😅 My life is so silly right now that I only turn on the fridge long enough to chill cookie dough. But whatever - more cookies in process, to share at the office I'm working at today. 👍🏻

#CoSoBakes #AnyExcuse

Today is a day for candles in two ways. In Colombia, it's Día de las velitas, when households "light the way" for Mary to Bethlehem, by setting out candle displays tonight.

It's also Hanukkah, celebration of the miracle of oil for one day lasting eight, as the Maccabees reclaimed & rededicated the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Themes of perseverance and reclamation of homeland will run deep this year, alongside grief for all who did not live to see it.

May we all light the way in hard times. 🕯️

Bedtime for me, #potato for the people.

https://youtube.com/shorts/6pmipEEqiVc?si=SJhc9jPEUH698Ihj

Every episode of Blowback is also an excuse to revisit this 1984 classic. :)

#CoSoMusic

"This is the world destruction, your life ain't nothing.
The human race is becoming a disgrace.
Nationalities are fighting with each other.
Why is this? Because the system tells you.
Putting people in faceless categories.
Knowledge isn't what it used to be.
Military tactics to control a nation.
Who wants to be a president or king? Me!
Mother Nature is gonna work against you."

https://youtu.be/B5S-q1gRxvw

So... when's the last time you went dancing in the middle of a grocery store? 😅

#Navidad #Colombia #AnyExcuse

(The band is supported by a local rum company, which hosts lots of these events to boost sales - lest anyone think this is perfectly seasonal altruism at play.)

Watch out, fellow Canucks. These bad times in the West aren't going to get any better if we allow this BS to be any further normalized up north. And we actually have hate speech laws to address the platforming of hate groups - so what-the-ever-loving-puck.

"Meet the 'Entrepreneur of Hate' Behind the Rise Of Canadian Neo-Nazi Fight Clubs"

#News #Racism #Nazis #Canada

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjban/meet-the-entrepreneur-of-hate-behind-the-rise-of-canadian-neo-nazi-fight-clubs

Time for a walk and an episode of Blowback.

It's not that I really need to go through the whole modern history of Afghanistan again - I've read so many different takes on US/Soviet complicity in the region's struggles already - but I do enjoy the return to history in general, when we as a species demonstrate so little ability to remember what's happened even a few months ago, let alone to put it into practice when making sense of the world today.

(To each their own weird hobbies, I suppose! 🙃)

Oh, head's up for tomorrow:

Washington Post workers are on 24-hour strike December 7, so try not to engage with the site. No podcasts, no media.

Will this strike improve quality of output from the sometimes *very* infuriating WaPo? Well, maybe - more empowered workers can push back better on top-down editorial decisions - but more importantly, the strike also covers drivers & those in production tech, & helps cultivate a stronger culture for workers' rights all around.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2023/12/05/washington-post-staffers-will-go-on-strike-thursday/

My dear Patrons now have access to another post, which includes Chapter 2 of Against Memoir. Hopefully these chapter drafts will come a *little* more consistently here on out, though juggling multiple platforms is still taking a toll on me with respect to producing consistently decent content across the board.

Next up, a newsletter! These next two will be lighter posts: a free-to-read reflecting on work elsewhere on Substack, and a paid subscriber media rec review. #Soon
https://www.patreon.com/posts/updates-and-2-93910263

It's a common limit to therapeutic language, though: failure to acknowledge how many problems aren't internally derived, but rather, very normal patterns of internal distress in the face of socioeconomic pressure. Fear of losing one's home? Very real, for so many.

The language is supposed to empower, but it might be more empowering to say "the world is so awful that trying to trick myself into putting aside the most probable outcome 'til it arrives is the best I can do for sanity here and now."

As much I appreciate CBT (the medical term, not the kink), sometimes it's difficult to use the lit on a rough mental day.

Catastrophizing, for instance: a cognitive bias that has you imagining the worst possible outcome (e.g., that I'll have to quit writing soon, & work day & night to make enough money to fix my problem).

But the lit focuses on the thought being irrational. A lot of people's catastrophes are *very* plausible. We're just trying not to let them override how we get by day by day.

Today's goal: NOT to worry about the world as if I, by worrying about it, can change a damned thing.

Also: to bake some more cookies between work tasks.

Preeetty sure one of those will be easier than the other. 🙃

Happy Wednesday, you nutters!

As I've been saying and writing all year, no demographic is monolith:

Most people don't want further violence - and during holy days especially! - but there will always be minority extremists agitating and trying to make peace harder for the rest. In Christianity, in Islam, in Judaism, in Hinduism, in Buddhism... everywhere that some can leverage notions of a righteous cause.

But *oh*, I hope they don't succeed.

There is enough hardship already in these days. May there come a better peace. 🕯️