Yay! Got a line on a chicken for Yale.
(Brought to you by a journalism fellowship that confused a performance with a chicken and paintball for Ross Douthat)
Yay! Got a line on a chicken for Yale.
(Brought to you by a journalism fellowship that confused a performance with a chicken and paintball for Ross Douthat)
Also, there’s something wonderful about an art piece you really can’t photograph. (Hind Sight is a dark room with maybe a single fixture of maybe 5 lumens).
Finally got to see James Turrell’s Hind Sight, 1984 at MassMoCA. Wonderful, but 15 minutes is not enough. So I’ve booked all eight slots between noon and 1p on Monday. 😁 🙈
Did Apple really shut down Facebook’s ability to issue internal builds along with its spyware? If so, anyone think that’s a big enough bloody nose?
Rachel Lark is an amazing sex-positive, filthy, badass feminist musician and she’s just started up a Patreon. Give a listen to her music and, if you like it, sign up to support her. It would be awesome if she gets more time to make art!
I was reminded by @rnv that I haven’t shown my face about for a while. Lots of (good) busy-ness around the holidays. Wishing everyone a happy new year! 🎉🎉🎉
Quote from dinner: “There’s a bottle of super high proof rum in the back of your freezer—don’t drink any, it’s for extracting DNA.”
I need to give Margaret Fell’s “Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved, and Allowed…” another read in the light of hooks. 📚
Currently reading: bell hooks’s feminism is for everybody. 📚
ps: What’s up with capitalizing hooks’s name, Indiebound?!
And, while I’ll have to brave Times Square (shudder) this evening; I’ve got a ticket to Hamilton to make it worth it. 😁
NYC on the weekend after Thanksgiving is nuts, but stay far enough south and one can find a quiet cafe. Enjoying Bluestone Lane in the West Village. ☕️
I’m a day late, but on Thanksgiving I try to honor the worst and best of our country. In remembering Native generosity, there is also our horrific history of genocide, germ warfare, breaking promises, and stealing land.
Yet, Lincoln institutionalized the holiday the same year he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made the de facto end of slavery an aim of the Union war effort. So, I try to honor that step in bending the arc of history towards justice and rededicate myself to the continuing struggle for equity in redress of two of my country’s greatest crimes.
I’ve seen some news stories warning about Trump shortening Open Enrollment for the ACA. That’s only true of the Federal Exhanges. Some states’ rules differ: NYS’s runs through Jan. 31, 2019. The deadline of Dec. 15 still stands for coverage starting on Jan. 1, 2019.
I’ve been listening to a podcast about the Haitian Revolution and I never realized how many different sides there were and how many shifting alliances. It’s not in every war of liberation that the colonial power (France) ships 20,000 guns to one army of freed slaves. While another two armies of revolting slaves are allied with a different colonial power (Spain) and receiving arms from them. Then there the group of whites who are fighting against their own government with a third colonial power (the U.K.). Not to mention the fourth side of rich gens de couleur who have an ambiguous relationship with everyone else and are repressing both whites and former slaves. And that’s just what went on in 1796.
Could we send some designers to Florida? They seem to have persistent problems designing ballots:
Here’s Sen-Gov dropoff:
FL20 (C005): 97.5%.
FL22 (A001): 95.7%.
FL24 (M001): 97.8%.
FL24 (Q050/051): 89.6%.
Political Bases and Compromise with @frankm
Each party has to pay some attention to their base, because those are the people who will be volunteering, donating, and most likely to turn out to vote in the primaries. Those people form the core of the parties: it makes sense that politicians will be attentive to their interests. To completely ignore them is to ignore political reality. For example, the Democrats can’t compromise on restrictions for reproductive rights, because liberal women would be enraged and primary any Dem who voted for it. And even if the Dem survived the primary, those women would certainly be apathetic in the general. Why vote for “a Republican-Lite”?
The Republicans have been completely bound to their base/donors for years. Why else would they have worked to pass extremely unpopular legislation during the last term?
Glory be, we took back the House, but there’s still a long road ahead. We need to keep at it! Keep pressure on the Dems, work on local reforms, and plan to be even more energized in 2020!
We would do well to remember the generational struggles of our heroes of the past. Remember that W.E.B. DuBois was born in 1868 and died in 1963. He lived 95 years and was born at the peak of Reconstruction black power and died a few days before the March on Washington. He lived his entire life in an era of incredible oppression. Yet he continued to fight. This could be our future. The only choice is to not be too jubilant or too depressed after tomorrow and keep moving forward. It’s the fight of our lives.