Volume 02 Issue 03 part 1
January 11-17, 2021
Last week was the first real normal week for me, or at least “normal” in the pandemic sense; the prior week doesn’t count. I had actual work to do, and needed to figure out a routine again. It’s been hard to balance my news consumption; US politics used to be a topic of interest for me and I did get back into it, but also missed ARMY Twitter (my escape from the news and current events). It’s like I want to be in the know but also want to be blissfully unaware. It’s a weird cyclical thing.
It doesn’t help that for most of the week I was plagued with low-grade migraines despite my best efforts at relief. By Friday I had given up; I took a sick day, and lay in the dark for hours. I spent the majority of the weekend on the couch watching BTS content, just as I had spent my whole holiday break.
This is probably what the rest of the year (at least) will look like for me. Not considering going anywhere or doing casual meet-ups since we have two babies in the family. No date yet for vaccines. My anxious brain starts to glitch when I think too far ahead, so I stay in the present or extremely near future only. It is very sad, but this is the level of risk that I can accept right now. Not much to look forward to, but at least we’re alive…?
Shop Small, Love Local
My friend Sasa’s posts for her business Feel Good Grocer inspired me to start trying to eat healthier breakfasts. I sleep late and long, so I wake up late and don’t usually have a good handle on my time throughout the day. By shifting to smoothie bowls, I want to be motivated to sleep earlier and wake up earlier and eat better, at least for the first meal of the day. I’ve been posting pictures on Instagram every day as a way to keep myself accountable. It’s been two weeks and my early conclusions are that I get full faster than I thought I would, and it’s improving my digestion. Still working on sleeping and waking up earlier, lol. I’m really impressed with how easy Sasa makes it: everything can be purchased on the Feel Good Grocer site and she provides a PDF to get beginners started. I was so intimidated, especially because her customers post such pretty smoothie bowls on Instagram, but she assured me it’d be a lot easier than I thought. She was right! The system is very flexible and requires experimentation on the user’s end, so I’m treating it like an experiment and only changing one variable at a time. I asked if I could offer y’all a discount code and she agreed: use FEELGOODWITHPINKY for 10% off your first order; valid until Feb. 15. You can also order directly using this link and the same discount should apply!
Currently…
Watching Hamilton again because my sister-in-law wanted to. Hamilton was the last thing I was obsessed with before I got into BTS. I still know it by heart and feel so grateful we got to watch it in London when we did. Coincidentally, it was Lin Manuel’s birthday yesterday! While watching, I remembered how in awe I was of Lin and his collaborators, the cast and crew. How pointed the line “Immigrants, we get the job done,” was back in the early days of the Trump administration. How poignant it is for me to be watching it now as Joe Biden prepares to take his oath in a few days (!!). How lucky we are to be alive right now (in more ways than one!)
Crying over Taylor Swift’s Folklore documentary on Disney+. Aia prepared me for the emotional ride this would be but I still cried at August. I used to think I was a Taylor stan but now that I’m a BTS stan I can safely say that I’m “just” a fan of her music. Haha. I’m not at the fan level of buying clothes she wears....
Taste-testing chowder Fenina sent over, OMG. So good!! Happy guinea pig here. Please send food for me to try. LOL. I will happily post and share feedback. Follow her at @redrocket.mnl on Instagram.
Enjoying old BTS concerts. This weekend I watched ARMYpedia with Aia and then 5th Muster Busan while babysitting. I now understand why 5th Muster is so revered among ARMY. The setlist is almost completely b-sides and it contains so many iconic moments that I’ve come across so many times on ARMY Twitter!
Longreads
How to Work through a Coup — Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study.
“We can keep optimizing ourselves to ideal robot status. Or we can reject the dead-hearted ideals at the core of capitalism. Part of the daily practice of doing that = building a permission structure — for yourself, for your colleagues, for the people you manage, for your kids and your partner and every person you encounter in your daily life — to feel some fucking feelings. You could call this a softness, or a posture of grace, but it is also a mode of resistance.”
Pushed to the edge by the Capitol riot, people are reporting their family and friends to the FBI — Hannah Knowles and Paulina Villegas, The Washington Post.
“Dundas’s former friend said she initially felt some hesitation about contacting the FBI. But Dundas’s words erased ‘all of the great things we did together and the wonderful things she did for me,’ she said. ‘What she said about killing people … she was talking about me.’”
Selena Gomez: Big Tech ‘cashing in from evil’ — Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press.
“‘I can’t believe you can’t check ads before you take money, and if you can’t you shouldn’t be profiting from it,” ‘ she wrote [in an email to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO]. ‘You’re not just doing nothing. You’re cashing in from evil.’”
The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful — Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic.
“Instagram is women’s work, as it demands skills they’ve historically been compelled to excel at: presenting as lovely, presenting as desirable, presenting as good, safe, nonthreatening. All of which, of course, are valuable appearances for a dangerous conspiracy theory to have.”
The Unlikely Connection Between Wellness Influencers and the Pro-Trump Rioters — Clio Chang, Cosmopolitan.
“A major reason that QAnon messaging was so successful on social media is that many influencers didn’t know (at least at first) that the language they were slipping in between stories on meditation and essential oils was linked to a conspiracy theory whose main goal was to prop up Donald Trump. Instead, these influencers were just doing what influencers do: following the metrics.”
Every Deleted Parler Post, Many With Users' Location Data, Has Been Archived — Dell Cameron, Gizmodo.
Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes they’re hackers who archive 99.9% of Parler content for law enforcement to sift through.
For the Love of Literally Everything, Stop Posting Pandemic Vacay Photos — Taylor Trudon, Cosmopolitan.
"Stop advertising your bad behavior. Not because you look stupid (although you do). Not because you don’t want to get caught. But because in addition to your large gatherings captioned 'Everyone has been tested!' and non-subtle sunset pics taken 30,000 feet in the sky (spoiler: the virus doesn’t care if you’re traveling to an island or to your grandmother’s house in Wisconsin—it will go with you!), your social media posts send a dangerous message. They normalize the very actions doctors and scientists are pleading against. They say, 'If I’m doing it, so can you.'"
After the Resistance, What's Next for the Crooked Media Podcasting Empire? —Natalie Jarvey, Hollywood Reporter.
My podcast consumption has gone way down since the pandemic started, but I was very excited to read this and learn that they’re adapting Wind of Change for Hulu!
We’re All Missing the Point of the Armie Hammer Cannibalism Scandal — EJ Dickson, Rolling Stone.
"The discourse surrounding Hammer’s transgressions should focus less on his alleged kinks and more on the alleged consent violations that occurred with the women in these texts... If the messages are real, 'this man has a fetish, this man has a kink, but I don’t think it was true BDSM because there was a clear consent violation that occurred. It’s just, like, spicy assault.'"
Every Coffee-Shop Writer Had a Chance — Taylor Roberts, The Cut.
Not enough people are talking about how Riz Ahmed met his extremely accomplished new wife randomly in a coffee shop where they fought over the socket…!!!
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Yours from afar,
Pinky