Media Reports, End of Democracy Edition
Oh hi! How are you? Fine, but not fine? Declared dead by the government, but still here? Oh wait, that last one is really just me. More on that in a bit.
It’s hard to know what to say given ALL OF THIS, but I’m also aware that sharing where I’m getting information could be helpful as not all of you are in the same echo chamber as I am. (A lot of it is doom! With some cute stuff and memes, and then some ads? Which makes it all very confusing?)
Where I’ve been getting news and information lately, generally:
Kottke.org - the original blog of blogs, or the one I’ve been following for a long time. Lately he’s been on the coup beat, and he does an excellent job curating sources and pulling the best quotes when you don’t have time to read everything. But, he’s also posting about art and cool stuff again too. We need it all!
What A Day news podcast - I’ve been listening to this pretty religiously since June 2020, when I realized I NEEDED my news with some real talk, some WTFs, some calling out bullshit as what it really is. They can’t do that at NPR!
(I had an epiphany that I don’t actually have to wake up to news when I could wake up to any other radio station, so I switched to classical, which is delightful until you realize after the soft violins comes…NEWS! But anyway please do listen to this NPR interview with Michel Martin and the DHS secretary regarding the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil)
Vibe Check podcast - For talking about the news and how ridiculous everyone is but also taking time to breathe and live.
Social Media - it’s good, it’s bad, it’s all of the above. I don’t think I would be feeling guilty about not calling my reps if I weren’t on social media. That’s because I wouldn’t even know what to call about.
Individual Things That I Have Liked
Thirty Lonely But Beautiful Actions - ugh I need stickers!
Ten Things I Don’t Want To Hate About You - trying to save a family from impacts of radicalization
Media Things That Are NOT NEWS:
Severance - We started watching the first season of this in…early January? Which meant that we were able to burn through and catch up with everyone else. It’s been such a welcome addition to my current state, because I can do deep on theories and rabbit holes. Visually stunning, great acting, and hilarious?
White Lotus, because I can’t NOT, but this season has been a bit of a snoozer for me. I do expect it to pick up but I’m not sure it will make up for the slowness of the first few episodes this season.
Books - Small Things Like These was quick and lovely. Otherwise in a book rut and have taken to rereading favorites - currently A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, mostly to see if I think it is as genius as I found it when I was 19. Jury is still out on that one, but I didn’t give up on it after one chapter like I did with a retry of Catch 22!
IN OTHER NEWS, NOT ACTUALLY DEAD
In late January I got a letter addressed to my estate from Wells Fargo and I’m like, that’s weird, why are they addressing me as if I am dead? and it turns out it’s because they thought I WAS dead. I will summarize the steps of how I dealt with this -
Go to a Wells Fargo that has an appointment and told the poor chap helping me: “Yeah, it’s a weird one. You all think I’m dead?” and drop the letter on the table.
More calls with Wells Fargo. Settle all the unsettled, officially not dead!
(Phew, that’s nice, I should figure out how that happened, but work! Life! News! BLAH)
Get my free requested credit report which says I have excellent credit (great!) and also on page FIVE notes that the SSN associated with this report is deceased! (WHY DO DEAD PEOPLE NEED CREDIT)
This mail always comes on the weekend, by the way.
Make an appointment with Social Security. (this is not as easy as it sounds, and even harder now that Musk and DOGE are trying to make things more “efficient” by breaking everything)
Take a personal day to sort this out, which ends up being a canceled school day because it’s so cold, sign a paper that says “I AM ALIVE AND WELL” (hahhhhhhhh) and we are done.
Maybe. I think? I don’t actually know. Also the lady at SSA could not tell me how it happened.
I came across this article this week about a supposedly dead person collecting social security and this doesn’t give me a ton of hope for finding anything out!
What’s concerning is that no one has been able to tell him how he ended up in the agency’s “death master file.” Had he been conflated with some other poor Leonard Johnson? Was he flagged as dead by a credit agency or the electronic funds transfer system, which then ricocheted back to Social Security? Was it simple input error? Nobody knows. Or nobody’s saying.
Social Security blandly labels this sort of event an “erroneous death determination.”
I guess the Death Master File comes for us all in the end. I also feel lucky that I am not dependent on them for money!
That’s all for now!
Okay wait I’ll close on this nugget - after being resurrected by the government I got ANOTHER letter from them - let’s reenact the text message between me and Aaron:
Him: I didn’t open your mail but it looks like you got a jury summons
Me: Ah shit
Me: BUT I’M DEAD
Him: Tell it to the judge