To Figuring Things Out

I’d rather carry you.

You cannot save her

You cannot save her

Greta Thunberg has shared a pre-recorded video appealing for international help.

“My name is Greta Thunberg, and I am from Sweden,” Thunberg said in the video recorded on board the Madleen, before tonight’s events.

“If you see this video, we are being intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel,” she said.

“I urge all my friends, family and comrades to put pressure on the Swedish government to release me and the others as soon as possible.”

crucify that kid, make her bear humanity's sins and hatred

(+alt version under the cut)

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

"You can't brute force your way through a trauma response" really hit me. I went to the library recently because I wanted to finally get better at reading. As I attempted, I couldn't process any of the words and I struggled a lot to not break down into tears. I can't remember if I eventually told anyone, but I was too ashamed to say anything to the people I went with.

I decided to time myself when reading this. And just the screenshotted stuff. It took me 40 minutes to read it. And it will take me another 40 minutes to fully understand it, because when I read I have to reread times (and make notes) to remember even just pieces of what was said (you dont understand, a lot of people need to reread to fully understand. When I am done reading, my mind it blank and I don't remember any of what was written - not the facts, not the jokes, not anything.) I usually have to reread twice. Taking two and a half out hours of my day to do something that exhausts me and brings me no joy when existence in general is exhausting - I just never did it because I was always burnt out anyways from getting up, from breathing, from being around people or from being alone. And I assumed it was just something wrong with me. But knowing the system is designed like this on purpose, I feel relieved and also even more deafeated. Because I think this genuinely confirms that I will need some kind of accommodation if I'm going to want to read and actually remember/learn what I read.