Victory or Madness

We have this idolized AND sanitized version of what happened then, and so we do not recognize it when it happens now.

Resistance fighters assassinated nazis and blew up weapons and infrastructure and destroyed records and forged paperwork and raised secret funds and smuggled people in vehicles and yes, hid them in their homes.

“Well it’s sad he got sent to an ICE camp but he faked his permit :/“

Whoever helped him fake his paperwork did what fighters in ww2 did. People who cut through chain link fences do what fighters in ww2 did, people who blow whistles chasing after ice cars do what fighters in ww2 did, people who destroy arms factories and cop city cranes do what fighters in ww2 did, people unmask agents do what fighters in ww2 did.

People are doing it now! They’ve been doing it now! You keep saying “oh if this happened here__” it HAS! It IS!

One local jail contracted with ICE voluntarily. We were getting close to forcing them to actually follow the rules of ICE detainers and release people if ICE hadn’t come for them. That’s over now. If anyone gets bond on a pending criminal charge, they are arrested and deported without the chance to prove innocence or guilt.

Two of my clients were victims of severe domestic violence. Nearly all have dependent children. Some of the children are US citizens. There are no questions. No support. Give your kids to CPS — this is the only option.

You know undocumented people can get a driver’s license? They can file taxes and get a tax ID? Those, the ones who tried to obey the law, are being taken out one by one, because their names are in a database that they voluntarily joined. Because they want to be here. They want to be Americans.

The judge in a case of mine gave someone a two-day jail sentence. Gone. Case deferrals for dismissal are available for all Americans; if an undocumented person tries to take the same deal, they’re gone. A child client of mine had his father disappear to ICE. A woman had her husband disappear.

This was based on a post @citrine-elephant used my tags for. Was gonna be a one shot but it’s gonna be a little longer.

Summary: Leon sometimes found himself thinking about Luis on nights like this, nights when he felt the plaga thrumming in his chest and the sickness hitting him in waves. Luis wondered if people like him could change, Leon wonders if situations like his own could.

People SAY that your health 'suddenly' starts to decline in your 30s but that's not really a good way to put it A) bc that's not really accurate and B) bc it frames this decline as something inherent and unavoidable, which does nothing to convince you that you have some agency about this.

So I'm going to explain this in LOOSE NON-SCIENTIFIC language:

When you are an infant or child, you are actively growing. Nature is throwing tons of new cells into you bc your body needs to BUILD BUILD BUILD. What you're able to do, eat and heal from is all largely dictated by this-- for example little kids often LOVE sweet foods or dairy-like foods and are relatively less interested in anything else. This is bc their body is running on HIGH all the time since building body parts is very energetically intensive. They can eat a fistful of sugarcubes and burn them off in an hour. Ask me how I know.

When you are a YOUNG ADULT you are actually still developing to a secondary extent, but your bones and such are fused and now that development goes into solidifying the structure and also finetuning its reproductive capabilities and features-- these, too, are HIGHLY energy consumptive when they first come online. Nature is STILL, thus, throwing tons of energy and new cells your way hoping you'll do something cool with them. You regenerate very quickly, and recover from harm rapidly-- But please note: swift recovery from harm is not absence of harm. This most relates to the consumption of 'junk food' and alcohol-- many people say they could 'eat whatever they wanted and nothing would happen' when they're in their 20s or that they could go out drinking and 'not be affected'. You were affected. You didn't notice.

Once everything has come online you go into maintenance mode. Nature stops throwing excess cells and energy your way bc you don't need that-- your body is yours and you are now responsible for maintaining it...hopefully with what you learned by experience in your 20s. IF YOU WERE NOT PAYING ATTENTION, you did not learn this, and are in for a surprise in your 30s bc your 'free recovery' subscription has ended. Recovery and maintenance- processes that are constant in the human body- now cost MINERALS & ELECTRICITY. You can go into DEBT now, and that debt will come in the form of joints that pop, inability to recover well, lowered immune function, and feeling like shit.

This debt accrues interest RAPIDLY once you hit 36-- the age of around 36 to 46 or so is a kind of reckoning stage where Nature assesses how well you've managed your body and you will be SWIFTLY downgraded if the result is you were just winging it.

So how do you build this account? 2 main things ( LOOSELY SPEAKING this is so not 100% scientific but I have to be general here): MINERALS -- you get these from eating well, mostly. You might want to take supplements based on your unique needs. But you need Minerals & Vitamins (i'm lumping these two together) bc they are the chemical building blocks (currency) your body uses to rebuild and fix up cells. ELECTRICITY is- again loosely speaking- having the proper chemical voltage throughout your body. This 'voltage' drops when you don't move enough, or when you're dehydrated. The building and repairing process your body wants to do may have the materials (minerals and vitamins) but there's not enough power in the factory, or the AC isn't working and the workers are overheating and can't work well. To fix this, drink lots of water and MOVE AND STRETCH your body. The action within your muscles and bones GENERATES ENERGY and it keeps your cells happy.

So the thing is, it's not that you suddenly find yourself taking damage after 30+. You were taking damage the whole time. You're just kept from really feeling it bc you're young and full of extra juice and given time to figure things out.

But at some point Nature expects you to do that, and you will pay if you don't.

Best to start out giving a shit, even if none of your friends think you're cool, even if you get called a 'health nut' bc you will still be able to frolick at 45, 50, probably so on while everyone who said it was dumb to have 'balanced meals' shares memes about how they wake up feeling like shit every day.

All the nutrients and exercise and drinking water won't truly help you if you're sleeping like shit every night, because you're not letting your body getting critical healing and recovery periods.

You don't get a second chance at sleep. If you learn something or experience something lovely & awesome and that night you sleep like shit, studies show you will NOT recall it nearly as well compared to if you sleep well.

You're not going to feel the impacts of poor sleep in your teens and 20s, but you increasingly will as you age. Your sleep quality WILL degrade as you get older, but there's things you can do now to improve what you've got, while you've still got it.

1) Search for: watch TITLE OF WORK free online

2) Scroll to the bottom of results. Click any of the "Complaint" links

3) You will be taken to a long list of links that were removed for copyright infringement. Use the 'find' function to search for the name of the show/movie you were originally searching for. You will get something like this (specifics removed because if you love an illegal streaming site you don't post its url on social media)

4) each of these links is to a website where you can stream shit for free. go to the individual websites and search for your show/movie. you might have to copy-paste a few before you find exactly what you're looking, but the whole process only takes a minute. the speed/quality is usually the same as on netflix/whatever, and they even have subtitles! (make sure to use an adblocker though, these sites are funded by annoying popups)

In conclusion, if you do this often enough you will start recognizing the most dependable websites, and you can just bookmark those instead. (note: this is completely separate from torrenting, which is also a beautiful thing but requires different software and a vpn)

Option 1: try the DuckDuckGo search engine instead (bonus: dedicated to privacy! doesn't track your data!)

2026 UPDATE:

SARDINE

bit of a big one, wanted to include some closeups as im rlly happy with claire and sherry in this!