My grandmother loved Groundhog Day. She always felt it was a holiday that "didn't get enough love," so she made a huge deal of it. She sent flowers to all her friends and made a big dinner - which, of course, always ended with the family watching "Groundhog Day."
In totally unrelated news, I am contemplating various anti-authoritarian reads this morning. Like this article assembled from a viral Eastern European Twitter thread in 2017, which we definitely did not heed the first time:
The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide
And this 2021 USGLC report, which just feels sad:
US Global Leadership 2021: Defending Against Rising Authoritarianism
And this Substack post:
30 Proven Tactics to Resist Authoritarianism in Your Daily Life
That last one intrigues me because points 1-20 were just...how I was raised. A real "Isn't this just a guide for how to live...ohhhh."
Neither punks nor librarians are born in a void, y'all.
Anyway. After seeing three separate "put the punk back in cyberpunk" conversations in three different outlets in four days, I have been thinking a lot about stories that teach people how to think and act around oppression. People like my students, who have never known a world where the technoligarchy wasn't running hot. Who have never been anything but the end users of their own devices. Who get weirded out when there *aren't* video cameras watching their every move.
That 30-point list is making me realize how much material I have for such stories in my own life. I can absolutely write a character getting their news from multiple sources, for instance. Or getting to know the elderly couple who runs their local bodega. Or learning to sew, cook, do basic first aid, start a fire, code a little website.
Like (I suspect) a lot of people, I'm used to thinking of my upbringing, and my life, as a "default." Like "this is just how people do things; this is just how things are done." Reading like this reminds me that my perspective is nobody's default but my own. That's what makes it valuable. That's where the good stuff is.
And I'd happily get to mining it right now, but my desk is so full of books that need processing and cataloging that I can't get to anything else on my desk. So once again, sorry, can't do work; too busy with work. (My February bulletin board is highkey fire, though, as the kids say.)
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