Category: Politics

COVID, Humor, Links, News, Politics, Pop Culture

Weekend Links

It’s been a week. Let’s get right to it. I’ve mixed in a few pieces of welcome wackiness to break up the anger and updates. I’m posting this early because just thinking about all the new that can break before the end of the day is making me sweat, and will likely require it’s own post to respond to.

If you’re going to any marches or protests this weekend, check in with me on social and let’s swap some photos.

STRAP IN.

Get mad. Stay mad.

This…isn’t bad for us. More savings and less spending.

Oh, so he was guilty. Who knew, right?

It doesn’t matter if you’re “good.”

Getting really, really stressed about November.

A friend and I were texting this week and I opined that you need a PhD in internet studies and memeology to understand most extremist groups these days – across all ideological stripes. I stand by that.

Two words: sex weasels.

There is a great confrontation coming in society about how much we can exist and expand as an economy based on “service.” Whether that’s other people cooking the majority of our food or serving it to us, we need to think boldly about alternative ways of living.

Small Dog Nation LOVES an art heist!

It also loves an archaeological find.

The last man in an iron lung.

“You create this world where you’re not just militarizing the police—you equip the police like soldiers, you train the police like soldiers—why are you surprised when they act like soldiers?” Rizer, a former police officer and soldier, said. “The mission of the police is to protect and serve. But the premise of the soldier is to engage the enemy in close combat and destroy them. When you blur those lines together with statements like that…It’s an absolute breakdown of civil society.”

Well, I’m crying now…

The Rhodes Center on what comes after COVID, optimism and pessimism both considered. (Finance and food updates are less than chirpy.)

QUEENS OF INFAMY UPDATE.

Seems like a relevant anniversary to remember with solemnity.

Zoom fatigue is real.

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Friend of the Blog Caitlin penned a piece on being a stranger in a strange land: a Canadian in the US in the current day and age. Worth a read.

“When we elected Donald Trump, we elected a political arsonist. The sole consolation of his presidency, in its early years, was that there was surprisingly little dry tinder. The economy hummed along, seemingly imperturbable. We faced few foreign crises. Domestic divisions remained mostly digital. This is not to dismiss real disasters or excuse cruel policies — from children thrown into cages to toxins dumped into our streams to the lethal mismanagement of Hurricane Maria — but it could have been worse. Playacting civil war on Twitter, as the president often did, was never the nightmare scenario. The nightmare scenario was the social fracture and violent crises of the 1960s layered atop the political and media system of the 2020; the tests of presidential leadership that have defined past eras demanded of this leader, in this era. We weren’t there, and then, all of a sudden, we were. We are.“

This cheetoh-dusted failure of a human being has made every single crisis we have faced – natural or man made – worse. Every single bloody one. I honestly hate him.

Edited to add: hate him. His malignant narcissism is a poison.

However, he doesn’t cause damage by himself or in a vacuum. He’s aided by protections from people who long professed contrary values but were happy to discard when push came to shove, and has surrounded himself with useless yes-men who add confusion upon confusion. 

K-Pop stans are having none of your racist bullshit.

No shit.

Call it out in your own groups.

….this is…this is a hell of a headline...

The god damned gall of this man.

General Mattis has chosen now to speak. So has a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

We live in the dumbest timeline, but we can’t change the past and we can change the future:

Humor, News, Politics

Clicktivism is Not Enough

If you posted on your social media yesterday, great. Time to do more.

 

Consume Diversely

Black owned beauty brands – women of color are not just disadvantaged in not having their skin tones reflected in product offerings the way lighter tones are, they are also not proportionately included in the business, development, and ownership structures in the beauty industry.

Black owned businesses you can shop from online

 

Educate Yourself

This doc is making the rounds and with good reason!

White folks – it’s not on people of color to do extra work to make us more understanding and comfortable. We cannot be passive actors in this and must fill the gaps in our own knowledge.

Read diversely. I’m sorry to say my education in retrospect is woefully lacking in writers of color and the only way to fix that is to ready more writers of color! Make an effort, check them out from libraries, buy from bookstores, attend events featuring black authors. Give yourself explicit goals on Goodreads or with your book club. Read widely, fiction and nonfiction alike, to educate yourself on the policy AND the personal and how they intertwine in the lived experience of your neighbors.

 

Advocate for Others

If you are the beneficiary of privilege, you have a moral obligation to use it for others’ good. So say all the major religions, most moral philosophers, and The Gospel of Small Dog Nation.

Black Lives Matter. Full stop. Put money where your mouth is.

If you’re white, deliberately support your communities of color better.

Donate to bail funds – black communities are disproportionately affected by this and have less access to resources to make bail (when they are more likely than other demographics to be arrested for the same crimes or actions, receive harsher or more punative treatment and state handling).

Support Minnesota specifically. The murder of George Floyd happened in their community and they are the epicenter of this messaging movement right now. (Also, my dear friend Lauren is a Minneapolis native and has been posting local resources and messages dilligently on her Instagram)

 

“Lift EVERY Voice…”

Register now if you haven’t. Show up in local elections and not just November. And – this is critical – support measures and candidates that seek to strengthen and enhance voting opportunities for your co-citizens, not curtail them. Different candidates will have different platforms like making election day a national holiday, expanding and resourcing additional polling stations, election protections, and more. There are a lot of ideas, vote for the ones you think best and most likely to expand the rights and benefits of citizenship to those who may not have access.

Volunteer to register voters and expand the ranks of the citizen support network that makes our elections possible and trustworthy. Democracy is a team sport!

Take it a step further if you can and put yourself in the shoes of the most marginalized. If you were a prisoner, would you want the right to vote? If so, do you support candidates who want to restore voting rights to that group? If you felt a school was underfunding and therefore not the best option for your child, vote to increase its funding so that other parents less privleged than you. If you wouldn’t wish it on yourself, don’t inflict it on others. This is basic, basic stuff.

 

News, Politics

Sunday Check In – Recognizing Racism and Doing Better

God, I hope I get this right because this is a difficult subject and while I want to write from my perspective, I want to also state clearly and up front that this is not about me. It’s peak white woman to try and make someone else’s struggle your own, but that’s not what I’m trying to do here, I’m trying to write about the only personal existence I’m an expert on and that happens to be my own. If I’m clunky about it, help me do better and make my actions and word better reflect my intentions. 

I was raised in a religion that denied ordination to the priesthood for men of color until only a few years before I was born. More than that, the doctrine of Mormonism requires participation in certain sacred ordinances – which in turn require those (male) participants to have been ordained. These rituals are necessary to salvation. In other words, I belonged to a faith that for a century taught that people of color couldn’t be “saved” in the same way as white folks. By the time I was growing up in the church, this was no longer true, but generational racism didn’t vanish from that community and it was a long time before I really confronted the history and teachings that had reinforced it for so long – and which have never been fully repudiated. The last time my husband and I voluntarily attended church services was the week that the church published an essay on its past racism and a white man who was teaching the lesson stood up in front of our predominantly black congregation and lectured people of color about how he had been taught “certain things” about race growing up and how the essay didn’t make sense to him. Of all the people in that room, we had the least right to anger, but we still felt it and it was still a transformative moment in our decision to leave the faith.

I spent large portions of my life as a racial majority and didn’t really think about how that impacted me. This included two stints in Virginia and one in Texas – not exactly places with an ambiguous history when it comes to America’s racial history. Luckily I also spent some important years on a Micronesian island where white folks were the minority which was instructive in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time but do as an adult. Everyone should experience being a minority. I was outrageously privileged given my family’s circumstances, but it was the first step in more self awareness that my experiences were not the norm.

This isn’t to big myself up, quite the reverse. I can look back on my life and cringe at comments I’ve made which I didn’t realize until much later were racially charged. I’ve never used racial slurs and would have reacted with outrage if anyone accused me of being racist, but I can see in retrospect that while I might have been innocent of malice, I was still ignorant.

One of my grandmother’s once told me that she and my grandfather would “have a big problem if [I] married a black man.”

University professors lectured me on how poverty was a self-inflicted wound.

Family members opined on how various communities could only experience tragedy or difficulty due to a lack of “virtue.”

Church leaders taught me that God had to wait for white people to be “ready” to accept black folks – as if other people’s salvation were dependent on my personal level comfort and that was a perfectly okay thing to believe.

I grew up swimming in racism, I just didn’t recognize it for a long time. 

You learn better, and you do better. I still screw up despite good intentions, I’m still unlearning assumptions and patterns that I didn’t realize I’d ever been taught, and I’m still unpacking where I may be part of the problem. Sometimes this means speaking up, sometimes it means shutting up, and other times it means using whatever voice I have to amplify other voices instead of my own. Because it’s not about me. 

Becoming anti-racist requires you check your assumptions, your privilege, and your power at the door and deliberately work to empower others – even and perhaps especially at the expense of your comfort.

Here are some resources to learn better.

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COVID, Humor, Links, News, Politics, Pop Culture

Weekend Links

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
– President John F. Kennedy 

Anyone who has cheered the dismantling of the State Department, the propaganda attacks that reduce the credibility of the Justice Department and trusted law enforcement, or outright dismantle them…

Anyone who cheered on some people marching on state capitols armed like militias, confident they would come to no harm…

Anyone who turned a blind eye to localized radicalization and militarization in their own community’s power structures, or worse enabled it because they knew they would benefit from it…

Anyone who shrugged at actual Nazis marching in the streets, or downplayed leaders who refused to condemn them…

Anyone who wanted systems broken rather than reformed in ways that meant they would have to share a bit more of their power, money, or sense of communal safety…

Anyone who worked to suppress voting of communities they didn’t want represented, undermining the point of the democratic process by ensuring that election results are increasingly at odd with with will of the electorate…

Anyone who shrugged or cheered when our press institutions were attacked, taken over by conglomerates, dismantled, and disparaged…

Anyone who raged at athletes kneeling, people marching peacefully, boycotts, and all other inconvenient non-violent actions as an “unacceptable” way to protest…

….what did you think was going to happen?  

What we’re witnessing in the States is not rioting, it’s rebellion. It’s what happens, in the words of Dr. West, what happens when the system cannot reform itself.

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Notorious AHP knocks it out of the consumerism park again – tackling how spending and debt has been ingrained into American/western society and framed not just as normal but necessary and even patriotic. Now it’s catching up with us all. But we’re also experiencing a forced alternative…and finding out how a forced break from our “business as usual” might be bad for “the economy,” but is much better for our brains and wallets for many. “In many ways, the pandemic has functioned as a great clarifier, making it impossible to ignore the dilapidated state of so many American systems. It’s highlighted whose work is actually essential, which leaders actually care about people who aren’t like them, and whose lives are considered expendable. The supply chain is broken; the social safety net is in shambles. And a whole lot of things we thought of as needs have revealed themselves to be pretty deeply unnecessary.”

Help, I’m poor but everything in me is craving this beauty of a summer dress.

Lizzo on the power of being your own hype man and rejecting performative feminine humility.

Karen-ism strikes again. Fellow white women, do better. (For the record, NO ONE should be subjected to the abuse being hurled at this woman, and the gentleman involved agrees, but she does deserve scrutiny and her behaviour condemnation for her actions. Her claim of not wanting to cause harm literally doesn’t make sense when she was explicitly attempting to get this man in some kind of trouble and was willing to dramatically exaggerate – to be polite – her description of circumstances to do so. She was trying to weaponize her privilege. That should come with consequences.)

“She went racial. There are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage,” he said. “I don’t know if it was a conscious thing or not,” he added. “But she did it, and she went there.”

Speaking of fashion, I think Gucci is on to something here. Seasonal collections are literally a hundreds of years old construct, and may not be as relevant in the current age. Go for it, Gucci, experiment!

Great idea in the middle of a global pandemic, cool leadership.

THINGS. CAN. CHANGE.

We live in the dumbest timeline…

Anyone interested in going subterranean?

Another black man is killed on camera, another wave of protests, and quite likely another summer of rage opens.

To no one’s surprise, the algorithms of social media are fundamentally skewed in favor of radicalization. And thus too, their business model.

Sure. Why not? I assume we can expect the zombies soon?

It’s not even June yet…

 

COVID, Humor, Links, News, Politics, Pop Culture

Weekend Links – Bring on the Bank Holiday!

Ducklings, it’s a Bank Holiday weekend and the links are dropping early because mama needs to lie in a sunbeam and do as little as possible for three days. I mean, let’s be real that’s my usual go to, but with quarantine we do it with GUSTO.

This week I introduced Jeff to Fleabag and he got me to finish The Last Dance which I enjoyed tremendously, in spite of not being a sports person outside of live collegiate games.

I know the weather is brilliant in the UK right now, but guys…please don’t be dumb. There’s still a pandemic on. Act accordingly.

 

I’m obsessed with the squirtgun priest. More creativity in unusual times, please!

A charming story about my favorite wildlife critter.

A firm rebuttal to my post of earlier this week. Okay, okay I’ll give up on the self-loathing already!

The British Museum is producing a film of its famous Pompeii exhibition and making it available for free. (YouTube)

As a long time fan of The Financial Diet, this podcast episode (doubling up as a YouTube vid) discussing the ephemeral nature of fame and fortune that we’ve been living with (and completely rebuilt commerce and social capital around) was a great listen.

One of the few bright spots out of this mess, but also a sobering reminder of what it will take to affect climate change trends.

Setting aside the batshit craziness (which is admittedly a challenge) can we all agree at this point that the one thing we cannot and should not do is take the guy “at his word?”

God, I hope we don’t go back, at least not the way things were.

Elegant and refined solution. Pure couture.

It’s bad faith all the way down and has been for a long time.

Yes, let’s experiment!

Still don’t really get where QAnon came from, what it encompasses, and what people who believe in it…believe? This is a long read, but worth your time.

Reader survey: trolling or a side effect of that unproven med we cannot be sure that he’s taken or not – thanks to the masterful work of a press release that refuses to confirm or deny whether he’s been dosed.

Trolls and Twitter eggs are going to kill us all… I don’t think anyone imagined the great science fiction digital undoing of our world to be this stupid.

Speaking of Twitter, yes, I followed this privileged saga and thought Roman really didn’t do herself any favors, but cannot help but contrast her being “on leave” while other (male) columnists have actively attacked and pursued punishing actions against critics (Bedbug Stephens, anyone?) and still have their jobs.  Roman publicly apologized and Teigen publicly accepted.

And in THIS week’s drama of white women trying to elevate themselves by comparing or contrasting themselves to other women – particularly women of color – Lana del Ray pulled one out too, on Our Lady and Savior Beyonce no less!

COVID, Humor, Links, News, Politics, Pop Culture

Weekend Links – May Day, May Day!

Well, we made it, kittens. April is behind us and good riddance. Short and sweet today as we’re powering through the last few hours before the weekend…even though it won’t look massively different from our weekdays.

Nonetheless, this weekend I intend to enjoy the sunshine, cuddle effusively with my husband, and cook. Let me know your plans in the comments, and I promise to cheer them on whatever they are.

We elected our dumbest and worst person to be president. You cannot convince me otherwise at this point.

New single from The 1975, one of my favorite bands.

Culture matters in good times, but it matters desperately in rough ones. Take advantage of the artistic generosity swelling forth, but also donate if you can now and commit to funding it when you can later.

2020 is so wild that this barely broke into my awareness this week.

Shall we volunteer, Small Dog Nation?

As I spend more time cooking, I am thinking more about cookbooks (as opposed to family recipes, or what I find on pinterest or online). But I have read few as BOOKS, and plan to rectify this.

Andrew Yang was an unusual candidate in that he seemed fully focused on future problems and did not sugar coat the risks he saw. While he was never my preference, I’m pleased he advocated for certain issues and found this interview with him to be worth a read given the state of the world.

This may be the only time a mediocre book review compels me to read the book in question, because it so perfectly encapsulate a current moment that it might feel remiss not to. “As I read The End of October, I found myself resenting it. It was such a silly potboiler of a novel, with such unbelievable characters, such leaden sentences, such infuriatingly clumsy dialogue. How dare the world in which I am actually living so closely resemble a fucking airport thriller?”

Yes, I have read “the nanny piece.” No, I have no further comments beyond “Eat the rich.”

The coming war between venues of all kinds, artists, distributors, and agents is going to be nuts. I don’t think movie theatres or theatrical venues are ever going to go away (if the last five thousand years of human history are anything to go by). But that doesn’t mean they won’t, or shouldn’t change. Concerts won’t stop, but I also hope artists will continue to stream straight to their fans when all this is over. I hope gyms will continue to provide online classes. I hope the ways in which we consume and enjoy all manner of things stays accessible and doesn’t just serve to make a few people rich.

Longtime readers will know that Small Dog Nation stans Yoga with Adrienne, so seeing her process and success detailed was both pleasurable and genuinely interesting. She’s a great exercise resource, especially right now.

Celebrating good spuds and good people.

Either we take sexual assault claims seriously or we don’t. Biden needs to provide answers to these accusations, the public needs to grapple with them and come to a consensus and partisanship won’t cut it. His statement today and call for transparency is the right first step, investigation must follow.

Death to FOMO.

COVID, Humor, Politics, Religion

Happy Freaking Easter…

Happy Easter from a former-mormon-currently-agnostic-humanist-stillmormonfeminist-effective-altruistic-mess. For those who believe and celebrate, I wish you a blessed day in unusual circumstances. For those who don’t, I hope the more general spirit of seasonal renewal and hope refreshes you. I particularly appreciated the sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and some comments from one of my former religious community’s leaders at their semi-annual gathering last week.

Malignant radicalism has led to a lot, if not most, of our collective problems as a species over my lifetime. Tribalism, performative politics, terrorism, homophobia, cruelty, misogyny, inequality, racism, and destructive hubris all seem to require it.

Whether religiously motivated or not, I would like to see that same fervor turned towards radical kindness over spite, radical collective care rather than radical self interest. The radical dismissal of selfishness that most faiths, at their best and most appealing, call for and encourage.

What kind of world would it be where we stopped trying to legislate others’ morality and focused more on living our own? Where we stopped using contractualism as an excuse to deny care to one another? Where we felt a sense of obligation to one another simply because we’re all specks of dust together on a slightly larger speck of dust hurtling madly and briefly through the void, and not just animals doomed to hunt or be hunted? Where care and community, or in other parlance salvation, isn’t based on transaction or complicated formulas?

Might be nice.

 

Humor, Links, Office, Politics, Pop Culture

Weekend Links: Quarantine Week Two

Hi there, kittens. Here’s you weekly batch of goodness, take some time to rest today if you can. Let’s all meet back here tomorrow for a proper catch up, eh? Love you all, truly.

Respect the bean!

How NOT to be an ass in the time of COVID-19.

Beware wildlife #fakenews.

Surely these people have assistants who will take their phones away!

Here’s a way to “go outside” even if you’re not able to at the moment – responsible social distancing, people!

At a loss of what to cook? Bon Appetit is here to help.

OH LOOK, MORE PROOF THAT WE CAN HAVE AN EFFECT IF WE PUT OUR MINDS TO IT. I’ll be the first to admit that the petri dish is not exactly ideal, but as a forced experiment it is telling.

“For me, the idea that my role in this situation largely consists of staying home as much as possible seems on its face to be egregiously fortunate…And more than simply being a luxury, it’s more than that: It’s a duty.”

In case you’re in need of a disco-y bop, Childish Gambino has got you.

SOLIDARITY.

More solidarity. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

As for the rest of you, stop doing brand adjustments and start paying people living wages with sick benefits.

The left gets accused (sometimes rightly) of virtue signalling, but we need to have a real investigation into the defiance signalling of the right. Whether it’s guns, anti-science or any other thing, the fact that we have allowed one of these things (an over abundance of caution or self righteousness to the point of ridiculousness) to be seen as equivalent evil to its counterpart (an overabundance of contempt to the point of public endangerment) is ludicrous. One of these things is annoying. The other is dangerous.

We stan a maximalist queen.

Never have we all been so obsessed with hand sanitizer, and Vanity Fair knows what #content we want right now.

How do we just lose stuff like this, part five million of a continuing series… (ETA: part five million and one)

Ah yes, Leyendecker and his impossibly beautiful men. We heteros aren’t immune.

I would very much like to be a part of this trend.

Meanwhile, in Britain…

Angst, News, Politics

A ramble.

Tomorrow is payday.

Never in my life have I felt more grateful for a paycheck…and never more convinced than ever that basic protections for individuals, workers, and families should be rights not luxuries.

We are seeing in real time what CAN be done by states, cities, companies and governments. Now, we need to confront that fact that the reason this hasn’t happened before is because those in charge chose not to. And of course they would! We’ve stopped referring to people as citizens and prefer to message in terms of “taxpayers,” as though the benefits of collective belonging are something you buy for yourself, rather than a public trust we all invest in.

What if the only measuring stick for success wasn’t just a bottom line or ledger? What if we stopped treating poverty like “lack of character” rather than a “lack of cash,” as historian Rutger Bregman put it? What if we respected the dignity of work of all types with a living wage rather than a constant negotiation and squeezing that leaves workers resentful of their bosses and bosses contemptuous of their workers? What if we treated public health as a public right…we might have fewer MLMs, people drinking bleach to cure disease, or be able to stop using GoFundMe as a kind of twisted healthcare to start!

Society should not be pay to play.

Perhaps I’m just unduly maudlin this evening but I have to believe that something is going change out of this mess. That something significant will change to materially improve a system so that the Dow isn’t the only thing people think should be lifted up. The alternative just feels…a bit bleak…

 

 

Humor, Links, News, Politics, Pop Culture

Weekend Links: Quarantine Edition

Wow. Whew. Okay.

How are we all, darlings? I don’t know about you but this weird sense of financial and political vertigo are just now starting to feel like the new normal. I’ve barely left my house in three days. My company is made up of the economic frontline of this situation and people have been working round the clock to try and understand announcements and circumstances as soon as they are made, and communicate to hundreds and thousands of colleagues who desperately want some stability. Everyone has been working at least 14 hours days. I am horribly aware that I’m just one of the lucky ones at the moment. Millions have been glued to the news trying to figure out What On Earth Is Going On, and the the vita question, What On Earth Are We Going To Do? I’ve been heartened and pleasantly surprised by the swiftness of the British government response – even though a lot of practical details clearly still need to be worked out. I’m keeping a wary eye on the US.

More than ever I’m grateful to live in a country where healthcare is a right. And in spite of the stress and anxiety, I’m bizarrely hopeful that what may eventually come out of this are systems that work better for PEOPLE than corporations. I hope the shock to the system makes people across the board less likely to cling to dogma and get more comfortable with experimentation and collective problem solving instead of the “Fuck You, Got Mine” attitude that we’ve all been either reacting to or wallowing in. I’m just heartsick that it takes something so drastic and with such high human costs for people to even consider it.

Stay safe, stay home, wash your hands, check in with loved ones. Drop me your updates in the comments and share (if you’re comfortable) any public social media where we can connect with one another. I will send hugs over the internet!

 

Unfiltered capitalism, ya’ll. Greed is not good.

An archaeological scandal, which we all know are the BEST scandals.

I didn’t know I needed this oral history, but I did and you do as well.

The billionaires want to become oligarchs and the politicians want to become billionaires. …In case you were wondering how we got here. (An old link but a relevant one given the state of…everything.)

This little guy just wanted to be left the **** alone, and honestly who could blame him!

I suspect we are all going to be needing some documentary recommendations in the coming weeks, and this one looks downright soothing.

So many people are being fundamentally decent right now. Some are doing it in big ways, others are doing it on a smaller scale. Way too many are also being arses, but my goodness, the initial outpouring of camaraderie and civic-mindedness is so humbling and heartening.

If you need something to do at home, may I suggest a museum virtual tour?

“A plethora of subpar options is the foundation of modern shopping.” Another Amanda Mull knockout on the phenomenum of Premiocre.

Color me shocked, but YES! Universal Basic Income experiment now, thanks! (Insert snarky comment here about how it’s not unacceptable to Republicans when they’re in power, apparently, but whatever. Let’s try it. Let’s see what happens and measure the effects.)

It’s the corruption, stupid.

And if you are wondering why things like UBI are now suddenly popular (those of us who’ve wanted this for a while should shut up and warmly welcome them into the fold with love and solidarity) and hate stuff like the aforelinked corruption, THIS.

Why yes, I did need a story about wallabies being cared for right now.

Festival plans ruined? We’ve got an idea for you…

ESPN is also rising to the occasion.

SDS fave McKay Coppins wrote a VERY timely and VERY Mormon article for The Atlantic.

This is brilliant.

Nice to be reminded that in crisis, most people aren’t assholes.

For comparison: good vs. bad.

Did someone open the damn Arc of the Covenant, or what?!

This is going to get a lot grimmer before it gets better.

But! Let’s end on a silly and fun note, shall we?