I have been seeing other bloggers doing this and I think this is a lovely way to "reblog" things I have found online that I really enjoyed and wanted to share. Essentially, throughout the week when I see things I want to share, I'll put them in a weekly draft, and then at the end of the week I'll publish it.
Nex3 — COVID Denialism & Disability Justice
The first crucial thing to understand is that, if you're at least on board with the basic idea that COVID denialism is a pervasive problem, COVID-19 has already disabled you. Even if it didn't give you long-term side effects, even if you're lucky enough never to have caught it, you have been disabled by it. Or to be more precise: you're disabled with respect to COVID-19. The specific agent of your disability is the society that subjects you to snide remarks and outright harassment for wearing a mask, that closes off opportunities for social interaction and employment to you, that makes it impossible for you to exist within it without putting your health at risk.
An insightful essay about how many of us with high-risk underlying conditions had not been disabled by our conditions until the "great unmasking" excluded us from public life en masse. Kol Tzedek Synagogue in West Philadelphia is a great example of an institution that, in choosing to discontinue inclusion for the most vulnerable, also disabled even more former community members who had been fully able to participate in the community before, and now are cut off and isolated without so much as a goodbye. It is not my head injury or autoimmune disorder that disabled me from attending services, but the decision to remove all COVID-19 precautions from the vast majority of in-person occasions. It was only after this decision that I truly felt the sting of living on the margins as a disabled people, fully understood the etymology of "marginalization." Pushed out of publish life and into only a very narrow place.
I have been focused on furnishing the margins since then. If I cannot safely participate in public life, at least I can make my private life more comfortable.
Sarah Z — The Narcissist Scare
(Youtube)
Another excellent video essay by Sarah Z. Sarah Z addresses a lot of similar points I have hit on in my essays, notably how attributing abuser to a special type of person shuts down the introspection necessary to prevent ourselves from abusing others. You can see how in the tiktoks highlighted by Sarah Z, the diagnosis of one's partner or family member as a narcissist now justifies behaviors towards them that are actually manipulative and abusive—while the evidence to make the diagnosis can be as shallow as simple bad vibes and eye contact.
Sortition Social
Created by the incredible Blackle Mori who remains one of the most impressive talents on the internet, this is a "communally shared RSS reader" where people add RSS feeds and those feeds are randomly rotated through in order to create an always refreshing experience of new posts from across the new postcohost independent blogosphere. I am definitely going to be using this to discover new blogs.
Curious Quail — What We Leave Behind (EggBug Forever)
This very silly song compiling eggbug memes made me cry. This like that one Weezer music video from the 00s with all the internet memes except this time I cried.
Website League
Some former Cohost users including a few I know and trust are cooking up a new social media network that's trying to sort-of synthesize mastodon and cohost with the power of Bookchin, the Zapatistas, and an eye to learning from the mistakes of indie alternative social media past. This might sound like the worst thing or the best thing dependI g on who you are. I'm keeping tabs on it and I think it has some strong potential to be a league of websites.
Jean Paul Sartre — No Exit
I saw a troupe perform this play as part of Philly Fringe Fest this week and it was excellent. It gave me a lot to think about in my ongoing existential crisis. My favorite Fringe play I saw was the Rose Garden by John Jarboe but that one will end forever very soon, whereas I can just share with you the script of No Exit.