NotGonnaDon’WannaPleaseDon’MakeMe (Get Up)

Or else, “Happiness is a Warm Puppy.”

It was cold out in Ollie’s potty area this morning!

Later this evening and overnight, we should get between 2-4 in. of snow, which is fine, then the temps will be below 20 degrees for a few days. Poor little guy’s gonna have to chase his favorite ball inside for a while.

———–Other Thoughts————————————–

I enjoy spicing my oatmeal differently each morning. I think I especially like ginger with a dash of vanilla, but my top favorite is cocoa and cayenne pepper. It’s really awesome, and puts a fine shine on the day, for me. Ollie can’t clean my bowl for me, though, when I do that one.

Our kid’s birthday is this week. I have no good ideas; he himself has no good ideas; we’re all sort of at the place where if we need something, we just get it. I’m thinking of something to cook. And trying to decide between ice cream cake, or lava cake, both of which are his favorites.

I’ve been really relishing a TV show on Tuesdays, now at 8PM but used to be at 9PM on ABC, called “High Potential.” It’s really good, and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who might try it; it’s a mystery show with a high IQ neurodivergent (show’s description) woman who becomes a detective while juggling family life and a missing husband. I really like it, and recommend it to anyone with an hour at 8PM on a Tuesday night! They stream it on Hulu, too.

I know no one thinks it’s much justice for We The People to see the FBI reports on the stolen documents found at Mar-A-Lago. It isn’t, really, except we’ll know if we want to, and will be yet better informed as we go about our civic duty of directing our government. And he’s still a convicted felon, as well.

I hope everyone’s got sun today, at some point. I usually prefer cloudy days with temps between 35-48 degrees, but since the election, for some reason, I’ve noticed I prefer a sunny day after a cloudy day, and maybe slightly higher temps, like between 42-60. Go figure.

That’s what I’ve got. I need to sweep the floor to make room for the new dog hair!

Some Justice

thanks to FOIA and Jason Leopold:

By Susie Madrak — February 11, 2025

The dismissal of criminal charges against the Yam Man for concealing classified records at Mar-a-Lago eliminated a significant barrier to making records about the probe public, a federal judge ruled Monday. Via Politico:

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Trump’s election as president — which forced the end of the criminal case — combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity mean Trump is effectively insulated from any criminal responsibility for his conduct. That means the FBI’s previous reasons for refusing to gather and disclose records related to the probe no longer apply, Howell wrote in a ruling in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by journalist Jason Leopold.

She noted that while the dismissal of charges against Trump may have reduced his criminal exposure, it “ironically” made him more susceptible to public scrutiny for his conduct. “With the far dampened possibility of any criminal investigation to gather evidence about a president’s conduct and of any public enforcement proceeding against a president, the [Supreme Court’s] decision … has left a FOIA request as a critical tool for the American public to keep apprised of a president’s conduct,” Howell ruled.

https://bsky.app/profile/plaintanjane.bsky.social/post/3lhu7clii5s2v

https://bsky.app/profile/luciecatnip.bsky.social/post/3lhu27ltj422c

https://crooksandliars.com/2025/02/judge-fbi-must-disclose-records-trump

ETTD

😀

Totally unrelated but really fun, so here it is:

Peace & Justice History for 2/11

February 11, 1790

The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, composed mostly of Quakers and Mennonites, petitioned Congress for emancipation of all slaves. Benjamin Franklin had become vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Society which not only advocated the abolition of slavery, but made efforts to integrate freed slaves into American society.
The proposed resolution was immediately denounced by pro-slavery congressmen and sparked a heated debate in both the House and the Senate.
More on early Abolitionist and Anti-Slavery Movements 
February 11, 1916
Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control, presumed a violation of the 1873 Comstock Law which prohibited distribution of literature on birth control, considered obscene under the act.
Goldman considered such knowledge essential to women’s reproductive and economic freedom; she had worked as a nurse and midwife among poor immigrant workers on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1890s. She also organized for womens’ suffrage, later opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, and was imprisoned for allegedly obstructing military conscription.
Emma Goldman speaking on Birth Control -Union Square, New York City May 20, 1916
“. . . those like myself who are disseminating knowledge [of birth control] are not doing so because of personal gain or because we consider it obscene or lewd. We do it because we know the desperate condition among the masses of workers and even professional people, when they cannot meet the demands of numerous children.”
– Goldman letter to the press following her arrest

Emma Goldman’s courageous efforts
————————————————————————————–
February 11, 1937
Forty-eight thousand General Motors workers won their 44-day sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. On December 30 workers at Fisher Plants 1 & 2 sat down and refused to leave, forcing workers around them to stop work and preventing the next shift from starting.

The sit-down strike ended when the company agreed to recognize the United Automobile Workers union as the representative bargaining agent for the striking hourly employees. Other automakers gradually accepted the legitimacy of the union. The success of the sit-down was an inspiration to workers in other industries to organize their own unions.
Nearly 100 images on the Flint sit-down from
Detroit’s Wayne State University Walter Reuther Archive
 —————————————————————————————-
February 11, 1978
Native Americans began The Longest Walk, a march from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to Washington, D.C.
Native American Activism: 1960s to Present

A Brief History of the
American Indian Movement


photo Ilka Hartmann
The Walk was intended to be a reminder of the forced removal of American Indians from their homelands across the continent, and drew attention to the continuing problems plaguing the Indian community, particularly joblessness, lack of health care, education and adequate housing.
—————————————————————————————–
February 11, 1979
Poet John Trudell, a former national chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM), burned an upside-down flag and spoke from the steps of the FBI building in Washington, D.C. during a vigil for Leonard Peltier. Peltier, also a leader of AIM, was imprisoned (and is still today after 30 years,) and is considered a political prisoner by Amnesty International. (NOTE: Leonard Peltier’s sentence was commuted to home confinement in 2025.)
Twelve hours later Trudell’s wife Tina, her mother, and their three children died in an arsonist’s attack of their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada. The FBI did not investigate even though the crime fell under its jurisdiction.
Learn about Leonard Peltier 
Remembering John Trudell 
———————————————————————————————-
February 11, 1990

Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in a South African prison following months of secret negotiations with South African President F.W. (Frederik Willem) de Klerk.
In 1952, Mandela became deputy national president of the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest black political organization in South Africa, having joined as a young lawyer in 1944.
He advocated nonviolent resistance to apartheid – South Africa’s institutionalized system of white supremacy, black disenfranchisement and rigid racial segregation.
However, after the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Mandela helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white minority government.


He and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1993 “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”
Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/11/newsid_2539000/2539947.stm

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february11

More Brain-Clearing Fun… 💃

Cover Snark: Script Font Confusion Strikes Again!

Read it when you get a chance, and get a good look at those covers! Holy cow-

I Really Like This.

I think you will, too.

What Does DOGE Really Mean?

Any doubt the family did not pass this feeling teaching down to Emo Boy Musk.

Why Elon Musk’s Family Moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950

This is so much how I feel after being sick for a few days

I can’t brain today, I have the dumb

Sure, We’ll Do That …

I don’t know if it’s a scam, phish, spam, or real. I wonder if anyone else got one of these, though, so let me know, and please don’t click anything within it. Meanwhile, I got a macabre giggle out of this email I received this morning from noreply@studentaid.gov ; Help your child submit their FAFSA form today. (You know how I love my giggles.)

Yeah, after all the news for over a week about access to such sites by unauthorized, unsworn, unelected, non-government employees actually younger than our “child,” who needs no help with such things nor even needs such things, we’re gonna log right on and put all that info in there! (Yes, we did it way back when he did need it done.)

The graphic won’t show here, but the body is very like my recollection of things from FAFSA.

I don’t know if anyone here has or knows someone who will need to fill out these forms with their kids for college in Fall. I simply hope we all remember to not click through from anything in an email, but to go directly to the site to do our work, OK? Thanks!

Self Care Is Important

(I used to do 10-20 minutes of some yoga each day during W’s admin while the kid was in school. I sort of let it go over time, though I suppose technically I use it when generally stretching, and during some exercises. This is linked on Oliver Willis’s news page, and I thought it could help all of us.)

A Hip Stretch To Help You Stay Sane

By Diana Moskovitz 2:54 PM EST on February 9, 2025

The news is all shit right now. Sure, there are more artful, creative, and writerly, ways to say that, but time is precious and writing something like that would prove nothing more than ownership of a thesaurus.

If you’re like me and millions of others, you are absorbing all this and wondering, “What can I do?” You can subscribe to journalism (which you probably already do! Yay!), donate money, volunteer, show up for your family, friends, and neighbors, and then what? That’s the thing about the battle for a real democracy—it is not won in flashy, Hollywood fight scenes, though those do make for excellent inspirational images for sharing amid said battle for democracy. It’s won in federal workers showing up to do their jobs. It’s won in reporters showing up to do their jobs. It’s won in a lot of us, in our own ways, showing up, doing our jobs, and not being assholes, even to the person who irritates you—and they are so, so annoying—but dammit we’ll deal with that after we make sure there’s still a republic.

Except, after all that showing up, there’s still a lot of time left for the mind to spiral. It can be easy to forget that our brains, for much of human history, did not take in this much news every day. Not even 100 years ago, most people got their news from a newspaper or magazine. They read it and went about their day, unless they listened to a radio broadcast. Then came television, then cable, then 24-hour news, then smartphones, then apps with push notifications, then social media and its endless firehouse of likes and lives. If we do not know how to log off it is because, in part, for most of human history, nobody had to. You could read to the end of the newspaper or reach the end of the newscast; you cannot ever scroll to the end of Instagram or TikTok. The endlessness is the point. We sacrificed true boredom to the gods of engagement.

So here’s my advice: Stretch your hips. Yes, even if you aren’t naturally stretchy, which I am not, and even if you can’t touch your toes, a feat I can barely accomplish myself. Those of you who have followed my work for a while probably will be unsurprised to know that I completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2018. I didn’t become a yoga teacher afterward, but it did deepen my practice and gave me more tools for stress management. Mostly, it taught me that one secret to leading a good yoga class is setting aside time for a hip stretch. Everyone gets so excited for a hip stretch, almost as much as savasana, and everyone feels really good afterward.

For my money, the best hip stretch is deer pose. You won’t run into it in a ton of classes; I find the defaults tend to be pigeon pose or figure four. But figure four doesn’t provide me much relief, and my hips are too inflexible to pull off a proper pigeon pose without bolsters and time to settle in. But deer pose? It requires less flexibility, no props, and provides a nice hip stretch.

In lieu of giving you an entire explanation of how it works, here’s a good video to walk you through the pose because, c’mon, you were just gonna skip to this part anyway. Though, if you want to read more about the pose, you can do that here. Also, remember you gotta do both sides!

To be clear, I’m not saying occasional hip stretches will stop fascism; I’m saying they help you stay level while you’re trying to survive the fascism. Tomorrow you will wake up, grab your phone, and scroll through what will feel like an endless stream of bad news and horrors. But then what? Maybe you go on a walk. Maybe you actually touch grass. Or maybe you take a few minutes to do deer pose. (snip)