Hello, friends and enemies. I really considered not posting anything today, but you know I love to stay on a schedule, so I’ve womaned up and done the dang thing. The last two weeks have been surprisingly busy at work, which, unfortunately, makes it pretty much impossible for me to have energy to do other things (because autism is a disability!). Last week, I did a big certification for accessibility compliance, which is cool and good and important to my job, but it was time consuming. This week I unexpectedly had a bunch of work involving creating an formatting a 50-page form. It is part of my job to do things like this but FIFTY PAGES of form is my personal hell. Especially when I’m informed it needs to be done immediately and I end up working until nine at night! Hateful! Ebeneezer Scrooge-ass behavior! I am contracted to the federal government, so they’ve been freaking out this week under the treat of government shutdown and the impending regime change. It’s a whole thing. I’m hoping everyone will chill out this week and I can have energy to get caught up on the things I actually care about like my Wikipedia translations and my reading. I had planned to do way more reading this week but alas!
Current Events
In my last post, I wrote about the United Health Care CEO’s killing and how the police hadn’t identified a suspect. As anyone who is at all online knows, the police have since arrested Luigi Mangione and charged him with multiple crimes, including terrorism. Mangione has already fully converted into a folk hero and the jokes and discourse over the last two weeks have truly been a source of delight. However, I have to remind everyone (including myself) that we don’t know if he actually did this. We have to assume he is innocent until/if he is found guilty. There are many documented cases of police planting evidence on people. The police say that they found Luigi with a gun and a manifesto, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. It may be real, but we don’t know.
It’s insane to me that the killing of literally one man with no apparent threats to anyone else is considered terrorism. According to the K-12 School Shooting Database (the bleakest website name in human history), there have been 327 school shootings this year alone. Where are the terrorism charges for school shooters? Where are the terrorism charges for the NRA lobbyists who insist that we can’t have gun control? Where are the terrorism charges for congress, who is not doing anything to stop this problem? Or for congress again for sending $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel in a year to support their genocide? Is this not terrorism? Our country is obsessed with terrorism, but it’s only terrorism when it threatens the status quo or can be used to whip up the populace into a jingoistic frenzy and erode our freedoms (shout out to the Patriot Act and the Transportation and Security Administration). I don’t know anyone who feels terrorized by a CEO’s death. The mood on the ground is everyone shrugging and saying “good.” However, many people feel terrorized by violence in schools or other public places. A whole generation of children has grown up with the omnipresent treat of violence at school. This whole fucking country is terroristic, but sure, let’s charge one guy with terrorism. That will fix the problem (big sarcasm).
Whether or not Mangione killed the CEO is now totally irrelevant. He is now a symbol for standing up to class warfare. The last year in particular (and I guess the last 30 years in general, from Reagan and neo-liberalism onward) has really worn people in this country down. Groceries are fucking expensive. Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy (the United States is not quite the only country with this problem, but we’re the only one having it on such a large scale). Productivity continues to outpace wages and the federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hour since 2009 and it’s impossible for most people to afford their rent. Meanwhile, the US is spending more on its military than the next nine countries combined, and the top ten richest guys in the world doubled their wealth during the pandemic. This is our money. All of these funds should be paying for society but instead we’re funneling it to a handful of rich assholes and the world’s biggest war machine. This is a sustainable way to run a society. Whether or not Luigi did it, can we be surprised if, under these conditions, he is the spark that burns the whole place down?
Books and Other Words
Can’t Pay Won’t Pay by the Debt Collective is a treatise exploring why we should stop paying our bills. Specifically, the Debt Collective calls for debtors to unionize and stop paying off exploitative debts like student loans and medical debt. It’s a form of collective action that “fights against predatory financial contracts and for the universal provision of public goods, including healthcare, education, housing, and retirement.” The argument is that our society has privatized things that should be public, which is part of why we’re all broke and in debt. One way to fight back would be to just … stop paying. The Collective suggests that people who owe the same creditors can form unions together. While an individual is, so to speak, owned by the bank, many individuals can bring any given bank or creditor to their knees. It may sound radical but consider that this idea was basically seen as a joke just ten years ago, yet we did see Biden attempt to pardon some student debt, a reminder that activism is a long game. The authors point out that forming a collective of debtors isn’t that radical; the “creditors are already organized—that’s why they got bailed out in 2008 and 2020.” The book also goes into a brief history of debt and privatization in the US. One painful example is that tuition at the University of California used to be totally free, but Reagan (when he was our governor), pushed for charging. This is generally seen as a response to Black people in particular and people of color in general seeking higher education. Reagan and racism strike again! The Debt Collective reminds us that bankers are profiting from our debts while the average American dies thousands of dollars in debt. It doesn’t make sense and people are suffering, which is why we need a radical change in how we approach financing public goods.
I read Katherine May’s Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times because I kept seeing people online rave about how transformative it is. I did like the book and thought the writing itself was lovely, but the idea that sometimes we just have to rest is not particularly new to me. I’ve already engaged with this concept through books like How to Do Nothing, so while I agree with this book’s concept, it didn’t bring about a major paradigm shift for me. What actually stuck out most to me in this book is that this a chronicle of a highly masked autistic woman who reaches a breaking point. I’m not giving May an armchair diagnosis by the way—she mentions early in the book that she was undiagnosed growing up. That really framed this whole book for me. She is beset by a mysterious illness that is forcing her to rest and take it easy and not go to work as a university professor. Yeah, girl, it’s probably the autism! Being a teacher is a high-masking gig and it will take a toll. She says that, when she had to begin “wintering” herself, “I couldn’t do as much as I’d hoped. I couldn’t be the person I’d imagined: cheerful, energetic, summery. I struggled.” A few paragraphs later, she says she saw this episode coming and, in anticipation, “I began to treat myself like a favoured child: with kindness and love … I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important.” Baby, that is autistic burnout!! Thinking of periods of burnout like this sounds like it’s helpful for the author, but I wonder if she would be better served by recognizing that she has a whole-ass disability and her needs are reasonable even during her personal summers so the winter doesn’t hit her like a ton of bricks.
I don’t have a lot of internet reading to share this week (see above re: busy) but I will say that this woman living in the mountains and inventing cheeses is living one of my dreams.
Instead of links to read, here are some things you can do or donate to:
- Top Ten EFF Digital Security Resources for People Concerned About the Incoming Trump Administration
- California Tribal Fund, supporting California Native non-profits and tribal programs.
- Donate or get involved in the Debt Collective. They use funds for organizing and to purchase and forgive debts.
- Books not Bars for the holidays. This is a fundraiser to get books to people in prison.
Doing Stuff
Last Sunday, my friend Lemon and I had a holiday cookie party to finish out this year’s series of food-themed gatherings. We asked everyone to bring a cookie and Lemon and I made some actual food so we didn’t go into a sugar coma. I made this lentil baked ziti recipe, which was really good (though I did add more ricotta than the recipe called for and extra seasonings). For treats, I brought some extra-Christmassy rice krispie treats and toffee (not pictured). Everyone made great cookies and it was fun to hang out. I also have to point out that I finally wore one of the things I knitted a couple of years ago. For whatever reason, this sweater vest had never made it into an actual outfit before, so here it is.
Kitchen Witchery
I’ve managed to make some normal food among all the treats. We enjoyed this butternut squash and caramelized onion galette with some red beans and rice (recipe from The Bean Book). I also tried this NYT Cooking recipe for cheesy chili crisp white beans (because NYT is obsessed with cheesy, beany things right now, but I’m not mad). I ate it for lunch for a few days and I enjoyed it. Although I think it’s more of an idea than something that really needs a recipe. It’s just beans and seasoning with cheese on top! I tried making a new treat, this salted maple honeycomb. It’s very good but super crumbly! I think I am going to embrace the crumblies and put it on top of ice cream. I also returned to everyone’s favorite treat, million peso shortbread, based on this recipe. I finally realized that I have to slice it before the chocolate is hard and fully set so that I can get it into nice squares instead of random shards. Not sure why it took me so long to figure that out, but we’re here now.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. It’s been cold so Fritz has been in my biz. The results are very cute.
