Two Weeks in the Life: October 13, 2024

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.

So, is anyone else kinda freaking out about global warming? According to Scientific American:

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.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

TV and Music

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.

a pair of clear, cat-eye shaped glasses frames with purple accents on the top corners.
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.

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.

Guía para votantes: 5 de noviembre de 2024, elección general de California

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

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 propuestaMi voto
Presidente de los Estados UnidosClaudia de la Cruz
Senador – Periodo completoAdam Schiff
Senador – Periodo parcial/restanteAdam Schiff
Propuesta 2
Propuesta 3
Propuesta 4
Propuesta 5
Propuesta 6
Propuesta 32
Propuesta 33
Propuesta 34No
Propuesta 35
Propuesta 36No
Distrito 7 del CongresoDoris Matsui
Distrito 10 de la AsambleaStephanie Nguyen
Alcalde de Elk GroveBobbie Singh-Allen
Miembro, Consejo Municipal, Distrito 1Darren Suen
Distrito escolar unificado Elk Grove Measure N

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 a Dos 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!

Voter Guide: November 5, 2024 California General Election

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.

¿Buscas la versión en español? Está aquí.

Reminders and Resources for California Voters

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/PropositionMy Vote
President of the United StatesClaudia de la Cruz
United States Senate: Full TermAdam Schiff
United States Senate: Partial/Unexpired TermAdam Schiff
Proposition 2Yes
Proposition 3Yes
Proposition 4Yes
Proposition 5Yes
Proposition 6Yes
Proposition 32Yes
Proposition 33Yes
Proposition 34No
Proposition 35Yes
Proposition 36No
United States House of Representatives: District 7Doris Matsui
California State Assembly District 10Stephanie Nguyen
Mayor of Elk GroveBobbie Singh-Allen
Elk Gove City Council Member, District 1Darren Suen
Elk Grove Unified School District Measure NYes

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.

Proposition 6

ELIMINATES CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION ALLOWING INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE FOR INCARCERATED PERSONS. LEGISLATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

My vote: Yes

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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Two Weeks in the Life: September 29, 2024

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!

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.
  • IACHR calls for legislation and public policies to safeguard human rights of bisexual people via the Organization of American States. IACHR said bisexual rights!

TV and Music

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.

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. Gore Supreme 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.

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.

Two Weeks in the Life: September 15, 2024

a bar with 25 and 10 pound weights on it, on the ground in front of a squat rack
some light deadlifting

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.

Current Events

Still from the movie Zoolander of Will Ferrell's character Mugatu shouting "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
Crazy pills!!

Is anyone else feeling insane that Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris? And that Harris said she felt “honored” by his endorsement? Dick Cheney, the villain of the Bush era? War criminal Dick Cheney?? Am I insane? If Cheney endorsed me for anything, I’d tell him to fuck off. Sarah Kendzior explains this far better than I could:

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.

a bent out of shape plastic alligator toy that looks like it's rolling its eyes and sighing. Text says "things that make you go"
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.

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.
  • The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s via Grist. Just a reminder that global warming is not new and Congress was talking about this stuff 50 years ago!
  • Mexico’s Senate approves a contentious judicial overhaul after protesters storm the chamber via AP. This is major! Mexicans will now directly elect their supreme court justices. After the absolute shitshow of watching Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett get appointed, I would definitely prefer just voting for justices.

Rampant Consumerism

A bright-blue planner with a sticker of a magic 8 ball that says "you already know what you're going to do" inside
New planner

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.

Bundt cake drizzled with vanilla glaze that is too runny and is pooling on the plate
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.

Two Weeks in the Life: September 1, 2024

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.

A bookcase in my garage with newly cleaned shelves, some things in neat piles, and some small plastic bins on some shelves
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.

A pile of vintage cookbooks including Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, and Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
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.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

TV and Music

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.

Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.

Two Weeks in the Life: August 18, 2024

Hello, friends and enemies. I’ve gotten back into Scrabble this week. I read an article about a man using Scrabble to help him deal with going sober. It was a very good essay and an interesting exploration into some people just needing something for their brain to do all the time. But what I really got from this article was the link to a website where people play Scrabble (https://isc.ro/). This is just a regular, old-school website, not a stupid app like ScrabbleGo or Words with Friends. I like Scrabble but their app annoyed me on many levels! It made playing the game feel more like hitting the slots at a casino. Random men were always trying to use it as a way to hit on people (and by “people” I mean me, even though my profile photo was a cat). So far, no one has tried to hit on me on Internet Scrabble Club and I appreciate the low-tech nature of the site. I am having fun! I’m playing too much Scrabble because I can’t do anything without really doing a thing. If you want to play with me, let me know! My screen name is linzomatic.

Current Events

Hey, so, I’m really worried about Trump telegraphing the fact that he intends to be dictator for (the rest of his) life and that he is presumably planning to install an autocratic regime. He told a crowd that they “won’t have to vote anymore” if they vote him into office this time. I don’t think he’s being hyperbolic; I really think that’s his goal. We’ve already seen the ways that Trump-aligned Republicans are trying to suppress the vote and sway the upcoming election in his favor, so I see no reason not to take him literally. I’m sitting here grimacing trying to think of what to say. I think we can all agree that no one wants this future.

As everyone knows by now but I must reiterate to introduce my paragraph, Kamala Harris picked Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate. This man has a certain wholesomeness to him that is borne out in a lot of his policies. He signed a bill into law to provide free meals at schools and another that provides free menstrual products to students. Those things alone make me want to vote for him. He is, obviously, not perfect because no one can be in this political system. While he does seem to be a big climate proponent, he also allowed a “new tar sands pipeline to pass through [indigenous] treaty-protected lands—after explicitly promising he wouldn’t.” Unfortunately, like nearly every politician in this country, Walz is a pro-Israel guy. I’m so deeply conflicted about this election because so many people are saying that voting third party is the only way to show politicians that we are not okay with financing a genocide. Harris doesn’t seem inclined to hear pro-Palestinian protesters out and hasn’t shown any movement in that direction (even though, according to an analysis by the IMEU Policy Project, more voters would show up for her “if she pledges to stop weapons to Israel” or “if Biden secures a ceasefire”). On the other hand, Harris would absolutely be a better president than Trump and we might actually get some decent governing out of her. She recently announced some big policies that sound really great and she is certainly the candidate that will be better for the LGBT community. I don’t want to vote for someone who is still supporting a genocide but where are the alternatives? Our system is broken.

Books and Other Words

I read Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots and I enjoyed it even though it wasn’t exactly what I expected. I thought it was going to be a wacky, mad-cap, Venture Brothers-style take on superheroes but it was a little more Watchmen/The Boys. The main character starts out as a temp worker for super villains—because someone has to do all the administrative work of professional aggression. After a super hero breaks her leg while she’s serving as an extra during a villain’s press conference, she becomes very interested in the cost of all this caped crusading. She starts a blog and tallies up how much it costs every time a hero knocks down a building during a fight, for example. Eventually, this gets her picked up by a major villain and she gets a full-time gig running what’s basically a team dedicated to psychological warfare against heroes. It’s an interesting story and I’m curious to see what happens in the next book.

Moonbound by Robin Sloan is essentially a hero’s journey set over 11,000 years in the future where all animals can talk and beavers are the stewards of the earth’s climate and there’s a college built around a worm-goddess who lives at the bottom of a well (yes, really). I thought this book was really cool. I love seeing ideas for how society can be completely re-imagined (especially after catastrophes) and it’s especially interesting to consider that over such a huge time scale. The book mentions entire civilizations that rose and fell between the humans of today (known as the “Anth,” which I assume is short for “anthropecene”) and the story’s present day. This book has questing, dragon slaying, wizards, a sword in a stone, and a whole city that runs on recycled materials—and none of those things show up in the way you think they might.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

  • U.S. Athletes Are Taking Full Advantage of Free Healthcare in Olympic Village via SI. Can’t afford health insurance? Have you considered qualifying for the Olympics instead? This is like a dystopian short story except it is real life. I’m glad these athletes are getting health care and taking advantage of what’s available at the Olympics but for fucks’ sake, could this country consider taking care of its citizens?
  • Newsom threatens to take money from counties that don’t reduce homelessness via LA Times. Gavin Newsom is big mad about homelessness and not in what I would consider a normal way. Since the Supreme Court said that cities can basically criminalize homelessness, Newsom has been really aggressive about removing homeless people. I, too, would like to see a reduction in homelessness but people need somewhere to go. They can’t afford to live anywhere! Private equity firms are buying up a lot of houses and inflation is kicking us all in the ass. According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, “As many as 40%–60% of people experiencing homelessness have a job, but housing is unaffordable because wages have not kept up with rising rents.” People can be working and still not afford a place to live. And now Gavin Newsom is out there personally clearing out homeless people. What is he trying to do? Look tough so he can run for president in 2028? No one is impressed!
  • The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it via Pluralistic. Here’s another good article from Cory Doctorow. Google lost its antitrust case! It’s officially a monopoly. The question of course is: what are they going to do about it?
  • This disused mine in Finland is being turned into a gravity battery to store renewable energy via Euro News. This is really cool! The idea is that excess wind or solar power could life weights up the mine shaft, and the weights could be slowly released later on to generate power.

Languages

paperback book: El beso de la mujer araña
El beso de la mujer araña

Inspired by my Wikipedia activities, I read El beso de la mujer araña by Manuel Puig (English version: Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was mentioned in the LGBT literature in Argentina article that I translated. I was only somewhat plagued by Argentina-specific Spanish words (Argentina’s Spanish is really something else) and fortunately I was already familiar enough with the country’s history to have some context for the story. El beso de la mujer araña is told almost entirely through dialog between two characters, Molina and Valentín, sharing a prison cell. A lot of the novel involves Molina narrating movies he has seen in great detail for Valentín to help pass the time. I don’t have any serious things to say about this book but I did like it and I am proud of myself for doing some more reading in Spanish, especially of a classic gay work.

Corporal Form

Last week I had a follow up with my GI doctor to talk about my liver health (previously discussed here, here, and here). She asked how my liver was doing, which … you can’t know how the liver is doing. That’s the whole thing. That’s why I had to do a biopsy. So I laughed and basically said, how would I know? It turned out she really wanted to ask me if I’d lost any weight. We went through our usual song and dance of her being like “lose weight … OR ELSE!” and I’m like “that sounds like an eating disorder but I’m making some healthy adjustments in other ways.” She did reveal that all my liver numbers are actually quite good and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have been referred to her or done a biopsy and everything, so I’m not sure why she’s being so aggressive with me. It’s like she wants to be the one who magically inspired me to lose 200 pounds. Sorry, but it’s not gonna happen.

Relatedly, something that is kind of becoming my Roman empire is the link between microplastics and obesity. Short version: we are inadvertently consuming quite a lot of microplastics and there seems to be some scientifically documented connection between microplastics and the risk for obesity. I’m not trying to say here that microplastics are the only reason I’m fat. That isn’t the case. But I do think the whole idea of weight and losing weight is much more complicated than we like to pretend it is. There are people who are skinny no matter what they eat and people who are fat no matter what they eat. I’ve written before about my body image and reconciling some of my adolescent shame on the subject of fatness. Something I’ve also been turning over in my mind is the idea that I may be fat because of my many ailments, not afflicted by ailments because I’m fat (as the doctors love to suggest). One example: I didn’t get diagnosed with sleep apnea until 2018, when I was 32. I’m fairly certain I’ve had sleep apnea since I was a teenager, which means I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in at least 15 years. When you don’t get energy from sleep, the only other way to get energy is food. When you’re tired, it’s also very hard to plan ahead and make a lot of complicated decisions about what to cook and when. So, I don’t know. I’m not going to devote a whole essay to this subject right now, but I do wish people (including doctors) would develop a little empathy and curiosity and remember that there is very little about anyone’s physical form that anyone has consciously chosen.

Knitting and Crafts

Speaking of my many ailments. I’ve been trying to settle back down and work on my knitting. My hobbies always end up on a rotation because I have too many. Lately I’ve been studying my languages and translating Wikipedia a lot, which has eaten up time I might otherwise be knitting. I realized, however, that part of the reason I’ve been avoiding it is because of my carpal tunnel! Pre-carpal tunnel diagnosis, I was noticing that I couldn’t knit for very long before my hand got all tingly. Now I am aware that this is carpal tunnel. I am trying to be good about wearing my wrist brace and do my stretches and we’ll see if it helps. I am tired of ailments.

Kitchen Witchery

I know I have shared multiple pizza photos here but sometimes I make pizza and I’m like “wow, that looks perfect” and I have to share again. So here is my latest pizza.

The only new recipe I tried in the last two weeks is braised chickpeas with zucchini and pesto from Smitten Kitchen. It’s topped with burrata and it tasted really good. Kirk said he would like to eat it again so it’s on my list of repeat recipes now. By the way, if anyone ever needs recipe ideas, I am still maintaining my recipe spreadsheet and it continues to gain power.

Cat Therapy

Now that I have two cats to honor, I wanted to create a more elaborate display. I bought this really cool shelf and Kirk helped me put it up in the bedroom. It’s now home to Viola’s and Huey’s remains, plus their paw prints and some photos and other sentimental bits. Nothing feels like enough but this will have to do.

A wall-mounted shelf with containers for Huey and Viola's ashes, their paw prints, and pictures of them both
Cat memorial shelf

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.

Two Weeks in the Life: August 4, 2024

Hello, friends and enemies. I was thinking, as I often do, about words this week. I was listening to a podcast where they mentioned “book tube” (the part of YouTube where people talk about books) and it occurred to me that the “tube” in YouTube is a reference to TVs, specifically the old CRT TVs, which used a big tube to make the TV go. Now we’re using “tube” as a suffix and it doesn’t really have any relationship to its original meaning, not unlike “-gate” as in Watergate (which, it should be noted, is the name of a hotel and not a literal gate). Unrelated but also word-related, I was considering the word “interesting.” Interesting is my ultimate compliment because I am at least a little curious about everything so for something to fully take up my attention, it’s serious. I realize I describe things as interesting a lot but I think most people use it as filler. It’s often used for “weird” just “I’m bored and want to say something noncommittal.” Not me though. I’m fucking interested.

Books and Other Words

I picked up The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi because the description said the main character is a translator and I think that’s neat. However, this book is horror and that’s not really my genre. We know something bad is happening so it’s not all that surprising when we get to the horrific thing, but I guess the real horror is the friends we made along the way, or something. The titular “Centre” is a very expensive language learning program in which learners spend 10 days in a sort-of monastic seclusion listening to recordings from a person speaking in their target language. Like magic, partway through the course, the learner suddenly finds themselves fluent and able to understand without having put in any apparent work. I won’t spoil the horror of it, but the novel is ultimately, I think, about colonialism and consumption. What happens when people from a country like England consume a developing country’s culture? How do we perceive people who are lower in the hierarchy—whatever the hierarchy may be—than we are? Furthermore, what would actually make us happy? These are all questions The Centre grapples with.

I was about two-thirds through Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time and puzzling over what, exactly, it was trying to tell me. I felt like I had cracked it, but then I read the acknowledgements and laughed. Bradley says she “became unhinged about various antique lads who died in the polar regions.” This book is actually a self-insert fanfic. In The Ministry of Time, a British intelligence agency has discovered a “time door” and they have pulled five individuals out of time. “Bridges” are agents assigned to each time traveler to acclimate them to the present. The story focuses one one bridge and her time expat, Graham Gore (his Wikipedia article has a photo [he’s attractive I guess, but he’s not the type to move me to write a whole novel]), the “antique lad” mentioned in the acknowledgements. In addition to polar explorer fanfic, one could also read this as yet another of our era’s warnings about global warming. We also meet characters from the future who briefly enlighten us about the relative uninhabitability of the earth; even the present is wracked by killer storms and unseasonable heat. I notice the climate crisis seeping into more and more of our fiction because it’s infiltrating our reality too. I think a traditional ending for this line of thought would be to say like “all our little choices add up,” and they do but you don’t need to get a lecture from me right now about what is ultimately a structural problem. Anyway, it was a fun read!

I was inspired to read The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen by this fascinating interview the author did with Anne Helen Petersen in Culture Study. The book is set in 19th century Finland, during a time when the Sami people were being slowly fenced in by settler culture. There are a lot of social and political threads in this story: the reindeer herders running into problems with farmers, the cult-like following that a local preacher has (and his way of preaching is not approved by the state church), young women trying to figure out where they fit into society. I thought this was a really interesting story and I’d love to read more about the Sami and this period. I am also curious about Pylväinen’s other novel, which is based on her childhood growing up in this little-known Finish offshoot of Christianity.

Tadek and the Princess is a novella that fills in some of the story for one of the characters from Alexandra Rowland’s A Taste of Gold and Iron, which I read a few weeks ago. It’s a very sweet and sentimental novella that gives us some backstory for Tadek’s childhood and expands on his relationship with the prince in the story’s present day. I may have cried a little but to be fair, I have been crying a lot this week.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

  • ICJ says Israel’s presence in Palestinian territory is unlawful via Al Jazeera. From the article, “The court said Israel has no right to sovereignty of the territories, is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and is impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination. It said other nations were obliged not to ‘render aid or assistance in maintaining’ Israel’s presence in the territory.” I’m glad we are, as a society, formally recognizing that what Israel is doing is wrong. Now we just need the U.S. government to stop sending them money.
  • Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that via The Guardian. I love to see people making information free! I’m looking forward to reading some of the articles in their Asymptote publication on translation and featuring translated literature.
  • Hacker Shows How to Get Free Laundry For Life via 404 Media. This is just a little feel-good story of a man getting fed up with shitty laundry machines stealing his cash and that man learning how to jailbreak the machine and run it without paying. The instructions are free and online for anyone to use.

Doing Stuff

Last weekend, Abby and I went to see a flamenco show. Flamenco dancing seems like a cousin of tap dancing in a way but it’s much more dramatic, and of course the dancing is connected to the other aspects of flamenco like the singing and the guitar playing. The show just had one dancer, although I kind of thought there would be more. It was very interesting to see her perform with a bravado we normally only see in men. Women’s artistic performances are often smiling or sexual in some way, however I would say this was a sensual, but not a sexualized, performance. I also realized this is definitely not an American art because they don’t make all the performers give a big, fake smile the whole time. The singers and musicians they just had neutral expressions (or even looked a little mad at times but that’s probably just what their faces felt like doing). There was a little girl in the row in front of us who immediately started stomping around after seeing the dancer. I love that. I love the idea of seeing something and immediately proclaiming “that looks fun, let me try!” I wish we had more of that attitude to go around.

Languages

This week I finished translating an article on LGBT literature in Mexico from Spanish to English, which I am proud of. I guess I have decided that queer literature is the subject I want to focus my Spanish to English translations on at the moment, and I’m having fun with it. After that I did a much shorter translation for the book that’s considered the seminal gay Mexican novel, El vampiro de la colonia Roma. I was searching for an English version of the book to find out if it had a different title (translated book titles are not always a direct translation), but I found an obituary for Luis Zapata, the author, which suggested that someone ought to do a new English translation. I haven’t even read this book yet but I’m like “wow, what if I did it!” I don’t know if I’ll do this but I do want to find out if you can just translate something then shop it around to a publisher. How does that all work? Perhaps this really can be my future.

I would also like to note that my translations from Icelandic Wikipedia are continuing. Among other articles, I’ve recently translated pieces about Vestari-Jökulsá (a glacier river) and Tindastóll (a mountain). I’m staying committed to the Icelandic geography beat for now.

Kitchen Witchery

I made a some really good recipes over the last two weeks! We loved this corn and asparagus pasta with ricotta, even though I accidentally ordered a quarter pound of asparagus instead of a whole pound, so it was a little light on the vegetable component. The recipe worked really well with this wide, tubular pasta. I’ve been trying to eat more tofu so I made this tofu with peanut sauce and we really liked that too! You basically can’t go wrong with a peanut sauce. To use the baby lima beans I got in my bean club subscription, I tried this slow-cooker butter beans with pecorino and pancetta recipe. It is pretty good but I made it too brothy (Of course. I always overestimate how much water to add.). I decided to treat it like a soup and tossed in some leftover raviolis and I was quite satisfied with that.

Cat Therapy

A whimsical black and white cat stuffed animal perched on my couch
cat-shaped friend

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. Regular readers already know that Huey died last week. I’ve been missing her a lot. I am not as emotionally wrecked as when Viola died since I at least had a little warning. I got out a lot of crying in her last couple of days. I am still crying though. I wish I could have taken a week off work to mope but there is no bereavement leave when your pets die. I got so used to Huey chilling on that spot in the couch that I had to put a different blanket there because I kept expecting to see her on the usual one. I also bought a little stuffed animal to keep me company on the couch because that’s just the kind of person I am. It’s very hard to find a tuxedo cat stuffed animal and this was the best we could do. He’s a little goofy looking, but he’s cute.

Fritz seems to be fine with the current state of affairs. He has ascended to only-child status and is glad he doesn’t have to chase anyone out of “his” bedroom. Feel free to place bets for how long he will remain an only child.

Here’s one more Huey photo for the road.

Huey the cat on my chest. My face is partially visible and it's probably obvious that I'm crying
last call for Huey photos

Obituary: Huey Halsell, May 8, 2008–July 26, 2024

Huey, sitting on the bed with her front legs crossed, staring intently at the camera

My beloved cat Huey—my first born, if you will—passed today. She had been in increasingly rough shape for the last few months, which I am only really seeing now while reviewing the photos I have of her. She had been struggling for bladder issues on and off for months and we thought she was in the throes of a really bad UTI. We started another round of UTI medicine a few days ago, but it didn’t seem to help. Yesterday morning, I realized it had been a day or two since she’d eaten or had any water. She was lying on the floor in what seemed to be a wet spot and I realized the situation was much more dire than I had thought. We went to the vet that morning and got the bad news that she probably had lymphoma (or perhaps another cancer, the veterinarian wasn’t certain it was lymphoma but was certain about the cancer). Her breathing was labored and she could barely stand. They gave her some fluids and a steroid and said the steroids might perk her up and function as palliative care. In fact, the steroid did nothing at all and she was barely able to stand or move in her final days. This morning, she hadn’t moved from where I’d placed her the night before and she seemed tired and miserable. We took her to the vet to end the suffering this afternoon. It was a rough day but I was glad I got to spend one more day with her, knowing what was coming, and make sure she felt as loved and comfortable as possible.

I got Huey in 2008 when I was living in Seattle. I had been desperately wanting a cat. I’d tried adopting a black cat with a kinked tail about a year beforehand who named Caesar. However, I had to give him up because the fiend kept biting the bridge of my nose when I slept and I soon became delirious and irritated. Huey came from a friend of my then-boyfriend when the friend’s cat had a kitten. Once Huey was big enough, I picked her up in a cardboard carrier and we took a 30-minute bus ride back to my apartment. She screamed the whole way. I had planned to adopted a second kitten from the same person, but the next litter (of also just one kitten) died along with the mother before she was old enough to be adopted. So, sometimes I like to think Huey was narrowly spared the same fate.

Huey was an adorable little kitten and unfortunately, I do not have any photos available. They are all on an external hard drive that my computer refuses to acknowledge (actually I found ONE that I had uploaded to my blog previously. Phew). However, I can tell you she has always had a bitchy resting face that makes everyone who sees her think she’s mad and a hater. She may have been a hater but she loved me and she wasn’t nearly as mad as everyone thought. She just wanted her space. She wasn’t interested in any people besides me and truly never even warmed up to Kirk even though he has been in her life since 2012 and, in fact, he helped take very good care of her.

Queen Huey, as I came to call her, was the doyenne of the household and scorned all who approached her from her throne on the end of the couch. Huey went through a lot, including moving from Seattle to southern California, then partially doubling back to Sacramento. She endured siblings that she did not ask for or want: Viola and then Fritz after her. She hated to be brushed and she loved to sit on top of me, something she started doing as a kitten and never stopped. She used to lie on my chest while I was in bed but in the last couple years, her arthritis made jumping onto the bed a difficult proposition (plus Fritz emphasized that the bed was his). She converted to lying on me while I was on the couch and got in the habit of what I can only describe as holding my hand.

It feels terribly cruel that pets lead such short lives. I had hoped she’d make it to 20 but it was not meant to be. I just hope she was happy enough. I always feel like I didn’t do enough: wasn’t home enough, didn’t play enough, didn’t let her go outside and lie in the sun on the patio enough. However, looking back at some of these photos, I have to believe she was happy and knew she was loved. She will leave a great void in my heart. She’s been with me for nearly my adult life and I don’t know what I’ll do without her sharp meows meeting me at the door whenever I return home. I’m taking comfort in the fact that she’s no longer in pain because she was truly suffering, especially this last week. I hope wherever she is, she’s getting all the ice water, string cheese, shower water, and whipped cream that her little heart desires.

Two Weeks in the Life: July 21, 2024

Me and my sister Mia, smiling forthe camera
sisters

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

tweet by @screaminbutcalm dated March 12, 2019 that reads me sowing: haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
a classic tale

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.

Screenshot of Morphine Love Dion, a Latina, from season 16 of RuPaul's Drag Race. The subtitle reads "The gringos are fighting"
The gringos are fighting

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.

The 2024 Republican platform on abortion

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.