Good morning!
Welcome to Digestable, your mouthful of things happening in the world.
Today’s news, fermented:
Wowie. An exhausting and terrifying week on our home planet.
From attacks on gender-affirming care in Texas to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, it’s a scary time to be a person.
There’s a lot of interconnection between the struggles in these places, as always; here are a few things I’m reading about:
Reliance on fossil fuels is what weakens the rest of the world to Putin’s stranglehold—hitting Russia in the oil and gas is much more powerful than anything else we can do. An excerpt:
"[This] is a war underwritten by oil and gas, a war whose most crucial weapon may be oil and gas, a war we can’t fully engage because we remain dependent on oil and gas. If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas."The fossil fuel industry is pulling strings in both Russian and Texan governments—sometimes losing, also facing powerful resistance
Ukrainian LGBTQ+ folks are terrified—their country, which has held pride marches for 10+ years, is a much safer place for queers than Russia.
Texas is trying to categorize medical care for trans kids as child abuse. This is so dangerous for trans kids and the people who love them—and also dangerous for anyone else who’s ever wanted to have bodily autonomy. Care about abortion rights? This is for you. Care about getting to decide what kind of medical treatment is right for you, instead of being told? This is for you.
The real moral, I think, is that all of these struggles are connected. As a trans person of Russian ancestry, I spent a lot of time yesterday doomscrolling and feeling like my number one antidote to despair—organizing—wasn’t something I knew how to do in this moment. But a night of sleep (which can feel like a luxury, when bombs are falling elsewhere) helped me remember that organizing and solidarity anywhere is crucial for organizing and justice everywhere.
Stay strong, friends.
(via)
~Caro’s Tarot~
Good morning readers,
Phew – what a week…a total understatement.
Ok let me try that again, what a WEEK. If you didn’t wake up stressed once this week, I want your secret. No seriously, what is your strategy to keep calm in the face of so much chaos? I could name all of the external events I could be alluding to, but I think you can come to your own conclusions about that.
I feel like a recurring theme of my tarot readings is self care in the form of reflection, or self care in the form of making space for self acceptance. Well today is no different. When all of those stress chemicals start coursing through my body, I personally like to refocus my attention on healthy things I can control. This morning we are going to ask the tarot cards how we can redirect our focus momentarily, in order to cope with the very real external stress.
A quick aside – I want to acknowledge the privilege many of us are coming into this question with. I want to make space for both the very real stress we can feel when all of these events are colluding and happening at once, and to also acknowledge the fact that it might not be our bodies that are being attacked legislatively and physically – therefore an even more important question to ponder is what are we doing to stand in solidarity and to be co-conspirators with those who are being directly impacted by the world’s events this week. I challenge those of us in the position of privilege to, yes cope with the stress, but to also channel some of that energy towards actually doing something, instead of just venting frustrations at the social media void.
OK, let’s ask the cards, the universe, the gods (whichever ones you believe in), the spirits – how can we refocus our energy this weekend in order to cope with our stress and channel it in healthy and productive ways.
Ace of cups– reversed:
Yes, this is the self-love card of the Tarot deck! In the reversed position, it speaks to love for oneself. So, before you send your love out to the world, send love to yourself, filling up every cell in your body with Divine love and happiness. And the more you do this, the more you can exist in flow with life itself.
On the flipside, the Ace of Cups reversed may be a sign that you are repressing your emotions, not wanting to express yourself fully to the outside world. You have your reasons for keeping your feelings close and not wanting others to know what’s going on inside. You may feel embarrassed or afraid of what might happen if you were to express your emotions. You may worry that if you allow your feelings to flow, they might turn into an overwhelming flood that can’t be switched off. However, be careful that you do not create an internal blockage by repressing how you feel. If you are not ready to share your emotions – that's okay! You can find ways to release them privately, through journaling, creative projects, movement, or screaming your frustration and anger out in the car.
I’m just gonna let that card speak for itself. Until our next reading!
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
On a day like today, when there's much to despair over and worry about, I'd like to offer some consolation: take joy in the fact that you, my friend, are not delusional enough to post a spoken word piece on Twitter of how hypothetically being Vladimir Putin's mother could have prevented the tragedy of this week from unfolding in the way that it did.
I've seen a lot of takes on Ukraine and Russia over the last 24 hours, but this is just masterful on a whole different level. Annalynne McCord, best known for her role in the 2010s reboot of Beverly Hills 90210, is literally saying "I can fix him" in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Homegirl wants it to be known that everything that's happening is happening because one man didn't get enough love in his life. And she recorded this 2 minute slam poetry piece for all of us to listen to because that's really what we need in this moment: another celebrity Imagine moment in the face of war and great violence.
Unsurprisingly, Annalynne was dragged all over Twitter for this performance. I guess if I were to be kind, she was doing this to process the news in the way she knows best. Yet it's also got to be one of the most tone deaf and asinine takes out there, right? Because I can assure you that nobody was looking to Annalynne McCord of all people for her analysis on the geopolitics of Ukraine and Russia.