My Media Sources

We don't have a television*, so I get zero amount of my news information from television. 

I used to subscribe to the Washington Post and to The New York Times, but dropped my subscriptions due to their editorial decisions.

Now I subscribe to these sources:

The Boston Globe (good, but a little too local in its focus)

The Atlantic (very good, with an in-depth reporting style I thought was gone forever)

The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (a local paper, which leans very much to the right, but at least seems sane, except for the letters to the editor section and an occasional editorial)

I also read a local free paper, The Fayetteville Flyer, which covers local events like council meetings and festivals and buildings applications. And I get some of my news through BlueSky -- not that they do reporting, but usually the news hits there first and then I can look to see what the AP site says, or the Globe. And I pick up some news from various blogs, and then do the same search.

Occasionally I will watch a segment from a television news station on YouTube, but these are so annoyingly vapid that I usually click away after a few minutes. 

If you can only have one news source, I recommend The Atlantic. Well worth the subscription fee.

*I'm not a television snob, honest. We watch TV shows -- we're watching the Pitt right now -- but we stream them. I grew up in a house where the TV was on all the time, and usually three televisions, all on at the same time, all turned up loud. When I moved into my own place and first experienced life without the racket of television, I was in paradise. So first we kept the TV in a little room of its own, and then we kept it in the closet and only brought it out to watch movies, and now we don't have one at all. It's wonderful.

"What is Trump Doing with these Tariffs?"

My kid asked me what Trump was up to with these tariffs.

"Crashing the economy," I said, "but I can't see why."

The simple answer is because he's an idiot, which is undeniably true. But I can't help thinking there's something even simpler behind it, like he thinks he's found a way to make himself (and Elon) richer by doing so. Since I'm not a billionaire, I don't know how that would work.

Also I'm sick*, so I'm not thinking on all cylinders. Here's what Camestros and their comment section have to say.

*I picked up a virus somewhere, which I hope isn't COVID. A cough, a sore throat, gastrointestinal issues, a fever. Plus general aches and blahness.

New Cost-Cutting Measures

ETA Update: There was so much outrage among local citizens that the Sebastian County police had to reissue this with APRIL FOOLS across it in red. Apparently the Venn diagram of people who hate electric cars, people who hate Leon Skum, and people who hate cops has a pretty big intersection point.

Wonderful idea!

From the Sebastian County Sheriff's office: 

We are proud to announce the purchase of 12 new Cyber trucks to add to our patrol fleet. At a purchase price of only $102k each these will more than pay for themselves in fuel cost savings. Due to a lack of charging stations in Sebastian County, we are giving you, the community, the opportunity to partner with us. If you live south of Greenwood and have an approved charging system, and would allow our units to stop by for a charge, we consider you a valued gold star community partner. These units will hit the county roads today, April 1st.

(Alt text: image shows a Cybertruck with a Sebastian County Sheriff logo on its site)

Happy Trans Day of Visibility!

Those of you who, like me, love someone who is trans know how scary our country is for trans people right now. The instinct is to hide, and no one will blame anyone who does.

But standing up and being trans in public tells every frightened trans person that trans people are out there, and there are many of them. (As many of them as there are redheads in the world, according to some estimates.) 

Trans people are people. They have human rights. Those who tell you to hate them, those who tell vile lies about them, are as evil as the racists in 1950, who told the same lies about brown people as transphobes do now, and for the same reason: to give a fascist population someone to hate.

When I was a kid, they taught us in school that America was the one place on earth where everyone could be equal. Well, that wasn't true then, and it's not true now. But it's what the country means, it's the spine of our democracy -- everyone is equal under the law -- and I'm not settling for anything else.

This goes out to my kid and his husband, and all their wonderful friends.

First Home Repair

One of the things I liked about renting was that when things broke I could just call the landlord. Depending on the landlord (I've had both good and terrible landlords) they'd come fix it. Ta-da!

Yesterday the thingie in the toilet which makes the toilet flush broke in half. Thanks to the help of YouTube, I figured out not only that this was called a toilet chain, but also how to replace it. I got a new toilet chain today and fixed it in about two minutes.

Go me!

I highly recommend YouTube, btw, when you don't know how to do something. Someone will have made a video about how to do it, probably several someones. It's great.

Applying for Social Security and Medicare

I am doing it, God help me.

The Medicare bit is the most complicated so far. There's Part A and Part B and then like D through infinity, and you will need professional help (I have acquired it) to understand which part/s you need to apply for. 

Am I worried about what Trump and DOGE are going to do to the Social Security system I have been paying into since I was 15 years old and got my first "real" job? Yes, I am.

Eroding Rights, Collapsing Rights

We've probably all seen the video of the Tufts graduate student being arrested by ICE. 

She is a Fulbright scholar. She has never committed a crime. She has a valid visa. She is in a graduate program. She has not been charged with anything. She was simply seized and shipped out of state. No one is sure where she is now, and ICE will not let her lawyer talk to her.

As Matt Mikalatos says:

I've heard some people saying lately that there's no reason to be concerned, because immigrants don't have the same rights as citizens, and honestly I find this more stomach-churning than some of the directly racist or xenophobic things I've seen people say. Why on earth are people defending the government that's harming people instead of the vulnerable people being harmed?

I will promise you this: when a government starts violating rights of the vulnerable, it doesn't stop with a single population of people.

And as a Yale professor who has just accepted a job in Canada puts it:

“But how could you speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen?” he questioned. “And if you can’t speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen, when will they come for the American citizens? It’s inevitable.”

Call your reps. Make some noise. Clown show fascists are still fascists.

 

Stolen From Tumbr

 A fable for our times:

Trump Regime Stripping Away Rights

If they can do it to immigrants, they can do it to you.

If they can do it to tourists, they can do it to you.

If they can do it to people who have green cards, they can do it to you.

If they can do it to students, they can do it to you.

None of us are safe. All the Trump regime will need to do is redefine whatever category they please into "non-citizen," or "criminal," and that will be that. 

We're building new prisons in Arkansas, while cutting funds for schools and libraries. If you can't see why that's dangerous, you've been drinking too much Kool-Aid.

ETA:

Haircuts and Nicknames

 In Arkansas, one of our Republicans wants to create civil liability for anyone who "assists" transgender minors. That includes parents, and apparently anyone else on the planet, and it includes things like calling a kid by a name which doesn't "fit" their "biological gender," or allowing them to wear clothing that doesn't align with that gender:

"...any act by which a minor adopts or espouses a gender identity that differs from the minor’s biological sex as determined by the sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles of the minor, including without limitation changes in clothing, pronouns, hairstyle, and name.”

(Emphasis mine)

Comments are asking if this means a parent allowing a kid to have a hairstyle (long hair, short hair) which doesn't "fit" their assigned gender will be prosecuted; or if buying jeans for your daughter creates civil liability.

But no. Of course it doesn't. No cis child will be prosecuted for wearing jeans, or having a ponytail. As with most laws, this one will be prosecuted selectively. It's a law that can be weaponized against trans people.

Laws about what clothing people were allowed to wear used to be common in the U.S. Women who wore jeans, men who wore blouses, these people could be arrested and prosecuted. Long hair on men was a crime. Men with eyeshadow or earrings could be prosecuted. These laws were not enforced against "good" people. Like the War on Drugs, they were a way to prosecute the "wrong" sort of people. That's how these laws will be used as well.

Arkansas governor and Trump wannabe Sarah Huckleberry Sanders and her supporters keep blatting about how parents should be in charge of their children, but that's not what they mean. It's not what any of them mean. They mean they want to put "good" parents in charge of their children. And their definition of "good" is parents who agree with them -- Evangelical Christian parents, Trump-supporting parents, bigoted parents. 

Parents like me, and other parents who don't see children as their possessions, as their weapons in a culture war -- we should be prosecuted. We should be jailed. We should definitely not be allowed to make decisions about our children's healthcare, or their education, or their lives. 

As with women's bodies, decisions like these should be left to the government. 

Spring Break Hoves Into View

And then after Spring Break it's only April until I retire -- five weeks and out.

My department is insisting on holding a retirement party for me. Don't they know how much I hate parties? Dr. Skull asked what I wanted to do for my birthday (last week) and I said, "Absolutely nothing. Let's do absolutely nothing."

So that's what we did.

I plan to spend Spring Break putting my books into alphabetical order and writing reviews for Interzone. Also drinking a lot of coffee. It's the perfect holiday.

Books, not yet in alphabetical order

The Kid's First Academic Conference

He's doing a poster presentation on "The Efficacy of Scientific Illustration in Portraying Large Herbivore Impact":

The Kid at the AABA

Violation of the First Amendment

The right to protest against the actions of our government is one of our fundamental rights. It's right there in the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If Trump's regime can redefine that protest as "terrorism," and redefine a person with a green card as an "illegal immigrant," none of us are safe. 

This is one of the foundations of the country. Trump is violating it -- and his base have no problems with that violation. 

When they themselves are arrested, and when they find themselves scheduled for deportation, well, they'll be outraged. (If it happens to them or to their tribe, it's a crime. If it happens to liberals or brown people, it's hilarious.) It'll be too late at that point, of course.

Call your representatives now.

Ten Days Until Spring Break

 ...but who's counting?

(Asking for a friend.)

Via Pharyngula

 Anti-Semitism in the Oval Office, or that really bizarre behavior toward Zelenskyy explained:

The elements that emerged in conversation with Jerzy over the years -- the mockery of Jewish appearances, the need for Jewish submissiveness, the claims about dishonesty, greed, cowardice, and corrupt conspiracies -- figure in the scholarly literature on the subject.

        (snip) 

Zelens'kyi was elected on a peace platform in 2019, but Putin did not want to talk to him, in part because he did not think that Zelens'kyi showed him enough deference.  

        (Snip)

It was all there, in the Oval Office, in the shouting and in the interruptions, in the noises and in the silences. A courageous man seen as Jewish had to be brought down. When he said things that were simply true he was shouted down and called a propagandist. There was no acknowledgement of Zelens'kyi's bravery in remaining in Kyiv. The Americans portrayed themselves as the real heroes because they provided some of the weapons.  

Go read it all, as the kids today say.

To forestall the MAGAs: We've been told that Trump can't be anti-Semitic, because he has Jews in his own family. But that's like saying he can't be a misogynist because he married a woman. Pretty much all bigots are okay with "their" member of whatever group they hate. I've had transphobes explain to me that they know trans people, so they can't be anti-trans. 

Also, honestly, it's probably also to do with Zelenskyy having more backbone and being a better president than Trump. Trump, like most weak men, can't stand strength in those around him.

Original post at Pharyngula

See also this.

Oh No

Kevin Drum has died.

He was a voice of sanity on the interwebs, and had been for decades. One of the first real bloggers. 

Activism Tab from N&M

Nicole and Maggie write about activism today.

Your one-stop shopping for things to do to resist our current regime.

Via PZ Myers, today is Stand Up For Science day.

Five Things I Like about Living Here So Far

(1) It's colder than Fort Smith and we get more snow. Not much colder and not much more snow, but it's still a win. Also, there are snow plows here, so that's nice.

(2) The Ozark Natural Foods Co-Op is less than a five minute drive away, so I can go there anytime I want and get great food and great ingredients to make great food.

(3) SO MANY parks, walking, and biking trails.

(4) The four-story library

Children's Room at the library

(5) My power company is a Co-op, and my water company, city-owned, does everything it can it encourage recycling -- including charging people who recycle lower fees to pick up their trash, and funding giant recycling centers.

Bonus: Jeni's ice cream is available at Harps. Like, just right there in the freezers. Amazing!

Five Books I've Read This Week

Maureen McHugh, After the Apocalypse

A collection of short stories by one of my favorite writers. I'm pretty sure I read this one before, but I didn't remember some of the stories, so maybe not. McHugh is the author of one of my favorite novels, China Mountain Zhang, about (among other things) a construction worker living in an AU version of America where we had a second American revolution and where China is the dominant world power. This collection is a bunch of unrelated but excellent SF stories.

Audrey Schulman, The Dolphin House

Science fiction only in that it's fiction about scientists. In the early 1960s, a partially deaf waitress gets a job working with a pack of scientists studying how dolphins communicate. Engaging and extremely readable but also pretty upsetting due to animal mistreatment in the name of science. This is the Schulman who wrote Theory of Bastards, which I read last week and really loved. It's also about scientists and animals, bonobos in that case, and also has a partially disabled main character. Not as much animal abuse, though, and more science fiction.

Ruth Chan, Uprooted: A Memoir about What Happens When Your Family Moves Back

A graphic novel about Ruth's experiences when her family moves to Hong Kong after her father gets a job in China. There's also a flashback subplot about how and why the family moved to Canada. Nice detail about the life of a young teenager in Hong Kong, as well as the differences between life, food, and schools in Canada and life, food, and schools in Hong Kong. A quick and interesting read.

Samantha Harvey, Orbital

I actually only read about half of this one. Pretty much everyone in the SF world loves this book, and also it won the Booker Prize, but honestly it bored me so much I couldn't go on. Maybe it got better in the second half? It's about some astronauts as they orbit Earth and what they're thinking about and seeing. None of their thoughts or anything they see interested me much, but other people clearly thought otherwise. Nothing really happens except those thoughts and the astronauts looking down at Earth. The language Harvey used got a lot of praise in other reviews I read, but that also didn't seem especially good to me. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something.

John Barnes, Finity

This one is actually a re-read. It's about an alternate Earth where the Nazis won WWII, or actually about a bazillion AU Earths where various things happened differently. It's also about math, sort of, and about being online. It's not a very good book, and the ending is particularly flat, but I always enjoy reading it anyway. If you're into AU novels, and want a non-taxing read, this is your book.

How the Sausage is Made

 And why:

(Image shows Trump, GOP elephant, and Elon killing a bunch of programs (WIC, Medicaid and Medicare, SNAP) in order to stuff them into a sausage grinder which extrudes huge tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country.)

See also this.

Republicans love smoke-and-mirrors budgeting. They're laying off thousands of workers chaotically even though salary costs are a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Elon Musk is pretending to save far more money than he really is. Now Senate Republicans are trying to hide the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts using a new wheeze called the "current policy baseline."

Five Reasons to Dump Trump

Or at least stop supporting the current regime. I don't think impeaching him will have any effect, since the GOP (including my representatives) are too cowed by Trump to take any sort of action against him.

(1) Tax breaks for billionaires, while increasing tax burden on the lowest quintillions

(2) Destroying scientific research in this country, because his base hates experts and would rather have their children die from preventable diseases than trust science.

(3) Gutting civil rights protections, for no other purpose than to feed the bigotry of his base

(4) Defunding Medicaid and WIC, two of the most successful programs in our current American landscape, under the pretense that this would "cut waste" and save money.

(5) Ukraine and Zelensky. We all knew how petty, inept, and faithless Trump is, but the barefaced contempt shown, out of pure spite, for a leader, a supposed ally, fighting for his country, told the entire world how little Trump, and the US in general at this point, are to be trusted.

I could go on -- the destroying of our national parks, and the EPA, and consumer protections against giant corporations, and giving unprecedented power to Elon Musk, a man as inept as Trump himself, and as dishonest as Vance -- but five's the limit, that's the rule. 

Call your representatives, for what little good that is doing those of us who live in Red States. (I keep getting told by my congressmen and senators that everything Trump is doing is good and necessary, actually. See my opening paragraph.)

See also this:

The Five Meals I Can Cook

(1) Pasta with cream sauce. I like either linguine or frozen ravioli. Does this actually count as cooking? I do reduce the cream sauce.

(2) Baked cod in a lemon and butter sauce, with asparagus on the side. Or some other sort of white fish with the sauce -- whatever the store has available fresh. Frozen fish just isn't as good.

(3) Tuna casserole. This is the one with the potato chips on top, which I like a lot, but am sick of eating at the moment.

(4) Beans and rice, except Dr. Skull won't eat beans and rice. He says beans are poison, which is something he got off one of his YouTube food cult videos.

(5) Chicken pie, except you need to roast a chicken first and we can't get whole chickens at the moment, due to the avian flu situation.

I can also cook frozen pizza or tuna fish sandwiches or crackers and peanut butter. Mmm, dinner.

Five Things I did before Noon Today

(1) Got out of bed. Because honestly, that's award-worthy in itself these days.

(2) Put the medicine in the cat's eyes. She's got some kind of ideopathic eye condition, which the new vet is managing to cure (the one in Fort Smith never could), but it requires eye drops twice a day and boy does she hate it.

(3) Made coffee and drank a lot

(4) Graded / reviewed 16 assignments submitted by my students, some of which required extensive commentary.

(5) Drove Dr. Skull down to Fort Smith to see his pain doctor there since we can't get in with the pain doctor up here until June 25. We spent two and a half hours at the clinic, two hours of that in the waiting room. We did get him an earlier appointment with the person who does the corticosteriod shots, so that's something.

I did 3 and 4 at the same time, and also a load of laundry while I was doing 3 and 4. So once again this is six things I did.

While we were in the Fort, we ate at Las Americas, which was excellent as always. So I don't have to cook tonight at least.

I had pupusas 

Five Things I did Today

(1) Overslept through my dental appointment. Rescheduled for next Wednesday, at noon. 

(2) Graded 19 assignments from my students, most of which required comments and requests for revisions

(3) Broke down lots and lots of boxes and made a recycling run. (I am still working through recycling all the boxes from the move, though I am almost done.)

(4) Took a walk in Wilson Park, which is where I used to do most of my walking when I was a graduate students. It's much more developed now, with a huge playground for kids, tennis courts, and an elaborate system of walking trails. Also a pool and a baseball field, but those were there when I was in graduate school. Dr. Skull made his famous home run on the baseball field.

(5) Wrote about 500 words on my new novel

Later I'm going to take the kid to buy groceries, so really I'm doing six things today. This is a big improvement over when I was in graduate school, when I would explain to Dr. Skull that I could do one thing a week that did not have to do with graduate school. Though I was taking daily walks back then, but that was just as a break from studying, frankly.

The waterfall at Wilson Park: 

That was there when I was in graduate school, but there's a much fancier bridge above it now. (That pocking noise in the background is from the nearby tennis courts.)

Five Things I Did This Week

(1) Graded about 200 submissions from students, most of them short, but all of them requiring feedback from me. (55 students times an average of four assignments per student, but several of them didn't turn anything in, so. This is increasingly common, by the way: students sign up for a class, but then just don't do any work. When I pursue them via email, they explain that they have other classes and full-time jobs and three kids, but they're planning on doing the work for my class very soon.)

(2) Made a chicken pie

(3) Wrote 3500 words on my new novel

(4) Took three walks, one of them when it was 12 degrees outside, and one of which was on the local trail system, Razorback Greenway. It's pretty cool.

(5) Read a bunch of books and wrote two reviews

What did you do this week?

Updates

This is the longest year ever. How is it still only February?

I continue to email my reps daily, and am considering calling them on the weekends or after hours, so I can leave a message without actually having to speak to anyone. 

I'm trying to get enough exercise. It's hard since we don't have a gym here yet, so walking around is all I can really do. Every time I go to the library, though, I get a real workout, since it's four storeys high and I have things I have to do on every single floor. So lots of climbing stairs.

Eating has become an issue. Dr. Skull's pain level is such that he can no longer cook, though sometimes he is well enough to stand beside me and tell me what to do next. This summer the kid can come cook for us, but he is far too busy with grad school at the moment. I have discovered that I really hate cooking, and since I can only cook about five things reliably, and I'm sick of all of them, it's a dilemma. Do I revert to frozen pizzas? Start living on peanut butter? 

There's a Reddit Fayetteville, and I have learned that if I can't figure something out, all I have to do is ask Reddit, and I'll have like sixty answers 20 minutes later. It's great.

I have to file for Social Security soon, and for Medicare. I have no idea how to go about this, so I'm a little nervous. Any tips?

The MAGA Mindset

Having (wincingly, and so you don't have to) had a glance at several MAGA blogs, sites, and pages, here is what I have learned about MAGA:

(1) If Trump/Elon is hurting them or something they care about, it's a huge offense and horrible and should stop immediately.

(2) If Trump/Elon is hurting other people/things they don't care about, it's wonderful and exactly what should be happening. Hurt those people more! Destroy more of those things!

This is the philosophy of a toddler, and not a very well socialized one. That's our country now.

Walking in the Snow

It got above 12 degrees, so I went for a walk in the snow.

Despite the socialist snowplow that plowed our streets, there was still a lot of ice on the road. People were driving anyway, and one truck was pulling a guy behind them on a plastic sled, which, wow. I guess that's the sort of thing humans get up to because we have no natural predators.

There were fewer people sledding on the golf course, probably because of the vicious cold. But the sun was out, making everything very pretty.

Here's a pine tree in the snow:

And here is Jasper, very pleased that she is not some idiot who insists on going out for a walk on a snowy, icy, frigid day:

What I'm Reading Now

Audrey Schulman, Theory of Bastards

This is the best book I've read in awhile -- one of those stay-up-until-2:00-in-the-morning books. Told mainly from the point of view of a MacArthur Fellow who studies sexual behavior in primates (mostly human, but in the book it's bonobos), it's the story of a couple months in her life, with frequent flashbacks to her past. She's disabled, which has made her, interestingly, a better scientist; and she's living just before and during climate collapse, which she ignores as assiduously as most people do, right up until she can't.

There are some great characters in this, not all of them human, and the writing is great. Five stars, can't wait to read more by Schulman. (Recommended on Jo Walton's reading list, where I get a lot of my favorite reads; and like her I have some nitpicks about the actual science, but by the time I was thirty pages in I didn't care, I would follow Schulman anywhere.)

Kathleen Flynn, The Jane Austen Project

Time travel and Jane Austen -- obviously a book written exactly for me! And I do like it a lot. A doctor and Jane Austen scholar (that's one character) travels back in time with an actor and a Jane Austen scholar (the other character) to meet and research Jane Austen and to get (if they can) the letters that Austen's sister famously burned upon her death, as well a completed copy of the Watsons.

Things don't go quite as planned, obviously; but what really works in this novel is Flynn's ability to give us the world of 1815, and the Austen family. There's a romance between the two Austen scholars which is pretty well done. I kind of wanted a different ending, but it works for the novel. Recommend for all fans of Austen and time travel.

Gary Groner, The Way

Also a post-collapse/post-apocalyptic novel. Here, a virus has wiped out most of the world's population and remains endemic, killing almost everyone as they age into their forties. Will, one of the few people to survive past fifty, is tasked with taking information about a possible cure from Colorado (where he is the only survivor of a bunch of Buddhist living in a retreat in the mountains) to San Francisco, where a group of scientists still have the technology to do something with the information.

We can gloss over that bit, since the cure is just a McGuffin. What we have here is a travel quest through a world where most of the surviving population are feral children and adolescents, and where any towns or groups of young adults have to try to survive in a lawless landscape. Will struggles to maintain his non-violent worldview, which keeps him from killing or harming anyone or anything, while knowing he benefits from violence done by others. Also, he has two animal companions, a crow and a cat, with whom he can talk. This is either magical realism or some side effect of the virus, I was never sure which.

Anyway, compelling story and great characters. Even an acceptable ending. I liked this one a lot.

Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea

I finally read this one, which everyone was raving about a couple years ago. I love Nayler's short fiction and his novellas, but I could never get past the first ten pages of this one. Finally I just kept reading, forcing myself through the first hundred pages, and it did get better. It's still not my favorite by Nayler. I think he works better with shorter fiction.

Anyway, this is another apres le collapse /apocalyptical novel, and it's about that -- how humans are destroying the ecosystem -- but also about some human fighting to preserve a small bit of that ecosystem, as well as a scientist who is studying octopuses in that preserve. The last half is pretty good, but I don't know if it's worth slogging through the first half to get there.

Weather Report

It's not going to get above freezing here until Saturday.

Good thing I got the bread and milk.

Snow in Sunlight

The view out behind my house:

Now that the sun is out it is five degrees outside.

Snow

It's three degrees here, y'all. High of fifteen today.

It looks like we got six or seven inches of snow, from what's on my deck:

These are pictures from the windows, since it's too cold to go outside. Maybe when it gets to be 10 degrees, I'll go outside.

Here's the chicken pie we made yesterday, during the snow day:

It was delicious.

SNOW EMERGENCY

We're having a snow event. Ten to thirteen inches expected, says the weather guy. I'm dubious, but it certainly is coming down.

Pix later!

Cats on a snow day

New Recipe on Cooking with Delagar

 Yes, I have cooking anxiety:

Splendid Pie Crust

Getting a Reply from my Useless Senator

One of my senators finally wrote me a reply, explaining that it was necessary to allow Elon Musk to destroy the country because we needed to cut spending.

He didn't detail which spending cuts were necessary, but from what we're seeing, it's cuts in things like medical research, environmental protection, and OSHA, as well as WIC and Medicare.

What's not being cut, clearly, is the money being poured into Elon Musk's pockets.

Lies and Nonsense and GOP Rhetoric

...but I repeat myself. In case you were thinking of taking Elon Musk's regime seriously, here's a thread on his very own website: 

This speech is full of half-truths, distortions, misleading claims and outright lies.

Basically living up to every meme, trope and unfair stereotype, of Americans being ignorant morons.

I'll go through each of the claims he made in this segment and what the actual facts are. /1 https://t.co/w2oXBvvB88

— Danny Boy (@Care2much18) February 14, 2025

And, as he notes a little further down in the thread:

 

It's also the contempt they have for the intelligence of their own citizens.

That speech was fully aimed at an audience of Americans, via delivery to an audience of Europeans.

Aside from pissing-off half of Europe, he's assuming Americans are too stupid to know he's lying. pic.twitter.com/LhT0N9gWJN

— Danny Boy (@Care2much18) February 14, 2025

Six Ways to Send a Message to Your Reps

 From Nicole & Maggie:

Six Ways to Send a Message to your Reps

Keep messaging, call if you can, write if you can. Let them know we aren't accepting this.

This app, 5Calls, gives you a list of things you can write/call about, and scripts you can use.

American Health Care

So we saw our new pcp, six weeks after calling for the appointment. The visit went well -- he seems like a great guy. And he referred Dr. Skull to a kidney doctor and a pain specialist right away.

The kidney doctor's earliest appointment? Two months from now. The pain clinic's earliest appointment? June 25. Though if we were willing to drive 50 miles, they could get us into their branch clinic in April.

Wow, it's a good thing we don't have socialized medicine, since then we'd have to wait weeks for basic care.

Gulf of Freedom Fries

Someone on BlueSky said the whole Gulf of America silliness reminded them of the whole Freedom Fries nonsense. To which I say, yes. 

Equally trivial, equally ignorant. Our GOP overlords, y'all.

The Elon Musk Press Conference

I'm not that much disturbed by what Musk's small child said or didn't say to Trump during that weird press conference. What seems really disturbing about the whole thing to me was the way Trump sat there, like a lump of fungus, while Leon Skum did all the talking. Is Trump even really self-aware at this point?

Life in Trump's America

What I did today (or I guess it's yesterday now):

4:30 a.m. Wake up and lie fretting in the dark.

5:00 a.m. Get up, make coffee, avoid social media as much as possible.

5:30 a.m. Email at least one (today, four) representatives. Today I expressed concern about the cuts in funding to science research, because what the absolute fuck. Only in more civil language. 

6:00 to 8:00 a.m.: Grade papers. My students have turned in their first paper, which the one where I teach them how to evaluate a source and then they find a source and evaluate it. We're working on sleep this semester, which seemed like a nice topic that could not be politicized. (I want them focusing on the evaluation process -- how we know what good evidence is vs. propaganda -- which if it's a topic like microplastics or climate change, for example, they can't do. They're too caught up in defending their priors to be able to think at all, let alone critically.) 

I have nevertheless a few students who have managed to politicize the process, sending me outraged rants about how I am teaching them to determine what a credible source is -- basically, one written by someone who is qualified and who works in the field; one published in a credible venue; and one which uses credible sources to support its claim.  Demanding that they base their paper on such credible sources is wrong, you see, because science is not always right. So therefore peer-reviewed sources written by experts in the fields are fake news. 

I treat these students as gently as I can, explaining the scientific process and how it works, and requiring them to learn about the peer-review process. This is probably wasted effort, since basing their belief system on propaganda rather than evidence is, in fact, one of their priors. And they will defend it rabidly. 

9:00 a.m. Shower. Try not to fall into despair.

9:20 a.m. Check social media and the three newspapers I read. Wince, close apps, thinking about dying. Start writing the emails I will send tomorrow. 

9:45 a.m. Call the pharmacy's automated phone line to refill my prescriptions. They can't fill one. Talk to the pharmacists, who gives me a list of pharmacies, some as many as 20 miles away, that might have the drug I need. Or, you know, might not. American health care, best in the world.

10:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m.: Beta reading a MS from one of my favorite authors. This counts as scholarly and creative activity, right?

12:00 noon: Took Dr. Skull to a medical appointment. This is both to establish him with a local physician, and to get referrals to the pain clinic and to the kidney doctor. We had to wait awhile, but otherwise the appointment went well. We both like this new doctor.

2:00 p.m. Stopped by the Harps to pick up prescriptions, some for Dr. Skull, some for son-in-law, some for the cat. Yes, the cat has her own prescriptions. 

"Name?" the pharmacist asked. 

"Jasper," I said.

"Date of birth?"

"....she's a cat. Somewhere around 2010?"

2:30-5:00 p.m. Beta-read MS some more.

5:00 p.m. Gave the kid a ride home from school since it was raining and cold, also so I could pass on the meds for SIL. It is rush hour in Fayetteville, which is nothing compared to rush hours in real cities, but I did have to cuss at some asshats who blocked the intersection where Wedington crosses the interstate. Asshats.

6:00 p.m.  Made dinner. Yes, actually cooked. Cod in butter and lemon sauce, plus grilled green beans.

7:00 p.m. Reading novels. I finished one and started another -- this one a novel by George Stewart which I'd never read before, called Storm. Written and therefore set in 1940. I'm not sure I like it, though Stewart writes wonderfully. Think about checking social media or the newspapers again; successfully manage not to.

9:30 p.m. Bed, after an uneasy check on the weather. We won't get snow tomorrow, probably, but maybe next Tuesday, which is the day I'm supposed to drive down to Fort Smith for my fiction workshop. Ugh.

10:00 p.m. Listen to Tana French The Searcher in the dark, which keeps me from despair at least long enough to fall asleep.

5:00 a.m. Wake up. It's raining. Lie brooding in the dark...

Going to Temple

Today I went to the local temple -- or really I guess ONE of the local temples, because my new town has more than one -- with my kid and Dr. Skull. 

I myself have always been pretty meh about religions and religious services, a side effect of living among Pentecostals and Evangelicals, who do their best to ruin the world for the rest of us. But I went today to show solidarity with Dr. Skull and the kid, and it was pretty all right. For one thing, this is a progressive temple, with lots of LGBQT people and disabled people, plus one of my former classics professors was there. We hadn't seen each other since I graduated, so it was good to see him again.

The service was mostly in Hebrew, and they sang it, so I had no idea what was going on most of the time, but the cantor/rabbi had a lovely voice. And there was a brief, not sermon, I guess, but whatever it is that synagogues have instead of sermons, which was great: the cantor told the story of how when Moses went to part the Red Sea, nothing happened. Caught between the Pharaoh's army and the raging sea, the escaping Hebrews fell into wailing despair -- what could they do? They were all going to die. But then Nahshon stepped up and walked straight into the sea, up to his waist, and neck, and over his head, and just as he was about to drown, the Red Sea parted, and the people could cross. It's about going forward even when you see no way forward, and so making a way.

The cantor also pointed out that once the Jewish people were on the other side, they were not in the land of milk and honey, but in an endless desert, with 30 years of struggle ahead of them. We don't win by a miracle, was the point, but step by step and by working together. It's clear she was talking about where we are right now, politically, and how despair and wailing won't save us; and what will save us. 

Also, everyone was very friendly and welcoming. Good vibes, as the kids today say.

I did notice that a police cruiser parked outside during the entire ceremony; and the doors were all kept locked. That part was a little disturbing.

Nahshon Walks Into the Sea

Something You Can Do Part III

 If you're having trouble figuring out what to say when you call or message or email your reps, here's a script:

Something You Can Do Part II

This was on Nicole and Maggie's list of things you can do, and I just want to highlight it:

https://myreps.datamade.us/

It helps you find your representatives at various levels (state, federal, city, county) and gives you their contact information. If you're not up to calling people, you can email them. I've made it my goal to email at least one person each day.

Be specific about what you want them to act on -- stop Leon Skum, or reject the anti-trans laws, climate change, Gaza, whatever it is you're worried about. I have a list, and I'm just going down it, one a day at least.

Speak up, speak out, resist. One voice is nothing, but there are a lot of us. Don't stay silent.

Something You Can Do

 Nicole and Maggie have a list.

Do one thing, whatever you can do. It's better than doing nothing.

Elizabeth Warren Speaks Up

 

This is Grim

All those people who threw endless tantrums over Obama not being an American citizen, because his father came from Kenya, are now perfectly find with Leon Skum dismantling the country to fill his own pockets.

Everyone who wailed about liberals being anti-Christian are fine with this current government attacking Christian churches because a pastor spoke out against Trump.

Everyone who insisted that ten year olds were old enough to bear children and fifteen year olds were old enough to be tried as adults are now happily redefining 19 year olds as children.

Honestly, I feel powerless. The GOP and today's conservatives are fine with all this. The rule of law is whatever Trump says it is. Or rather, whatever Leon says it is.

What am I, with my tiny little blog, supposed to do? 

Do what you can do, I tell my kid, but honestly, what can we do?

I mean, It's a Little Rude

 I've seen posts about how we shouldn't call them Nazis, since they don't identify as Nazis (or anyway most of them don't), but frankly calling them idiots, bootlickers, and fascists seems a little more rude to me.

Also, remember how whiny they got when we called them weirdos?

I don't know, it's almost like they think we should call them by whatever names they identify as, except I thought they had a whole rant they would go into about not being forced to use names for people that don't agree with (what they consider) reality. So weird. It's almost like they believe people should respect them, but that they aren't required to respect other people.

Happy February

 

(Image: Homer Simpson in a car shouts to two guys on the roadside, "It's because of DEI!" Next panel: One guy asks the other, "What did he say?" and the other guy says, "I don't know, something about being a fucking idiot.")

And While I'm on the Subject

While I'm on the subject of English grammar, nothing pisses me off more than someone who thinks they know grammar when in fact 

If they're my students I'll be gentle and provide education but if they're fucking idiots on the interwebs not so much.

Every Morning

Every morning I wake up and I have to get out of bed.

What is this bullshit.

Speaking Of Learning Latin

 I started studying it in high school, which meant I had to be bussed to the boys' high school, since the girls' high school didn't offer subjects like physics and Latin and higher math. Why would we need to worry our pretty little heads about such things?

Public high schools where I grew up were segregated by sex until the mid-1980s, when the parents of a student finally sued the state over the practice. Why were they segregated by sex? So that little white girls would not have to go to school with young black men. But yeah, systemic racism definitely never existed in the United States.

ANYWAY.

My brother was in the same Latin class as I was, and I consistently scored higher than he did on every test and quiz. Since he knew that he was smarter than I was (all my brothers always thought they were smarter than I was, since I was just a girl), how could I possibly get better grades than he did?

"It's because you study," he explained to me. "I could get A's if I studied too."

That right there is why men often do worse in school than women do. Women are so tricky they commit underhanded acts like studying for exams. (The same brother failed Finite Math in college because I had made an A in that, and if I could make an A in a math class, clearly he didn't need to study or do homework in the class to get an A himself.)

No, seriously, the real problem is that men and boys are certain that they don't need to study, since they are so much smarter than women that they can learn without studying. And when it doesn't work, that doesn't mean they're wrong. It just means women are gaming the system. Or something.

The Importance of Teaching Grammar

I taught the grammar class at our university for years, as well as the History of the English Language class (fondly known as HEL). Grammar has always been my favorite subject to study as well as to teach. If I had my way, everyone would study Latin* as well as English grammar from the time they were six years old.

HOWEVER.

The biggest problem I'm seeing with my students is not that they haven't been taught grammar, but that they have been taught grammar badly. Either their teachers did not know English grammar (a possibility, I admit) or the students did not understand what they were being taught.

So I get students who think that any long sentence is a run-on, for instance. Or I get students who have some hazy idea about clauses starting with which or that and when each word should be used. Or I get students who are perfectly certain that starting a sentence with a conjunction is "bad" grammar.

Or various other weird misconceptions.

But the worst part is, I get students who think that "good" grammar equals good writing, and that if their sentences are grammatically correct, then they're "good" writers.

Of course, their sentences often aren't grammatically correct, but that's another issue.

*Why Latin? Because a sound knowledge of Latin grammar makes understanding English grammar so much easier. Also, the process of learning Latin correctly teaches problem-solving, logic, and the ability to think clearly. Sadly, usually the only people teaching Latin these days are homeschoolers, and they teach it very badly, just as they teach English grammar very badly. 

Just saying

 

Surviving in the Trump Era

 This is good advice for those of us who are feeling overwhelmed and hopeless while Trump attacks our families, destroys democracy, and does his best to destroy the world:

More American Health Care

My son-in-law works a job requiring heavy labor and lots of heavy lifting, and day before yesterday he injured his foot. As the resident expert in all things medical, I advised ice, elevation, and ibuprofen, and waiting a day to see if it got worse.

It got worse, so we had to take him to an urgent care. (He couldn't drive because the injured foot was the driving foot.) The first one we visited was packed; the second two were closed. We finally found one tiny one near the local Whole Foods which was still accepting patients, though they closed right after admitting the SIL. (This was at 10:00 in the morning, by the way.)

You had to have a credit card they could put on file before they would even let you sign in. That's with insurance.

It took us four hours to be seen. Ninety percent of the process was paperwork -- getting the SIL's insurance verified, getting the credit card verified, getting information about where the SIL worked and who his spouse was and where he lived, in case they had to come after him for the cost of the medical care. They had four people doing the paperwork. This was all before anyone even asked him what was wrong. 

Ten percent was him actually seeing a doctor, which took about 15 minutes.

Good thing we don't live in one of those countries with socialized medicine.

I will say the staff was very friendly and doing their best.

Oh, and he's fine, by the way. It's a stress injury to his Achilles tendon. Rest, ice, a stronger anti-inflammatory, and compression. He can't work for a week, which means he doesn't get paid for a week. Life in the American precarity. 

About Retirement

One thing I'm noticing about retirement is how much more I resent all the "training" I have to do. 

Not that I didn't resent the training when I had years ahead of me at the job. Every semester, the same explanations of the same things -- here's what to do for ADA, here's what to do if a student has a health crisis, here's what to do if there's an active shooter in your building (die, basically) -- but as the years have gone on, the number of "training" sessions have increased. 

This year alone I've had to do Blackboard training again, even though I'll never use Blackboard (I prefer Google Classroom), and now I'm supposed to do several Workday sessions even though I only have fourteen weeks left on the job. 

Not that I'm counting the days or anything.

Also assessment sessions. UGH.

Spring Semester 2025

We are now two weeks into the spring semester and so far it's not excruciating.

Because I taught five classes in the fall, I am only teaching three this semester. Two are online, and going all right. I do have three students who despite all my cajoling have not yet done anything for the class. But honestly that's pretty low for an online class. The others are all working hard and getting their work in on time.

The one f2f class meets just once a week, on Tuesday nights. It's my fiction workshop, and an excellent group so far. Often I have a hard time getting workshop participants to speak up this early in these semester, but these guys have so much to say. 

Also they are all writing a lot. It's great.

The kid is also doing well. He loves graduate school, and is making friends with the other students. He is not so fond of teaching, so I don't know if I can persuade him to become a professor. So sad.

Trump's Clown Show

 Kevin Drum makes an observation.

For all the Republicans who kvetched constantly over the past four years about Joe Biden's "unlawful" behavior, I'd like to remind you that in one day Donald Trump has:

1. Pardoned hundreds of violent criminals solely because they're MAGA supporters.
2. Explicitly declared that he wouldn't enforce a law he's legally required to enforce.
3. Redefined birthright citizenship in a way he knows very well is unconstitutional

(and several more examples) 

But of course the explanation is very simple: Trump supporters don't care about facts, reality, or the law. If their guy does it it's okay. If it's blatantly not okay, as for example when Trump bribes people and lies about things, why, that's okay too, because all politicians do it. And if not all politicians do it, it's still okay, because look what they're doing in China, I suppose you'd want to live there instead?

The whole TikTok thing is just a harbinger. Trump and the other Conservative lawmakers wanted to ban TikTok. Conservative states made laws banning it. Trump's Supreme Court upheld those laws. Then Trump, surprised by the outcry from his base, takes credit for "saving" TikTok by refusing to uphold the ban. Conservatives applaud Trump's freedom-loving stand.

That's how it's going to be, for the next four years. Don't say you weren't warned.

Trump on Trans People

I was assured by people on Reddit that it's silly to worry about what Trump will do to trans people and their rights because "presidents don't make laws."

Which is, you know, hilarious, considering what happened to women's rights the last time he drove the big truck.

Anyway, here's what the ACLU has to say. 

I've increased my monthly donation to the organization, which fights for the rights of us all. If you want to do the same, here's the link.

Also: What Trump says he'll do, and what he has the actual power to do.

An Observation

Teaching first year students for thirty-plus years has taught me that if there is a way to misread a simple set of instructions, they will find that way. And if you have 60 students, they will find 60 different ways to misread the instructions.

At this point, it's almost a game. Can I write something that can't be misunderstood or misread?

Magic Eight-ball says No.

Wedding Achieved

The kid and the boyfriend are now legally wedded husbands. 

Photos:

During the Wedding

After the Wedding

Celebrating Afterwards

Argh American Healthcare

I chipped a tooth, so I needed a dental appointment. Getting one turned out to be surprisingly easy -- I got in a noon today.

Riding that high, I decided to set up an appointment for Dr. Skull with a PCP. 

That turned out to be a nightmare. It took me three hours and calls to several local doctors before I found one who would just make me a damn appointment (which is a month away). Everyone else wanted me to fill out reams of paperwork, so that they could decide whether to accept him as a patient, and warned me that even if they did accept him, the first appointment would be at least a couple months out.

Oddly, I've been told only places with universal health care/single-payer systems have this sort of problem. How strange!

Snow Pix

Snowy tree at sunrise:

 

Sunrise over the snow:

More pictures here

Wedding Rescheduled

The wedding has been rescheduled for this coming Friday -- a week from today.

Fingers crossed the weather gods don't come at us again.

Snow

We got six or seven inches, I'd guess.

This is from the front door:

Sometimes we keep a road out there, but not today.

Another shot off the back porch: