Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

A Butch Walks into A Bar

I don’t know why but the first LGBTQ computer game came up in my mind again recently. Somewhere between all the bad news about the internet archive, the fact that we keep losing games and data to a lack of preservation, and the powerful reliving of the past wherein trans folk are marginalized, othered, and litigated in the same way I watched gay and lesbian and bi folk be during my childhood I was just thinking it’s amazing that someone made a computer game about a lesbian detective looking for a transwoman and simply asked in return that you fund AIDS research if you can. I’m sure someone else can pull out threads of the levels of injustice that even if your game is free if you display marginalized people it isn’t even enough for it to get noticed and to almost be erased but also, it isn’t erased. It’s here. It’s still here.

>Number Two<

The Jungle (Second Edition)

In about 8th or 9th grade we had to read, if not the whole book, then long passages from Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. We read it in social studies class so it was in part, a lesson about progress and history (as all social studies classes at that level seemed to be interested in lying to students about) but it was also a story about science advances and most of all, of unions. That fair work for fair pay in safe conditions created a safer outcome for the general public as well. Anyway, 100 years later and I think we might need a union. The past few years have been illuminating in the US about working conditions and food safety but I assume they’re about to get worse so I think this article is a good starting point to pull out some of the threads that people need to be following up on going forward.

>Number Three<

Food and Profit

This video by Sam Sowell is so good that I hope he has another one in him but if he doesn’t, this was great. Sometimes I talk about how no one knows the Youtubers/Tiktok folk you do because actually 1M subscribers isn’t that many in the big scheme but this video has 6,000 views at time of writing and he has 318 subscriptions so really no one will ever see this. This video talks about BMI, calories, food companies, and fatphobia in a way that I wish Maintenance Phase actually did (sorry everyone, I literally hate that podcast I think it’s extremely poorly researched and bad actually, I appreciate that it helps folks who are in the weeds of diet culture or whatever but I am not so I think it’s mostly two clueless people who really need a scientist).

>Number Four<

False Choices

I think this is a really beautiful piece that actually tackles some of the concepts and nuance that Audre Lorde was getting at when she was talking about her rest as a site of resistance. I think people have that difficult tendency to blow thing up into being universal concepts when thinks that are specific (to a person, to a situation, to an intersection) should stay there. Should be allowed to stay there.

I think it is really important that people rest but like most things, it’s not the only thing we need to be doing and we can’t let a cute slogan keep us from making things better for ourselves and other.

>Number Five<

He’s A Romantic, Obviously

I entered this world, like most people, being unaware of the fandom that was around me even though I spent the few years before internet fandom ate me whole, watching Star Trek. What I mean to say by this is that I actually experienced James T. Kirk before I was corrupted by the Flanderized version of him present in both fandom and in pop culture/pop media. While you can’t unexperience your mental picture of Kirk, this article does a great job of making the case for why your view of Star Trek’s most famous captain is probably all wrong.

That’s all for this month and hopefully I’ll see you back again next month with some more exciting and cool things!