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Politics

Day 740 and Immigration Failed Us Again

My second attempt at a securing a tourist visa for a friend failed this morning. If you’d have asked me a few years ago if I thought the American immigration basically worked, I would have agreed that, sure I thought it probably worked ok. No reason to think otherwise right? Phew I was wrong. But […]

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Uncategorized

Day 739 and Immigration Anxiety

My family has been working on a visa for a friend to come visit us in the United States. It’s felt like the longest 2 years of everyone’s lives. I had no idea how broken our visa and immigration system ones until we tried to invite a family friend with a bad passport on vacation […]

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Culture Politics

Day 1301 and Coming to America

The leadership of any powerful industry naturally has some vested interests. You assume this is obvious but to give Kamala Harris’s mother her due “”You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” That is actually a pretty conservative viewpoint to have. What if you can’t upend all […]

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Politics Travel

Day 1170 and The Machine

I hate failing. The sense of doomed futility I have when I interact with the broken bits of the American bureaucracy weighs on me. Every time a crucial piece of the business of government fails I feel helpless. Like I am a loser. I feel deeply that the machine has ground out some remaining spark […]

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Chronicle

Day 1095 and 2023 Round Up

I’ve been sick for the last week and a half or so, so this round-up is coming on the last day of 2023. As you may have gathered from my title schema, I have been writing every single day for 1095 straight days. That means I’ve been doing this for three years which is a […]

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Internet Culture Startups

Day 1036 and The Right Direction

I’ve been in Europe for the last month. My itinerary included Tallinn, Helsinki and Amsterdam. It was a personal trip with work overlayed on top as the digital nomad as become a regular part of my life. I have said it before but I don’t take as much pleasure as you might imagine from these […]

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Culture Emotional Work Politics

Day 972 and Falling Faster

I’m starting to feel like summer is losing its grip on me. I cannot even begin to express my relief that September is almost here. I loathe summer and this one has been particularly hot and horrifying. Being in Montana for the summer has given me the nicest possible version of summer still possible on […]

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 944 and InstaHo

I suppose it’s fitting that just one day after feeling glimmers of hope that our networked chaotic youth culture is rebelling towards whitepilled optimism that my mood would immediately take a darker turn. You just can’t sustain a vibe these days when you have to interact with reality. Or at least reality as intermediated through […]

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Politics

Day 922 and Inconveniencing Americans

I’m enjoying a tiny moment of schadenfreude as I hear more stories of Americans being inconvenienced by our systemically fucked federal bureaucracies. Every time a reasonable person encounters a petty injustice in the renewal of their passport I see hope. Because our immigration, visa, State department sundry consular services are so fucked. Like if you […]

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Emotional Work

Day 908 and Joyful Grief

I’ve had enough emotional and mental work to know that grief is a complex and personal process. I knew as the death of a close family loved one came on the summer solstice that I needed to grieve. I revisited the frameworks. There are the three Cs (chose, connect, communicate) for a simple framework to […]