(ir)rationalityi

[rationalityi]

My apologies!

I still can never quite really manage to tumblr correctly, and this whole primary/secondary blog thing is really throwing me off. For more Master of None quips, The Handmaid’s Tale #spoilers, extensive Halt and Catch Fire meta (just kidding -- no one asked for that!), etc, follow: irrationalityi.

[rationalityi]

My god, Gordon Ramsay

You never fail to disappoint. At the very minute when two black girls made it into the finale, you have to make a comment to the white boy who got cut because unlike the aforementioned girls, he couldn’t do more than what he’d always known how to do -- and he’ll never have to -- that boys like him are the reason they started this competition (very nearly an exact quote).

Dear god, sir.

[rationalityi]

Fried avocado poppers > avocado toast

[rationalityi]

Did someone take an Topics in Intro Philosophy course before writing this season of Kimmy Schmidt?

[rationalityi]

Apropos of nothing

But it seems to me that an air of rejoinder is perhaps a necessary component of identifying as a woman of color, as a cis-woman, or as trans* person (or any other marginalized identity). I’m not sure what it means necessarily to have always been a person of color, to have always been a woman, to have always been trans* in a metaphysical sense because these are non-essentialist identities that don’t make sense in isolation, absent and prior to the process of socialization.

Identification happens later. For people who grew up as kids of color or as girls, or as trans kids, it’s A Big Deal to say “yes” because your mind had been whispering “no” your whole life. Identification can be joyful, yes, but it’s a corrective that’s only possible or necessary because the implicit conviction that you are not good or worthwhile or even real lingers bone deep. Even in the best of times, it’s scar tissue that springs up around the wound of self-hatred. That’s why it can sound defensive, self-protective.

Always, when I consider myself, I’m filled with at least a low watermark of disgust. But without that, I can’t imagine what identification would even mean, what substance it could hold.

[rationalityi]

We tend to speak about the poor as if they didn’t live in the same society, as if our gains and their losses weren’t intertwined. Conservatives explain poverty by pointing to “individual factors,” like bad decisions or the rise of single-parent families; liberals refer to “structural causes,” like the decline of manufacturing or the historical legacies of racial discrimination. Usually pitted against each other, each perspective serves a similar function: letting us off the hook by asserting that there is a deep-rooted, troubling problem — more than one in six Americans does not make enough to afford basic necessities — that most of us bear no responsibility for.

Matthew Desmond, The New York Times [link]

[rationalityi]

I want to write more about The Handmaid’s Tale sometime, but I wanted to say that I really appreciate its heavy inclusion of sustainability in “A Woman’s Place” (after a brief mention of making bread from scratch in the first batch of episodes). It fits with their return to “nature” philosophy (shared, by the way, by more evangelicals than many may think), and it’s a clever way of pointing out that this brand of autocratic utopianism is certainly not merely a product of the right.

[rationalityi]

I remember being appalled as a kid that we elected an ignoramus. Now, I genuinely hope that that’s all we did.

[rationalityi]

Oh dear. I think some local kids are about to have quite the party, and here I am just trying to illegally have a beer on the sound.

[rationalityi]

Unpopular opinion (probably)

Sara was The One for Dev and he should've run faster after the guy who stole his phone.

[rationalityi]

Confession

I have a problem where I must eat food that is discussed on television, regardless of whether or not they are presented in an appetizing way, or if I had any prior predilection for the food in question.

Which is why I made stewed apples for my French toast this morning.

[rationalityi]

In case you were wondering how deep the madness runs, I am currently making homemade pasta (for the first time!) tonight because I watched Master of None.

[rationalityi]

I am currently in "real America"

The people are all white but the trout is pretty delicious.

[rationalityi]

I don't "get" Twin Peaks. Don't @ me.

[rationalityi]

Focus On Infants During Childbirth Leaves U.S. Moms In Danger

The U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world: Sixty percent of the 700 to 900 deaths each year are preventable, including that of neonatal nurse Lauren Bloomstein.

[twice-five-miles-deactivated201]

Winners and Losers of the Recent Nuclear Holocaust

The nation was recently rocked by retaliatory nuclear blasts that have turned much of America into a barren wasteland, decimating the population, t...

[rationalityi]

Oops

Turns out I spend an ungodly portion of my budget on food.

[rationalityi]

Oh fuck, my French friends will even more insufferable now.