First of an Optimistic Weekly Blog
Hello, here is the start of a blog, I like to try to flesh out my thoughts in a more cohesive way, so this is the product of that. I have lots of thoughts on music and sports and politics, and this will likely be a conglomeration of all the different parts of me into a single weekly type thing. I would like people to read it! But, if people don’t, that’s ok, and if people only want to read the music part or the politics part, or the part where I list out things I consumed that I enjoyed this week, that’s great! I don’t know how to add links within the article yet, so here is an itinerary (it’s my blog I get to call it what I want)
Music (mostly Olivia Rodrigo but also a good playlist imo)
Politics (I talk about what happened this past week, and Andrew Sullivan, a weird guy who is very successful)
Sports (I really hate Tony LaRussa)
Other Media I Really Enjoyed This Week
Music:
I’m starting with music, so I created this playlist for all the bitter girls (or for straight white men who are in a relationship and just like up tempo bops where you’re mad at a non-existent person)! I think it should be pretty accessible and you can just click on it and play it while you read if you want? It’s your life though, do what you want.
Also, yes this is in honor of Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album released
olivia rodrigo’s album bangs!! Jealousy, Jealousy and Brutal are my favorites, when she leans into the pop punk side she really gets into the petty vitriol that makes you feel like a part of the drama. It’s energetic and is punchy. Her ballads are great as well, but do feel like there were 1 or 2 too many, but Traitor is my favorite of the slower songs.
I also listened to Sinead O’Connor’s most popular album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”, it had some really good songs, and it was interesting to hear early 90’s Alternative Rock. Not breaking any new ground but the backlash she received protest against the Catholic Church is really perfect. Here’s a quote from the NYT article recently released about her:
O’Connor was 18 when her mother died, and on that day, she took down the one photograph on her mom’s bedroom wall: the image of the pope. O’Connor carefully saved the photo, waiting for the right moment to destroy it.
Politics (booooo)
First of all, shoutout to Larry Krasner for winning the Philly DA, and get fucked pundits.
This is about Andrew Sullivan, an online guy really out of touch with any part of society, and was a hawk on the Iraq War, said that Gore tried to steal the 2000 election, was pro-Ron Paul in 2011???? Voted for Kerry, Obama, Obama, Hillary, and Biden. So, to his credit, he does seem to grow and constantly change as a person, wavering in and out of conflicting identities, but eventually votes for the lib.
The Andrew Sullivans are very weird, like their top issues are all one-offs of very powerful people becoming inconvenienced. Like look at this tweet:
He tweets “We all live on campus now” as if it’s something interesting, remotely how living on campus feels like, or if it matters at all. He is a 57 year old from the UK who went to Harvard.
so Kanye Voice What does Andrew Sullivan know about college campuses?
I’m obviously not going to read the article, because who the fuck cares about an Apple staffer? Like realistically, I am sure I would have some sort of sympathy, but we live in a society of extraordinary poverty surrounding us, people struggling to eat, widespread addiction caused by a pharmaceutical company that mocks Kentuckians as not being able to read. These are issues that are just around me in my pretty privileged bubble in Central Kentucky. That’s not to mention people being bombed, forced out of their homes, forced into refugee camps for decades going on around the world.
But anyways, Andrew Sullivan’s central theory about “Life on College Campus” is just really weird and wrong. Some quick background on me, I was in a College Dems org, and like most College Dems orgs, there were about 8 people who came to meetings, ate pizza, and talked about weird stuff that happened in the past week. We would sometimes go canvassing for local races, we would try to have a local candidate come and talk to us. We had successful weeks where about 20 people would show up. All of this to say that we never attempted to cancel anyone which would have been one of the most absurd things to have put effort towards. At the College Dems, our biggest successes were getting people jobs. Sometimes other activist groups would come and see if we wanted to sign on or whatever and we’d be like yeah sure. Quite a powerful all-encompassing organization we were running. The stories Sullivan points to are usually some no name private colleges in the northeast, because that’s who he makes the choice of surrounding himself with. He’d probably say something like that it’s not one organization or something? Really though, like there was not a lot of turmoil at the University of Kentucky. I think the biggest thing were usually frats being racist? A frat guy got drunk and killed a kid in a DUI and that lead to some changes to fraternities for PR. I think the kid might’ve gotten kicked off (aka cancelled). There were Anti-Choice groups that would show up to campus and shove dead babies in everyone’s faces. If I were to focus on one campus issue, it would be the prevalence of sexual assaults and rapes at college parties. College-aged women almost ubiquitously have at least one story of being groped or worse by men, this is by the time they’re 21 for the most part. It largely goes ignored by our society, which is super fucked up.
Here’s a Fun New Game of “Good Job/Bad Job Joe”
good job joe!
“This includes upwards of 60,000 Haitians who were already benefiting from the protected status, but had been living under fear of deportation amid an attempt by the Trump administration to terminate the program, and thousands of recently arrived Haitian immigrants who lacked the protected status.”
harm reduction counter: +60,000
Bad job joe: Lowering the infrastructure bill from 2.3 Trillion to 1.7 Trillion while GOP says they’re further away from a deal than before is very bad negotiating. In my opinion, we should keep raising the price tag and adding good things until the GOP agrees to a 2.5 Trillion Dollar bill.
The real fundamental problem with compromising with the GOP is that they ignore all the problems with America, like they had a trifecta 4 years ago, so they could do whatever they wanted. If they legislated on a policy, they thought it was a problem and that they should fix it, and vice versa. They don’t think infrastructure is a problem, they do think that rich people are taxed too much. Most of them thought that too many people had healthcare, but they didn’t put a Child Tax Credit in any of their bills. Joe Biden did, because he thinks Child Poverty is a problem. The GOP Senate repealed “the stream protection rule”, repealed labor rights, repealed some privacy laws, and passed the farm bill. They also used ICE as a brutal tool against immigrants. None of these are things Democrats will or should compromise on.
Well, any ways, the Senate Democrats Broken Brains (Manchin, Sinema, and like 3 silent others) will force everyone to hear the Republicans grovel about nothing for 3 months and give us no votes. Love summer!
Bad job society:
uhhhhh what is Delta doing?? Just taking sledgehammers to wheelchairs??? what the fuck.
Sports!
Fuck Tony LaRussa, what kind of shitty coach (I know they’re called managers shut up) lets the other team throw a baseball at one of his players, and defend the other team! He said “I didn’t have a problem with how the Twins handled that." There’s is just no excuse to get mad at a player hitting a homerun. Oh no, he did the coolest thing possible that helps your team. Anyways Tony La Russa is 1. responsible for the verification checkmarks on twitter which is weird and 2. is a far shittier person for reasons that extend beyond just being a shitty manager.
The NBA Playoffs and NHL Playoffs on at the same time is the real best time of the year.
Trae Young yelling “It’s quiet as fuck in here” in MSG made me feel sad, but it was cool as hell. The Knicks are really fun to cheer for and it is a lot of fun to see a full vaccinated section.
Playoff Hockey is great and I highly recommend it. It’s very weird how many people hate the Vegas Golden Knights. I mean I just wanted to get into hockey, and lived in Central KY and didn’t want to learn any random hockey history, which made VGK a good choice for me and my roommates. It gives me a similar feeling to being a Kentucky Basketball fan, except that I didn’t ask for all this drama, just needed a hockey team to cheer for.
Nothing better than a beer and midnight est hockey though.
Here are things I liked this past week
WITHPod with Chris Hayes: Treating Trans Youth with Dr. Izzy Lowell, I really learned a lot and it answered a lot of questions in a good way.
Trashberg with Ashley Feinberg: My Google search history: a frank interrogation as always, reading Ashley makes me feel insane and it’s great.
NYTimes Opinion: His Comfort is not My Responsibility ; lol Fuck Rob, he’s a bitch who is closeminded.
Best of Chad Johnson’s Mic’d Up
I’ve been watching Taskmaster a lot as well.
And that’s all I have! I’ll leave you with a final tweet:
Happy Birthday to this tweet