2026-06-08 03:47:00
I have mixed feelings about this book, published in 2020. First of all, I think there is a lot of good information in it. I learned a lot about efforts to prevent votes from being counted, and efforts to prevent citizens from voting. I think it is a book worth reading, but I also am very critical of this book.
The entire perspective of this is book is basically: Democrats have better policy, and the only reason we lose is because Republicans engage in voter suppression.
That's a little hyperbolic. But it's a dominant perspective throughout.
The book is very well written. Most chapters start with some personal anecdotes. Either stories of her own, or stories of others she's talked to/worked with. We get a first-hand look at how someone, who made a best-effort at voting, got rejected - either they were unable to cast their vote or their ballot was thrown out. She then goes into the details of how each of these cases of voter suppression functioned at an administrative level.
There is so much to learn from these stories. And I recommend reading this book for that reason.
But on to the criticism.
Firstly - she doesn't even mention Citizens United, or the Democrats' failure to overturn it even though they've had a trifecta once (maybe twice) since Citizens United was passed. CU is the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to give basically unlimited money to political efforts, and to do so anonymously.
In a late chapter, she wrote that she had disagreements with both Bush's, with Obama, and with Clinton, but that Trump's administration is the first one where she fundamentally disagrees with the foreign policy stance of the United States. This irritated me. She explained that it had to do with trade-wars, isolationist policies, anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, and damaging our reputation on the world stage.
It perturbs me that she doesn't have a fundamental disagreement with the U.S.'s foreign policy stance other than Trump. Because our stance has been to use our military power to bully countries we disagree with. We murder people, and all of our presidents are war criminals. Our foreign affairs are horrendous, and the fact that she's not appalled by them before Trump appalls me.
And this plays into another thing she writes in one of the last two chapters - that the next steps for our country involves returning us to being a moral leader on the global stage. And um, WHAT!? We are not a moral leader. We may have appeared as one. We may present ourselves as one. But we have a LONG history of civil rights abuses, of fascism, of slavery, segregation, oppression of LGBTQIA+ people. Oppression of women. And so-on. And our economic policy is extremely pro-corporate and anti-people.
She has a whole chapter about the rise of Populism, and how Authoritarian Populist leaders are on the rise globally - Trump being one of them. My Best Friend raised a concern that Abrams seems to be opposed to populism generally. And ... I'm not sure if she is definitively against populism, but it feels that way.
This whole book is basically about how terrible our Democracy is because of our long history (and current practices) of voter suppression. And then she has the nerve to say that we were once a leader in democratic innovation. Maybe our Democratic systems were innovative in some respects, but they were implemented in extremely oppressive ways. And we've fallen into a disgusting two-party system, with winner-takes-all elections, which disenfranchises nearly half of our country every single election. We are innovative in some respects, but not broadly speaking, if you ask me.
And back to my early criticism - that she blames Republicans for Democrat losses.
Voter Suppression is a real problem. Yes, it plays a role. Trump is a scumbag and lies and wins people over. Yes, he is a problem.
But Democrats have failed to win support, and she takes almost no accountability for that. Getting into that would be another whole long post, but let's summarize it as: Talking a big game, but then delivering for corporations + putting Hilary up for the 2016 Presidential instead of Bernie + turning their backs on Zohran and other actual progressives.
She does mention that "even [she] didn't escape" the twitter mob. And wrote briefly about factionalism on the Left. And how the "Left" and the "Far Left" basically attacked her for being too corporate. She says this like they are the problem - like we are the problem. Once again, she didn't take accountability for her shortcomings, and instead blamed others.
Oh, and she says maybe one sentence about how Democrats maybe do some gerrymandering too. My state is hella gerrymandered by Democrats. I mostly like the policy outcomes of this, but it IS voter suppression, and I'm not okay with it, and she should call it out.
None of my criticisms are meant to dismiss the very real issues she raises in this book. There are serious problems she talks about, and the book is extremely educational. It is well-written and easy to follow. And it is also hella biased.
2026-06-06 00:59:00
I know so many things are bad in society right now. Aside from global warming, we are collectively better off than any human generation in modern history.
I have no intention of dismissing the bigotry today. Racist gerrymandering is stripping votes from people of color. ICE raids have attacked U.S. communities. The list of anti-trans legislation in the U.S. and the UK (and probably other places) is growing longer and longer. The list of bad is long.
But I can pick so many points in our history where things were so much worse. Let's start with the fact that the U.S. legalized gay marriage in 2015. Yes, we're backsliding on queer rights, but we're still far ahead where we have been historically. Talk to an old gay man who's been in a platonic marriage because of what gay rights were like 50 years ago.
Let's consider the cold war & the red scare, where even the appearance of supporting communism would put you in front of a government review panel, and you'd lose your reputation and your job.
We have proposals like the SAVE Act which would force millions of women to procure birth and marriage certificates in order to vote. A horrible piece of legislation. Women couldn't even vote before 1920, and they got the right to vote because women fought for it for decades.
Black people were widely enslaved in the U.S. until ~1865, but were freed through a civil war. The KKK then terrorized black folks and carried out lynchings for many years, including a 1920s resurgence directed more toward political oppression than violent oppresion (there was still violence, don't get me wrong). In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation on paper, even though it persisted for years in less explicit forms.
We got the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect the black vote from attempts at voter suppression. Sadly, that law has been almost completely obliterated by recent supreme court decisions, but even so we are still better off than we were before it was passed.
On global warming, there are scientists and engineers developing new technologies. Factories bringing costs down. Governments subsidizing industrial improvements and requiring sustainable technology. We cannot all escape the damage caused by Global Warming, but the more of us who fight today, the fewer of us will suffer tomorrow.
Health care is too expensive and hard to access, but the treatments we decry as too expensive today (they are way too expensive) were entirely unavailable 100 years ago. Heart bypasses began in 1960. Now, heart disease might bankrupt you. Before, it just killed you. Bloodletting continued into the 1800s, and in that period doctors were resistant to even washing their hands. We deal with some vaccine-deniers today (including our Secretary of Health), but much of human history didn't even have vaccines.
Jews persisted through the holocaust. Native Americans persisted through colonial genocides. Japanese people persisted after American concentration camps. Chinese people kept immigrating after the Chinese Exclusion Act. Factory workers persisted through 12+ hour shifts with no safety protections. And so on and so forth.
None of these horrors are forgiveable. Our country and others globally have done so many terrible things and are continuing to do them.
But to look at our moment in history and feel that we're doomed, that there's no point in trying, that we've already lost, is an ahistorical view. It discounts hundreds of years of struggle. Hundreds of years of oppressed people fighting for their rights. Hundreds of years of meaningful progress.
And still today, there are millions - billions - of oppressed people, millions of people fighting for our rights. People who want the freedoms promised to us by our constitutions and laws. Freedoms we deserve by birthright.
Feeling a sense of doom at times is completely understandable. Life is heavy, and emotions can be even heavier. We all are allowed our periods to be depressed and down and feel like giving up.
But sinking into that doomerism is not only abandoning the hope of a better society tomorrow. It is abandoning the millions of people who are actively facing oppression, the millions of people who are actively fighting, the millions of people who deserve to be supported, to have you on their side, to have you fighting with and for them.
Your doomerism will not stop progress, because there are so many of us fighting. But your doomerism will slow us down. It will make it harder to secure our rights. It will not only slow progress toward a better future, but it will hurt those you care about today.
All the horrors we've overcome have been overcome because people believed in it, worked on it, fought for it. Believe. Work. Fight.
2026-06-04 02:09:44
I've been sober (from weed) since May 20th. It's now June 3, 14 days later. And I want to write about it while its all still fresh. I want to reference this next time I think to myself "smoking isn't so bad for me." I'm not sure I'm never gonna smoke. But I don't want to go back to even smoking every weekend. Definitely not every day.
Note: I've added this to my #best posts. It's not necessarily high quality. I just want to be able to find it when I want to re-read it in the future.
The first few days of sobriety were hell. I couldn't sleep. I'd lie in bed, and the moment I started to dip into dozing, restlessness would SHOOT through my legs. I'd keep trying and soon I'd start feeling a panic-attack building. I had to get up. I had to go for a walk. A long walk. Or eat food. Watch TV. The first few nights, I would eventually pass out at like 10am.
The last two nights, I slept for very near 8 hours, for the first time in awhile. Today is probably the first day where I feel like myself. I did have some restless legs mid last night, but I was hot. Turned the air down, got back to sleep. Was fine.
Before May 20th, I smoked every single day for about 5 weeks. Before that I was smoking 3 nights per week for months. Originally it was supposed to be 2 nights per week, but it wasn't. It was 3. During the 5 weeks, I stopped meditating and doing yoga - a near-daily practiced I had started within the past 6-9 months, thanks to starting guided meditations in therapy. The meditation & yoga had been extremely beneficial for my mental and physical wellbeing. And this practice fell off. I'm not back to where I was, but I'm already doing some yoga and some meditation most nights. I picked these back up probably 5-9 nights ago, after the worst of the sleep issues had passed.
I'm reading again - and I'm interested in reading again. I have this insatiable hunger for knowledge - an insatiable hunger I've had for a very long time. I've been active in the mid-day and somewhat active in the evening. This became a part of my routine over the past 6 months or so, whether I was smoking or not.
Sometimes, I'd be more willing to be active while smoking. I would not feel like being active. But then I would smoke and do chore-stuff anyway. The last two weeks, I've been far more responsive to how I'm actually doing. Pushing myself sometimes, but not a lot.
The 5 weeks of daily smoking saw me reading NONE. I didn't read articles. I didn't read my books. I met life's challenges (which were greater than usual) and I played video games. Video games got boring, quickly. I felt unsatisfied. But I was also burnt out and exhausted from life. The weed helped medicate that. But it also caused me to backslide in terms of my mental health and healthy habits. Part of the backsliding was, indeed, life's challenges.
I'm dreaming again. I don't dream a lot when I smoke. I don't remember them anyway. I enjoy my vivid dreams - though I'm sure they will mellow some over the next few weeks, as the weed works its way out of my system.
Now lets go back to the months where I was smoking on "weekends" - 3 nights per week.
I didn't usually do yoga or meditate on smoking nights. I mostly just played video games. There's a sort of enjoyment in the games, especially when I have a new roguelike to obsess over. But those obsessions are fleeting, and then I'm bored. And I'm too high to read, even if I'm not that high. So I just sit in my computer chair for hours clicky-clacking at things I really don't care about. It's unfulfilling.
And my sleep had gotten really bad. I'd be able to sleep on the nights I smoked. But then the 4 nights in between were a regular struggle. I've had sleep issues since I was 11 years old. But the restless legs had never been a frequent issue. Well on my sober nights, I was having restless legs. They were keeping me from falling asleep. And then I'd also wake up long before I was ready to.
And during the sober days, I'd just be waiting for the smoking nights. I've lived with mental illness in shifting forms for many many years. Depression in 7th/8th grade. Alcoholism and depression as a young adult. Several other bouts of depression. Chronic weed use/addiction for years. Energetic manic periods and burnt out depressed periods. A 4 month period in early 2024 when I felt like killing myself every single day, where I was genuinely miserable every single day.
Well the form its taken over the last year or so, one that I've identified clearly is psychic pain. This is where I experience a sensation of pain, but it is not placed anywhere in my body. It feels like pain, but there's no part of my body where it hurts.
Well during the smoking-on-the-weekend period over the last several months, this psychic pain was nearly unbearable. It would grow throughout the day. And it would be its most severe after dinner. On smoking nights, I would experience great relief, without effort. But on sober nights, it would hurt. This also came with mental exhaustion, inability to think clearly, inability to motivate myself to do much of anything. On better sober nights, I would lie down after dinner for awhile. Not sleep, but rest. And that would alleviate it.
But I felt very stuck in my routines. And it felt like I was constantly just outrunning this psychic pain and managing my brain's struggles. I was craving weed every single day. On sober nights, I couldn't wait for my weed nights. On weed days, I couldn't wait for the evening (I almost never smoked before dinner). Its like there was just this cloud of misery hanging over me, and the only real reprieve I got was smoking on the weekends.
I haven't been in that cloud the last week or so. I've had my struggles, especially with these sleep issues. But it's been different. It's felt temporary, and it has largely alleviated (not completely). But my reaction to this cloud now has been ...
I don't know how to explain it. But my reaction before was to clam up, to feel tight. Now, it's more like "oh this sucks, let me deal with it." So I lie down or I go on a walk. Maybe some light yoga.
I'm starting to eat healthy again. Salad the last couple nights. And they're so fucking good. But I don't know if this is weed related so much as life/burnout related. And definitely the first week or so of the sleep issues post-quit I gave no fucks. I had to comfort myself and get through the misery. I took a break from trying to be healthy. I just had to get through it. But I'm on the other side of that now.
One of the worst things about smoking each weekend is the constant craving. The craving is a cloud hanging over me every single day, and it just eats away at my sense of wellbeing.
The psychic pain ... it's hard to say whether its related to the addiction/craving/withdrawal situation. It might be a feature of my mental illness. I think it is a bit of both. I've had some times of experiencing that psychic pain since quitting. I'll be curious to see what the psychic pain is like over the weeks and months that follow.
My favorite things about being sober.
I can sleep. I can fall asleep. I can stay asleep. And I think I'm more flexible about when I can fall asleep.
I'm doing yoga and meditating again. It makes my body feel better. It helps my mind be calmer. It trains my brain to be more pleasant, less reactive, more aware.
I'm reading again. I love learning things. It can get dull or feel like a slog. But it is rewarding.
I'm doing photography again. Well, I did twice recently. This was a new hobby I picked up in the last 6 or so months. I had been missing it. I want it to remain a hobby. I really need a photo album, because analog is a huge part of what makes it feel rewarding.
I'm hardly ever craving weed. I miss it a little bit sometimes. I do like weed. It can be really fun and enjoyable. But I'm hardly craving it. Craving is a miserable experience.
My memory seems better. I remember more clearly. I can think more clearly - most the time.
...
By no means do I think my mental illness is cured. By no means do i think I'm able to work again. I still have fairly low limits. But I'm excited to get familiar with what my new normal is without weed.
I want to maybe smoke once a month. Maybe twice. No more. But even that is scary. It's scary because I'm hungover after a smoke. Part of that hangover is craving. Part of that hangover is just feel depressed and shitty. Part of it is psychic pain, I think. I'm afraid that the "once a month" smoke can too easily morph into "well I'll smoke for two days" and into three, and into weekly.
...
I want to write again - local journalism.
I want to code again - my website for local journalism and the tools to run it.
I want to engage in more activism - I spread Resistance Cards to oppose my country's current version of fascism. I want to get involved with a group. I want to sometimes raise issues with my city council. I want to email legislators. I want to show up for protests (though I am largely disillusioned with protests, as most of them are a way to blow-off steam rather than a step in a larger plan toward change)
I want to socialize with my friends. I want to get out of the house and do things I enjoy. I want to make new friends (one bestie lives in germany, another is 40 minutes away, and another is like 70 minutes away)
I want to date. This is nerve-wracking due to my disabled-jobless-poor situation. But I have a lot of great qualities to bring to a relationship. And I want romance again. I want love. I want sex. Jesus Christ I want sex - but I want sex with intimacy and affection, not just hookups.
I want to get my house in order - I've been making great strides in this area. The clutter & mess that's built up over the years is horrendous. Before I try to put myself back into the world (i.e. work), I have to get my house in order. I need a solid foundation.
I want to be smart as fuck. I've always been pretty smart. Did well in school. Tested well. And my intellect and mental abilities have not been what they used to. Reading is a big part of improving this. Maybe going to school again. I want to be living to my intellectual potential, and I have not been, for a very long time.
Most of all, I just want to be happy, at peace, and feel fulfilled.
...
I've always declined mental-health medication. And I will continue to do so. I've had many conversations about this over the years, I've been pressured to take meds. But in the last six months, I made a simple decision - I feel strongly about this and I am not willing to discuss it any further, and I need no other reasons. If I got someone pregnant, I would probably be willing to take meds in order to help care for my family. I'm not sure there's any other thing that would change my mind, and it isn't up for debate. This is a personal choice. I know meds are extremely helpful for a lot of people, and strongly support those who wish to use them. But I do not wish to.
And that brings me to the weed. I use it as medication, in part. I refuse pharma-meds but accept weed. Well. That's because I'm addicted to it. That's because I'm familiar with it. That's because when I smoke, I'm not introducing myself to something new. And also maybe because weed really is fun.
But I can have a lot of fun without it. I often do. Hell, it's not uncommon that I have more fun sober than high. And I actually remember the fun when I have it sober.
I don't want to be a weed addict. I gave up alcohol 11 or 12 years ago. I debated trying to use it casually and occasionally, because alcohol's fun. But I made up my mind a year or so ago that I'm not going to, for the primary reason that I do not want to crave it. I almost never crave alcohol. Drinking occasionally would open me up to those cravings, to that ongoing internal debate of "is it okay to drink tonight? Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe It's okay." I don't want to have that fight with myself, so just saying no is simpler.
I should probably learn from that and apply the same logic to weed. But I'm not sure I'm ready to (or ever will want to) completely swear off weed. I want to enjoy it from time to time.
But I don't want that enjoyment to take away from my life.
I'm 34 years old. My ambitions have long been big, and they have not manifested. My ambitions are still big, but they are tempered and more realistic. The things I want for myself and for my life and for my involvement in the world are hindered by drugs.
I have always held onto hope that I would be able to heal from mental illness. This does not seem a common view. It seems far more common to believe that a brain has a "chemical imbalance" and the only real solution is to take medications that "fix" the "imbalance". Well there is also scientific research that shows the efficacy of things like meditation and literally just going for walks. Your brain structure and chemistry literally change based on lifestyle. I want to heal through work - meditation, activity, therapy, social support. I don't want to heal through meds, nor do I wish to be dependent upon meds.
I've made great strides in my mental and physical wellbeing in the last year - ~7 years of therapy and effort starting to really pay off. I want to continue this work. I want to see where it leads me.
My dream, regarding my mental health journey, is to get to a healthy and productive place. I want to write a book about my journey. I want to share with others and help others in this way. I have no intention of naysaying meds, and actually want to talk about how helpful I know meds can be. I want to encourage folks to do what's right for them and their lives.
I have a lot of goals, and I want to pursue them. I want to run for city council. I want to run as a state legislator. There's some chance I'd be interested in being a federal representative or even a president, though I kind of doubt it. Sidenote, U.S. presidents are basically required to be war criminals, and I would not be willing.
I want to (re)build my local journalism site, and I want to provide the tools for others to make their own versions in their communities. These journalism goals conflict with my political goals. That's a difficulty to navigate later, and ponder in the meantime.
I want to continually learn and grow as a person. I want to be a good member of my personal community and my broader community (city, groups I'm in, etc). I want to be a good friend. I want to have a life partner (or two, maybe), and I want to be a good life partner. I want to love heartily. I want to forgive vigorously. I want to be joyful. I want to be at peace.
2026-06-01 02:57:00
I went to dinner with a friend 2 or 3 years ago. We went to a regional fast-food burger establishment that is fantastic. At that time I was a lazy vegan, so i would cheat often. This place had grilled cheese but no other vegetarian options. I wanted a fish sandwhich. But my friend was buying and she said she wouldn't spend her money on meat.
So I got a grilled cheese. It was good. I was a little annoyed but understood. And I talked to another friend about it who thought it was pretty ridiculous.
I've been thinking about that recently because I'm a committed vegan now. And recently my niece and nephew were in town and they had a coupon for free ice cream from a different burger establishment. My mom asked if I would go get it for them, and I declined for vegan reasons. This was something I felt conflicted about, especially since they got the ice cream anyway & so the impact on the world was functionally the same.
But then I've wondered recently about the title of this post.
If you took your friend out for burgers. And it were available ... and your friend tried to order a dog-meat burger instead of a cow-meat burger ... how would you feel about it?
Would you pay for it, because it is a "personal" choice what they eat? Would you refuse because of how you feel about pet-animals?
2026-06-01 02:47:00
I sometimes spend considerable time and energy thinking about a topic, writing it, and editing my post before publishing. These are posts I am extremely proud of, that I tend to feel are meaningful, and ones that I really want people to see. They usually get less than 5 toasts, and sometimes none lol.
And then I throw out some shit like Windows removed the calculator wtf and it gets 61 toasts lol.
I get it kinda. Like everybody knows the windows calculator, except some poor bastards who only ever used google as a calculator. Its short and sweet and it resonates with this trend of software decline that basically everyone experiences at least sometimes. (I didn't know I hated the word enshittification until I typed it. I rephrased lol)
Now, if you look at my top 19 posts below, they're not all silly shit. Several are about bearblog things. My charlie kirk post and orgasm posts are both meaningful to me. I forgot about my 'internet is different now' post, but that's somewhat meaningful too.
But this critical analysis of news reporting got no toasts & its genuinely one of my favorite posts I've ever written. This "Wild" animals post only got one toast and - to toot my own horn - its quite insightful lol. And my other self-described best posts generally don't perform that well. (I didn't realize that several of them actually get 10ish toasts which does weaken what I'm saying here)
And that's okay. Like. I don't need all of my good posts to get a ton of eyes on them. (okay i do quite like it when my meaningful posts get toasts) A lot of my writing is, in part, a way for me to think and put my own thoughts together. But idk. It's just funny. It's just funny how some silly things REALLY resonate with people and some meaningful things just ... don't. Idk.
P.S. See Sort Bear Analytics by Toast Count
2026-05-27 11:31:00
For ever and ever I've just hit winkey, typed 'calc' & hit enter and up pops the calculator. Well I'm on a fresh windows 11 install from like 2 or so weeks ago. And it didn't appear in the menu so i finished typing 'calculator' so naturally when i hit enter it opened fucking EDGE to do a web search. So I try 'calc' and naturally it opens LibreOffice Calc (spreadsheet software).
Well I used my eyes and there's an option to INSTALL CALCULATOR from the windows store.
I'm not a fan of bloatware. I don't want a ton of pre-installed software. But you're giving me copilot and outlook and fucking xbox and a ton of other shit, and you can't give me A CALCULATOR!?
Its just dumb. What the hell
(afterthought: It's probably done on purpose to get us to use the microsoft store. Which was a bad experience. It did that loading-style where there's a bunch of grey bars where there WILL be text. I hate that so much. Its one of my most hated design choices in the modern era. It makes me feel really anxious. And it took FOREVER to load. Like 20 seconds. But still. Forever. lol)
