Hello, guys. I know I haven’t been active in this blog for some time, but I guess I just needed to write about this and I’m not sure where else to do it.
As some of you know, I live in Venezuela. For the last hour or so bombs have been falling over my city, Caracas. Some people say it’s a coup d'etat, others that it’s the US military. We are not yet sure what is happening.
A bomb fell over La Carlota, a military air base a few blocks away from my apartment. We can still see the smoke through the window. As I understand, bombs have also fallen on “strategic places” like Fuerte Tiuna and Miraflores.
The neighbors are speaking about leaving but me and my parents haven’t decided what we are going to do. We don’t really have a place to go. I’ll keep you updated if I can. Thank you for taking the time to read.
If you’re in the US military or National Guard, and are given an illegal or unconstitutional order, the GI Rights hotline (1-877-447-4487) is there to help give you the support you need to do the right thing by refusing it. It would be good to think about this now before it becomes a live issue for you and it would be smart of you to memorize that number.
You can reblog this without your thoughts about the US Military, btw, that’s allowed.
In fact: you SHOULD share it without your thoughts on the US Military. If someone in the military sees this number and is considering it, they already know. Just let them see the resource.
Venezuela has been in a dictatorship as long as I have been alive. Since 1998. My parents are happy about a coup and hope Maduro dies or gets arrested, which yes. Fuck Maduro, fuck Chavismo. But I’ve read way too much about the history of US dipping their hands into South America, installing puppet states, fucking everything up and this is not a win. Even if Maduro dies or gets arrested, the US just wants the country’s resources without more pretense of negotiations, they are not magically going to fix everything, there is a corrupt reason for this to be happening that is yet to unfold and I’m so tired. Fuck Trump.
I wish I could find better words to explain this to non-venezuelans, or Venezuelans of an older generation who are just tired of failed “socialism” and beelined straight to far right borderline extremism as if that was better. For now my family back home is safe and I wish every person in Caracas the same.
I love Josh’s anti-classism so much. I grew up in a single parent household that didn’t have time/the ability to cook. I taught myself as an adult and ended up loving it. I cook with this stuff a lot. Shit, the RealLemon juice ends up in a lot of my cocktails. Sure, I like fancy ingredients when I can afford them and I have things I get picky about using - but I have bad hands, mincing garlic is painful as fuck. There’s a lot to be said for knowing how to work with what you have. Don’t shame people for trying, don’t shame people for feeding their families things that they enjoy.
if you are only a good cook if you have access to premium ingredients at whole foods or above prices then you arent really a good cook
I think about this post a lot because of the phrase “i’ll cook anyone’s ass under the table.”
an absolutely humungous update they just keep getting better
I think this needs an important addendum:
Not only did Billie Eilish donate $11.5M, she also called out a room full of billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, directly to their faces, saying “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but, yeah, give your money away, shorties.”
The $11.5M she’s donating is about ¼ if her net worth. Imagine if a billionaire did that? If Mark Zuckerberg donated ¼ of his net worth, it would be about $55 BILLION… and he’s still have over $100 billion left.
And, yet, unsurprisingly, people are mad at Billie Eilish for what she said and not at the billionaires for hoarding all the money and resources
A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett’s The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.
I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I’m feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.
All the book really does is [I’m pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I’ve read no more than 5 pages] “discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help.”
But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I’m compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it’s saved my life at least a few times now.
It’s intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it’s very easy to find, but here’s a link for it anyways.
Evolution of Steel! Did you know steel is just iron with a dash of carbon mixed into it? It’s literally just iron with 1% carbon, which magically makes it more durable
Additional steel headcanon. Elders being self-sacrificial since the rust damage is already beyond repair… ahh it’s bittersweet
Entry level jobs haven’t existed since the 2008 crash. 90% of hiring managers won’t hire recent graduates. A quarter of job listings are ghost jobs. Companies hire part time so that they don’t have to give benefits. Federal minimum wage hasn’t increased since 2009. The True Unemployment Rate is 25%. Master’s are the new bachelor’s. For most the job search takes over a year. 75% of resumes are never. actually seen by the hiring team.
The US labor participation rate is around 80% of abled adults, which yes, does mean about 20% of abled adults are not working, but perhaps much more damningly, this is actually very high participation compared to a lot of US history, and yet the cost of living and pay are so mismatched that quality of life is reaching impressive lows.
The poem is written in common hymn meter (alternating lines of 8 and 6 syllables, usually iambs), so there are many possible tunes you can use to sing it:
Amazing Grace
Pokemon theme song
Gilligan’s Island theme
House of the Rising Sun
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Joy to the World
Feel free to add any favorites!
Full scansion:
◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – we hunt the mighty pasta BEAST ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – and bread/sticks are / its BONES ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – ALFRE/DO FLOWS / inside / its veins ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – its or/gans are / CALZONES ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – LASAG/NA plates / its ar/mored hide ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – and should / the he/ro dare ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – you’ll find / the noi/some Jaws / are strung ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – with gar/lic an/gel hair
metrical form: common hymn meter (iambic tetrameter + iambic trimeter, or iambic heptameter) rhyme scheme: ABCB
