Seattle is such a deeply blue bubble that I don't expect my day-to-day experience to change that much, if last time is anything to go by...but that still leaves a lot to be afraid of. E.g. I'm in the process of building up our disaster kit beyond its current bare-bones state because if the Big One or some other like disaster happens in the next four years, any help we get from the feds will be late, reluctant, and woefully mismanaged. And no matter how personally safe I am, I don't want to live in a world where my safety is so contingent on where I live and my generic ordinary middle aged white lady presentation that protects me outside said bubble as long as I keep my mouth shut.

Also, I'd appreciate passport~ma for Dylan and more especially for Alex. Mine is good through 2029, but Dylan applied for a renewal and Alex for the first one under his current name back in November, and they're not here yet.

Hi all. I'm not leaving FB or Insta. Yes, I hate Meta, but there's no viable alternative for me right now when it comes to so many aspects of my life — my canyon FB group that looks out for fires and each other, my mom and other elderly relatives, my professional groups for scholastic journalism — and, honestly, I just don't think my leaving will do much. I respect everyone making the choices they feel that have to make, but I'll still be there for now. I am on Bluesky, which is a satisfying Twitter replacement, but it's not enough.

I've been so consumed with grief and trying to support my friends and students who have lost everything in these fires that I can't even think about the inauguration today. We finally go back to campus tomorrow after two remote weeks, and Edison is about to shut off our home power again because of another Santa Ana in the canyon. It's blowing hard right now. Anyway. Ennui.

While I'm not leaving FB or IG, I'm reducing the amount of time I spend there. I like Bluesky, but my social media of choice and where I spend the most time is Tumblr.

I watched The Substance over the weekend. I liked it, but as someone who has a lot of body image issues, I probably shouldn't have watched it the same day as my first Wegovy shot.

There is no replacement for FB in keeping in contact with family members. I just try to limit the data they can get from me. Same for Bezos.

Much Passport ~ma Susan and Alex

my generic ordinary middle aged white lady presentation that protects me outside said bubble as long as I keep my mouth shut.

I hate this. I want to use it for good, but I don't know quite how.

I too just think they have all my data. There was also a payroll data breach at work that means they also have my social security number and bank account number, so I am just screwed.

Oh yeah, since whatever federal office that does security clearances got hacked, both my and husband's info have been out there. Let alone all of the other breaches.

Passport~ma, Susan

Argh, Steph! How awful. Fully support punching.

Ooooh, link? I don't have a Costco membership but that sounds so useful.

This is the one I have. [link]

Among other things, most of the mutual aid and immigrant networks operate through FB. Between that and the neighborhood group, I can’t get comfortable cutting off those lines of information.

For as long as they last. And in the meantime building up more RL connections.

That sucks, Steph.

Passport~ma, Susan.

I’m hoping to get a condo or the like this fall, so my sister and I drove up to Port Huron today, to get a sense of the vibe and whatnot. It was ~10 F, so we didn’t walk around a lot. But we had lunch by the Blue Water bridge, which goes to Canada. We found a gaming store, where I talked to the rather cute proprietor about the geek quotient in the area ( enough for multiple weekly gaming nights, both board and role playing, and a second store devoted to just card-based gaming). Then we went two doors down to a gothy coffee shop called The Raven, which leaned hard into the Poe theme. A fair bit of anime hair in view. I saw at least one trans flag and one pride flag in town, as well as a witch store we didn’t go into. There’s a lovely neighborhood I’ll never be able to afford, but the less expensive neighborhoods looked largely well cared for. The surrounding environment is terrifyingly Trumpy, but that was true back in NC.

We’ll be checking out some other areas (New Baltimore, the riverfront area in Detroit), but Ort Huron looks promising. I’ll look forward to exploring it more when it’s a tad warmer.