February 14, 2025

Just the Ones that say, "I lurrve you."🫀

Hello and Happy ValenTIMES!

I’m just back from Trader Joe’s in Harlem (we have one now; it has very divisive “graffiti” art) where the wonderful human directing us to cashiers said, “Good morning, my beloved shoppers. In case you missed it, my name is Joanne and I’m wishing you a Happy Valentine’s Day of peace and love.” That’s it! No scolding! No directives. Just joy. What a delight! Go be someone’s unexpected delight this weekend.

“How are you?” has gone from least traumatizing automated greeting to…

I’ve relinquished some activist spaces that ventured, imo, away from their intended mission and goals and, tbh, I feel real good about it. My uncertified, unlicensed diagnosis: folks are out here making themselves miserable: a) comparing themselves to other people in all arenas of their lives and b) needing recognition for doing the right thing. I think that’s what the kids mean when they slap the label of “performative” on everything…while being fully performative in their labeling. 🙄

Instead, I’m asking people I care about: how are you resourcing yourself at this time? Hit “reply” and lmk! I am open to any and all tips, advice, levels of engagement from “burning it all down” to “minding my Black-ass business.” (Do you have to be Black to “mind your Black-ass business?” I dunno. Try me.)

I’m resourcing myself through/by:

• not attending “emergency meetings.” Where have y’all been? We been done been in an emergency situation.

• learning to hold disappointment better, knowing that it will pass.

• in my more misanthropic moments, asking myself, “do you think you’re safer on your own?” Because safety is relative, contextual, and in flux. The ways people in power have captured the idea of safety and manipulated it is the biggest threat of our time.

• focusing on what I value: commitment and accountability, curiosity and learning, and grace and connection. I promise not to get annoyed if you ask me sincerely, “How’s that going for you?”

• seeing movies and TV shows, such as:

  • The Pitt (on Max, I’m obsessed with the attempt to show empathy even when people are being the worst, exhibiting why and how representation can matter, also Noah Wiley’s evolution into ZADDY 😍).

  • the wrap up to Somebody Somewhere (Joel and Sam’s friendship deepening was so heart-breaking and -mending; only three seasons and short episodes—binge it with a bestie!).

  • my favorite filmmaker Mike Leigh’s new one, Hard Truths, with Marianne Jean-Baptiste being impeccable at showing how anger damages others, but also the person carting it around.

  • From Ground Zero, 22 short films made in Gaza amidst the destruction, genocide, and land grab. Not since seeing Fruitvale Station has a theatre been so SILENT at the end.

• music, music, music! In my never-ending, honestly fool’s errand to responsibly consume music, I’ve given up on streaming and given over to Apple Music. None of these platforms are paying creators ethically. And at least I now realize the sound quality on Apple Music is the best and I’ve been littering my earholes for years with Spotify and Deezer’s AI dumping-ground. I now buy vinyl if I listen to an album constantly and on repeat. Some mainstays:

  • a whole heap of finds in the PopMatters 2024 Best albums list (#31 - Reyna Tropical’s Malegría [video], #29 Jasmin Williams’ Acadia [video], #23 - Arooj Aftab’s Night Reign).

  • my musician-artist-friend Gavin gently nudged me out of my US/UK-centric orbit and tipped me to the Polaris Prize shortlist and omg the Canadian riches! Jeremy Dutcher’s Motewolonuwok giving Jeff Buckley a run for his money and soooo ✨archive-y✨, Charlotte Cardin’s 99 Nights and her song, “Confetti” make me wanna wear lots of black eyeliner and smoke, and TOBi’s Panic and the single, “Flatline”—just out here being GORGEOUS and ART. You can also check out Gavin’s bea-yoo-tiful album, Quiet Life, and us digging into the crates for ethics, archives, and music sampling on Pop Records.

  • everything Joshua Idehen puts out has been varying degrees of magic! But his romp through ideologies using the metaphor of “Mum Does the Washing” is ^{chef’s kiss} so sharp and funny and in line with my current post-ideology, “can’t we just LIVE” explorations…he gets a lick in on every ideology.

    

Enough about me, some just the ones for YOU!

• Friendly Streaming, a Mac desktop app, streams YouTube (and some other stuff I never use) and skips the complete and utter piles of trash ads that have migrated from daytime TV and the bottom of free blogs (belly fat! MLM ponzi schemes!) to all Alphabet properties.

• Have I touted Time Buddy yet? Since t’internet is still up and running and online meetings are still a thing (remember: you can opt out or just, like, say, “let’s talk on the phone”), Time Buddy helps figure out the time in multiple time zones and cut-and-paste as proof you were in the meeting when you should’ve been, according to time zone supremacy.

• Advice: if you are on the toilet enough to call it “toilet reading,” that’s too much time on the can and you need more fiber in your diet. These students on their phones while occupying one of two bathroom stalls…😤 It is not a PHONE BOOTH. Oh, you don’t know what a phone booth is? Well, TikTok yer lil’ ass out of that stall and I will give you an exegesis on, “Early-to-mid-20th century telephone practices and environments!” So that’s the real advice: stop inhabiting your phone and free the stalls! 📵🚽

• Also stop in habiting your phone now that nation-states are using everyday consumer devices as weapons…

  • But now that the line has been crossed, other countries will almost certainly start to consider this sort of tactic as within bounds. It could be deployed against a military during a war or against civilians in the run-up to a war. And developed countries like the United States will be especially vulnerable, simply because of the sheer number of vulnerable devices we have. - “Israel's Pager Attacks Have Changed the World” by Bruce Schneier, a super-smart technologist and security expert. He has a good digital security blog and isn’t prone to hyperbole.

• Write Future You a letter! Receiving a letter from Past-Me was actually a great reminder that as Jamila Woods says, “The seed has all the information.” But for the love of all that is sacreligious and unholy, don't read the public letters. lol, people are fucking psychotic. In fact, stop reading comments on any platform, point-blank-periodt.

• BBC’s Gardners’ Question Time is right up there with BBC’s Shipping Forecast in terms of: why am I listening to this…why is it actually interesting…should I volunteer with a community garden (yes)…do I need a boat (no)? Give a listen if you need to listen to something that’s not the latest Littlfinger-Musk report.

• I was looking for the actual evidence that these devices aren’t listening to us and came across Digital Rights Byte and their response to some oft-asked tech question. I still don’t believe devices (Siri, Alex, alla dem) aren’t actively listening even when you turn them off. Yes, me and bae talked about Kraftwerk, but no one picked up a device and searched for anything related to German electronica. So why is this ad about Kraftwerk popping up???

• When I can stomach some political news and resistance tips, Andrea Pitzer’s podcast, Next Comes What, is making me more steely-spined. Anyone who can write a book on the global history of concentration camps and still string together evidence-based ideas for banding together and saying, “Fuck fascism” is alright by me. We have seen this before. We know how it goes.

• I heard the phrase, “Do not obey in advance” on Pitzer’s podcast and traced the current usage to Timothy Synder’s book, On Tyranny. Lucky for my short attention span, monkey brain, there’s a graphic novel version that I’ll read in advance of the Read & Resist book club on Weds (02.19 at the (LGBT) Center, 208 W. 13th St., Manhattan). Read it and come thruuuu.

  But, yeah, generally, good advice: DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE. Not even in the moment. Be ungovernable.