Esther Andoh

My mom tried to lose weight in vain for months before she finally gave into my begging her to get a second opinion. The first doctor she saw next scheduled her for surgery the same day she met him. When my mom asked about the risk of operating on her he told her that there was some minor risks for complication and that all she would need to do to alleviate the risk was spend an extra night in the hospital so that they could keep a look out for any complications.

There were zero. There were also zero complications when she had her other knee done, her hip replaced and her gallbladder removed.

I've been struggling all my adult life with weight loss. I've gone to fat camp as a teen, Jenny Craig, Weight watchers, Atkins diet, Juicing, vegan, vegetarian, eat once a day. None of which worked for me. I also worked out an hour a day, I'm always told I'm not trying hard enough, or putting in effort. I'm told I'm simply over eating. I'm at the breaking point to see if maybe if I only eat 800 calories a day maybe I'll lose weight.

“It’s not about the Cheerios.”

This was in reference to a story about a kid flipping the HELL out into a full-blown panic about running out of their favorite cereal. Not a tantrum, not a whine-fest, but an all-hands-on-deck, code-red, world-is-ending blowup.

The kid had originally come from a very unstable situation and experienced food deprivation. The new adoptive parents were stumped, because look at all the other food! You’re safe! We can get the Cheerios tomorrow!

But it wasn’t really about the Cheerios, it was about that first flicker of unease triggering all the old trauma. From the outside, it looked ridiculous. To the trauma-trained reaction of the kid’s brain, it made perfect sense.

Human brains are weird, and we’re all out here trying to survive. Sometimes our brains do this in socially acceptable, convenient ways. But not often.

Pirating books can end authors' careers. Especially new or smaller authors.

Book piracy is NOT a victimless crime. It IS hurting authors.

It IS "your fault" just like stealing from someone's small business run out of their garage makes it "your fault" when the business/person struggles to recover financially from your theft.

Particularly given that you have free alternatives in libraries. Which DO actually contribute to the author's income, as well as to the library's funding justification.

Textbooks are a different matter. I'm chiefly talking about fiction here because it's my area of expertise. Point is.

That is exactly how prejudice evolves itself into something systemic. By changing the rules of who is allowed to be seen clearly. And this is where it becomes personal.

Most people reading this do not think of themselves as antisemitic. They would never use a slur. They would never straight out and openly deny someone’s humanity. But that is not how this shows up anymore. It shows up in smaller decisions we make as progressive and left leaders these days. In what we excuse. In what we scroll past. In which deaths feel complicated instead of tragic and unacceptable. In whether we instinctively see a person or a position when we hear the word “Zionist” or “anti-Zionist.”

You can oppose Israeli policy. You can reject Zionism. You can defend it. None of those positions require you to sort Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims into categories that determine whether they deserve empathy. If your framework depends on deciding which Jews are acceptable and which are not, or which civilians matter and which do not, then the issue is not that your politics are controversial. It is that your reasoning has already crossed a line that civil rights traditions were meant to prevent. The civil rights standard was never agreement. It was consistency. No collective guilt. No dehumanization. No conditional empathy.

We already know how to apply these principles. We are watching what happens when we fail to. The only question is whether we are willing to apply them when it challenges our own assumptions. Because if we cannot, then all we have really done is learn how to recognize injustice selectively.

And selective justice is not justice for all."

Let’s all remember that the man , and others like him wake up every day and decide they’re going to harm your friends , your family , innocents who have no way to defend themselves against the power they all wield . And they gladly do so to get a little more powerful than the day before

They don’t get to expect humanity when they’ve spent their miserable lives depriving us of our own