A certain libertarian white rich man on HBO thinks there should only be one National Anthem. He’s okay with getting rid of the current one, but we all have to agree on the replacement. The idea of one National Anthem, included in his argument, is founded on the idea that there is one USA. Except…
Author: Clio
Mother
you didn’t care when i was merely sad you only cared when i was holding the gun and you didn’t know who i was planning to shoot Clio 09.21.21
speak words of kindness
speak words of kindness to yourselfyour heart will hear youyour heart will heal you the child inside your mindhas been hidingfrom the shouting and the shaming they don’t want to be scaredthey don’t want to be scarredthey want to feel the warmth of love they’re the one you’re scoldingwhen you’re scolding yourselfand they burrow in…
On Pre-Emptive Shame
While I understand the distinction between shame and guilt being between “how I am” vs “what I did”, I feel like this misses what is for me a major component of shame. Shame is often pre-emptive: I feel ashamed of things I want to do, before I’ve even done them. I fear mockery and ostracism….
Protected: Bananas
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Number Lines and the Empty Product
The “Empty Product” is the product of all numbers in a group of no numbers at all. To the uninitiated, this sounds like word salad. Mostly because it is: How can you multiply no values together? How does that even make any sense? And on one level, it really doesn’t: We need the Empty Product…
On the Correlation Between COVID Cases and Deaths
So, content warning: This is about COVID deaths. Someone tweeted about case counts correlated to Rep/Dem voting patterns by county showing that the GOP was literally killing its constituents, and someone else rebutted that cases aren’t correlated to deaths because only about one in seven people who test positive die. But a proper correlation would…
Mirrors, Windows, and Nonbinary Literature
A recent conversation about Jeff Garvin’s “Symptoms of Being Human” reminded me of the literary concept of mirrors and windows. Two of my favorite TikTokers are @finngerhardt and @mx.deran, and these two illustrate the concept well. The bulk of @finngerhardt’s TikToks are deliberate windows: The purpose is to educate cis folks about being allies to nonbinary people; these videos…
On Demi Lovato, Cancel Culture, and Fact Checking
So someone asked why Demi Lovato is so controversial and… I can’t tell. I feel like people take every little thing they say and twist it way out of proportion. They accepted a free trip to Israel and were excited about getting baptized in the River Jordan. This becomes: “Demi Lovato is a Zionist!” They…
The Sweet Tooth of Marine City
1 The five and dime where my parents bought my first typewriter is now a candy store that shares its name with a comic book series about the apocalypse, and that makes sense because I feel like I am a hybrid, half-human, half-alien, looking to be made whole, and I feel like it was there—in…