting the flu vaccine is linked to a reduced risk of alzheimer’s. By the way, the government is doing free covid tests again. You can order them here: https://special.usps.com/testkits.
I am fortunate that I haven’t gotten covid yet and I am desperately trying to keep my streak going. Research is showing that covid is way more than a cold or even a respiratory disease. It affects the whole body and it “might also be unmasking other neurodegenerative conditions,” which means if you have any genetic predisposition to something like Parkinsons, getting covid could be a catalyst for developing it earlier in life. One reason I think I haven’t gotten covid (even though Kirk did) was that I take allergy medication every day (if I don’t, my ears get plugged up and I can’t hear anything). There is some evidence that antihistamines can inhibit covid, although researchers are still looking into that. All this to say: please be careful out there! Covid is still raging and it can seriously fuck you up.
Books and Other Words
Vita Nostra by married couple Marina and Sergey Dyachenko (translated from the original Russian) is definitely a weird one but I liked it. It’s billed as a “dark academia,” magic school but make it creepy Russian, but I think it’s actually a lot more existential than that. The protagonist, Sasha, is coerced by a mysterious man named Farit into attending a university that she knows nothing about. Her fellow students were also forced to attend via threats of violence and none of them have any idea what they’re actually studying for. It’s a little hard to explain the plot because I think it is better to experience the book and let the weirdness of it creep over you.
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramírez puts the spotlight on various women from the middle ages as part of the ongoing work to restore women to the historical record. There are lots of reasons women’s voices were lost, including medieval “male writers [taking] the visions, words and ideas of female intellectuals and [rewriting] them for a largely male audience.” The title, Femina, refers to a the “label scribbled alongside texts known to be written by a woman, so less worthy of preservation.” Texts by women were regularly purged from libraries beginning in the Reformation, which is part of the reason we have so little remaining of women’s words today. Each of the book’s chapters begins with an archaeological discovery and takes a detailed look at the woman who would have been behind the artifact, including women like the Birka warrior, Hildegard of Bingen, and Queen Jadwiga of Poland. There was also a chapter on the Bayeux Tapestry and the women who would have been behind its creation. I find all this kind of thing fascinating, so of course I enjoyed the book. It’s both interesting and weird to me to consider that people from hundreds of years ago had lives as rich and complex as our own, and this book does a great job of reminding us that women have always been a part of this complexity, even when the historical record doesn’t reflect that. Finally, and this thought doesn’t fit neatly into the paragraph, I also have to share that I learned from Femina that the term “the dark ages” refers to “the lack of surviving textual evidence” from the period. It wasn’t uniquely ignorant, we just don’t have books from that period. There are so many things to know!
Vita NostraFemina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written out of It
Meanwhile, on the internet:
‘Disastrous failure’: How Biden emboldened Israel to attack Lebanon via Al Jazeera. Israel is fully waging war on Lebanon now too and the US is still giving Israel billions of dollars all the time! I will continue screaming into the void that this is not okay and I do not want our tax dollars paying for this! I hate it!
you’ve been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress) via Threadings. This is a long and very thought-provoking essay on why so many people hate to read and how this disadvantages us in activism and the class struggle. The author also goes into how short-form video (like what we see on Tiktok and instagram) is not nearly as informative as it feels like it is and how that’s no replacement for actually reading a book. “Bite-sized thoughts—especially short form video—convince you that the whole thing is right in front of you. I am trapped in an academic zoo, wherein I produce thoughts or emotions or projects what have you and often receive nothing meaningful back. … Short conformity stunts our conversation to the length of your attention span. This undermines the communion between artist and muse.”
Wikipedia is facing an existential crisis. Can gen Z save it? via The Guardian. Wikipedia is running the risk of being an old people activity and a relic of an earlier internet age. That sucks because it’s full of really good information. They are trying to encourage younger people to get involved and keep it a thriving and vibrant source of information.
We’re losing our digital history. Can the Internet Archive save it? via the BBC. It seems that a lot of “Can X save Y” news was on my radar recently. From the article, “A quarter of all web pages that existed at some point between 2013 and 2023 now… don’t” and “one in five government websites contains at least one broken link. Pew found more than half of Wikipedia articles have a broken link in their references section, meaning the evidence backing up the online encyclopaedia’s information is slowly disintegrating.” It feels like the internet is permanent but it really isn’t! It makes you wonder if there’s going to be a giant empty space in the historical record when people look back on our era.
I reactivated my Netflix subscription, mostly in anticipation of a new season of the Great British Baking Show (which started this week!), but Kirk and I also wanted to watch an anime called Delicious in Dungeon. There is technically a plot but it’s mostly about a group of adventurers working their way through a cursed dungeon, killing the various monsters inside, and turning them into the basis for haute cuisine. It’s cute and fun and we enjoyed it. Also, the main character Laios is the most autistic man of all time.
Rampant Consumerism
A month or so ago, we bought a new dining table set (from Costco lol, but it’s actually pretty nice!). Fritz really enjoys lounging on top of the table so we decided to get a tablecloth to attempt to prevent him from scratching up the surface before it has even seen a single Thanksgiving. The tablecloth is from Rough Linen, which I found a few months ago when I was possessed by the idea of getting linen dish towels. We really like the towels, so we decided to get a tablecloth from them too. That’s all well and good, but the real reason I wanted to share this was because Fritz thinks we set up a big table fort just for him. He spent half of yesterday on a chair tucked into the edge of the table cloth. He truly is my son.
Fritz appreciating his new tablecloth fortFritz in his new table fort
Wikipedia
I’ve been increasingly invested in editing Wikipedia lately. I’m still working on translations with my respective teachers. Here’s a recent Icelandic translation of a place called Mikilbær. For Spanish, I am almost done translating and reviewing the article about the Bush v. GoreSupreme Court case, which has been challenging, but I am learning a lot and getting a lot of practice with the preterite versus imperfect tense and the subjunctive. Wikipedia’s Guild of Copy Editors is doing an editing drive this month so I have been participating in that too. I discovered there’s a page where people can request edits (usually in the process of developing a page into a “good article”) and I find it gratifying to edit something when people actually want editing. I edited the pages on Botswana and the North Yemen civil war this week, among others, and I learned quite a lot while doing it.
Autism Thoughts
The last week or so of work really sucked because I had to do a lot of work because a lot of people I work with didn’t realize that they were legally obligated to make their documents accessible. Unfortunately, my job is to make the documents accessible. This is a noble task, but I don’t like doing it all at once. I know I’m not special or unique for not wanting to work, but sometimes it feels so painful to have to work when all I want to do is translate my Wikipedia pages (or whatever I may be focused on at the moment). It’s not even the work itself, since I am clearly invested in editing Wikipedia even when I don’t feel like editing at work. There is some research suggesting that letting autistic people engage in their special interests helps emotional regulation. As this article puts it, “Research shows that beyond such practical benefits, a special interest often has deeper value. ‘It reduces stress. It helps the person to calm down when they’re upset.'” I love doing my little activities. I just don’t know how to reconcile the fact that my brain lights way up when I am doing things I want to do and that I have to drag myself kicking and screaming to do the job I get paid to do.
Kitchen Witchery
I’ve been into the Smitten Kitchen archives a lot lately and last week I tried her herbed summer squash pasta bake. It sounds very fancy but as I was making it, I realized it’s really just macaroni and cheese with squash in it. And there’s nothing wrong with that! This deserves to be celebrated! It was very good and a good way to get some extra vegetables with my macaroni and cheese. I just got the new cookbook, The Bean Book, co-authored by Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo. I tried the cheesy black beans and corn bake and we liked it. The book recommends serving it with some chips or tortillas, but I made rice to go with it.
herbed summer squash pasta bakeblack beans with corn and cheese (and rice)
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. If anyone is wondering, Fritz is still being a poop bandit and rejecting pooping in the littler box. The current prevailing theory, which Kirk proposed, is that Fritz is traumatized about pooping in the box after an incident a few months ago when the poop stuck to his butt and he spent 15 minutes racing around the house trying to escape it. Fritz continues to pee in the box just fine but he seems frustrated that we keep forcing him into the litter box when he seems to be gearing up to shit. Is this too much information? I don’t know, but it’s my life.
Fritz climbing the wallsFritz lounging and being cuteFritz in the afternoon spotlight
Hello, friends and enemies. I’m sure all of you have been dying to know if I did manage to work out in my gym after doing all that work cleaning the garage. The good news is I did work out twice since I last wrote. It was a little too hot for me for most of last week, but it’s cooling down so I’m hoping to make it a more regular habit for a while.
It is obvious what happened even if some are reluctant to cop to it: Bush-era Republican operatives, unable to function in the chaos of MAGA, saw an opportunity to remake the Democratic Party, which had been lurching to the right since the 1990s, and took it. They left receipts: the conservative Lincoln Project is Harris’s fourth biggest donor. Change in Democratic Party policy is determined by donations — not only the Lincoln Project’s — and then rationalized with the Trump/Not-Trump binary.
Democrats are now told that Dick Cheney is “good” because he endorsed Harris and that they should see this as “unity” instead of contamination. Ironically, Dick Cheney had already unified America in loathing, leaving office with a 13% approval rating.
ughhhhhh
In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris said, “As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” What the fuck? Is “most lethal” really the goal? Haven’t we seen enough of this? We already spend more on the armed forces than the next nine countries combined. We have over 700 military bases in 80 countries. We’ve bankrolled Israel while they’ve killed, at “a conservative estimate … up to 186,000” or more (a figure from July, by the way). To be honored by the endorsement of the Iraq war guy, to commit to maintaining the most lethal fighting force in the world. Just … what? You want to do infinite war to make money for our weapons manufacturers? I guess this is all that this country is and having a woman president is not going to change that. It makes me feel sick that this is what our tax dollars go to: rampant destruction. This is not what I want to vote for but these are apparently the only choices in this system.
Just to be clear, I am not at all saying this to suggest Trump is a better option. Trump is unequivocally worse. That guy is obsessed with nuclear bombs. At a minimum, I don’t think President Harris would start a nuclear war. I’m trying to say we need more than two options. Maybe even an option that isn’t committed to endless military activity.
Books and Other Words
Alexandra Rowland’s Some by Virtue Fall and The Lights of Ystrac’s Wood are a pair of novellas set in the same world, although I wouldn’t say they are necessarily a series. Some by Virtue Fall was a lot of fun. It’s centered on a theater director in a sort-of Elizabethan environment who is in an extremely high-stakes rivalry with another theater. All the men have been banned from working the the theater by some kind of royal decree because they won’t stop brawling and causing problems, which means women are playing all the parts in a gender-flipped Shakespeare way. Everyone is fucking nuts in a fun way. The Lights of Ystrac’s Wood is a little more meditative and philosophical but still features a foppish bard who gets his lute magically blessed by the god of theater and poetry. Both were enjoyable to read and I am going to continue working my way through Rowland’s catalog (Running Close to the Wind is still my favorite so far).
I almost didn’t finish How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World by Deb Chachra because it had a bit of a slow start. Chachra spends the first few chapters of the book on making infrastructure visible to the reader because it’s something so firmly in the background of our lives that we are scarcely aware of it—like flipping a light switch. The rest of the book is about, well, Chachra doesn’t say it explicitly, but how capitalism is a major problem for infrastructure. Infrastructure is often a means to transport “resources for the benefit of whoever controls the networks, which means they get more power and wealth,” which “isn’t a side effect,” but the whole point of a lot of modern infrastructure. Chachra uses the example of the British Raj establishing trains throughout India. Ultimately, the trains are a good thing, but all the profits from the train system left the country and went to people in Britain thanks to a deal where investors got a fixed profit percentage! Lots of infrastructure in the US and the world is crumbling because we don’t like to invest in public works anymore, and what we need is maintenance of these systems. Maintenance, however, doesn’t have a nice, exciting profit margin for contractors like building something new does, so there is little (financial) incentive to do it. One interesting perspective I took from this book is that our approach to materials and energy is backwards; we actually have functionally unlimited energy in the form of solar, wind, and hydro power but we have a finite amount of material resources like copper or lithium. Recycling is often seen as not cost effective, but what we really mean is it uses too much energy to recover the materials. However, when we think about having lots of energy and not so much raw material, recycling suddenly becomes much more “profitable.” Chachra ends the book with some guidelines for how we can turn this ship around and start thinking about infrastructure as a form of care and a way to create agency (think about all the free time and choice we have because we don’t have to, say, haul water from somewhere to our houses then boil it to make sure it’s clean). I would love to see us take a more long-term view of infrastructure as our cultural inheritance but I’m not confident that this country will do it.
Some by Virtue FallThe Lights of Ystrac’s WoodHow Infrastructure Works
Meanwhile, on the internet:
How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity via The New Republic. The media has essentially been laundering Trump’s intellectual abilities by selecting little pieces of his usual word salad to run in articles. The full text of what Trump says is usually completely incoherent. People didn’t want Biden to be president again because of his age and potential dementia, but the media in general is not raising these same concerns about Trump.
Marshmallow Longtermism via Pluralistic. Here’s another very good analysis by Cory Doctorow about long-term planning, conservatism, and the famed (and, ultimately, not replicable) marshmallow test.
I like to use a paper planner. My preferred stationery company released their 2025 calendars and I got mine in the mail yesterday. I love planners because they feel full of potential. I also happened to have the perfect sticker (from https://claricetudor.com/) for the planner, so that brings me joy.
I am in shock that 2025 is fast approaching. Although I feel like nothing makes me sound older than exclaiming “[year], already!” every single year. Yet, here I am doing it again.
Wikipedia
I must have passed some kind of threshold on Wikipedia because in the last week it seems I’ve become a full citizen. I think it might be that I passed 500 total edits (I’ve made over 600 edits across multiple language versions of Wikipedia, and I’m over 400 on English Wikipedia). First, I got an invitation to use the Wikipedia Library. I didn’t even know this was a thing but I love to look things up so I am very excited about it! It’s a huge collection of databases and academic journals that is free to active Wikipedia users. The second thing was that I got to vote for the Wikimedia Foundation’s board members. My Wikipedia efforts are paying off. Not in the literal sense, of course, but there are some rewards it seems. Plus, I just like doing it. I wish Wikipedia was my job.
Corporeal Form
I’m still trying to figure out what is wrong with my body since my POTS hypothesis turned out to be wrong. I’ve been reading about joint hypermobility, which I didn’t even know about until I started taking ballet class and got instructed not to hyperextend my knees. Who knows how long I was doing that without even knowing about it. The “test” for hypermobility is called the Beighton score, and it just tallies up how many weird joints you have and asks if you have ever been able to put your hands flat on the ground with your knees straight or do the splits (yes and yes). Apparently anyone can learn flexibility but hypermobile people can do this without any effort so … cool? I already knew that autistic people are more likely to be hypermobile and both autism and hypermobility can be linked to gut issues (which I have). I started looking up what else hypermobility and autism might be connected to and this study said that hypermobile autistic women were more likely to report chronic ear infections than regular-mobile autistic women (I have had so many ear infections in this life). Hypermobile people are even more likely to have sleep apnea, which I have. I assume because the body just doesn’t want to hold itself up? I’m thinking some of my fatigue issues, like my famous three-hour afternoon naps or sometimes just feeling like standing up is asking too much of me, might be down to hypermobility. I was watching instagram videos by a physical therapist who specializes in hypermobility who mentioned that hypermobile people tend to get tired because we’re spending so much energy holding up the body. Even things you might think are not strenuous, like sitting at a desk, require a lot of muscle effort. So, maybe that’s something?
Before I move on, I also have to note that in my research travels I found an article stating that people with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency are more likely to have sleep apnea (note: this article is pay walled). I did a test last year as part of the analysis for my liver issues that showed I have a genetic predisposition to alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which can predispose people to liver and lung issues (hello, fatty liver disease! Here’s the post I did about all that). Apparently this can also be linked to sleep apnea. I would like to give a hearty “honestly, fuck off!” to the doctor running the class I had to take at Kaiser when I got my CPAP who told me, without knowing a damn thing about me, that my sleep apnea would “probably go away” if I lost weight. Bite me!
Kitchen Witchery
I’ve been keeping it pretty easy in the kitchen and not trying anything new in the last two weeks. I revisited sheet pan noodles with glazed tofu and stuffed cheesy shells, which everyone was pleased about. I made a double-batch of the buttered walnut cake from the Snacking Cakes cookbook (doubled so I could make it in the bundt pan) and I was immensely satisfied to get it out of the pan cleanly.
Butter walnut bundt cake
I have refrained from starting fall baking, not the least because it is still summer! Frankly, it’s also still hot. Ushering in warming spices and pumpkin is not going to make the weather shift any faster. Kirk is a stickler about enjoying things in their season and he has, perhaps, rubbed off on me a little bit. Then again, maybe we are right about this issue in particular.
Cat Therapy
Fritz is being a menace to society and decided he needs to poop in my office, a place where there is not normally a litter box (though there was at one time). Defeated, I put a litter box in there. He is mostly using it but now he is also pooping next to the box in my office. I’m not sure what he’s trying to prove, but I’m not impressed.
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
He is a BABYFritz in his bonnet, ready for bedBro is ready to start declaiming
Hello, friends and enemies. I’ve been feeling very productive over the last week. I’m determined to start lifting weights in my garage gym again (I haven’t touched anything this year so far!) so I’ve been cleaning and organizing and de-spidering the garage. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of random stuff that we don’t need or didn’t like or missed the return period for, mostly by posting it on the local buy nothing facebook group and having the garbage service come do a junk pickup for all the things that needed to go to the electronics recycling center (if you’re in Sacramento County, you get three free large or bulky trash pickups every year by the way). Some things that people are willing to claim via the buy nothing are not surprising, like some old dumbbells (we got a fancy new set that interlocks so you can get multiple weights from one piece of equipment). Other things are more surprising, like that someone actually wanted the “universal” toilet pump kit that did not work for our old toilet and has languished in the garage for two years. I’m glad people want these items though because they are often perfectly fine, it’s just that they did not work for me. I feel better that someone wants to use them so I don’t have to throw away totally functional objects.
Some garage organization
I’ve realized that if the garage is at all icky, I do not want to be out there. So, to keep the garage organized and limit the amount of spiderwebs and dust that can collect, on Saturday, I organized a big pile of tools and random household stuff into these clear plastic bins. It keeps creepy crawlies out and we can see what’s inside. The bins are not that big so it means they can’t get too heavy and unwieldy and they won’t get overstuffed (plus I put a label on the top with tape so we know what types of things are in there). I’m hoping this helps the garage stay organized. Kirk also suggested that we finally get a new side door on the garage (not the big door that you drive in, but a people door) to keep the critters out. We have been meaning to do this for a while because this door is not really an outside-facing door. It feels like an inside door and doesn’t have a sweep on the bottom. We also need to install some lights out there so I can have the option to work out in the evening after it gets dark. Anyway, home ownership is really as annoying as everyone says it is but I still vastly prefer it to the alternative.
I have not gone outside to work out yet but I am hoping to do it today since the weather isn’t supposed to be too hot and now the garage is fairly clean. I will report back.
new (to me) cookbooks
In other topics, last weekend I went with Kirk to his parents’ house because his dad invited me to take any cookbooks I wanted from my late mother-in-law’s collection. She had quite a lot of books, but I just took a few vintage Julia Child and Alice Waters, plus one from the Moosewood Collective. You can’t see it very well in the photo, but she had a thin cookbook from 1897 called Scientific Cookery that I also took. I think it is the source of her clam chowder recipe that she used to make on Christmas eve. I also noticed she left notes in a lot of cookbooks, which I love. I find I am sentimental about these sorts of things that connect us to previous generations of women who perhaps did not have a lot of other avenues for artistic expression.
Books and Other Words
The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher is a book that weaves together real people’s stories from Thrasher’s own reporting and the science and sociology of disease. The book discusses ten intertwined vectors of inequality—including racism, the carceral system, and ableism—and how they all work together to make certain groups of people more vulnerable to viruses. Throughout the book, Thrasher compares the recent, ongoing covid-19 pandemic with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which peaked in the 1990s. A lot of the work that LGBT activists did around AIDS laid the groundwork for some of the good ways communities responded to covid, but Thrasher also highlights the fact that, in some areas, we have not learned much, and in fact we are still dealing with a lot of inequality and misinformation surrounding HIV and AIDS today. One major theme in the narrative was that America has a very individualistic culture, which means that a lot of people are not prepared to do things that might be good for the community even if it isn’t necessary for them as an individual, like wearing a mask to reduce the transmission of covid to vulnerable groups like prison populations or disabled people. Some conservative groups have even coopted progressive language (“my body, my choice”) to protest mask mandates. There is a really interesting discussion that wraps up the book about how perceiving ourselves as “owning” a body versus “being” a body feeds into the way we see ourselves (or not) as part of a larger body like a community or a society, which gave me a lot to think about on an existential level. Thrasher also talked about the unfulfilled potential during the height of the covid pandemic to change society and how hopeful things felt, in certain ways, in 2020 when people were acting collectively to limit the spread of disease. He observes that, “Even when tens of millions had no income, we largely accepted that rent had to be paid to landlords.” Which is wild! So many things changed in response to the coronavirus but not rent. Not paying for healthcare. There is still work to do.
I’m on a bit of a non-fiction streak because I also read Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen. This book broadly describes Indigenous history in North America and Indigenous people’s interactions with European settlers. This book is long but any chapter could easily be a book in its own right given that Hämäläinen covers 500 years of history. So, at this point in my life I am well aware of the contentious history and the fact that Europeans killed something like 80% of America’s Indigenous people (directly or through the spread disease), and as I was reading, I was trying to remember what I learned in school about Indigenous people here. I found a big gap. Like, I can remember learning about some specific battles and skirmishes, the story of the “first Thanksgiving” with everyone happily getting together to feast, and some general facts. But I don’t think it was clear to me that Indigenous people were nations (as Hämäläinen describes them and the US used to do before we started calling them “tribes” to delegitimize them) and that they fought tooth and fucking nail to not be killed and displaced and have their way of life paved over. Imagine walking past a house and the front door was open and you thought “cool house, I’m moving in,” but then found people on the couch once you got inside. It would be insane to tell them to get out and that this is your house, right? Yet, that’s what Europeans and then the United States did for several centuries. They claimed land wasn’t in use because Indigenous people weren’t farming it all or using it in the way they thought it should be used. It’s maddening that it seems so clearly wrong when you see it all laid out like this but this is not the story our country tells about itself. Our history is just one big string of broken promises with people who were here first and who we could have coexisted with if our forebearers hadn’t chosen to be genocidal assholes in the name of capitalism and Jesus. When Indigenous people did try to live in the way the local white people seemed to want them to, they still got run out of town (to put it extremely mildly) for being too uppity and coming up against people’s racist beliefs. All this is inextricable from why our government won’t stop supporting Israel as it destroys Palestinian lives. Israel is doing exactly what the US did for centuries. Admitting that Israel is doing something wrong means we have to admit that we were wrong too, and this country doesn’t have the emotional maturity for that.
I picked up Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual because I really liked Cahokia Jazz, which I read a few months ago. Light Perpetual did not blow my mind wide open like Cahokia Jazz did, but it’s still a good story and a very well written book. It is also a tale of alternate history, in this case, imagining the lives of several children who might not have died in the very specific circumstance that one particular bomb did not fall on a particular Wollworth’s in London. The story follows their lives from south London at age five through their 70s as they grow up, have families, and witness the world changing.
Bunny by Mona Awad is a novel that reminds us that friends don’t let friends go to grad school. The book is definitely a little creepy and left me wondering just how reliable our narrator was. It was also darkly funny and definitely took some inspiration from the movie Heathers. Our protagonist, Samantha, is one of five women in a graduate writing program at a prestigious university. Bunny explores how isolating it can be to not fit in with your peers, especially when they have the kind of wealth and comfort that you don’t, and how hard it can be to create art. It also looks into what happens when your peers are absolutely fucking nuts and sharing some kind of hive mind and maybe performing dark magic in their attic. Fortunately, this was not my experience of grad school, but I fear it is all too common.
The Viral UnderclassIndigenous ContinentLight PerpetualBunny
Meanwhile, on the internet:
‘A much more infectious’ COVID variant fueling California’s relentless surge via LA Times. The current Covid variant is highly contagious and infection rates are high right now. It’s a great time to be wearing a mask in public to avoid spreading it. By the way, every time you get covid, the risk of developing long covid increases! This shit is still serious. I, personally, am very worried about getting long covid because, knowing my busted corporeal form, I will get long covid and have a very bad time.
Was girl math invented by a man? via Total Rec. And article that asks “Has ‘girl math’ shifted from a joke to a coping mechanism, a marketing pitch, or both?” and that invites us to look at pictures of the rich guys making money when we buy stuff we don’t need.
This is my fight sooonnnggg via Garbage Day. Some thoughts on the election’s current vibes that I appreciated.
Two songs that are really defining the vibe right now for me are The Socialist Vampire Conspiracy Part III (yes, there are parts I and II) by Oli Frost and We’re Fucked by We Are the Dream Eaters. Socialist vampires would at least want to take good enough care of humans and the planet to keep their food source in good shape. But here we are with the capitalists in charge. We’re fucked.
Corporeal Form
Last time, I mentioned that my carpal tunnel was bothering me and making it hard to knit, so I’ve been trying really hard to be responsible and wear my brace. I was reading up online about what carpal tunnel even is and learned there are actually reasons to wear the damn brace at night, which my doctor did not explain. She just said “wear it to bed” and left, basically. My knee-jerk reaction was that I do not want more medical apparatuses added to my sleeping situation, however, given that the wrist often ends up in weird positions during sleep, it’s actually preferable to wear the brace to bed. Wearing it during the day can be detrimental because the muscles weaken. Cool. It would be nice if the doctor actually explained things to me, instead of not explaining things then getting mad at me when I arrive to appointments having read about things online. I literally cannot win. I have been wearing it at night for most of the last week and I do think it’s making a difference. I am not getting the tingling as frequently, so at least it’s getting better even though the remedy is annoying.
I have also previously mentioned that I was semi-convinced that I have POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) because I have a notable number of the symptoms. My doctor said I don’t have it but I do feel that something is wrong with me because I know it’s not normal to feel out of breath and dizzy every time I lean forward or stand up. I was searching online for a place to get independently tested but I found this self-test instead, so of course I administered it to myself. And I definitely do not have POTS! I still don’t know what’s wrong with me but I guess I have to agree with my doctor that it’s not POTS.
Moving It
My dance classes started again this week, which I am very happy about. I really like the feeling of going back to school (not enough to actually do more school haha), but starting a new season of dance class kind of gets me that sensation. I’m keeping on with ballet, jazz, and tap this year. If anyone wants to join me, the studio is Galaxy Dance Arts. We really need more people to join tap in particular because enrollment is kind of low and they won’t keep the class for just me!
Kitchen Witchery
We are rapidly approaching fall, but it is still summer, especially as far as produce (and the weather) is concerned so I am still doing a lot of corn and zucchini stuff. I tried another Smitten Kitchen recipe (her recipe catalog is deep), a corn and bean chowder topped with cotija cheese and other nice things. I liked it and it makes a corn soup a little more filling (you know I am all about that bean life haha). I also made a chocolate zucchini cake because maybe we all need more chocolate cake in our lives. On Friday night, my friend and her daughter (my “niece”) came over for dinner so I got fancy and made enchiladas mineras from Rick Martinez’s Mi Cocina cookbook (you can actually watch him make this on YouTube here). I think I made the sauce a little too watery (my most frequent cooking error) but they were still really good. For dessert we had flourless chocolate cake, which I’ve been wanting to try making for a while. It was good! Obviously! It’s chocolate cake.
corn and bean chowder with cotija cheesechocolate zucchini cakeenchiladas mineras, beans and riceFlourless chocolate cake
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
