Three Interesting Things

1.  This long piece addressed some of the work being done to broaden traditional publishing. 

2. I am not working in employer benefits these days, but it doesn't mean I wasn't curious about how employers could cover abortion - or any other medical procedure an employee needed to go out of state for, this piece addressed some of the logistics if you are benefits admin curious.  

3. Sometimes something that could be stunt. protest, or prank just captures attention, and this tale of a radio station that played a single song yesterday was fascinating.  

This Is Us

The book America, that the Daily Show under Jon Stewart put together had asterisks and footnotes. Because there are lots of times throughout US history that they say everyone should have something, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, free speech, and so on, but, by everyone they meant like rich white dudes, or dudes with property, not the people who had been declared property of course. Growing up and living in DC it becomes clear a little more easily the asterisks. 

Our local laws are regularly challenged by Congressional folks for funsies. We have been repeatedly denied access to Congressional representation, and yet, still required to pay federal taxes, a particular thing that is true nowhere else in the US. 

People try to attack our city because of those nationally elected folks, and yet they go home, and all the various surveillance set up to track them, tracks us. 

But it just means more work to be done. Just looking at Supreme Court precedents alone, we have had many terrible ones. There are ones I consider terrible still in place. And others that were later changed. It's sometimes exhausting to daunting to discover things, rights, even back on the to do list, when they seemed done. 

But well, history books show us that terrible decisions can get fixed. They just kind of skate over all the work. It's a lot of work. But the good news is there are a lot of us. 

Over on the Newsletter

Hey folks, I know today is a day. 

In news that has very little to do with current events, the next scene in the "How May I Help You? story I am serializing went out to newsletter folks earlier today. 

You can take a peek at it here: https://buttondown.email/talkapedia/archive/how-may-i-help-you-12/

Three Interesting Things

1. Some local residents started a plant coop for folks interested in finding native plants.  

2. I am very very biased about this, but I enjoyed author Andie J. Christopher's post on how dating apps feel like a variation on diet culture. 

3. The ship that locals had been talking about for so long, it inspired "The Goonies" among other things, has been located. 

Thinking a Lot About Clothes

I am doing the 100 day challenge. This is not really promo, I like the dress and the company offering this so far, but there are variations of this (10 x 10, project 333, etc) that I have been meaning to try for a while. 

There are various studies that most of us wear a small portion of our closet. That we tend to machine wash more frequently than we need to. And that honestly, most people don't remember what you wore yesterday anyway. 

One of the things trying to wear the same dress for 100 days has shown me is how lazy I've gotten about spot cleaning. Or hanging up stuff that I wore that day. 

I also have reached a point in my life where I have plenty of clothes that fit, but I don't wear.

Or I do, but then they go in the laundry and the laundry piles up and I forget they exist. I hate getting rid of things that work, but also if I have more things than I can keep track of, then it isn't really helpful. 

I'm still in the early days of this, and so may find as I run out of leggings, and scarves, and necklaces to accessorize with, my interest in this wanes. Okay, I won't actually run out of scarves. But we shall see. 

I think whether you do this officially or just on you're own, there's something to the ease of knowing just what I'll be wearing tomorrow.