If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
K. Wright’s right: The Privilege of ‘Always Negotiate’ I have always advocated for myself and negotiated for more money, but it doesn’t always work, it doesn’t always work to the degree that I hope or want or deserve, and I know that more than a few people would penalize me for even asking. I’ve had a strange combination of luck where the workplaces are incredibly toxic but either I had the backing of a strong advocate or they felt like their hands were tied so they had to give me more but they also punished me for it.
Related: I also think that the officer and watch commander should have been personally liable for their actions in arresting Utah nurse Alex Wubbels when she refused to comply with their illegal demands, not just fired and demoted. Maybe that’s what it takes to get officers of the law to actually respect the law they’re supposed to uphold.
Also related: I am so incredibly tired of terrible people.
I hope white people stay out there screaming this truth until it finally breaks the police and federal government brutality.
Brave Saver: “This is the core of what enrages me about traditional financial advice: it actively harms people. There are so many of us who read or hear personal finance advice that leaves us feeling ashamed, worthless, hopeless, and filled with despair. And how can we move forward when the solutions we seek all turn into emotional and mental blocks?” Note – I didn’t have this problem when I was using blogs as a resource 12-10 years ago but the PF world I delved into and loved was incredibly different then. It was almost all stories about people working through their struggles, it wasn’t all this making money off their platform How To and pushing an agenda.
Yay for Kitty and paying off her mortgage! I wistfully think: gosh that’d sure be nice and also: gosh but I’m not willing to dump all our cash into the black hole of our mortgage because it needs so much to make it happy.
I cannot carry a tune in a bucket so I admire those who can. I don’t enjoy talent shows and reality shows as a rule but happened across ten year old Souparknika Nair’s Britain’s Got Talent audition and her voice just blew me away.
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1608.94; Rural libraries, $321.62.
DHS is sending federal officers to snatch people off the street in Portland. Here are some ways to help.
SDCC isn’t happening this year and I’m ever so sad about the lost family and friends time. But we can still support the people who would have relied on those sales as a big part of their finances. I’ve been adding tweets to this thread of the vendors currently listed with online shops that we’d normally buy from.
I missed him at this SDCC visit but it was wonderful just knowing he was there leading this Children’s March even if I didn’t make it there in time.
My favorite thing about John Lewis is that at ComicCon, he cosplayed as his younger self, wearing the same coat and backpack he wore at the March on Selma and led kids in a little march around the convention. 🖤 pic.twitter.com/6T2sgRZehz
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1589.82; Rural libraries, $321.62.
A tiny part of me wanted to believe that just maybe it would be possible to see some things improved by the end of the year. Just some. Not all, not a lot. But I’m betting Scalzi‘s right that we’re looking, at the very least, at this complete bullshirt through the end of the year.
I read that younger children are supposed to be less susceptible and less likely to be carriers. Then I see reports like this and this and I remember how many people are selfish idiots who refuse to mask or do anything to keep people around them safe, or naive and ignorant of proper masking, or have no idea they’re asymptomatic carriers, and my risk assessment goes way the hell up. Because it’s not just a risk based on the biology of the virus. It’s amplified by human behaviors. And too many Americans are not trustworthy.
The Plague States of America. Painful to think about how true a lot of this is: It’s not that other nations don’t want to welcome Americans, they just can’t. The point of a passport is that a sovereign power vouches for its bearer, but America can’t vouch for the health of their citizens at all. America’s public health regime is far less trustworthy than Liberia’s (which is actually quite good). Its sovereign is mad.
At the same time, you can’t trust Americans. Americans have poor hygiene (low masking rate) and at least 40% of the population can’t be trusted to even believe that COVID-19 exists, let alone to take it seriously. They’re likely to refuse testing, not report symptoms, break quarantine, and generally follow rules. Americans have a toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance that makes them unwelcome travelers.
I am so sick of this administration and their attempts to further destroy this country. This time it’s their attempts to bring down USPS. USPS isn’t perfect, what is, but none of the private companies that compete with it are any better and in a lot of ways they’re worse in my experience.
People looking for permission to lie to stand out on their applications. It reminds me of the candidate who would have been a shoo-in for the job but I knew the company he had come from so the way he chose to lie made it obvious he had inflated his title. He would have been just fine with the truth. But I will nothire someone who is willing to lie to get a foot in the door. Why would I trust them?
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1589.82; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Edmonia Lewis: the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world.
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Quinisha Jackson-Wright: “While I’m sure they mean well, the difference between them and me is I don’t have the option to only think about race when it’s all over the news. Once the dust settles and the protests are over, I don’t get to breathe a sigh of relief and return to business as usual. I understand that the times in between this hashtag and the next are when racism is at its worst. It’s more subtle than a video of a cop taking away an innocent human being’s last breath but just as insidious.”
This article on COVID in this moment in June resonates. Thankfully we haven’t been getting invitations but we do see some folks out and about in ways that seem reckless and we are just not ready to risk that: “Because, what seems like five minutes ago, we were all on lockdown. Because people in every nook and cranny of the U.S. are still getting sick. Because even though it feels like we’ve aged 10 years since February, the coronavirus is still very new and we don’t know a lot about it. Because my number one job is to protect my family.
But it’s this “decision fatigue” that’s the new tired. Before, it was the holy-crap-what-is-happening-is-it-safe-to-get-the-mail daily fears that made us crash by 9 p.m. every night. Now, it’s the everyone-else-is-going-out-and-living-again-but-what-if-its-not-safe-and-there-is-a-new-spike-next-week fear that’s bringing me down.”
And while some people are having very mild or no symptoms, this COVID experience is more what I expect we need to be prepared for. Hattip to Nicole and Maggie.
A good framing for teaching someone how to stop and think before they react at work: “You’re very passionate about your job and you want this project to succeed at the highest levels, and that’s great. But keep in mind that the first response to a problem isn’t always the best solution. Sometimes we need time to absorb all the parameters of a situation and to listen to the perspectives of your teammates before moving forward.”
Dinnertime!
Seamus used to pull this kind of thing with me but he was much more emphatic and a little bit patronizing. After several weeks of banging his bowl, and incremental one hour changes, now dinner is at 2 pm and we have peace again.
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1589.82; Rural libraries, $321.62.
While I’m still not yet optimistic that we’ll see true and lasting changes in society after just two weeks of outrage and protests, I do feel like this time feels different and this article talking about protests in small towns across America is exactly why I sensed a difference. I don’t know if it’ll last, I truly hope it does, but I was startled by the number of people from small places I was familiar with coming out to protest. Even my predominantly middle class white suburban hometown turned out.
The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world – “Overall, nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns: they led to political change 53% of the time compared to 26% for the violent protests.
Music’s week during the protests: “It’s hard to walk into a store knowing I may not get service because of the color of my skin, it’s tiring to remember to get a receipt because I don’t want to get stopped for shoplifting. It’s painful to think about my brother getting pulled over for a traffic stop and having guns pulled on him (which actually happened, in front of our house, when we were in high school). In my particular corner of the world, it’s hard to be many of my friends’ only black friend. It’s hard to ignore the Trump-supporting crap my in-laws post. It’s hard to surf social media (which I have to do for my job) and see the awful racist stuff people post, the whataboutism, the well-meaning but tone-deaf stuff from “allies.””
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Sign a petition: Demand justice for Breonna Taylor. They’ve passed a law under her name to ban no-knock warrants (because as we’ve seen, the police are notoriously scrupulous about following the law since they’re also subject to it /sarcasm) but as of Monday, they STILL HAVEN’T ARRESTED HER MURDERERS.
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop. There are so MANY good points in here that reinforce what the community and the statistics are telling us. One final idea: consider abolishing the police. I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.
I had never heard of any of these Asian activists before and they did important work:
Yuri Kochiyama: was interned during WWII, sued for reparations and won, used that to fight for further reparations, independence, and more.
Teachers Face A Summer Of Soul Searching. What Do They Do In The Fall?: “By August, elected officials will give themselves credit for discussing things, as if discussing a problem actually solved it. Some will insist that Corvid-19 is no worse than the flu and we have to put America back to work. Others will admit that the money they approved is not nearly enough to meet the demands. District administrators will complain that they don’t have the necessary resources, but they’ll still get no more help.
And by fall, individual teachers in individual schools will have to figure out how to do the best they can with the little that they’ve got. The district guidance they get will range from restrictively stringent to hopelessly non-existent. Mostly, they’re going to have to figure out how to cope on their own.”
Scalzi on Gen X and trans people. At the time I watched Ace Ventura, I didn’t know anything about trans people but I do now and I’m deeply uncomfortable with how comfortable that movie was in othering trans people. I’d also like to know why women are so deeply threatened by trans people having rights, and by trans activism. In what way does their having rights negatively impact women? Rhetorical question, other people having rights doesn’t take away my rights unless they have the right to harm others with impunity. Like cops and basically our justice system do. But that’s not a small minority of people having more rights, that’s a group of people opting into a system that’s set up to allow brutality. And I’m sick of the argument that trans people are the perpetrators of violence against women. The VAST majority of cases where a man who has abused a woman in my personal life or in the news, it’s a cishet man operating with impunity. He didn’t need to pretend to be a woman to do it. Hell, look at our president! FFS.
Nicole and Maggie reminded me of a cake memory / ritual I used to have. I suspect I got away with it because my parents were too busy to notice. What did you get away with because your parents were too busy to notice?
We are the boiling frog
Text of @IAmSyiDavies’s tweet: As someone from a country that has witnessed a civil war, totalitarian leaders, ethno-religious pogroms, state-sanctioned brutality & the slow eradication of human rights under the guise of criminality, I can frankly tell Americans: You don’t know what you’re playing with.
As someone from a country that has witnessed a civil war, totalitarian leaders, ethno-religious pogroms, state-sanctioned brutality & the slow eradication of human rights under the guise of criminality, I can frankly tell Americans:
You don't know what you're playing with.
— Suyi Davies Okungbowa (@IAmSuyiDavies) June 7, 2020
