Hello, friends and enemies. This weekend I’m visiting my sister in Long Beach. She’s dealing with some shit that I won’t talk about here so I came in to offer some moral support and cook dinner for a few days. What I did not expect as part of this outing was to narrowly miss airports effectively shutting down because of a global tech outage. Fortunately, it seems like I’ll be able to get home just fine because, of course, everyone is working like mad to fix this but, also because I flew Southwest, which has apparently not updated Windows for a very long time and is thus immune to this particular computer-based ailment. It’s wild that one faulty patch can take out almost everything. Maybe we shouldn’t be letting corporations do everything? We especially shouldn’t let just one corporation run security for so many critical systems. The hullabaloo reminds me a bit of when that stupid boat was stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021. Except that was a lot more fun and we had a whole week to generate memes about it. It’s harder to chuckle about this one; people are probably dying because hospitals and health care have been affected by the outage.
Current Events
As usual, I’m not sure that I have any new or novel perspective on what’s happening in the world, but I feel compelled to comment and organize my thoughts here all the same. Let’s start with the “easier” topic, I guess.
The Vice Presidential Candidate
Trump announced his Vice President would be Ohio Senator James Vance (I’m not calling this idiot by his initials). This guy really sucks and that’s a gross understatement. As my friend Abby put it, “he’s someone who would order my death by firing squad without bating an eye.” This is a man who thinks we need to get rid of no-fault divorce because it’s “unfair to men” (I am not going to spend time explaining why we need no-fault divorce). Knowing what we do of Trump, I am sure he picked Vance because he has some level of fame beyond mere politics. Vance is the author of the book Hillbilly Elegy, which was very popular despite apparently being fairly insulting. It was criticized at the time for its thesis “that anybody who isn’t able to escape the working class is essentially at fault” (Salon) and for being “primarily a work of self-congratulation, a literary victory lap, and a vindication of a minimalist safety net” (Jacobin). (Side note: if you want to read something that successfully does what Hillbilly Elegy claims to do I recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson and Mill Town: Reckoning with what Remains by Kerri Arsenault). Vance is also no friend of the queer community and is one of those mendacious assholes who thinks all gay people are “grooming” children (It’s never gay people doing this). It’s not surprising that Trump’s running mate is someone with such dangerous views but that doesn’t mean we get to skip talking about the dangerous views.
Actions Have Consequences
In other news, as probably everyone knows by now, Trump got shot at during a rally in Pennsylvania last weekend. We know next to nothing about the shooter and his motivations, although my personal theory based on nothing but vibes is he is probably some kind of accelerationist. Still, this isn’t stopping prominent Republicans from claiming that Biden is to blame for this, that he somehow did a Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? through normal campaign rhetoric and statements like “Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy.” What these comments are conveniently forgetting is that the Supreme Court ruled just two weeks ago that the president can do whatever he fucking wants. The president has immunity from criminal prosecution. So if Biden did somehow order a hit on Trump (he didn’t), it’s legal! I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that the same Republican party that has been obsessed with jailing Hillary Clinton, the party that did a whole coup attempt on January 6, 2021 is offended by this. But sure, this is somehow Biden’s fault for not being civil enough. Okay.
What’s killing me about this is that the whole Democratic institution seems to be like “that’s a wrap, boys!” and being unwilling to keep on campaigning in the wake of this. Biden has (temporarily?) stopped running political ads. If you really believe Trump is an existential threat to democracy, now is not the time to sit back and let him play for sympathy because of this. Fucking do something! You can keep campaigning without being an asshole about it. You don’t have to run ads like “Joe Biden, unlike some candidates, has never been shot at one of his own rallies” but you can still fight! This taking the high road shit is gonna get us all killed because Trump really is an existential threat to our country. So many democrats seem to think it’s over. You’re not even gonna fight? The election is four months away. You’re gonna say that Trump was lightly shot and there’s nothing else we can do? It’s absolutely maddening that we’re stuck with a political class that either actively wants to kill us (Republicans) or passively does (Democrats, speaking generally, in their refusal to do anything).
Are Women Still People?
We’ve already discussed so much but, unfortunately, there is more.
The Republican Party published their new platform and, wow, it sucks. It sucks for many reasons but today I’m looking at just one reason. Here’s a screenshot in case they decide to pretend they never said this shit later on.
Republicans are attempting to use the Constitution to assert that fetuses are people and have rights that supersede the rights of the person carrying the fetus. This is so fucking scary. Instead of playing around with state-by-state abortion bans, which will never happen across the board (because support for abortion remains high everywhere), they want to make the fetus into a little citizen itself so they can oppress women more effectively. As The 19th reports, “If established by legislation, fetal personhood would have the practical effect of prohibiting abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Its impact could become national if courts affirm state-level laws that extend the application of the 14th Amendment to fetuses.” Jessica Valenti has a comprehensive analysis of the situation in her newsletter Abortion, Every Day.
If I have fewer rights than a clump of cells in my uterus, am I a person?
Books and Other Words
I was absolutely charmed by Alexandra Rowland’s Running Close to the Wind. All I knew going into it was there would be gay pirates and that another author I really like was singing its praises. I was literally laughing out loud while reading this book because it was so funny. The story centers on a pathetic wet cat of a man (affectionate) named Avra who has recently left his country’s intelligence service and taken up with a group of pirates led by Captain Teveri, with whom he has an antagonistic on-again/off-again relationship. This is complicated by the fact that Avra may or may not have acquired a crucial state secret and that a very attractive monk named Julian has joined the crew and he has, to everyone’s dismay, taken a vow of celibacy. What I liked about this story is it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The goal is to have fun and give these three characters room to go through some emotional growth and figure out how they want to be together. The book is very sex positive (they are pirates and they are down to fuck. Well, except for Julian.), although there’s no actual sex on the page, just a healthy respect for the craft. The story culminates in the most important pirate event of the year: a cake competition that residents of the local pirate town take extremely seriously. What’s not to love?
After I finished Running Close to the Wind, I went in search of Rowland’s other books and discovered I had already bought her book A Taste of Gold and Iron and hadn’t read it yet. This one isn’t nearly as silly as Running Close to the Wind but it was just as charming. In this story we are at the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum: A Taste of Gold and Iron is ultimately about a prince falling in love with one of his bodyguards. Said prince, Kadou, is the sultan’s younger brother in an Ottoman empire-inflected kingdom. His anxiety attacks have ramped up since his sister (the sultan) had a baby and he’s trying to figure out how to be useful as a spare prince. In addition to being quite a tender romance (not exactly enemies-to-lovers but more like “I am immediately smitten with you but then resentful that you didn’t live up to the version of you in my head”), the story is a really effective portrayal of how it feels to have anxiety and be afraid of being vulnerable, needing anything from anyone, or taking up space in the world. These are all very challenging to avoid when you’re a prince and so many people have dedicated their lives to your service. Both this book and Running Close to the Wind mention a break-in to an important government ministry, so by reading both books you see multiple perspectives. The pirates think this is the funniest, best thing to ever happen, while Kadou and his government are panicking and trying to make sure their whole dynasty isn’t run out of town over this.
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- Keep Hunter Biden As Far From the White House As Possible via Slate. It is troubling to me that Hunter Biden is one of the “strongest voices” telling Biden not to step down as president. As Slate put it, “Hunter has been joining the president at a slew of meetings with top White House aides—Jared Kushner–style—during the ongoing fallout.” If Biden wants to make the case that he is better and more ethical than trump, he should keep his kid out of it. We did not vote for Hunter Biden! Hunter is undoubtedly trying to make sure dad wins another term so he can get pardoned.
- Last Chance, USA via Sara Kendzior’s Newsletter. I am once again turning to Kendzior because she’s saying it better than anyone else is right now. “Despite his recent moves, Biden and Trump are not the same. It is essential for their mutual backers, and those backers’ plans, that they are different. Trump is the abuser, and Biden is the enabler. This is more effective than overt tyranny.”
- French President Macron’s snap election gamble ‘did not pay off,’ professor says via CNBC. Shout out to France for not electing a far-right government. We salute you! Also, imagine if we could have a “snap” election instead of a two-year presidential campaign grind.
- The Robots Won’t Cause Massive Unemployment This Time, Either via The Geek Way. Translation may never end up being the job I do for money (but who knows!), but I was still extremely cheered to see that “translator employment has grown in recent years” and “translators get paid almost 20% more than the median US worker.” We love to see it!
Moving It
I finally got the video from my May dance recital. Message me if you want to see it and I’ll send you the link!
Kitchen Witchery
It’s not really soup weather but I don’t respect authority like that anyway and I have tried some new soup recipes. First, I made slow-cooker cauliflower, potato and white bean soup, which I mostly picked because I could make it in the slow cooker. You might think the slow cooker is ideal for winter, but I think it’s great in the summer when I don’t want to get the house any warmer than necessary. It was good and I will definitely make it again, but I think it might work better to substitute cheese for the sour cream and use sour cream as a topping instead of something to stir into the soup. At my sister’s house, I made this red lentil barley stew recipe. I actually used farro instead of barley because it’s what we had on hand and that worked great. It happened that Mia had all the ingredients on hand (even leeks and fennel), so this ended up being a perfect choice for using up some of the things she had lurking in the fridge.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. My nephew Neo has the pouty-est little face and it kills me.
And of course I’m not going to skip posting Huey and Fritz.
