2月-坚果海外加速器
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It’s fucking wild to watch social media try to deal with the protests and the not-very-shocking “news” that black lives are devalued by racist social structures, including but not limited to health care, the justice system, city planning, and education. Even me with my dumb diary-blog! I am not a “brand,” I have never had an ad or been paid to post anything, and I rarely comment on current events, but like everyone else I went back and forth with Do I Mention What Is On My Mind vs. Do I Shut Up And Let Other People Talk.
Probably either way is okay. Here is what is not okay, social-media-wise:
A fake-eyelashes Mormon lady on Instagram with some “not all cops” and “violence is never okay” and “can’t we all get along” crap. Can we all get along? I don’t know. Maybe ask the captain of your local badge-wearing murderous thug squad? Or the elected officials who respond with various forms of “hmmm how unfortunate” every time a cop murders someone, even if it’s on video with numerous witnesses?
Then there’s the woke blogger who gives you a reading list, which is…okay? But not enough? You can read forever and reading is good but there is danger in academically knowing all about racism, feeling comfortable that YOU don’t do or say racist things, and still not having done any real work on yourself. (I do like donation roundups, though! So many small and new-to-me orgs that I’ve added to my Give Away Money list.)
IT IS OFFICIAL
I am not going back to the office for the summer and maybe not for the rest of the year. The work-from-home policy is for pandemic reasons, although I might be working from home a bit even if the world were virus-free, because my office building had a few issues with broken glass.* We have been told that returning to work there in person, in our bras and real-person pants, is “voluntary” for 2024. I think I will stay right here, thanks.
I need to make some tweaks to my schedule and also get my mind out of the “this is temporary” space, but I am realizing that the public transit commute sucked up quite a bit of time. A lot of it was enjoyable time—reading and podcasts and the beautiful view as the El trundled across the beautiful river. But a lot of it was stressful too—sitting on a train car thinking about starting dinner and putting in laundry while not being able to do it. Or rushing to leave at a certain time in order to have the type of evening I wanted to have, with the laptop in a backpack to resentfully haul out later and actually finish the work.
Now I start work extremely early, up with the birds at stupid o’clock, take a huge break in the middle of the day, and work a little more in the early evening. Biphasic sleep and biphasic work. I am like a farmer in preindustrial Europe. (In so many ways! Astrology, bloodletting, civil unrest, the noble class controlling the land, oh and of course living through the New Black Death.)
*The protests were very centered around my work neighborhood, especially on the first Saturday night, and it was surreal to see footage of my building, “my” Trader Joe’s with a burning SUV out front, “my” smashed-up 7-11, “my” looted Starbucks. I wonder if anyone broke into the Starbucks and calmly made their own latte, for protest refreshment. Or if any vegan protestors got away with some non-dairy milk. Just so the broken windows weren’t for naught.
SHELTER IN PLACE OBSERVATIONS, UNIMPORTANT EDITION
- Has anyone else had the pandemic experience of long-ago people contacting you out of nowhere? I think some people must be bored as shit and are going through their old contact lists. My most recent surprise email was a high-school friend, kind of an oddball “if Alex P. Keaton was a libertarian” type; we had a lot of classes together and he was always nice enough. I did open his email with some trepidation because, after years of no contact during our (separate) college careers, he moved to New York and one day sent me an email with a Zappos link to some sandals and the note, “My girlfriend just got these and I thought they would look good on you too…you always had nice feet!” Then there was a row of smiley emojis and oh god THAT IS A NO FROM ME. FOR SO MANY REASONS. MIMI SMARTYPANTS HAS LEFT THE CHAT. I did not reply. This recent email, however, was normal and fine? So I wrote back, in a normal and fine way, but of course I will never get his foot thing out of my head, and thus it will never truly be normal and fine again. Let that be a lesson to you all.
- On a similar note of “hmmmm no,” the prisoner I have been a penpal to sent me a Mother’s Day card (?) and also asked for a photo. The thing I REALLY didn’t like about the photo request was that he said he would understand if I was not “ready” to send one. In a previous letter, after he had made a joke about a jealous husband, I was pretty fucking crystal clear that I am only in this for the letter-writing, that my husband knows all about my letter-writing, and that he (the penpal) should not make jokes like that again. It’s possible, given the prison system and general state of the postal service, that our letters crossed in the mail, and I am trying to give the benefit of the doubt. You are supposed to tell the letters-to-prisoners organization if anything makes you uncomfortable, and then…I actually don’t know what happens. They reprimand him? You just break it off and are assigned a new penpal? Anyway. He gets one more chance to not be creepy.
- I have a new outdoor pet! There is a chipmunk that lives in a gap between my house and the porch, sort of in the wall, I cannot describe it properly! I am not an engineer! When I feed the birds I also put out some sunflower seeds especially for the chipmunk and then later I get to watch them (nonbinary chipmunk) run around eating in their cute stop-motion way.
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- Watched a bunch of one-word title films.
- Cyber regulators deny rumors they approved VPN …:China's cyber regulators have denied they have given a company green light to sell VPN services in the nation, stating it was Cyber regulators deny rumors they approved VPN service Global Times Published: 2021-07-10 15:29:38
- Joker: also too long and also god what a steaming pile of crap.
- Perfect: documentary about synchronized swimming . A surprising amount of injuries!
- Harrow: BBC docuseries on an elite boys’ boarding school in London (the one with the silly straw hats)
- Maineland: another boarding school doc, about Chinese students who go to high school in extremely small-town Maine
SHELTER IN PLACE HEROES, PRODUCT EDITION (NOT SPONSORED IN ANY WAY)
- Roomba. I thought this was a gimmick when LT bought it but it is so good to run daily for cat hair and kitchen crumbs.
- Period underpants. My turn for skepticism! I bought the widely advertised name-brand kind and while they are perhaps better suited to a WFH situation than for running around town, I think they work well.
- Stand mixer. I want homemade pizza all the time, but limiting factors include the mess and getting flour on my hands. I am a sensory-issues princess when it comes to gooey hands. The stand mixer makes pizza dough fast and mess-free. Also, the stand mixer theoretically frees you up to do other things besides kneading dough but I always end up standing and staring at the dough going around. Meditation!
- astrill安装. So much less gross than touching a sponge. More of my issues, see above.
- This no-waste cleaning stuff that comes in tablets. I bought and liked the kind that this author praises at the end of this article.
- Flower subscription. I bought flowers for my mom last month and impulsively added the subscription. You can change the recipient each month so some can be gifts and some can be all for yourself. In contrast to a few other things on this list of heroes, this is not no-waste AT ALL—my flowers came from South America and were heavily packaged besides, so I may as well have burned an acre of rainforest myself. But I can’t deny they are making me happy. Look!
—mimi smartypants has been enlarged to show detail.