Wednesday Flames: Surviving the recrudescence
The circus is back in town, and we're going to keep cleaning up after the elephants.
Welp. No matter how much you think you’ve prepared for something, you’re less ready than you think when it happens. We didn’t watch the coronation, but we’re still processing all the disheartening news of the subsequent memecoin grift, abusive executive orders, and blanket January 6 pardons. Admittedly, it helped a little to focus on FLOTUS’s 47-proof brim, Carrie Underwood’s PA glitch, and Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s face-to-face plea to the president to show compassion for immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Plus, the “saving TikTok” propaganda reveals that TikTok has joined Xwitter and all the Meta platforms as unstable and unreliable, so we need to diversify our communications. In addition to Group Hugs and her Discord group, Magda has started an email newsletter with the flavor of her old AskMoxie blog, where she writes about being human, parenting adults, and staying prosocial amid violence from the oligarchy. Doug has abandoned Threads in favor of Bluesky, and he has his other Substack, The Big Swing.
We also want to check in on our non-MAGA Republican (Republican Classic?) subscribers and make sure you're being kind to yourselves. This is all so nauseating and dehumanizing, and you’ve probably lost more colleagues to trumpism than we have. Perhaps one day, we’ll return to a glorious time when we can stop commiserating about this festering kakistocracy and once again argue about optimal tax structures and the relative merits of the social safety net.
Until that time, however, we won’t be diverted from our central mission to keep talking about all the bullshit of being in our 50s. (And soon, 60s!) We’re going to do all we can to support people in crisis, defend victims against bullying, and help us all feel as strong and sane as we can.
Over the next few weeks, we'll record an episode with a gut health nutritionist about caring for our aging GI systems, and another with a dentist who’ll outline why our teeth go downhill so suddenly in our late 40s and 50s. (Did you know that 30% of all people in the first five years of menopause lose a tooth? Magda didn’t know this fact, and now it haunts her.) We've also lined up a talk about how to help your kid sort through college acceptances and figure out how where (and when) to go.
You are not alone. We are right here, and we’re committed to the work.
Thanks for reading, and keep your dustpans handy.
Magda and Doug