Links Roundup
Welcome to another edition of links roundup. This week, Ariel’s been reading and thinking about the following articles, none of which are explicitly solarpunk, but all of which relate to the way solarpunks choose to interact with the world and their communities.
Experts Agree: Sugar Might Be as Addictive as Cocaine
This comparison has been floating around for a while, but reading a properly-cited article about it is a bit of a trip. The language is fairly cautious around sugar’s addictive properties, which is par for the course with scientific studies, but I can tell you that my brain has certainly rearranged itself to accept sugar as the only acceptable reward despite harmful consequences. Hopefully this awareness means less added sugar to our daily foods going forward, although that’s hard to control unless you have the luxury of time/space to make your own foods on the regular.
Cheating a bit here because I’m not all the way through it and maybe showing my hand a bit that I haven’t fully read the Communist Manifesto, but I’ve had one too many Marxist bros tell me, in the course of grad school, that it will like, change my life and how I look at things. You know how you tend to avoid something because it’s too popular and too many people recommend it to you? Or is that just me? Either way, this edition really helps set the Manifesto in its context and has some very insightful commentary. (I still don’t agree that class is the fundamental oppression on which all others are predicated and you cannot make me see it that way, DAVE).*
How Good, Kind, Caring People Became The Bad Guys
I highly enjoy the articles from OkDoomer, although it’s pretty explicitly the opposite of solarpunk. Jessica Wildfire is an incredibly compelling writer, and imo this article recasts Sara Ahmed’s theory of the feminist killjoy in a skilful, contemporary way that applies to how we are living our lives post-pandemic. Food for thought.
Dairy worker with bird flu never developed respiratory symptoms, only pinkeye
This is a fun article to read and spiral off of. Gonna warn those with anxiety now, please have the group chat or whatever mental health supports you need open before reading through this one, because you might be hyperventilating afterwards. It’s always a good time to experiment with veganism, and now more than ever, at least get yourself off of cow products and byproducts, for everyone’s sakes.
Pluralistic: Tabs give me superpowers (25 Jan 2024)
Cory Doctorow is so productive it’s bananas - this blog post of his has some insight into how he manages to maintain that, the bullshit that is “life hacking”, and some very useful information.
*I do have some very good friends who are Marxists and not named Dave and in fact are very intersectionally-minded folk and feminist allies.