December 13, 2020

second things second - the immaculate mailing list

the immaculate mailing list

a couple of updates

1. okay, so kat and i both got covid tests on monday morning. mine turned up negative, but hers came back positive. YIKES, right? luckily, we're both still feeling pretty fine. i took a second test on friday that also came back negative, which we're thinking means that kat's positive test result came toward the end of the illness (the doc said that positive results can show up for months after a person was actively contagious). this likely means that i was asymptomatic, but contagious, a couple weeks ago, as i am the only one in our household who spends any sort of time around other people. also yikes! even if i'm negative now, it's possible/probable that i was contagious and still going to work! i feel pretty terrible about that, though i'm fully cognizant of the broader structures that put me in that situation. i've been getting tested every month or so since i went back to work in june (of my own volition; incredibly, this is not the standard), but it's totally possible i was sick between tests. it was admittedly a pretty loose system, one that will have to be tightened up going forward. i'm staying in quarantine for the recommended time, but there's no financial support system available to me, aside from a meager system of paid sick time that the city mandates. businesses that received small business loans from the last government aid package (lol) were mandated to offer all employees two weeks pay (including tips) if they had to stay home due to covid, but it could only be used once. i had to use mine all the way back in june, when i was displaying some symptoms, (but tested negative). using sick time means i don't collect tips, which make up nearly half of my wages, and now if i am sick in two weeks, i don't have any paid sick time to use. this is all, frankly, a load of bunk, but not at all surprising. so many people don't even have paid sick time! i know several people who got sick, had to stay home, and then just didn't have a job to go back to. workers are being offered up to slaughter. personally, there is no fucking way i would be going in to a coffee shop to order anything, or dining at a restaurant's patio cafe (which are often literally enclosed tents, effectively being indoor dining), or going to an airport to fly to a totally different place!! i'm far from the only worker who wouldn't take those risks ourselves, yet we're regularly inundated with people who are more than willing to risk their own, and the workers', health. please continue to think not just of your own risk level, but that of everyone who plays a role in the logistics of your decisions. maybe just don't do it.
2. i finished my holiday gift selecting today!
3. kat and i (begrudgingly) signed up for healthcare today. again, what a load of bunk! we were hoping to find something that would make therapy a little more financially accessible, but it looks like it will be more affordable for us to continue paying out of pocket on a sliding scale than paying a 50% coinsurance of the full rate after already paying the deductible. bunk, i tell ya! bunk!!

here's some things i've read over the last week, and what i thought about them

• i finished the orange eats creeps by grace krilanovich. it's a book i quickly realized was not meant for me, but i kept reading because i hadn't really read anything like it before! to be honest, i probably owe it (and myself) a reread because i think i glossed over parts that were kinda significant. oops! maybe you'll like it though, i hadn't come across a story told like that before!

• i just read this blog post from mike caufield in 2015, discussing different forms information on the internet can be displayed and consumed, namely "the garden" or "the stream". i found it fascinating because i've been evaluating the way that i interact with the internet, and how i would like to interact with the internet. i've long been in the stream- that is, much of the information i consume comes from social media and continually flows by. if i'm not paying attention at any given moment, i'll miss it. it can be tough to draw connections between separate ideas this way! this is not me disparaging the stream- i love to wade through and watch the fish swim by. but as i think about what the internet can do, in terms of highlighting connections between different ideas, i think i've been ignoring the garden, which can be thought of as something like wikipedia, where links between pages make it easy to follow information into new trains of thought. a more pictoral way to conceptualize it would be this charlie's conspiracy wall. look at how all these different ideas are connected to other ideas! perhaps more organization is desired, but it makes it easier to see the whole picture, yeah?

  

  • this piece from low-tech magazine (a magazine that i love!!) about electric cars, and how the electric cars of today are about equal in performance to the electric cars of the early 20th century. i didn't know! both classes of vehicles get roughly the same range (range being a pretty big downside, as compared to fossil fuel vehicles), because, while battery tech has improved so much that batteries today are much lighter, the cars being built are much heavier! they cancel each other out! if you could pop one of today's batteries in an electric car from ~1910, then wowie! you could roll for ages. i'm not gonna delve in to all the tradeoffs here, but i recommend reading the article, and spending some time poking around the rest of the archives- the magazine is emblamatic of where my brain is at these days.
  • lastly, this piece from michael olenick about how the fella who invented the concept of credit bereaus (an institution notorious for its negative impact on Black people) in 1841, was an abolitionist! lewis tappan was a zealous evangelical, a founder (with his brother, arthur) of the american anti-slavery association, the financial support behind the amistad case (again, along with his brother), businessperson, and a supporter of the underground railroad. as a zealous evangelical looking to purge sin from the world, he created a surveillance network to sus out brothels and other such unsavory activities. as a business person, he went broke giving credit to folks who never paid up their debts. marrying the two, and thinking that someone who lead a pious life would be more likely to pay their debts, lewis turned his surveillance network to figuring out if folks would be good and proper debtors! then he sold that info to other business people. surveillance capitalism at work! credit scores are totally unneccesary and only serve to perpetuate poverty. anyways, liberation requires dismantling capitalism.

somethings i've listened to this week

• live sets - heavy lifting. this music is being made thru code, live! cool electronic stuff.
• what's your pleasure? - jessie ware. tru booty shaking music. super 80s dance tracks.
• the disintegration loops - william basinski. tape loops! i came across this looking for songs for last week's music league, "what does it feel like to be digested?", but spared my friends the hour long track.
• songs to yeet at the sun - soul glo. soul glo from philly is maybe my favorite hardcore band. this album is sick. you should buy it.

hmmmmm… anything else?

yeah. this world didn't have to be like this! people made decisions. we can make better ones. the world doesn't have to continue being like this.

image of the week

xoxo josh