D&F 4/21/24
Happy Earth Day! I took a few months off from newslettering due to life stress, and a link environment I would call “slow news month”. The rain in the Bay Area took its toll on my brain chemicals, but now in the light of spring, I return. Since the last edition, I’ve flown to New York for work, and gone as far as suburban San Jose for a manager summit. The less said about the latter location, the better.
Snorri, my perfect cat, celebrated his 15th birthday this weekend by laying in the sun most of the day, then on my lap while I watched the Chinese Grand Prix. This is the longest I’ve ever had a single pet in my life, and his existence brightens every day I get to spend with him. If you’ve met Snorri, you know how unbelievably loving and friendly he is, and how much he likes grooming people’s hair. What a weird, wonderful boy. Here’s to 15 more years of life!
With that preamble and catch-up out of the way, let’s get to the…
Links
The cities next door recently got a slew of handsome wooden benches, installed by “transit activists”. Oakland’s roads and infrastructure are abysmal, and Berkeley seems completely fine with the regular murder of cyclists and pedestrians by car drivers, so it’s nice to see the youth taking matters, and saws, into their own hands. In San Franciso people are stopping dangerous drone cars, to banning deadly right turns on red. It’s great to see people taking charge where the car-pilled electorate is too cowardly and slow to save lives. We need change now, because the death toll is awful.
It’s great to see non-transit publications finally understand that cars, stroads, and highways are making the world a deadlier, sicker place. Investing in transit, pedestrian safety, and better bicycle and wheelchair access in our cities, coupled with removing lanes and free, subsidized parking of multi-ton environmental disasters will radically change our cities for the better. I’m convinced getting people out of cars and onto the streets, on buses, or bikes means more connections and better empathy between everyone. It’s much harder to create an other without the steel and glass barrier between you.
Perhaps wellness, if we are to embrace its full potential, should dispense with the fantasy that we should always be fit and chipper, or strive to be. Perhaps it is far healthier to agitate against the circumstances making us sick and miserable than it is to latch our hopes to another glossy promise.
Wellness is a scam. American women spend millions a year trying to keep up with the Goops of the world, turning to supplements and mushroom extract instead of collectively working towards systemic change. Why? It’s easy to buy things online, and impossibly hard to rally our energy to work together. Surely the next green juice will fix my life, no matter that healthcare is inaccessible to many and we’re stuck in jobs that are killing us to stay housed and have access to a doctor. If instead of a zero-sum competition, we could see health and housing as a right to fight for, we might have a chance. In an election year it’s hard for me not to feel pessimistic, but fortunately I’m cursed to believe in the power of collective action. That’s the real wellness.
This study rules. I hope that sports associations will start listening to trans people, and scientists on the overwhelming data that shows trans women and trans men should compete against cis women and cis men respectively. We need more studies like this of trans athletes to dispel the anti-science fears of magical bone density and “y chromosome” doping. Much like the link above, the singular focus on hurting individual trans people won’t solve the systemic issues that lead to female athletes being paid significantly less than men, and prevents many from making spot their full time job.
These were mostly pretty bummer links so I want to leave you with a fun interview with one of my favorite authors, William Gibson. After leaving the US for Canada to avoid the Vietnam war, he started writing with no real plan, and I think he changed science fiction and literature for the better. I’ve had the chance to see him do a reading twice now and it was spectacular and strange to hear the slow Virginia cadence of his voice speak about drones and the Peripheral. Even if you aren’t a fan of “genre fiction”, give one of his more recent books a chance. I hope he keeps writing for a few more decades, but regardless, he’s a treasure.
Closing
I’ll try to get back to writing these missives more often. Thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far. Every spring I remember how amazing life can be, and I hope you do too. I’m off to finish my coffee, and then ride my bike next to the ocean, so until next time, see you space cowgirls~