To my Subscribers and Supporters:
This update is shorter than the last one, but I’ve been no less busy.
I was going to write about how lovely it is to be in an apartment where I can see ravens flying and dipping into air tunnels to coast along, but I’ll save that for another time. I will say that this sliver of Hyde Park is quite dense with ravens and they are amazing: large and unhurried and a way of just idly walking along the pavements here, looking into the stores as if checking out the wares. They own this place, as do the multitudes of spiders everywhere, also among my beloveds.
I’m not optimistic about the ongoing health crisis and am only hanging out with very tiny groups of friends (one has been my max so far, slowly expanding to three or four) and only outside. Everyone needs to do whatever it is that makes them most comfortable and I’m not yet gathering inside unless it’s a tiny group of people I can trust, and I’m still distancing: definitely no restaurants. I’m fully vaccinated but I don’t trust others to be so I still mask everywhere even, frankly, in the outdoors. At the start of the pandemic, when there was much more uncertainty about spread, I was walking in my local park with my cane, as always. It turns out that if I extend it outwards, it creates a good distance between me and others. A runner, part of a group, started moving towards me, and I held out my cane to my left so she’d just make her way around (it had worked so far with others, who might have been irritated but just quietly jigged over). Clearly irritated that I’d dared to do this, she waited till she was right up where I was and then very deliberately leaned in and coughed hard in my direction.
I don’t think this was her trying to pass on Covid to me: she was just a brat who felt entitled to run on a track in a giant park where she had more than ample space but how dare I deny her that sliver of track for a few seconds and she would show me (for the record, she was a person of colour—in a city that’s run like a plantation, an angry white woman would have been much more aggressive, to the point of violence).
My point is simply this: we don’t know enough about the variant(s), we don’t really know what the actual effects might be on individuals, and the CDC and Fauci are not to be trusted with all their flip-flopping. Much is made of the fact that the WHO’s recent advice that even the vaccinated should still be masking indoors somehow only applies to, you know, all those other countries. We conveniently forget that viruses travel with ease and great unpredictability. Americans love to drive across the country and there are no travel restrictions of any sort, which means the Delta or any other variants that might pop up can spread with ferocity. Here’s a more local example: in Chicago, the last time I drove through the north side with a friend, I was shocked to see how many people were unmasked—and that was in the middle of the pandemic. I have to imagine they’re a lot more careless now. Meanwhile, there’s a gap in vaccinations on the south side and—this is the part often ignored—a fair number of restaurant workers, for instance, have to commute to the north side from the west and south, forced to work amongst all those unmasked clients and customers (I can’t find exact stats but I know Chicago, and I doubt that most restaurant workers can afford to live near the places they work, especially up north). This is how the virus and its variants might travel within dense areas with ease, when the most vulnerable are forced to serve those who feel comfortable with taking health risks.
All of this could be mitigated by an intensive vaccination campaign, but that has failed so far and only 67% of Americans have their first shot (it’s by now acknowledged that a single shot may not be much help against the Delta variant). When I first began trying to get vaccinated, I melted into tears before a friend got a hold of someone who helped me—the system was that bad. While it’s a lot better now, the bigger problem today is a widespread suspicion of vaccines and, well, frankly, a shitty healthcare and economic system where most people are just struggling to make sense of their daily lives. To this day, it’s the most vulnerable, like teachers, restaurant workers, and healthcare personnel, being asked to put their lives on the line. We’re paying the cost of several decades of a worsening public health system. But we’re also paying the cost of a broken education system that lies in tatters after decades of neglect: a problem that few will address at length is that a lot of resistance to the virus stems from a lack of education.
Combine all that with the general sense of entitlement—people resort to angry responses even over mere feet of running track. This is a country where you can’t trust that some rando won’t cough on you in anger or, worse won’t just go into a spa on a shooting spree with a gun he bought mere hours ago—and I’m expected to trust that the unmasked are actually vaccinated in my local supermarket? Why do we think people will adhere to some honour system about their Covid statuses (to be clear, I don’t think demanding to see cards is a solution: a drive to full vaccination is what’s needed)?
The CDC is not being transparent about the threat of the Delta variant: media outlets in the United States are only just slowly and very, very reluctantly reporting on the threat posed by it. I have no healthcare to speak of, and it irritates and angers me to hear politicians and so-called health experts say that I’m fully protected, kinda-maybe, by my vaccinations and that even if I were to be infected, the effects are likely to be mild.
Mild according to whom? Like most people here, I have shitty healthcare and if infected I’m likely to get much sicker just waiting for treatment. Plus, even a week or so struggling to get well will mean untold work time lost that I’ll struggle to get back—and all this just as I’m finally able to get a semblance of a regular schedule. This is the situation for a vast number of people in a country where nursing home employees, who should have the most secure jobs, live in a state of unending precarity. As far as I can tell, the powers that be—including a larger media network that is either corrupt or naive or both—want to foster the illusion of normalcy just so the wheels of commerce can keep spinning. No one gives a damn about our actual lives.
Anyway: I’m juggling a number of projects, and I can’t wait to share more details. My main superpower is that I can write (I have others but they’re on hold), and I’m focusing on that right now. I still tend to underestimate how much time some projects can take and that sometimes, after a dense piece of work, I just need to vegetate for a few days. I spent most of this holiday weekend noshing and watching M. Night Shyamalan movies after an intense period of work. I consequently spent a good portion of this morning cleaning up the detritus of the last few days.
But: still excited about the new place and the work and even, would you believe, the world?
Here’s my brief update:
SOME NEWS:
As you know, I’m an Editor at Large (is that capitalised or not?) for Current Affairs, an honorary role that lets me swan around like the departed Queen Mum, minus the jewels, for a magazine I dearly love. Recently, I joined the editorial board of The Anarchist Review of Books. It’s lovely and I’m excited to do what I can to bring this publication’s unrelenting vision to the world. Please support both publications as and when you can!
PODCASTS
I was excited to be on Radio Free Galisteo with John Shannon, talking about Against Equality, Gay Marriage, and Wokism. Do listen, and support them if you can. You can listen here.
I was back on one of my faves, Champagne Sharks (who have what may be the coolest logo EVER), talking to Trevor Beaulieu about why the publishing industry is like Fyre Fest, why writers don’t really want to be paid well, and more. Please support them if you can. You can listen here.
WRITING
There will be a couple of new pieces soon that I’m very excited about. And while this isn’t my own writing, I was mentioned in this Time Literary Supplement piece, “Let Us Now Tell Sad Stories: Why We Might Write about Trauma,” by Irina Dumitrescu. I was pleased, flattered, and surprised: people usually use my work or cite my points without bothering to reference me at all. As you know, I’ve been working for a while on a piece, “Soft Plagiarism,” which addresses this problem in broader terms.
FORTHCOMING PIECES
I’ve been mainly birthing the first chunk of a large project that I’m really excited about (more later) and working on finishing up “Black Lives, Brown Guilt” and “My Two Marilyns” (see below in my “forthcoming” list). I’ve also been working on a piece about how the queer radical work of Against Equality was plagiarised and deliberately misinterpreted (this is a very hard thing to do and yet…it was done). The last month was, of course, Pride, and I was sick of it by June 2. Still, this seems like a time when the Old Guard of the LGBTQ+ community is now flailing around, looking for a reason why its exploitative, vile, useless nonprofits should continue to exist (never fear, they’ll soon concoct a crisis!) Look for work from me on the history of gay activism and more.
I’ve added the list from my last update with a couple of additions. I’ll do this every time I post an update, and strikethrough work as it gets done (there might be new pieces I’ll add to the list and strikethrough even if I haven’t listed them previously: it’s a system, of some kind).
“My Two Marilyns.”
“Black Lives, Brown Guilt.”
“Killing the Queer Softly: Or, How to Plagiarise Radical Critique and Not Get Away with It and Why Academia Is Failing and Falling.”
“Amanda Gorman and That Poem.”
“On the Never-Ending Myth of Matthew Shepard.”
“Star Trek, Alpha and Omega.”
“On Isabel Fall and Twitter Storms.”
“On Indian Matchmaking.”
“A Saga, In Seven Tables.”
“On Foucault.”
“Andrea Smith and Native American Identity.”
“On Soft Plagiarism?”
“On Blackness and Tenure: Cornel West, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and the Concept Itself.”
“The Long, Strange Journey of Glenn Greenwald.”
“Megan Markle and Blackness” (may be merged in some way with the Gorman piece).
DAILY POSTS FROM THE ARCHIVE
If you follow me on social media (@NairYasmin on Twitter, and here I am on Facebook), you know I post DPs (Daily Posts from the archives) every weekday at or around 9 a.m CST. Here are the DPs I’ve posted in the last couple of weeks.
“Fuck Love.”
“New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City.”
“What’s Left of Queer: Immigration, Sexuality, and Affect in a Neoliberal World.”
I’m on Instagram, and love it. I only post photos, imagine that! No Influencer garbage for me: come for the pics, stay for the pics.
And in case you missed it, here’s my last update, “The Biggest Update of All Time.”
Till the next.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
