Hello, friends and enemies. Hey, so, everything is happening. 2025 really decided to start with a bang. I would love to believe that we’re getting the year’s madness out of the way and it is going to be smooth sailing from now to December. Unfortunately, Trump is being inaugurated for his second term on Monday so I have no illusions about what is to come.
L.A. Is on Fire
Two huge fires started in the Los Angeles metro after a windstorm snapped power lines. The fires are still burning. Cal Fire reports that the Palisades fire has burned almost 24,000 acres and is 39% contained; the Eaton fire in Alta Dena burned over 14,000 acres but is about two-thirds contained. That’s a tremendous amount of destruction and a huge health risk for everyone in the valley breathing that air.
Disasters are happening everywhere all the time but it feels much more emotionally close to home to see L.A. on fire. I grew up in southern California and I still live in the state so it is feels very real to see it on fire. A lot of people, Californians and non-Californians alike are emotionally attached to the area since we’ve been seeing it on TV our whole lives (one friend sent me a link about the status of the house they used for the Golden Girls being at risk, for example). It’s also very scary to see a disaster affect such a populated area and feel totally powerless about it. This tweet I included in the emergency kit post last week basically sums up the mood. L.A. is not that far away from me! And it’s very close to some of my family.
Aside from the global warming of it all, I remain concerned about housing issues. I feel like I’m repeating myself, but I will say again that we are operating in a climate where homelessness is criminalized and forced prison labor is legal. The Onion has already published an article titled LAPD Arrests Everyone Who Lost Home In Fire, so I’m far from the only one thinking about this. We already have a housing crisis in this state and a bunch of working-class people’s homes just burned down. Seems like that could end badly! Where will all those people go? Will the replacement houses be affordable? Landlords are already price gouging. It’s despicable behavior. If your reaction to a natural disaster is to immediately raise rents, you should not be allowed to be a landlord ever again and should probably get in line for the guillotine.
I hope that the state finds the political will after this disaster to raise wages for incarcerated fire fighters and make it possible for them to get firefighting jobs upon release. If the state government can’t figure it out now, when there’s more good feelings for firefighters than ever, then we’re never going to get it. Even Kim Kardashian wants them to get paid more. If this fire had come before the election, maybe the subject would have gotten enough people to vote for ending involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know it’s hard for me to do nothing when things are bothering me. Last weekend I wrote this emergency kit post about how to be ready to go if something terrible happens. I hope I never need it but I feel better knowing I’m reasonably prepared to deal with a disaster. I’ve also seen a lot of ways to donate to people affected by the fires. A number of people have already aggregated a lot of GoFundMe campaigns and other ways to directly support people because it takes a long time to get insurance and FEMA money. Here are some ways you can send money to people who need it right now.
- Directory of GoFundMes for displaced Black families, displaced Latine families, displaced Filipino families, and displaced disabled people.
- The Anti-Recidivism Coalition is running a campaign to give money to incarcerated fire crews.
- Pasadena Humane Society, which has taken in lots of animals displaced from the fire in Alta Dena, is taking donations.
- The Open Air Worker Emergency Fund is offering one-time cash assistance to outdoor workers impacted by the fires.
- A big list of fundraising campaigns and ways to help in the Culture Study newsletter. People have shared a lot in the comments too.
For anyone affected by the fires, I am not the best source but I wanted to share a couple of things I’ve seen:
- Mutual Aid L.A. resource list organized by date and location. There are lots of clothing drives and other distribution events.
- The LA Times published a big list of places giving out free or discounted goods and services to anyone displaced by the fires.
Just about all these campaigns and resources are mutual aid. This is us being here for our fellow citizens. The government is not prepared to help at the scale and speed that is needed (I saw on instagram that the city of LA was asking a mutual aid group for masks. What? Doesn’t the city have money for this shit?). Consider this yet another reminder that we all have to take care of each other. Donating even five dollars to someone who needs it can help. We can’t all do everything for everyone, but if we all do something for someone, we’re going to get through this.
Social Media Apocalypse
Meta and TikTok have both been serving as sources of concern and insanity.
Moderation is Over
Facebook declared this week that content moderation is over, offering us more evidence that we cannot rely on tech companies to mediate our human relationships. If you missed it, Zuckerberg said Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) said it will replace fact checking with “a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes.” The platform will no longer be moderating hate speech, which includes “removing rules that forbid insults about a person’s appearance based on race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease.” This means that the internet experience is about to get really ugly for anyone other than heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender white men. A former Meta employee said that they “really think this is a precursor for genocide.” This is not hyperbole given that facebook has played a role in fanning genocidal flames before. Some experts are saying that Meta is basically repeating the behavior that led to the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, and “laying the narrative ground work for … mass deportations” here in the US.
We really have to stop using services that are taking advantage of us and making the world worse on purpose. I thought for sure I had written about this in detail before but the closest posts I had were about not using Spotify anymore and some information about internet privacy when the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. Facebook is a shambolic mess of a platform that is forcing AI slop into our feeds and keeping our friends from seeing our posts. I’ve been trying to organize events through facebook recently and many people told me that facebook didn’t even show them the event that they were explicitly invited to. It’s not even doing the thing it was ostensibly built to do.
I know the concept of not using facebook or instagram is daunting and scary. What if my friends never talk to me again? I get it! I quick facebook in 2014 and stayed away for a year or two until roller derby dragged my ass back into the ecosystem. However, using social media is not a sustainable way to live or connect with others. We trade our data and sanity and convenience. It’s so easy to see a funny video and send it to my friends and when they say “haha so true,” we are strengthening our friendship. We also didn’t have to make any effort and, it turns out, relationships take energy, even if they’re with our most favorite people. Effort is at a premium because it is so difficult to live. We’re all working a ton and managing our households and trying to clean and cook and exercise and go to the dentist every six months. No one was meant to do all this alone (or even with just one other person). Our social lives are what we end up sacrificing. Facebook and instagram and tiktok are here to sweep up the little pieces of socialization we can fit into the day.
I have a few suggestions for how to reduce our dependence on Meta and other social media. I think the hardest thing to replace is groups. We used to have forums! Anyone could start a website and put a forum in it. Then Reddit and facebook replaced them all. I don’t know how to replace the local Buy Nothing group that operates through facebook or the Rancho Gordo Bean Club group. That’s okay. I don’t have to know everything, but I do know that spending less time on social media and finding real ways to interact with your people is a net good. Any time we spend outside of the Meta (or Twitter or whatever) ecosystem is time that belongs to ourselves.
Here are some suggestions for connecting with friends and family without a technocratic middleman. I know they require more work than giving a heart to a post, but the upside is you will get to have a real conversation instead of feeling like you’re posting into an empty void. Call me a diva, but I would rather have a conversation with three people than get 50 likes on my post.
- Text or instant messaging: I am surely dating myself, but remember hanging out on AIM, MSN messenger, or ICQ and chatting with your friends? Wasn’t that great? Good news, this technology is still available and you can talk to your friends all the time (and I do!). Get phone numbers and use your phone’s text message or use a dedicated, encrypted messaging app like Signal. I enjoy Signal because the things I say don’t get turned into ads!
- Letters or email: Yes, I am basically just suggesting long text messages (lol). Honestly, even sending birthday cards or holiday cards is a good way to stay in touch. I realized this year that I could send holiday cards just to tell people I’m glad they’re my friends. That was always allowed! If managing your address book feels too hard, you can use Postable to get your friends’ addresses and send cards. Though, in my experience, if you just ask a friend for their address and tell them you want to send them something, no one will be mad. In fact, they’re going to be happy that you want to send them something!
- Federated social media is supposed to be an antidote to corporate sites like facebook. I’m not an expert on this, but the idea is that you can leave a social media site and take all your connections and history with you, even if your friends don’t leave. This might sound crazy after 15+ years of facebook use, but it is possible using the magic of computers. Cory Doctorow has two posts that explain the concept well, one using the metaphor of a fire escape and another that talks about the benefits of federation more broadly. So far, the only federated social media spaces I know about are Pixelfed, an instagram replacement, and Mastadon.
- Make real-world plans with your friends. Again, I know this is very hard because we are all busy. But this is the “community” they’re talking about when they say “you need to build community.” Your friends are your community! One of the best things to do is have a standing activity. You know I get tired fast, so I, personally, would not commit to anything weekly, but I love this article on having a weekly spaghetti night with whoever wants to show up. I have been hosting quarterly food parties with my friend (Souper Bowl II is coming up!). I have another friend who comes over for dinner every other week. Facebook can’t and shouldn’t attempt to replace this shit! Make plans to get ice cream when a new flavor comes out at your favorite shop! Go see every new Keanu Reeves movie! I don’t know! There are literally no rules and life is supposed to be fun.
- Start your own blog or website. I am definitely biased because I’m running my own blog on a website that I own(!) and I think this is a great way to put thoughts into the world. I recognize that not everyone has the interest or technical knowledge to do all that. However, there are some easy options to set up your own blog or site. First, you can make a WordPress blog for free (WordPress is the system I use for my blog). Second, you can make a free website on neocities. Fellow internet natives probably remember GeoCities; neocities is using the same concept in an attempt to revive the internet and make it fun and interesting instead of a group of five websites containing screenshots of the other four.
- Sign up for newsletters. This one isn’t really a “family and friends” suggestion, but any artist, author, academic, local shop, etc. you follow on social media almost certainly has a newsletter and they are probably exhausted with trying to appease the algorithm. You can subscribe to their newsletters to keep up with them! Shameless reminder: you can subscribe to this blog and get it delivered to your email! Here’s the subscription page.
Just in case it needs to be said: I am also not perfect at any of this. It’s so much easier to use social media but I do think it isn’t helping us as much as we think. I say that as a low-energy being who really loves the internet and probably wouldn’t have nearly as many or as good friends as I do without it. I think it’s important that we are continuously interrogating how we use this technology that didn’t exist 20 years ago (I know facebook literally existed 20 years ago but the way it is now is unrecognizable from, say, 2004 facebook). We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to put some effort in the right direction.
The Propaganda Isn’t Working Like It Used To
TikTok, the preferred social media app of young people and people with ADHD (I assume. All those short videos have to be doing something for my neurodivergent comrades but I find them overwhelming), is being shut down in the U.S. as of today. I have not been following this story very closely because I don’t use TikTok, yet I do find it troubling that our government would rather ban a company from doing business here instead of pass actual regulations that would protect our data online. If TikTok is letting China access our data, why don’t we make it harder for any corporation to take our data? Ah, but then we have to regulate the Silicon Valley companies and they make too many campaign contributions.
Multiple people have argued that the real reason the US wants to ban TikTok is “because it has become a hub for progressive activism” In User Mag, Taylor Lorenz relays the findings from a study that found “TikTok is the only platform where left-leaning news influencers outnumber right-leaning ones. TikTok also has more than double the concentration of news content creators who identify as LGBTQ+ or advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and 73% of teens who identify as Democrats or lean left use TikTok, compared to 52% of teens who identify as Republican.” I think TikTok has shown people in the US a lot of information about other places that we wouldn’t have seen, or that would have been filtered through a different perspective. Through social media, and TikTok specifically, a lot of us heard directly from Palestinians, something we probably would not have been able to do otherwise. I’m sure this played a big part in motivating the student protests last spring, which seemed to really freak out our institutions and people in power.
There also seems to be a very real argument to be made that TikTok is being banned because Meta can’t compete with it (but … the free market! [sarcasm]) and has been spending tons of money to lobby against it. We know that Zuckerberg buys companies he can’t compete with or builds a copycat in the Meta ecosystem when he can’t. That’s why it’s so deeply hilarious that “In only two days, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu,” or Red Note, in English, which is kind of like a Chinese version of Instagram. The app is in Mandarin. It’s for Chinese people. TikTok users’ reactions can basically be summed up as:
There’s no telling if this will last, but the memes, for now, are extremely funny (lots of “My Chinese spy is here! I thought I’d lost you!”). People are apparently attempting to learn at least a little Mandarin to use the app, if Duolingo is any indication. This also seems to be the first time that Chinese people and Americans have been able to directly talk to each other en masse and we seem to be discovering that we’re not so different after all. Chinese people are asking questions like “is it true that Americans have to work two jobs, or is that just propaganda?” I appreciate that Chinese people, unlike many Americans, understand that they are subject to a lot of government propaganda, but unfortunately, we’re not beating the “need two jobs to live” allegations.
As funny as this all is, I am concerned that, especially for younger users, that they may not just be ironically embracing China. I get that the US is doing some terrible stuff and China and the US have an adversarial relationship. However, opposing the US doesn’t automatically make China good. I think individual people from our respective countries interacting is a straightforward good thing. China as a country though is actively committing genocide against the Uyghur people. The government is anti-LGBT (I also read a bit about this topic a few years ago in Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China). And have people already forgotten about the protests in Hong Kong? I am far from an expert on China and I know the US is not doing much better on human rights issues (we, too, are bankrolling a genocide, backsliding on LGBTQ rights, and squashing protest). I know we all love to be online, but I hope everyone can temper their China enthusiasm with a little reality. Although for now, we can at least enjoy the memes and envy their functioning rail system.
Books and Other Words
I am feeling good about having already read a whole book in Spanish this year (although I admittedly started it in December)! La nostalgia de la Mujer Anfibio by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade starts with a shipwreck on the shores of the Island in Sálvora off of Spain’s western coast the morning of Lucha’s wedding. Lucha does not want to get married and hooks up with one of the shipwrecked men, but goes on with the wedding anyway (wild choice!). The story goes on to narrate Lucha’s lack of connection to her daughter, who later moves to England, and the stronger connection she forges with her granddaughter, whom her daughter delivers to Lucha shortly before passing away. It’s still a little hard for me to get all the finer points of a novel in Spanish but I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to keep track of the plot a lot better than I have with books in the past. Perhaps I am learning something! The gist of the story is that all these old people in this small town are simmering with old grudges and secrets and it seems to be making them all miserable. Lucha’s daughter left because she was a lesbian (huge, open secret), Lucha’s husband always knew that their daughter wasn’t biologically his (big secret), and Lucha’s letters from her “shipwrecked lover” are forgeries (secrets and betrayal!). Things start to change when a hippy calling himself Ziggy Stardust comes to town and starts playing records for everyone in the town square to jog their memories. Cheers to the power of gay men bearing pop music?
I was unfortunately disappointed by Beans: A History by Ken Albala. You may think that a history of beans would be inherently boring, but no, I am interested in beans. I think this book should actually be called Beans: A Western Cultural History. It is organized into chapters about different types of beans, but nearly every chapter is stuck on the same thesis that beans in western culture have traditionally been a low-status food that people eschew when they can afford something better. Every chapter also came back around to any given bean’s usage in Europe or the US. Even the chapter on Phaseolus vulgaris, beans that originated in the Americas, mostly talks about Europe. We get a few pages about beans originating somewhere then we’re back to white people. Truly maddening. The closest this book gets to focusing on somewhere else is the chapter on soy, but even that does eventually migrate to what we’re doing with it in the west. I was interested in the parts that were about the history of a bean but how can there be a whole book about beans that glosses over so many parts of the world?
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors via Forward. Great, I can’t wait to get targeted for editing Wikipedia. I love (sarcasm again) the dichotomy of “Wikipedia is unreliable!” versus “People editing Wikipedia are actively harming us and should be targeted.” So stupid.
- The Year I Embraced the Potluck via Eater. 2024 was also the year I embraced the potluck and I loved it. I can’t wait for Souper Bowl II.
- Third Space? You Can’t Handle a Third Space. via Midwesthetic. Everyone says they want a third space (a community place that is not work or home), but people are unwilling to deal with the inherent discomfort of being in public. Community is necessary but not always easy.
- 2024 Word of the Year Is “Rawdog” via the American Dialect Society. I remain out here, rawdogging life.
- Threads of resistance: Knitting and embroidery are laden with stereotypes of domestic femininity – and the subversive potential for protest via Aeon. Fiber arts are art and they are cool and important.
Languages
I know I said I planned to read more in Spanish this year, and I am, but I did not plan to read Don Quijote in the original Spanish. Yet, here I am. My dear friend Lito wanted to read it this year and I decided to come along for the ride and the discussion (which, by the way, has been so much fun, even though I’m very behind on the reading). Since I can’t be normal about anything, I’m reading in Spanish. It is challenging but also not quite as terrible as I expected. I also didn’t expect it to be as funny as it is. I guess these classic works have staying power for a reason. It is definitely going to take me months to get through this, but I wanted to get it on the record that this is happening, as insane as that is.
Kitchen Witchery
I tried a baked oatmeal recipe because I eat oatmeal for breakfast but sometimes struggle to find the motivation to make a bowl of oatmeal every morning. This photo doesn’t look like much, but I was happy with how it turned out. I skipped the prescribed fruit and just did nuts on top, plus mixed in some flax meal. I had a version of this I was making with steel-cut oats but I realized that I don’t think those oats are doing my apparently extremely sensitive guts any favors.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. I remain obsessed with this creature.
