Notices by JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)

Has such a protest sign ever before existed, across all of human history

#EventuallyTheyCamefortheAccountants

This is outrageously egregious.

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/long-covid-is-now-the-number-one

I keep walking to the window, staring at the pond, and wanting to be out there ... but without, you know, doing the work of getting dressed, dragging a kayak and gear, actually maybe (probably!) getting wet

I want the reward without all the work and risk and discomfort of committing to the bit

I have also decided that mine are centrist Dems- they yield to the slightest pressure and become wholly incapable of doing the job for which they were installed

THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF MEANINGFUL RESISTANCE

I am ready to put “collapsible dishwasher spikes” on the list of “seems like an awesome idea but is actually bad"

Starting to understand that ‘struggling to breathe due to wood smoke in the winter and also wood smoke in the summer’ is just going to be the status chosen for all of us with asthma in this era

We are a quarter of the way through the 21st century and I have paleolithic village problems

I'm watching students wrestle with defining what 'urban' means, and also thinking about what 'urbanists' think they mean, and in particular, the city-exceptionalism that sometimes happens.

I have colleagues who began ministry when I did but chose to go into large churches rather than medium sized or small ones, who are continually like "in the LARGE CHURCH CONTEXT" and then describe a staffing or programming situation that in a lot of ways is ANY program-sized church. They assume their experience is specific and exceptional because they are continually told that it is, but in a lot of cases a church institution and its problems are similar and translatable. (There are limits to this argument, but not so many as large church-serving ministers would imagine.)

Similarly, people say things about "urban places" that often actually are true of anywhere we haven't gutted, displaced, disinvested in and wholly abandoned.

Thriving TOWNS have a lot of the benefits that people call "urban."

I speak here of gutting, but it will probably be more legible to most people to also acknowledge GATING, which produces a different sort of half-realized place, one that may have tons of investment but no connection or context.

Through my own choice, I don't deal much with those kinds of place-in-a-box--I am more a scholar of the rural and the towns that thrive, or don't, in these non-city contexts, and which we've been told for generations that everyone who wants opportunities and relevance and a future must leave

(This work is through the dirt on my own shoes; I am a displaced child of Wyoming and eternally pissed about the ways that an entire generation of us were pushed to leave by forces that cared nothing for the future of the place.)

"But you can't bike in a town, or between them"

Ok but what if you could.

Like, why can't you?

Because bikes don't work that way?

Because towns don't work that way?

Or because we just didn't build in a way that imagined and allowed it?

You know that thing where your ankle like needs to pop or gets out of ... gear ... or whatever, and then you put weight on it and fall on the floor? Or feel like you should fall on the floor?

What the hell is that about

In Alberta I found a bathroom that is, itself, trans

I became tired of opening a block of cheese and leaving the rest to spoil in the fridge in Newfoundland so instead I sliced it and let it spoil in my luggage in Alberta 💡

Y'all, I laughed so hard.

I'm eating an actual (I think) watermelon that tastes exactly like fake watermelon flavor

My cheeks were red, for real, halfway to Montreal- I do not know why exactly (I don't even think it was mostly my fault) but omg it was EXTREMELY EMBARRASSING.

Anyway, thank you Canada for having a sense of humor and basic humanity so this can be funny instead of a thing that makes us all question the meaning of life.

Borders are a questionable invention but I swear to you the experience does not have to be terrible even when it goes somewhat poorly.

It is a CHOICE to make things terrible when accidents happen.

@FlashMobOfOne that's good because it was not a good time

So, I'm in my car at whatever the Quebec crossing is called that is Highgate on the Vermont side, and doing the whole interview thing, and bro is like, Do you have your study permit, which is my visa to live in Canada and thus this is a normal and expected question.

And, semi prepared person that I am, I said yes, and grabbed the file where I keep it, leafed through to find the one that is mine, and reached out with it to hand it to friendly border agent.

Who reached out to grab it.

And then we both look at each other. Silently.

And then I am like ... Can ... I go get that?

And he goes, YOU PROBABLY SHOULD

THEN, OUT OF NOWHERE, A HUGE GUST OF WIND COMES AND RIPS IT OUT OF BOTH OF OUR HANDS.

MY STUDY PERMIT **BLOWS** **AWAY** AS WE BOTH STARE AT IT, HORRIFIED

It has disappeared from view and I'm sort of having a slow motion heart attack but then I see it. But then as I approach it it blows. But then I catch up to it. But then it blows ... anyone who has ever chased paper in wind knows how this goes.