This weekend my husband and I did some very important preparation for the week to come: we rewatched 2017’s Justice League. I can happily report that we are now ready for Thursday night.

I am forever a sucker for superheroes. Give me some DC. I’ll never say no to Marvel. Yes, I’m down for some Doom Patrol. Wandvision? Yes, please! The Boys? I mean… yes, of course, but I’ll have feelings about it. If I’m not working or baking or reorganizing the pantry or turning wine bottles into candles, you can probably find me streaming superheroes.

All of which is…

Thoughts on the “internet’s take action button” calling on Congress to pass COVID relief

The CEO of GoFundMe, the largest crowdfunding platform in the world, the site that millions of Americans have turned to in the hopes that their fellow Americans would throw them some pennies to keep them from falling through the gaping holes in our nation’s basic systems, and the self-styled “internet’s take action button” penned a remarkable op-ed in USA Today.

After cataloging the extraordinary volume of COVID-19-related fundraisers the site has hosted over the past year, and categorizing those desperate pleas into heartbreakingly telling categories —…

It’s finally officially 2021 and the President’s tweets are extremely boring, the White House Press Room podium isn’t a campaign prop, Dr. Fauci is liberated to tell us the hard truths, we’re back in the WHO and the Paris Climate Agreement, we’re not trying to undermine NATO, there’s no budget for a new border wall, our federal approach to immigration can no longer be summarized as “cruelty,” and grownups are working on an actual federal response to COVID … it’s a new day in America! Phew!

Many things, of course, are the same as they were on January 19, in…

In the 12 days since Donald Trump launched an armed insurrection on the heart of our democracy — domestic terrorism that growing evidence indicates was well planned and had some points of coordination inside the federal government — there have been a few ways he and his have been held to account:

• Trump was impeached for a second time by all of the Democrats and ten Republicans in the House
• Some state legislators who violated the 14th Amendment by participating in sedition are facing consequences ranging from removal from committees to possible expulsion from their office
• Virtually all of mainstream…

I was very excited about the email I’d planned to send yesterday celebrating the triumph of organizing (and some signs of rejection of Trumpism) in Georgia on Tuesday, what the wins might portend for governing this year and elections next cycle, and the very real evidence that the deep south isn’t made up of red states but of voter suppression states. …

Back in January, in the Before Times, I posted a challenge to myself:

This year, I’m committing to writing more about what I read. It’ll help me remember the books better, and I think it’ll be an important part of living up to another commitment I’ve made for 2020: intentionally expand the set of people I learn from, grow, and build with.

I said I’d post a monthly reading list of five-ish books for us to chat about.

And here we are. In December. The After is in sight but we’re still very much in the During. And I mostly…

Three related pieces of information:

1. There has been a dramatic increase in people giving money directly to help other people through cash transfer apps, rather than through nonprofit organizations.

“The coronavirus pandemic has mainstreamed a once-radical form of charity — or solidarity, depending on your politics and vantage point — in which strangers use peer-to-peer payment apps to give money directly, and instantly, to each other.”
-The Giving Apps: How Venmo and Cash App Upended a Century-Old Charity Model | Caitlin Dewey | OneZero|

2. 19 million Americans are facing eviction in January if the federal government doesn’t make immediate…

Salesforce is purchasing Slack, and there are slew of things that are interesting about it.

One is the seemingly unstoppable march of consolidation. Bigger tech companies controlling more of the platforms that drive our work, home, and social lives as the behemoths buy up the upstarts has extraordinary political implications. It makes it more likely that the answers to the big socio-polticial questions tied up in questions around privacy, advertising, hate speech, and more will be those that continue to favor growing big tech.

Another is the disparate fortunes of companies servicing the 25% or so of people who are…