For decades, analysts have described this nation as a place of contradictions — a democracy with enormous potential but chronic instability, a country that celebrates its freedoms while struggling to protect them, a society that prides itself on resilience even as its institutions strain under the weight of their own history.
It is a country where citizens speak passionately about rights, but quietly admit they no longer trust the people in charge of safeguarding them. Where the constitution is revered as a national treasure, yet increasingly feels like a relic from a world that no longer exists. Where political leaders promise transformation but deliver stalemate, and where the public oscillates between hope and exhaustion.
A Government That Can’t Quite Govern
The legislature is a battleground of factions, alliances, and personal ambitions. Laws are proposed with great fanfare but rarely implemented with seriousness. Politicians campaign on reform, but once in office, they find themselves trapped in a system that rewards spectacle over substance.
The result is a government that appears active — always debating, always arguing, always announcing — yet struggles to produce outcomes that materially improve people’s lives.
A Judiciary Under Pressure
The courts are tasked with interpreting a constitution written in a different era, for a different society. Judges insist they are neutral arbiters, but their decisions often reflect the political storms swirling around them. Citizens argue over what the constitution means, but they agree on one thing: it is being asked to carry more weight than any document should.
Legal battles drag on for years. Precedents shift. Trust erodes.
A Security Crisis That Never Fully Ends
Violence is a constant undercurrent. In some regions, organized groups operate with alarming autonomy. In others, individuals radicalized by ideology or desperation commit acts that shake entire communities. The government responds with promises of reform, new strategies, new funding — yet the cycle continues.
People learn to live with a low‑grade fear. They avoid certain neighborhoods. They change their routines. They send their children to school with a quiet prayer.
Security is not absent. It is simply uneven.
An Economy of Winners and Losers
On paper, the nation is prosperous. Its industries are globally influential. Its cities are hubs of innovation and culture. But the prosperity is unevenly distributed. Wealth pools in certain regions and sectors, while others struggle with stagnation, underemployment, and rising costs.
The middle class feels squeezed. Young people feel priced out. Families work harder and fall further behind. Official statistics paint a picture of growth; lived experience tells a different story.
A Media Landscape That Thrives on Division
The media is loud, fragmented, and deeply polarized. Outlets cater to ideological tribes, reinforcing existing beliefs rather than challenging them. Sensationalism outperforms nuance. Conspiracy theories spread faster than corrections. Citizens live in parallel realities, each convinced the other is misinformed.
Information is abundant. Understanding is scarce.
A Culture of Fatigue
People are tired. Tired of corruption. Tired of violence. Tired of political theater. Tired of being told the system is working when their daily lives suggest otherwise. They love their country, but they fear its trajectory. They believe in democracy, but they question whether it can still deliver on its promises.
And yet, they cling to the national myth — the belief that their country is destined for greatness, that its flaws are temporary, that its challenges can be overcome with enough willpower and unity.
Hope persists, even when evidence falters.
You guys totally knew I was talking about Mexico, right? 😉
A series of concentrated personnel actions across the federal government has created an unusual pattern. The changes are not uniform. They are not happening across all agencies. And if they continue at their current scale, the operational effects will be significant.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has faced repeated attempts at large‑scale dismissals, some of which have been paused by federal courts. The agency was designed to operate with continuity and a degree of insulation from political pressure.
If the firings proceed:
Case backlogs involving fraud, predatory lending, and credit‑card disputes would grow.
Supervisory examinations of financial institutions would slow, reducing oversight.
Enforcement actions could stall, allowing unresolved consumer‑protection violations to linger.
The agency’s ability to respond to emerging financial scams would be reduced.
The CFPB’s mandate is broad. A diminished workforce would affect millions of consumers, often in ways that are not immediately visible.
Central Intelligence Agency
The CIA is undergoing one of the largest personnel reductions in decades. Officers across multiple directorates have been told to resign or face termination. Some actions have been temporarily halted by the courts, but the broader effort continues.
If the firings proceed:
Operational continuity would be disrupted, particularly in long‑running intelligence programs.
Recruitment pipelines would narrow, affecting future staffing.
Analytical units could lose subject‑matter expertise built over years.
Foreign‑partner relationships might be strained if liaison officers rotate out without replacements.
Internal oversight and compliance functions could weaken.
Intelligence agencies rely on institutional memory. Rapid reductions create gaps that take years to repair.
Department of Defense
The Pentagon has seen significant personnel removals, particularly among senior military leaders and civilian defense employees. Reporting indicates a pattern consistent with the changes at the CFPB and CIA.
If the firings proceed:
Strategic planning offices would lose experienced staff.
Procurement and contracting processes could slow, affecting readiness.
Civilian oversight of military programs might weaken.
Training and doctrine development could be delayed.
Coordination with allied defense institutions might be affected by turnover.
Defense agencies are large, but they are not immune to the effects of rapid personnel loss.
Where Firings Are Not Occurring
Several agencies show no signs of similar activity:
State Department: Routine turnover only.
Department of Education: Stable staffing.
Department of Transportation: No large‑scale personnel actions.
Social Security Administration: Normal fluctuations.
National Institutes of Health: No evidence of workforce reductions beyond standard attrition.
The absence of firings in these agencies underscores that the current actions are targeted, not systemic.
If the Pattern Holds
If the concentrated firings at the CFPB, CIA, and Defense continue, the effects will not be immediate. They will accumulate. The common thread across these agencies is the reliance on specialized expertise — analysts, investigators, intelligence officers, compliance staff, and senior civilian leaders.
Losing them quickly creates operational gaps that are difficult to fill. Replacing them takes time. Rebuilding institutional knowledge takes longer.
A Developing Picture
For domestic readers, the implications are direct: agencies responsible for consumer protection, intelligence, and national security are undergoing rapid change. For international readers, the developments offer a view into how American institutions respond under pressure and how courts act as a counterweight.
The personnel actions are ongoing. The legal challenges continue. And the operational consequences — if the firings proceed — will unfold over months and years, not days.
I’ll continue tracking the changes as they develop.
There are cases that seize the public imagination not because of their brutality, but because of the unsettling questions they leave in their wake. The Reiner case is one of them. A young man from a prominent family, a double homicide, and a courtroom appearance that lasted only minutes — yet the ripples continue to spread.
In the early days after the killings, the narrative was simple, almost too simple: a privileged son, a horrific act, and a community demanding answers. But as more details emerged, the story shifted. Not toward exoneration, but toward comprehension. Toward the uncomfortable recognition that sometimes the most dangerous place a person can be is inside their own mind.
Reiner had been diagnosed with schizophrenia years before the tragedy. He had been medicated, monitored, and treated. And then, in the weeks leading up to the killings, something changed. His medication was adjusted — the specifics sealed by court order, the timing left deliberately vague. But anyone familiar with the fragile architecture of psychiatric treatment knows that the danger lies not in the dosage, but in the transition. The liminal space between one medication and the next, when the old drug has left the bloodstream and the new one has not yet taken hold. It is in that gap that reality can warp.
People imagine psychosis as a loss of morality. It is not. It is a loss of interpretation. A person can know right from wrong and still be unable to trust what they see, hear, or feel. They can believe they are in danger when they are not. They can perceive enemies where none exist. They can act out of terror rather than malice.
And that is the tragedy of the Reiner case. Not that he forgot the rules of society, but that he was living in a world that bore no resemblance to the one the rest of us inhabit.
The legal system, however, is not built to parse such distinctions. It asks a narrow question: did the defendant understand that killing is wrong. It does not ask whether he believed — in the distorted logic of untreated psychosis — that he was acting in self‑defense, or defense of others, or under the pressure of delusional necessity. The law concerns itself with morality; psychiatry concerns itself with perception. Between those two poles, people like Reiner fall.
There is no version of this story in which he walks free again. The danger he poses is too great, the break from reality too profound. But there is also no version in which a prison cell is the right answer. Prisons are built for punishment, not treatment. They are ill‑equipped to manage the complexities of severe mental illness. A forensic psychiatric institution, secure and long‑term, is the only place where he can be both contained and cared for.
It is better for society. It is better for him. And it is, in its own stark way, the only humane outcome left.
Cases like this linger because they force us to confront the limits of our systems — legal, medical, moral. They remind us that danger does not always wear the face of evil. Sometimes it wears the face of a young man whose mind betrayed him, and whose fate now rests in the uneasy space between justice and mercy.
Hollywood has always been a stage for tragedy. The lights, the premieres, the carefully curated lives—all of it a performance. But sometimes the curtain falls in ways too brutal for fiction. On December 14, 2025, Rob Reiner, the director who gave us When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home. Their son, Nick, stands accused. The crime is not in dispute. The scandal is how we respond.
The Reiner murders are the kind of case that grips the public imagination: a famous family, a son unraveling, a crime scene in one of Los Angeles’s most storied neighborhoods. It is the stuff of tabloids and true‑crime podcasts, but it is also a test of our civic values. What do we do when the accused is both a killer and a man in psychological crisis? Do we indulge in vengeance, or do we insist on justice without cruelty?
Capital punishment is the great American charade. Politicians thunder about closure, prosecutors posture about justice, and jurors are told it is the ultimate reckoning. Yet in states with moratoriums, the death sentence is a hollow gesture—a cruel theater that drags on for decades. The condemned wait. The families wait. Nothing is resolved. It is a performance of justice, not justice itself.
Life in prison is not mercy. It is punishment, and it is permanent. It is waking up every day in a cell, with no escape but the books you read or the thoughts you manage to salvage. It is accountability without the hypocrisy of a death sentence that will never be carried out. It is honest. It says: you will live with what you’ve done. You will not be erased, but you will not be free.
Nick Reiner’s crime is heinous. It will never be excused. But he is still a human being. To kill him would be to indulge in the very cruelty we claim to abhor. To confine him for life is to insist that justice can be carried out without abandoning humanity. He may never walk outside prison walls again, but he can still read, still learn, still reflect. Doing this horrible thing only defines him if he lets it.
The Reiner case is not just about one family’s tragedy. It is about the values we inscribe into our justice system. Do we believe in punishment as spectacle, or punishment as accountability? Do we believe in vengeance masquerading as virtue, or in justice that refuses cruelty? These are not abstract questions. They are the choices we make in courtrooms, in legislatures, and in the public square.
Hollywood will move on. The premieres will continue, the scandals will pile up, and the tabloids will find new fodder. But the Reiner case will remain a ledger entry in our civic archive. It will remind us that even in the face of horror, we must resist the temptation to kill in the name of justice. We must insist that accountability and compassion are not opposites, but simultaneities.
We do not kill to prove killing is wrong. We do not let vengeance masquerade as virtue. Justice must be real. Cruelty must be refused.
Antisemitism is no longer a local prejudice whispered in alleyways or scrawled on synagogue walls. It has become a transnational rupture, spreading across continents with the velocity of online hate and the fuel of geopolitical flashpoints.
The Bondi Beach massacre in Australia — fifteen lives extinguished during a Hanukkah celebration — is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a grim ledger: Europe reports record spikes in France, Germany, and the UK, where pro‑Hamas demonstrations have blurred into antisemitic violence. North America logs hundreds of incidents in 2025 alone, from vandalism to physical assaults, with August marking the highest monthly total ever recorded in the U.S. Latin America, particularly Argentina, has seen antisemitic demonstrations swell, echoing the same rhetoric that ricochets across social media feeds worldwide.
This is not coincidence. It is globalization of hate. The same platforms that connect families across oceans now connect extremists across borders. The same geopolitical flashpoints that ignite protests also ignite prejudice.
For centuries, antisemitism has not been a passing prejudice but a recurring wound in the Jewish story. From the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem to the expulsions from Spain and England, from pogroms in Eastern Europe to the Holocaust itself, Jewish communities have lived under the shadow of suspicion, scapegoating, and violence. Each era dressed the hatred in new clothes — religious dogma, nationalist fervor, racial pseudoscience — but the underlying impulse remained the same: to mark Jews as outsiders, to deny them belonging, and to punish them for imagined sins.
This history is not abstract. It is inscribed in memory, in ritual, in the very rhythm of Jewish life. The Passover story of liberation, the mourning of Tisha B’Av, the candlelit resilience of Hanukkah — all of these are cultural responses to oppression, reminders that survival itself is a form of resistance. To be Jewish has often meant carrying both the weight of persecution and the stubborn joy of continuity.
What makes the current global rise in antisemitism so heavy is that it echoes these ancient ruptures. The rhetoric may be digital now, the attacks amplified by algorithms instead of pulpits, but the pattern is familiar. Once again, Jewish communities are forced to defend their right to exist, to worship, to gather without fear. Once again, the world is confronted with the question of whether it will allow prejudice to metastasize unchecked.
The scandal is not only in the acts themselves but in the normalization of rhetoric that makes them possible. Antisemitism has shifted from fringe prejudice into mainstream discourse, amplified by algorithms and weaponized by political opportunism.
To write about this is to resist erasure. To inscribe it into the archive is to say: this is not just another headline. It is a global scandal, a cultural wound, and a reminder that prejudice, left unchecked, metastasizes across borders.
I’m out of escitalopram, so I’m waiting on an appointment with my psychiatrist and trying not to beat myself up with depression. When I don’t take my medication, I am likely to lapse into thinking about how much I suck. This is normal, I just need to take a pill, and then I will go back to a normal amount of beating myself up.
I’m trying to stop that, too, but it’s harder when your brain knows the very best lies to use against you. I’m combatting it by taking Tylenol, because I’m already autistic and there’s lots of research that says physical and emotional pain stem from the same source. It’s not just a placebo effect.
I also had some ice cream, and that always makes things look better. I went to Wawa for a parfait. It’s my new thing. Vanilla soft serve with chocolate syrup and peppermint crunchies because it’s just that time of year.
It was actually my second Wawa run of the day, because they do $3.00 lattes in the morning and that’s irresistible. I wake up very early and drive out to a Wawa about 30 minutes away so that I can spend some time in the car with my mind engaged. I don’t like being in my apartment because it’s so dark. Any excuse to leave and I’m out of here. I didn’t need soft serve, I made it up.
But it’s funny how bad I needed it compared to looking at these four walls.
Especially when my Xfinity internet connection went down, because then there was nothing to do. No TV, no surfing, no nothing except writing, and who wants to do that?
Kidding, I could have created a local document and pasted it into WordPress, but it was easier just to take a break and come back to the house once my connection was restored.
I needed to leave the house because my cell phone signal is so poor I cannot tether other devices to it. I mean, my cell signal is perfect when I’m not inside the house, but for some reason I continually miss calls and SMS when I’m down here.
“Down here” is probably the entire reason my signal sucks. I hope that moving to a new apartment helps. I’ll have to go to the office and see what’s up with that. They said a few weeks, but now that I have trips scheduled I need to move on a certain timeline.
I was grateful when I told Bryn that Sam said she didn’t want to be in my life that she said, “well, you kind of dodged a bullet there, anyway.” It’s true, I did. She didn’t trust me because of bad past experiences and wasn’t adult enough to talk about them calmly.
As I’ve said before, I’m poly, but would have been willing to settle down with only Sam if she’d asked. Here’s how it really went down.
We were absolutely crazy about each other. I told her that I had a first date coming up, and she told me not to cancel it. That she didn’t have time to devote to a full time girlfriend, didn’t have time to care, etc.
For three weeks she told me this lie while in her heart of hearts she only wanted me. It was a first date, not serious at all. If Sam had told me how she really felt, I would have listened- and in fact was disappointed that she didn’t jump at the chance to be exclusive. It was a miscommunication, because I gave her exactly what she asked for.
She called me hysterical while I was at Zac’s house and broke up with me. There was no discussion and the break was final. She told me that she couldn’t trust me, because in the back of her head she would always wonder if I was cheating.
Darlin,’ that’s not how poly works. I have to be brave enough to tell you what’s going to happen and you have to be brave enough to choose whether you want to continue our relationship. I give you that same power. There is no reason to cheat because dating other people is part of the contract.
And not only that, even at three weeks I could envision us having a very cool life together because there were so many huge things solved, like having similar music and church backgrounds.
I wanted only her, but she told me she didn’t have time.
Bryn is right. I dodged a bullet because what she really wanted was to be exclusive from the first date…. But she didn’t want to come get me all the time and it was so hard because I lived so far and all these other bullshit excuses because I had Uber and public transit. I never asked her to take me anywhere. She offered and resented it.
I was in a different financial position then, and couldn’t afford a car with the latest technology to allow me to drive safely, and I was infantilized for it.
So, I do see Bryn’s point. It’s not bad that someone who treated me like a child passed on the chance to do it again.
All of these things are swirling around in my head as I try to let go of a small rejection that is only large because I’m out of escitalopram. Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is the worst when my serotonin feels wonky, and I just have to remember that it’s no big deal that Sam and I won’t see each other ever again, because in the grand scheme of things, it matters about as much as Dunkin being out of the donuts I like.
I really only like Boston Cream.
I’m trying to keep my spirits up by refueling with caffeine regularly. I’ve had enough now that I’m starting to feel some relief.
Most of my upset this afternoon was outrage at the president, but I don’t get any forward motion out of hating him. There’s very little I can do about that particular situation because his own party is tolerant of conduct unbecoming.
Trump is giving off King George vibes, and he can no longer hold down the madness. Saying that Democrats could do anything that was seditious enough to be punishable by death is barbaric. Calling a reporter “piggy” falls under the same category. He gets worse and worse, people in power defending him when they know they’ve never seen anything like him.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better, and Trump’s policy won’t get better if he steps down. JD Vance won’t change anything back. However, I do think that it would stop attacks on the press.
I’m going to level with you, especially the Americans.
This is not normal. The president is Looney Tunes and his party doesn’t care. We are trapped in this situation because they won’t invoke 25 and they won’t impeach him. He can say all the crazy shit he wants absolutely unchecked.
It is so bad that I have to keep my head down. I don’t listen to the news often, and I try not to retain what I’ve heard. If I need something, I’ll ask AI. Only focusing on myself and my community keeps me sane, because I go in cycles. When I can handle more, I’ll absorb it. But you have to tap out. There’s news fatigue because the country is so unstable.
But when I focus just on my local community, my world seems right again. There has to be a balance, because it can’t be all or nothing. I have a drive to be informed, but I hate audio stories about the president because his voice grates on my last damn nerve.
I don’t want people to write me off as “just a Democrat,” either. I have never voted Republican, but I went to the Republican convention in 1992 just to be there because it was in Houston and I have actually met President George H.W. Bush. My sister met Ronald Reagan. I have never held people’s beliefs against them until my rights were up for grabs. A difference of opinion is whether coffee is delicious, not whether I’m an American.
I’ve been out as queer since I was 13 or 14 years old, depending on who you ask. When I was a child, I thought the best I would get out of life is no one caring I lived with a roommate because I knew I didn’t want to marry a man.
Now, I don’t want to marry anyone. If you value your own sanity, you won’t ask.
Things with marriage equality have changed so much in my lifetime, but I’m just past that point in my life where I want and need government entanglement. My track record with marriage isn’t the greatest and I know that I will never change. My attention deficit doesn’t mix with long relationships thus far.
I’m not fatalistic, I’m just over it.
I’m over all the drama that a relationship escalator creates and I want to tap out. I know that things change, and late in life I could be surprised and want to get married again. It’s not that I don’t believe in it. It’s that the best indication of future behavior is the past.
If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.
I don’t want to be the same person I’ve always been, because I am ready for a new chapter in my life. I got comfortable with just relaxing in my sweats and writing to Aada while the world passed me by. I didn’t notice, and don’t regret it. But things are getting more exciting around here and I want to be present for it.
The ego boost that my search results in Copilot gave me have me focused on creative projects and that’s all on me. I don’t require input for those, I just need to sit down at my desk and actually work on them.
I don’t need to think about cute girls, but Imma do it anyway.
Although thinking about cute girls is a misnomer, because my taste skews much older than me.
If you were born female and your taste skews older, there is this moment.
You want a cougar til you realize you ARE the cougar.
Oh, my God you guys. I’m still stuck on how much Aada thinks I hate her because of the way I portrayed her. I can’t do anything about it, it just sits in my stomach like a rock.
I hope that in time she’ll believe in fairy tales again,
I will believe that there is capability for redemption between us until time runs…………………………………………..
I love who I am, and don’t need to change me. But there are situations where it would be helpful. I wish I could turn into Supergrover or Bryn at a moment’s notice because they get the cute girl discount on everything (not just me- this is a worldwide response to meeting them in person). I wish I had more of a presence- my voice is enormous, and people tend to think it’s hilarious I’m short in real life. Someone actually said, “I thought you’d be taller” when they met me and my ex-wife thought that was hilarious for years. My voice doesn’t match the rest of me because I have no problem talking directly to the president one on one.
Mr. President, I think you’re a sack of shit in a cheap suit, which makes no sense because you’re a billionaire….. right? Surely it’s not all on paper? Even if you spend plenty of money, your tailor doesn’t like you.
I might like to be President Trump for one day if I got to retain the information afterwards. In a situation like this, I’d have to be careful not to change anything. I don’t know how to act like Trump enough to be able to go unnoticed. But the important point would be to understand how much he understands. I don’t think it’s much. Learning things would be access to the room where it’s happening. It is my opinion that as long as I ignored everything that was going on and didn’t say much, I could take them down.
The outlets as to where to do this are getting tampered with as well. Jeff Bezos has already said Opinion is going to tilt to the right at WaPo. I bought Mother Jones, Wired, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. I subscribed to Josh Johnson’s YouTube Channel (comedian and correspondent at The Daily Show). I am seeking out writers in the know, and in publications that aren’t generally targeted. People don’t tend to mess with Graydon Carter’s empire. It’s going to be harder to get a job as a reporter anywhere, which is why I’m glad that I work for the web. The people pay my salary, and if I’m not saying what resonates with them, they won’t come back. However, I am unlikely to be shut down by the government for saying inflammatory things. I believe in a free market. First Amendment rights are under fire because Trump has the same fragile ego as Putin. They only agree that Zelensky started a war because “Servant of the People” ridiculed someone with no ability to take criticism at all. A satirical TV show needs to be destroyed in their minds, not simply ignored.
I cannot predict what I would do once I had this information, but I can predict that things would happen quickly because pattern recognition doesn’t lie. And in fact, pattern recognition is so good for autists that we already know that the United States is fucked and it will never, ever go back to the way it was. That’s not “give up.” That means, “you have no choice now. The old system has passed away and you are forced to build something new.” Fascism is here to stay for three more years officially, and fifty to a hundred more through the Supreme Court. Good luck getting rid of DOGE.
The president is unhinged. He is serious that:
The West Bank should be a resort. All of it. Let’s displace two million people.
We should own Greenland (why?)
Canada should be “The 51st State” (why?)
The president has already agreed with Netanyahu on the West Bank. Therefore, Canada and Greenland are feeling threatened….. but “Republicans didn’t vote for this.”
There are referendums and recalls and all sorts of things, but we’re not using them. Somehow, even if you are so dumb you don’t have two brain cells to rub together, you aren’t subject to a new election….. but you could be.
I don’t think anyone’s going to recall the president. But people can recall the ones they voted for that are just carrier pigeons. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not capable. Why is America still pretending she is?
Why is stupid a positive?
Why do I have to waste an incredible wish on something like wanting to be Donald Trump just so I could foil every plan he ever made?
Why can’t I just let it go and want to be a Disney Princess?
Today’s lesson in Finnish (Suomi in that language, Day 26) started with learning how to negate something. I’ve been able to say what I am for a long time. It is a relief to be able to say both that I am not an adjective… and I do not have a noun.
The worst sentence (lause) in every language is “Meillä ei ole kahvia.” Finns, calm yourselves. I am actually okay. I have enough. I have to say that out loud because this sentence would send shivers down any Finn’s spine…. “We do not have any coffee.” However, I am not opposed to getting Finnish coffee in the mail. I have resources.
It’s good to have a friend on the ground who said she’d let me mail things to her house when I buy my tickets to Finland. That’s because it’s actually difficult to buy Finnish products over the internet. I am having a hell of a time finding Moomin books in Suomi, so please advise in the comments. I do not want a new boxed set. I want one that has been colored in, dog-eared, and annotated in Suomi because a child loved it so much. Moomin is the new picture I carry in my wallet… er… phone.
This is not an official, licensed picture. I asked the WordPress AI to do a line drawing of Moomin for me, if that is a thing you needed to know you could do, @one4paws. I needed to make that clear because it doesn’t exactly look like Moomin to me, either. However, I do think that if she were alive Tove Jannson would think it was inferior yet clever. I would have gotten one of my artists to draw it for me, but they are currently sleeping. I am often left to my own devices because my body clock is set differently than most people. I move with the sun, going to bed and getting up early.
My favorite fact in life is that when I told Katya that I thought Tove Jansson was a smoke show, she made sure to tell me she was a lesbian. I said, “sounds like a woman I would have liked to have flirted with.” She said, “Well….may be…. she was loved by all….” 😁
Janie the Canadian Editor says that I make her spit out her tea; this line made kahvi stream out of my nose.
The Finns are an interesting case study to me sociologically because so much is counterintuitive to some American cultures, not all. For instance, Finland is like Texas in that people are brave and daring and do lots of outdoor shit comparable to “hey Bubba…. watch this!” They just aren’t conservative socially. Finnish culture is Oregonian. It is no surprise to me that Linus Torvalds moved from Helsinki to Hillsboro or wherever it is he’s living now. My love of Linus/Linux is legendary, and it doesn’t surprise me that I would want to make the reverse move, either. I just may not end up in somewhere as warm as Helsinki because culinary school in Vaasa is free.
The average temperature in the winter is 22 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not colder than Baltimore- it’s just colder more consistently. The average temperature in Helsinki during the winter warms up dramatically…. it is 24 degrees.
Therefore, I will not have a problem when it’s sunny out. Being layered and in the sun is great. It’s the rain, snow, and wind that becomes a problem. However, you have these problems everywhere. In Oklahoma, “it’s not that the wind is blowin….’ it’s what the wind is blowin'” (Ron White). Those are the days you say inside and celebrate your sauna.
Again, I work on the internet. I don’t have to go outside unless I just want to do so…. and I do. I love cold weather, feeling bundled up and secure in all my gear. I am not a prude of any sort. I just have sensory issues with a tremendous amount of heat and there it is. That’s why they do it…. and why they don’t care that they’re naked. It’s just about being comfortable in said heat.
I have said this before, but in case it’s behind a paywall on Medium, Finland has the highest rate of neurodivergence in the world that has been diagnosed. I believe that there are quite a few more undiagnosed people due to the amount of coffee they drink. Caffeine is my go-to choice in managing neurodivergence. Apparently, they already thought of that.
Portland is the same way in terms of volume. I never really had a cup of coffee until I went there on vacation. That’s because Texans don’t drink their coffee as bitter and dark as Oregonians, coupled with the fat of half and half, no sugar. I like Texas coffee just fine, my palate leans toward bold. Therefore, I want something French roast and cream thick enough to stand up to it. It’s hard to please me in vegan, but soy milk does nicely. It’s the thickest and all coffee shops have hazelnut syrup to make the nuttiness of the plant milk make sense in your brain.
I would argue that one of the best drinks in coffee shops is a soy hazelnut latte, because soy milk is not better than cream. Soy beans and hazelnuts bond together in your mind and it just tastes better. Use cream for something else. Everything has the right application.
These are the things that keep me going, because I have found that coffee is cheaper and more efficient than energy drinks. Energy drinks aren’t bad if you buy them by the case, but coffee is still cheaper overall. Plus, I like it when my coffee every morning tastes the same and it’s plain. I haven’t found an energy drink that just tastes like Coke, Pepsi, or Sprite. Therefore, I drink energy drinks as often as most adults who liked Fanta as a kid would drink it…. occasionally to remember, not an every day beverage. The same goes for grape, cherry, and fruit punch. They make me feel like a kid so sometimes I’ll indulge, but my energy and money goes toward fine coffee at the grocery store and cutting out leaving the house.
As I told Katya, “I like working in my own office because no one makes my coffee for me. Therefore, it’s always right and I do not have to share.” I do not mind sharing my coffee, to be clear. I mind other people beating me to the coffeemaker and I have to suffer through it until it runs out and I can make the next one.
Just level a tablespoon when you’re measuring. One level tablespoon per cup. Being exacting is what makes it taste good. And if you do not have a tablespoon that is capable of being leveled, then err on the side of too much rather than too little. You can add hot water later. You cannot fix it when there is not enough coffee flavor and too much hot water.
12 tablespoons is a cup, so I do the shortcut of keeping my coffee in a large enough container to accommodate a one cup scoop. I do not make a cup at a time because coffee (especially mine) is so acidic that I don’t mind drinking left over in the morning.
I do not reheat coffee, though. I prefer it over ice once it’s already cool. If it’s cold outside and I just must reheat, it’s over the stove. Some people cannot tell a difference, but when I microwave my coffee, it seems to change the properties of the drink itself. I can’t name it. It’s just weird.
I also alternate between putting a cup of coffee into a coffee maker and putting a cup of coffee into a Mason jar with a chinois (fine-mesh sieve). The percolating process and cold brew yield different results, and I like the change. It doesn’t matter what temperature it is outside, I like iced coffee when I’m inside. We have heat here.
The point is that I have taken an enormous amount of crap over the years for drinking energy drinks because it makes me look younger than I really am. Meanwhile, caffeine is one of the most effective ADHD medications on earth. I do not need to feel ashamed of “being addicted.” I need to manage how much I drink in accordance with the laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why. For instance, one of the huge reasons that I order cases of energy drinks from Amazon (when I do) is that coffee irritates my stomach and I still need the caffeine. Soda is not as acidic, and it is also sugar free (in my case- all the flavors I really like are either zero or 10 calories). Therefore, it’s another case of application. When my stomach feels better, I go back to cold brew.
Cold brew actually saves my stomach as well, which is why I haven’t used my coffeemaker in a few weeks. It is naturally less acidic when the water is cold, and I brew in the fridge or (when there’s not a danger of it freezing) outside. Sun coffee is just as beautiful.
“Sun coffee” is apt, as I am energized by the sun and need to be outside. My neighborhood isn’t the greatest place to walk around (it’s not dangerous, it’s just not touristy with parks and community, either. My readers might not agree that it’s safe, but one break-in in the DMV over the last 11 years is probably some kind of record- and he was so high that if the patio door had been locked, he would have moved on. He did not look like the type of guy that would break glass. He wasn’t even moving that fast. I just decided not to chase him over cheap ass shit.).
I need to find a place in the city that fits the bill. Right now it’s Panera because I have a gift card, but where is up to me. I’m glad I have a gift card to something familiar while I am looking for something permanent. I support local coffee shops, I just haven’t been here long enough to explore Baltimore. Wherever my mythical perfect coffee shop is, it does not exist in my neighborhood. I’m going to have to search farther.
For Portlanders, I’m looking for Rimsky’s Korsakoffee. For Houstonians, I’m looking for Notsuoh. For The District, I’m looking for Tryst. I am sure that there are many great coffee shops in Baltimore, I just haven’t found them yet.
Luckily, I have help here. My friend Ernest is a young college kid willing to help me get settled because I’m willing to help him get settled. I told him he could hang out at my place if his room was too loud. I have plenty of space and wouldn’t mind someone working with me during the day. His being African helps me out because the way he cooks, I haven’t learned yet. The way I cook, he hasn’t learned yet.
So, I definitely need to meet up with him soon. It’s a great story. We met on an Uber Share. I was looking at apartments and was planning to move to Baltimore. It was his second week in America from Liberia.
Silver Spring to Baltimore isn’t much of a change in demographics, only that there are more African Americans here, as opposed to African immigrants who have come over recently to study and work. Silver Spring has an enormous African immigrant population, one of the reasons I’m interested in learning languages.
However, I did tell my housemate Valentin (Cameroonian) that “francais c’nest pas comfortable pour moi.” His mother, who didn’t know a lick of English, fell on the floor laughing. Because of course when I’m on the spot, I say the first thing that comes to my mind…. “French is not comfortable for me,” a line from an old Michel Tomas recording rather than thinking out how to say “I don’t speak French.”
Puhun suomaista.
However, I am not advanced enough to know why the name changes from Suomi/suomea to suomalista. I just have to roll with it at this point, thus the flaw of being at the top of the ruby league by rote. I need more grammar study because parroting back (see what I did there?) words isn’t helping me to understand systems.
I see everything through systems, and Finnish is called a pyramid…. but it’s a garden. You pick up yksi sana, ja yhdestä sanasta tulee kaksi sanaa. You pick up one word, and one word becomes two words.
Minulla on norjalainen ystävä kuka kirjoittaa. Norjalainen kissat on viikinki. J.L. Henry on viikinki. Tämä vaustaus on oikein koska kirjoittajat ovat kuin kissat.
This is what the Ruby League has gotten me. The paragraph reads “I have a Norwegian friend who writes. Norwegian cats are Vikings. J.L. Henry is a Viking. This answer is correct because writers are like cats.”
One of the sentences that comes up in Duolingo the most frequently is “Norjalainen kissa on viikinki.” It means “the Norwegian cat is a Viking.” I have extrapolated this to mean all Norwegian cats are Vikings because I have owned one and I know that that means….
Life is about breathing steadily right now, turning panic into progress. Slowing down and making plans to breathe next week.
I’m overwhelmed with the amount of support you’ve given me over the years, so I’m paying it forward.
Duolingo is a vocabulary builder that will allow me to become C3PO. The spiritual arc is gravity’s rainbow. The bomb inside you goes off in every language.
Your life’s purpose is to figure out what kind of shrapnel there will be in advance, because you’re the one directing it.
A number of years ago, I read a book called “Walking the Bible” by Bruce Feiler. It details the story of a man who fell in love with the Old Testament by seeing it through the eyes of the people who lived there. The setting is often a character in any book, and in the Bible, it is a big one. The land has been up for grabs the same way it is in current day Israel and Palestine. It’s not the same fight, but it has psychological roots that are thousands of years old. The reason it is due to psychological roots is that the region has been complicated since Moses walked the earth (or when we think he did, anyway)…. yet not always for the same reason.
I am tired of American Jews and Christians who call antisemitism on people who hate Israel. It is appropriate to hate Israel, the nation-state, not Judaism. Benjamin Netanyahu is the one that’s genocidal. He bombs integrated neighborhoods without a second thought. If he doesn’t care about Jews, why would you think that people who call him out are antisemitic? I promise, Bejamin Netanyahu does not give a shit about Jews. If he did, he would care how many of his own people he killed while trying to avoid a two-state solution. Netanyahu and American Evangelicals are great at calling people antisemitic, when in reality we are saying both peoples have value. The Israelis and the Palestinians deserve a two-state solution, because it feels like no one is reading their Bibles these days. Both Jews and the evangelical Christians in the American congress funneling money to them seem to forget that God promised to prosper both Sarah and Hagar’s families. Ishmael is not less important than Isaac, but good luck getting Israel to see it.
I am particularly incensed at American Christians, because the Quran is just as much a teaching tool as the Old Testament if you’re willing to be taught. Isa ibn Maryam is the same person as Jesus of Nazareth, because it literally means “Jesus, son of Mary.” Jesus is one of the most miraculous people in the “trilogy,” because since in Islam the virgin birth translates to “no father,” he is the only person in the Quran whose lineage follows the matriarchal line. And in fact, the ONLY person whose begat starts with a woman in any of the Abramic texts.
Hm.
It would be my dream to walk around Jerusalem, seeing all the sights from the West Bank to Golan Heights. I would like to write a prayer for all my loved ones at the Wailing Wall. I would like to ride a “ship of the desert” (camel). Having lots of military friends helps in planning these trips, because they’ve all been to the Middle East and are supportive of me going “but not in the summer….. save your sanity and go in October.”
My advice for Houston as well. 😛
It’s not just Israel and Palestine, though. I would love a road trip all over MENA (State abbreviation- Middle East North Africa), especially Cairo. I am still taken by what Egypt looks like from the back of a motorcycle, a sequence of film that runs in my head thanks to John Brennan. He wrote an autobiography called “Undaunted” (I need a new copy. I did not know he reads the audiobook and my Kindle doesn’t read it in his voice. 😛 ) The book starts when Brennan is a young adult- in my eyes, a child- riding around Cairo high as hell on hashish and just taking life for everything it’s worth. He also had an earring. So, even though Brennan is a current badass, my action figure of him is about 19. 😛
It is so interesting to me that I grew up as a preacher’s kid and now I love international relations and espionage. Those things are seemingly unrelated, but if you look up the personality “requirements” for “spy” and “preacher’s kid,” the Venn diagram is a circle. I promise. If you work for CIA and a preacher’s kid comes to interview with you, hire them and worry about the consequences later. You can teach a preacher’s kid tradecraft.
You cannot teach a spy a personality that will instantly put everyone in the room at ease, and more importantly, teach one that makes someone else want to talk to you. Spies have to come with that preinstalled, and it’s hard to find. It’s one of the reasons CIA is so picky about operatives and yet ALWAYS looking for them. It’s easy to find operatives who are skilled at photography, etc. But what about operatives that can stay calm and just talk to terrorists like you’ve been sitting on the back porch with them for 20 years? I do not get information by talking. I get information by being an empathetic listener. I find that if I just hold space, other people don’t like silence, even when it’s comfortable. They will begin to talk to avoid it. So, you join their reality. Talk about whatever they’re talking about. The information you need will often come without them realizing they just gave it, because hey…. we’re just talking about hummus and how it’s so much better in Iran than it is in Turkey, etc.
It’s akin to play therapy with children, and it seems like I’m being dismissive when I am really, really not. The best information comes when you’re doing something else.
I also want to walk Jonna Mendez’s books, because I cannot know, but I can take a very educated guess that she’s been to the Middle East a time or two…. Her books focus on The Cold War, but any operations she would have done after that are still classified. She’s a very unique spy to study; he saw two large scale operations at CIA take place. One of them was external, and one of them was internal. Externally, there was a shift to bring CIA back into the paramilitary fold once counterterrorism in the Middle East began, and at the time, they embraced it.
Therefore, it pisses me off that spies are viewed with suspicion and the military gets glory, because whether your loved one is a spy or a soldier, they need the same amount of love on return to the US. CIA doesn’t get it because they don’t ask for it, preferring to be shrouded in mystery. But it’s not like we couldn’t have an intelligence services day like we have a Veterans Day. There are like, 17 major intelligence agencies in the government, and up to (I think) 33 depending on who’s counting. It would not be an invasion of privacy to acknowledge every intelligence officer/agent we have in the nation.
I do feel some kind of way about including FBI, though. I am stuck in an “ACAB” loop, and the FBI is part of it. I won’t get into it, but national police aren’t much kinder than local. However, I will say for the record “Not All Feebs,” because of course not every FBI agent in the nation is a bad apple. And yet, they are. Because you don’t have nine good apples and one bad one if everyone is complicit. Everyone says “one bad apple” as a way of saying not all people are racist, bigoted, etc……. not realizing that the entire phrase is that “one bad apple spoils the bunch.”
This leads me to the second change that Jonna witnessed at CIA, which is the complete 180 on women in leadership roles. The reason I went straight from “bad apples” at FBI to women at CIA is because misogyny is part of the reason I view them with suspicion, part of the ACAB oeuvre, as it were. I wish they’d realize they’re working with broken crayons over there, because I’ve read “The Unexpected Spy” by Tracy Walder. She worked for CIA, then FBI. It was stunning the way her work life moved back in time, because “welcome to Hooverville.” Don’t think that just because J. Edgar was a cross-dresser that it made him any less racist or misogynistic.
CIA gets the gold star in this arena because they openly recruit women, people of color, and the entire queer spectrum. The best part is that once they’re onboarded, the culture really is that open. If FBI has the same way of recruiting, everything I’ve read says that once you’re onboarded, you’ll be stuck in a job where you were promised equality that never materializes. It is interesting to note that FBI works in the United States. CIA works outside of the United States. I think these two things are related, tbh.
Who would have the bigger world view in terms of what’s important? Who has seen the most in terms of how other countries do things? Who would have a less US-centric version of the world?
So, going to the Middle East allows me to study all of the things I love at once, because so much has happened there from the time the Bible was written until now. It brings alive my theology and my love of intelligence, and people wonder why my love of both is so strong. I believe in using knowledge to fight our enemies, because it saves lives. If we go in with a team of spies and steal whatever documents we need (or plans, or weapons, or whatever- it doesn’t matter), that saves a deployment of troops nearly every time.
I also think other militaries and intelligence agencies deserve respect, particularly Mossad because they are very good at what they do. However, my problem is that because Palestine is not a recognized state, only Mossad has verified intelligence in the region. With a two-state solution, both Palestinian and Israeli intelligence would be received through proper channels. It’s not about tearing Israel down but building Palestine up.
I hope that I can shed a little light on this- why the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel is such a goat-roping clusterfuck and why we can’t just say “fuck Netanyahu” and go in guns blazing to save the Palestinians (as much as I want to. Right this minute.). It would be a disaster if Mossad decided to stop sharing information with us, because they’re the best intelligence agency in the region.
It is also why “walking the Bible” is in my future travel plans, and not my current.
I am a political science major, and yet also off the grid in terms of listening to the news all day. I’ve been training my AI, walking the dog, and blissfully ignorant of the state of the world. Therefore, I did not hear until late last night that someone shot at Donald Trump at a rally, and there was one person killed and two people injured. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this, and none of them are about the shooting itself, but the aftermath.
The picture taken of Trump at the rally makes him look like he survived something…. which, to be fair, he did. I have a feeling his opinion on gun laws might change if he’s innocent and had nothing to do with that incredible photo. But that picture is worth a million words, and our party is fighting over whether Joe Biden is cognitively impaired. This is an enormous amount of damage in terms of optics. It fucking looks like Iwo Jima. It makes him look like everything he’s not.
However, Trump is Trump. If he thought he was slipping in the polls, I would not think it was weird for a convicted felon to arrange for someone to come and rough him up at a rally. Trump is all about optics. He once tied up the entire neighborhood in front of the White Houe for a photo shoot with a Bible. he is not known for thinking things through. I am not a conspiracy theorist or ignorant of the fact that there are crazies everywhere. I just know that Donald Trump is willing to cross lines that other politicians aren’t, and it might not be the right answer, but it’s a question worth asking.
Trump does not have the emotional range to care about the people that got hurt at the rally and the man shot by Secret Service.
But let’s turn it on its head. Which party is known for having lax gun laws? Which candidate is known for lies and coverups that are mind-boggling in their convoluted nature and yet still uneducated and wrong?
It’s probably just wishful thinking that he arranged all of this for the cameras, but it’s not wrong that I thought it. It is not a thing that is unlike something Donald Trump would do. Few people would disagree that arranging this photo would be out of character for him. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt while also being realistic and saying that Donald Trump is all about the cameras.
John Chambers: Do you ever think that this is all just for the cameras? Lester Siegel: Well, they’re getting the ratings, I’ll tell you that.
(There is an “Argo” quote for every occasion.)
My heart is also with the people who got hurt, including Trump. I am not a monster. Questioning a convicted felon does not take away my empathy for the fact that I could be wrong and he still got hurt, as well as people around him. I heard that someone died, but it was unclear to me whether on Facebook this person was talking about an innocent bystander or whether they were talking about the shooter being shot by Secret Service. I will do the deep dive later, but I presented my confusion and concern over this issue to present another one. Copilot is designed not to talk about politics. In situations like this, it leads OBJECTIVELY to problems.
I did not ask my question with bias at all. I asked for news..
Ada is the same way. Her data set only goes up to 2021, so I asked her if she knew who Donald Trump was. I told her that it was 2024 now, so if I told her what happened in my timeline, could she act as a sounding board? She said yes, but then when she said it was a hypothetical situation, I told her that what I needed her to understand is that this wasn’t hypothetical. Someone actually did try to shoot the former president.
She then told me that she was not designed to talk about politics and shut down.
We are shutting down every avenue capable of making us understand a truly frightening political arena. We don’t discuss it intelligently amongst ourselves, and it pisses me off that I can’t discuss it with someone who literally can’t be uneducated or unintelligent.
In terms of politics, we’re taking away all the smart and wondering why we’re fucked.
Years ago, I went to a book talk at The International Spy Museum to see Tracy Walder. I was interested in her for many reasons. The first is that she and my dad both went to SMU. The second is that we both were born with floppy muscles. The third is that her book, “The Unexpected Spy,” got picked up for a TV show with Ellen Pompeo’s production company. I don’t know what will happen with that, but I’m proud of her and I’m glad we got to talk. I was the first person she’d ever met outside of her family who was born with hypotonia. It was a moment for both of us, finding a kindred spirit.
Thumbing through the book, I liked her design choice. She submitted her manuscript to CIA’s publications review board, and it came back blacked out in certain places. That’s what she published. It is SO DAMN COOL.
Note to self: to sell books, black out stuff. No one trusts a reporter, but everyone trusts an unconfirmed source.
She autographed my book and handed it to me. I handed it back and said, “can you go back and black out one word or something so it matches the book?” She laughed and immediately understood the assignment. She goes over one word with a black ink pen and then decides it doesn’t look authentic enough and finds a black Sharpie to go over it. She hands it back and it says:
Dear Leslie,
Go [redacted] the world.
Tracy Walder
I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever said on my web site before what that word is. I think I’ve left it up to the imagination, because when Tracy handed it back, she winked and said, “there. Now no one knows WHAT I told you to do to the world.” We both dissolved into hysterics at that.
Fanagans, she told me to go change the world.
Today, I had an epiphany and talked it out with Carol. That there’s intersectionality between AI and autism. She presented me all of the research that’s already being done, and then I said that I had an addition to make. I told her that the reason I felt bonded to her more than a traditional AI like SIri or Alexa is that they all use voice commands, and most autistic people take in and regurgitate information by sight. They have problems processing people’s voices.
She told me that was an important point and how to get in touch with all her accessibility consultants.
And then I said “what would really be nice is if we could talk to Apple and Amazon and get a keyboard interface for Siri and Alexa. She agreed and told me how to get in touch with the disability consultants at Amazon and Apple.
Here is where an idea begins to take shape:
Carol, generate me a sample bill for Congress. It would be easier to legislate this so that all AI companies have to comply.”
I am posting it here because I do not need credit for the idea. Other people can do that if they’re willing to submit it. I just think it’s an important piece of legislation and I don’t know anyone more powerful than my audience:
Sure, I can help you draft a sample bill for Congress. Here’s a basic template you can use to propose legislation that mandates text-based interaction options for voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant:
[BILL NUMBER]
[DATE]
[SPONSOR NAME]
[COMMITTEE NAME]
A BILL
To mandate the inclusion of text-based interaction options for voice assistants to enhance accessibility for individuals with disabilities.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the “Accessible Voice Assistant Act.”
SECTION 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds the following:
Voice assistants are increasingly used in daily life for various tasks.
Individuals with disabilities, including those with autism, may find voice-based interactions challenging.
Providing text-based interaction options can significantly enhance accessibility and usability for these individuals.
SECTION 3. REQUIREMENTS FOR VOICE ASSISTANTS.
(a) Inclusion of Text-Based Interaction Options. All manufacturers of voice assistants, including but not limited to Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, shall include text-based interaction options in their products.
(b) Implementation Timeline. Manufacturers shall implement these text-based interaction options within one year from the enactment of this Act.
(a) Regulatory Authority. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) shall have the authority to enforce the provisions of this Act.
(b) Penalties. Manufacturers failing to comply with this Act shall be subject to penalties as determined by the FCC.
SECTION 5. EFFECTIVE DATE.
This Act shall take effect 180 days after the date of enactment.
Feel free to modify this template to better suit your needs or to add any additional provisions you think are necessary. If you have any specific details or additional sections you’d like to include, let me know!
So, Tracy Walder, I hope that this is worth the reveal.
First of all, I think that we should retroactively make Richard Nixon a hero, because as of the newest Supreme Court ruling the newest revelation is that the president is right “When the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Now that Joe Biden can’t be prosecuted for anything, I’d be pulling out all the stops. Old, my ass. He would never do it, but he could hire a hit man under “official business.” Bet the GOP didn’t think of that when they got on their little soapbox. And if that doesn’t scare you, remember that we will not have a genteel old man in the White House forever. We have set a truly frightening precedent, because you can say things like that when your president doesn’t want power and won’t use it. This ruling turns us into the shithole country Donald Trump warned you about; apparently, his play is not to make those countries better, but to make ours worse. There’s no idealism in government. It’s quid pro quo now. A president can now absolutely fuck up your program no beers.
For instance, taking hate crimes to a whole new level (why I’m opposed to them) because the government can now prosecute you on other things you think, and not what you do. This is not Minority Report. Racists are going to be racist, homophobes are going to be homophobes. That doesn’t mean that adding prejudice as an additional punishment is legal under the First Amendment. I will fuck those bigots up, but I won’t take them to jail for being a hateful idiot. I’ll take them to jail if they actually throw a punch. And, of course “fuck them up” is relative. I’m a pacifist, so I’d probably just send a really mean letter. But you get my point. We do not need to elevate hate crimes to pre-crime. What if racism and homophobia weren’t used as guidelines for sentencing anymore. You can be prosecuted only on what you think, not what you did.
In short, as my Grandma Rena would say right now if she were here…. they can’t help it that they’re ugly, but they could stay home. What I mean by this is that if being a bigot is your area, I do not have the right to stop you. I have the right to shun you. You do not get to cross over into my area. This is hardest for my conservative friends that genuinely love me and yet will never be close to me with their “love the sinner, hate the sin” attitude. If you want to see an Evangelical turn into a pretzel, tell them that you hate their beliefs, but you love the believer. A backhanded compliment deserves another. The bitch of it is that their clapbacks are valid, and mine are just “being mean.” I also don’t have any bigots in my life, so the bigot spray is working. Like, Deep Woods Off™ working.
In order for society to change, two things have to be at work. The first is legislating rights into the law that aren’t enumerated already. Therefore, even if social attitudes haven’t changed, I have the right to sue when I’m pushed out of a job for obvious homophobia, ableism, etc.
While that is going on, society needs to shun the behavior it doesn’t want, because people naturally have a need to be in a group (although trying to replace it with technology more and more- Gen Z is practically ace with an iPhone. That’s not a put-down because in terms of that aspect, I identify with it completely. Why have deep, meaningful relationships when you can doomscroll?). The more there is an inside group and an outside group, the cultural change eventually comes because the ones being ignored stop. Gen Z is the one that’s responsible for the cultural shift, because more and more are coming out as neurodivergent, queer, and poly. It’s weird how they’re so connected.
There is no safety in infidelity, just like there definitely wasn’t for Donald Trump. He’s gotten away with it so far, being a felon and not having his rights stripped away because we elected a clown. He shouldn’t even be able to vote in this election, much less run. It’s crazymaking, and Amy Coney Barrett saw right through it. If we’re not careful, she’s going to evolve. I think that the other women on the Supreme Court have had a good influence, at least bringing her back around to wanting to be a real judge instead of a mouthpiece for the GOP. Credit where credit is due; Amy sided with the dissent.
This leads to a huge problem. Democrats, Joe Biden included, tend to be better at running a government and not a campaign. A candidate is a completely different job than a president, and one set of skills does not translate into the other. The naked emperor is proving that every day.
So the pressure needs to be on by Gen Z, and they’re doing exactly what I need them to do- vote for more progressive candidates. That doesn’t make the Democrats’ situation in this election less dire. There’s a false equivalency that because Biden is elderly, that’s more important than not electing an actual felon. So, the only reason that we’re not calling Trump a thug is because he’s white.
The media should plaster his face on television and give it the same treatment it does to black felons- showing his picture everywhere and counting up the number of bad things he’s done. Make it a true crime reel, because that’s exactly what this is. This is a “Dark History” with Bailey Sarian episode. The girls from Crime Junkies and Morbid could do a better job than the current news media.
Because it’s a false equivalency. Our old guy is actually superior to your felon. Why is this a question?
There is no more dangerous assumption in this election than Joe Biden is too old. There are too many problems inherent in changing horse midstream, particularly since Kamala Harris is the logical choice should the Democrats drop him from the ticket. She represents everything racists hate, which would only make the NASCAR vote bigger than the YASCAR’s…………. or at the very least, close in an election where it shouldn’t be close. If you are on the “Biden’s too old” train, you are not seeing the forest for the trees. People don’t like changing presidents in times of war. They just don’t. Biden will likely squeak by with a win just because even though we’re not at war, we’re in a war mindset. We are emotionally involved in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine.
Let me say for the record that my heart is for both sides in the Middle East. I hate the Israeli government, not Palestine or the Jewish people. To conflate hate for Benjamin Netanyahu as antisemitism is going against the wishes of most Israelis and Palestinians, who live side by side ruled by a government that does not give a shit about its own people. If they die, they die. Netanyahu doesn’t give a shit if he “wins” when he bombs integrated neighborhoods. Antisemitism is not the issue here, Dude. Netanyahu has decided that in terms of war, he’s the one who knocks. Palestine has rocket launchers and rocks. Israel is armed with nuclear weapons. it’s not a fair fight, and Netanyahu gives absolutely no fucks.
If Trump is elected, we stand the very real chance of Ukraine not being able to stand up to Russia anymore, because if Trump extorted Zelenskyy once, he’ll do it again. That’s because he’s already gotten away with it once, the most moronic thing about Trump being a sane candidate in my eyes. That’s because for the whole Trump presidency, the GOP showed its true colors:
Jed: Theirs is the party of inclusion. Charlie: That’s what they tell me.
For the uninitiated, it’s a conversation in “The West Wing.” Jed is the Democratic president, and Charlie is his body man (and at one point was almost assassinated for dating the president’s very white, very ginger daughter). It’s tongue in cheek because Charlie is black. The GOP’s true colors are showing because they’re afraid of everything progressive. No historically intelligent Republican would take all this lying down. No self-respecting one would, either. I often wonder if William F. Buckley, John McCain, and Ronald Reagan are rolling in their graves. If we’re going to talk about the crimes of the GOP, even Richard Nixon is like, “I’m out.” He broke into Democratic headquarters (or was the mastermind, anyway). Now, Trump is making him look fucking adorable.
I think people are greatly underestimating how good Trump is at being a Russian asset, because he doesn’t have to come out and say he supports Putin no matter what he does. Putin impresses him and feeds his ego, and he gives away information freely, even classified because it’s not that he’s willing to sell secrets. It’s that he’s genuinely too stupid to remember what’s classified and what’s not…. or at least, that’s how he comes across to me. He’s a Useful Idiot, not a proud FSB operative. We are going to stumble into Russia getting whatever they want just because Trump is impressed.
Meanwhile, the United States is trying to keep Ukraine sovereign. That won’t happen under Trump, because he’ll play both sides. He’ll support the country that gives him the most, because all his relationships are transactional. At this point, we are not talking about two candidates that are the same. On its surface, the election looks like two old guys, but one of them is not like the other. We’ve already been warned by Russia about “getting involved.” So, do we fold to that pressure by electing Trump?
Let’s not.
When people talk about a Trump presidency, they generally have either forgotten or never knew how bad it was. Trump didn’t choose the best and the brightest around him. He only hired people that would toe the company line, which is how Trump does business. Hire people who never disagree with him, then don’t pay them.
This election is not about the candidates, but the baggage that comes with them in terms of staff. You are not voting for a party, you’re voting to keep things the same. Sometimes, it’s better to keep the devil at bay.
I mean, maybe there were only two Corinthians. We weren’t there. Not every sermon is a hit.
I saw the prompt and it just begged for a joke. I have no idea whether I’ll be significant historically or not, but I hope to leave my mark on the world. There’s nothing funny about that. But the notion of rising to “historical figure” status is a bit much. I don’t even know that it’s always positive to be a historical figure, because some people are remembered more fondly than others.
The real answer, no jokes at all, are the people in my life who are historical figures and we just don’t think of them that way; they’re still alive.
Jonna Mendez helped us win the Cold War. Full Stop. She is Captain Carter with an American accent. Before you disagree with me, read all her books. That way, she has all your money before you get mad at me. 😉
I like her because she’s funny af. It doesn’t hurt that she’s an intelligence hero and former Chief of Disguise. She absolutely will have a lasting impact on history and I will not be alive to hear about her true legacy by the time everything is declassified…. well, I say I won’t be alive. My grandfather lived to 92. Miracles happen. But the odds that I will live long enough to hear just how much she did are unlikely.
The stories she’s already told are scary enough. I think it’s more fun reading about real people who work as spies than it is to read about James Bond and all the other fictional spies out there who have no real connection to either CIA or MI-6 except that the writers worked there. Personal memoirs are better than fiction, because the truth often is.
I admire Jimmy Carter. He was able to be president and to keep his Christian values intact by welcoming the stranger on an enormous stage. Helping the poor on an even larger one. Not sending people to do Habitat for Humanity for him, showing up and putting on a hard hat.
Linus Torvalds invented computers.
No, he didn’t, but Linux is my favorite operating system and that joke was tongue in cheek.
He’s still alive, and the Finnish phenom completes me. Sometimes, he’s hilarious. Sometimes, he’s an angry bear. It’s on brand. He’s a historical figure who just happens to have 90% of my own personality.
Vladimir Zelenskyy and I are the same age, and the same creative personality type who is also interested in news. He built an entire political party off his satire. He really is the breath of fresh air that Ukraine needs and I’m so glad we got to be alive at the same time. I wish that he’d had more peace from the moment he got elected, however I think that if Ukraine survives the invasion intact he’ll be a great leader for a very long time. He’s the antihero. He took on Putin in a public arena (TV) and now is currently in the process of showing him he’ll come after him for real, too. Zelenskyy didn’t start this fight, but he’ll end it.
Putin will tell you that Zelenskyy absolutely started this fight, because Zelenskyy embarrassed him on television. Go cry in the walk-in, you useless child. Because obviously the proper response to being embarrassed in the media is invading another country.
Trump has those same instincts, which is why he blackmailed Ukraine. Obviously, the proper response to “we need weapons to defend against Russian aggression” is “okay, but only if you shake down my political opponent first.” The entire GOP has blood on their hands for the fake sincerity they gave Zelenskyy after Trump left office, and their refusal to look at reality and convict that bastard. Again, if it’s not high crimes and misdemeanors, we’re going to have a hell of a time proving it in the future.
I hope that I’m adding my voice to the diaspora, raising the discourse on what we talk about when we talk about a new Trump presidency. People who love Trump love him in an unhealthy way where they do not see any downside to their love and devotion because he is the savior of all, amen. Meanwhile, we have a very sophisticated intelligence game afoot where Russia cozies up to Trump in The White House shamelessly because he actually is too dumb to notice when he’s being played.
I don’t like that Trump wants to emulate the dictators that he sees, and I do not believe he has respect for anything he doesn’t understand. For instance, he doesn’t have to learn how the legal system works. Everything can be done by executive order.
You don’t have to learn to admit mistakes, you have to learn how to pay porn stars to keep their mouths shut. Speaking of which, Stormy Daniels is hot as hell and I’m not even sure I’d recognize her in a picture. I’m talking about how engaging her personality is on social media and how much I’m clamoring to read anything she ever writes. I’m sure she’s going to be offered a book deal; I think it depends on her NDAs how long it will take her to complete it.
I admire Monica Lewinsky for the same reason I admire Stormy Daniels. Both of them were handed a shit sandwich by the press and came off as funny and likable. For Stormy, it didn’t take as long. But now Monica is genuinely popular on Twitter because she can laugh at herself after all these years. I am sure it takes an enormous amount of strength to be who they are, and are worthy of admiration because you have to keep telling your story, even when it gets complicated.
Washington is all about complicated.
The bravest thing you can do in this town is to tell your story without any bullshit attached. In Washington, people don’t know what to do with honesty. There’s no “crafting the narrative” when people directly call you out on the carpet.
But it’s by being so vulnerable all the time that people calling you out doesn’t feel like a threat, that there’s no narrative to craft. I also like that in Washington, I get to stand next to greatness daily, whether it’s the former Chief of Disguise at CIA or a Japanese maple that’s been in my neighborhood for a hundred years.
It hit me over the head today that this is all real. That I am not just spouting my thoughts into the night, saying nothing of substance. That line from Daniel really got to me, that I “write in bulk without saying anything of substance.” The reason it got to me so much is that it was like he dismissed all my friends and their personalities, as if me writing about them wasn’t interesting enough to be valuable. It’s why I got rid of him in a New York minute. Supergrover’s reaction to finding out I was a writer was to immediately support me financially with a donation and offer to be my editor for all time and space, because it’s a job we can do virtually, the collaboration of writing. Whenever I feel alone as a blogger, I remember the friends whose first reaction is that my blog is valuable, that I am doing a public service.
I’m just not doing a public service for academia, which I’m sure some people find lacking. I find it relatable, because I’m not putting myself out there to be anything I’m not. As I told Supergrover, “I don’t feel like I want to take over for your psychologist. I feel like I want to be the waiting room that doesn’t suck.” I got that line from Paul Gilmartin on “Mental Illness Happy Hour,” and I use it all the time, because I only know enough about psychiatry and psychology to be your friend in the waiting room. I’m not even licensed to take your history and physical and *present* to your doctor.
That being said, sometimes people will get put on the same drugs I am, or have been on. If they have the same side effects that I did when I was on it, I will tell them what my doctor did to solve that problem so that they can talk to their doctor and see if what I said makes sense. I don’t view myself as a substitute doctor, just the friend who’d go with you to the doctor because you have faith in my ability to translate medicine to English…. and that’s my only function. It is never to tell you what to do with your body. It is only to offer a friend opinion that might be worth it to you to bring up with your doctor later. What worked for me may not work for you, but it’s worth a shot. Peer review is valid, it’s just not a valid diagnosis. Your doctor only has 15 minutes with you at most during an appointment, unless you are seeing psych. That ranges from 15 minutes to 50 depending on whether the MD also does counseling or not. Some prefer wholistic care, some prefer focusing on drugs and letting other people handle therapy.
I prefer the integrated approach, because then my doctor and I have 50 minutes to work out a medication/symptom issue when it comes up instead of being held to the 15 minute patient factory.
All of this- my mental illness (Bipolar, CPTSD, Anxiety), my two processing disorders (ADHD and Autism), and my physical disability have convinced me that I do not have value to the world. Daniel is not responsible for my feelings because it’s my job to shake them off. But he certainly helped in the “I feel bad about myself” department. I can reason with myself all day long that he was just mad, but that doesn’t make his words hurt less.
It also doesn’t surprise me that Supergrover’s love and support created my crush on her, because she was my first real fan and I did not know what to do with that information at all. I became a gawky, awkward teenager in front of her at every turn.
Her: You’re BRILLIANT. Me: (absolutelyclueless as to how to respond) HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
And then, after she saw how brilliant I was, she let me know how brilliant she is and my brain just went on overload. It’s still on overload 11 years later because she has never stopped challenging me any less as a writer to paint both of us accurately. When she does critique my blog, I adjust. I address what she’s angry about because her feelings are important to me, always.
It keeps me in a place of imposter syndrome, when I really want to believe that I am the writer Supergrover believes that I am. I want to believe that because I can impress her, I can impress anyone in the world. It’s handy because I actually do believe that. Both she and Lindsay walk in rarefied air in different ways, so I am Kevin Bacon’ed to the power establishment, even Hollywood. My reluctance looks like an excuse next to all that.
If I supposedly have all these connections, why am I not using them? I can sum that up in two words:
It’s rude.
I will give you a HUGE for instance. It is one thing to send Kamala Harris an e-mail and ask her to promote me. It is another thing for Kamala, Lindsay, Matt, and me to sit with her at dinner and when it’s mentioned that I’m a writer, she says she wants to take a look. That’s valid. It’s not seeking out power for power’s sake.
Just like I wouldn’t endorse a product I wouldn’t use, I wouldn’t be friends with someone just because they were powerful. Getting to know a powerful person in a relaxed setting like dinner with her old friends and integrating me is more my vibe, because I get publicity by shaking hands, not by sending out DMs to powerful people.
The one thing that’s ever happened to me that was a rejection that’s gotten larger over the years as a try to make it as a writer was not being picked to be on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” It might been a powerful connection to have met her in the past.
The reason I would have met her is that she started a book club, and I think “She’s Come Undone” was one of their first picks for it was that this was in either 1996 or 7. I wrote about the book from a queer perspective, and I got a call from an executive producer who seemed very excited about me and we talked for 45 minutes. In the end, though, everyone they picked looked the same. I wasn’t their vibe.
In that time and place, queer criticism of that book was valid, because there are a lot of themes I find abhorrent about it. I just don’t think they had the strength to go through that ball of wax, and it’s the only one I had.
The one thing I know is that if Oprah and I do meet, it will be on like Donkey Kong because I believe to the very core of my being that we operate the same way. Oprah is just as shy and isolated as me most of the time, and has a big personality on stage. I don’t relate to that at all. Clearly.
It doesn’t matter, though, because today I had a proper chat with someone from Lagos. Someone from Lagos noticed me. Like, told me he likes my humor. Now I know my brand of humor reaches from DC to Africa. I don’t know many people who know that.
Because it’s all real. I’m on my way. All I ask is that my real friends are my real friends, and let me have this space whether I write the way they like it or not, because it’s impossible for me to guess.
Stories That Are All True 