Welcome To Jamestown

When we were children, my sister had private music lessons at her violin teacher’s house. I only visited there once, but I still remember that afternoon. The teacher had an artificial pond in her yard, a large beautiful thing with lily pads and plant life. And in the pond, there were goldfish. I had never seen such enormous goldfish. 

Reblogged again for this drawing I made for it

Oh, the comments are GOLD

When the health food store unionized, something wild happened that I thought was just a goofy one-off, but makes more sense now.

I think it was coming from a background that viewed labor as necessary to accomplish anything, but advocated for the equitable distribution of the gains made by labor... and then being thrown in with people who just thought labor was icky.

Just to put a bow on it:

I was on leftie tiktok (as a creator) for a bit and I saw this attitude there as well. I specifically remember one argument around cleaners where someone said that employing a cleaner was, like, ethically bad, and that "after the revolution" we wouldn't have cleaners.

Yeah, that really sums it up. There's stuff that needs to get done, so I'll never be of the opinion that it's degrading work. I worked in kitchens for a long time, and every other position is reliant on having clean dishes, so nobody can really be "above" washing dishes. The shitty thing about washing dishes or busing tables is how people treat the people doing it. The work itself is vital.

My sister-in-law (husband’s sister) was supposed to get married this fall but due to some immature/concerning behavior by her fiancé, the wedding and engagement were called off. (I don’t want to be too specific, but there were sudden red flags, followed by his sudden decision that he wanted to postpone the wedding months or years despite the fact that most of it was paid for already).

It also started an ongoing health crisis that everyone is in denial of in a way that makes me feel absolutely insane. Long covid has overtaken asthma as the most common chronic illness in children, causing fatigue, depression, anxiety, and more. Disability rates in all ages have skyrocketed and will continue to grow. Every covid infection can cause long-lasting or permanent immune system and BRAIN damage and we're wondering why everyone is sick all the time and has no attention span or critical thinking skills. A study found that driving a car with acute or long covid is as dangerous as driving drunk because your brain is so fucked.

unfun fact: any flu virus can cause this damage. even regular "normal" flu. covid seems to be very efficient at this, but influenza viruses can also cause "long flu" and months or even years of issues. i can't even count the number of people i've seen saying things like "i don't understand, it's been months and i still feel wiped out. it wasn't even covid, it was just flu!" like bruh. there's no "just" flu. flu fucks you up and can kill people too, especially the very young, very old, the chronically ill, and the immunosuppressed.

Let's try for neither. Take the texture and the flav