Now for a little story I wrote this morning, called FEAR AND LOATHING IN TARIFFLAND: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF KARYN VON MAGA KOCHSUCKER.

Strap in. This is a long thread. The morning sun rose like a bloated orange over the strip malls and foreclosed Applebees of the suburb, signaling another glorious day in Trump's tariff-ridden America. Inside a three-bedroom home, Karen Kochsucker groaned into her MyPillow and checked her phone.

Buckle up. Long thread.

For decades, the raving lunatics of the far right have peddled a steaming pile of hysteria about "illegals" storming across the border, coming to pillage, murder, and steal jobs—none of which hold up under the brutal scrutiny of cold, hard facts. This is classic American paranoia, a bad acid trip wrapped in a flag and sold as patriotism.

Six days in, he's alienated Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama, Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil. Mexico and Canada already teamed up to stop selling us steel. Now Colombia is imposing tariffs on coffee and other goods.

Population of the USA: 341 million.

They don't need us His biggest fans have a grasp of international relations transferred from their understanding of professional wrestling, where the loudest chest-beater wins. They think his tantrums are strength. They are in for a rude and expensive awakening. They will never blame him, though.

I've been reading a wide variety of romance novels lately, including those in the Best of BookTok category to see what all the fuss is about. To my readers here who reflexively roll their eyes upon hearing “romance novel,” please consider the following anecdote: I was in college in Boston. Esteemed literary author Ethan Canin came to read from his short story collection Emperor of the Air at the Memorial Chapel on the Harvard campus. I went, with dreams of one day being a writer, too. At the end of the reading, Canin took questions.

The most powerful tool in the sociopathic narcissist's toolkit is pity. If there is some past trauma they can drawn upon to justify their present atrocious behavior, they will. This is how they disarm people of conscience. It works in abusive marriages, and it works in genocide. A toxic partner might say "I don't usually hit people, but I was hurt as a kid and what you did really upset me." Leaders of nations use the same handbook. "I have a right to defend myself against sleeping babies because this terrible thing happened to me in the past."

"THE WEAPONIZATION OF LANGUAGE: How the Passive Voice Enables Genocide," todays post in my newsletter, STORYTELLING IS A SUPERPOWER:

I'm posting the entire essay here, in hopes that if you like it, you'll subscribe to my newsletter. Ready? Language is not neutral. It’s a tool, a weapon, and often, a disguise. For writers, language is the medium through which we reveal or obscure truth. And nowhere is this duality more apparent than in the passive voice—

“We’re going to unwoke the state,” Representative Jeremy Haroldson, the next speaker pro tem of Wyoming, told the New York Times this week.

Okay, sweaty creep with bad ties.

I imagined what Jeremy's Wyoming life would look like, "unwoke." Here's a little taste: Our suburban man Jeremy wakes up in the dark. He cannot switch on the lights because the carbon filament for the modern light bulb was invented by Lewis Latimer, a Black inventor.

One of the most fascinating relationships to think about is that between Martha Washington and Oney Judge. Martha, very homely, was first married off as a teen bride to an old man name Custis. He died and left her then-toddler son everything. Martha managed the fortune, inclusing 400+ enslaved people, and it grew.

The top 10 ways the US embargo of Cuba is exactly what narcissistic abusers do to partners who try to leave them:

A 🧵 Oh, the grandeur of American foreign policy! The blue suits, the wagging fingers, the rhetorical smoke rings blown with the smug precision of a carnival trickster. Nowhere is this phenomenon more on display than in the United States’ long-standing embargo against Cuba.

Here's what it was like checking into a hospital in Cuba, as an American. I waited three minutes. A nurse came to greet me. She hugged me and looked me in the eye and asked me if I felt well enough to walk. She wore an old fashioned white paper nurse hat. I followed her to an office. She handed me a small plastic tub containing new toiletries, a toothbrush, comb and towel in it. Like a hotel.

Alright, folks, let’s talk about two things we love in this country: drugs and money. Now, you might be wondering, "What do Mexican drug cartels and U.S. pharmaceutical companies have in common?" Well, pull up a chair, because you might be surprised. A tale of two drug dealers: One wears fancy cowboy boots and deals in illegal narcotics, the other wears a fancy suit and Thomas Pink shirts and sells you pills. But here’s the kicker—they’re both making a killing off of your misery. Literally.

Here's a brief but incomplete list of the things it is perfectly legal to put in your food in the USA because doing so makes rich people richer, but illegal to put in your food in Mexico because they make people sick:

A 🧵 Additives and Colorings

Synthetic Food Dyes: Certain artificial colorings like Red No. 40 and Yellow No. 5, linked to hyperactivity and other health issues, are heavily restricted in Mexico while commonly used in the U.S.

Friend moved to Mérida, Mexico, 2 years ago, recently visited the US for 1st time since. What he noticed? 1. Food here tastes like chemicals. "Americans are being poisoned." 2. Everyone hates someone. "Everywhere you go, people are filled with hate." 3. Racism is everywhere. Before you decide to comment about how "dangerous" Mexico is, understand this: There is NOT ONE CITY in the USA that is safer than Mérida, a Mayan city which is the 2nd-safest city in North America, after Montreal. Your stereotypes will get you blocked immediately.

This is all nothing new for me. I was impeached as freshman class president, by the high school administration, in 1983, for organizing a sit-in at the mall to protest nuclear proliferation instead of hosting the bake sale the teacher advisor had suggested. At that same school that same year, I was shoved by Mr. Morrow, the algebra teacher, when I stopped standing for the pledge of allegiance, to protest the US invasion of Grenada and the US support of Apartheid in South Africa. I began ditching school to read Gogol & Tolstoy.

Within an hour of me posting my true views on the genocide on Gaza, Universal Content Productions called to inform me the studio will no longer be developing my novel, THE DIRTY GIRLS SOCIAL CLUB, for a TV series.

This is the world we inhabit.

Please support my books. They are pretending there is some legal chain of title issue. But there isn't. They would never have signed the deal if there were. They magically pulled one out of their legal team within an hour of me saying I can't support any candidate that supports genocide anywhere.

The most fascinating thing?

HLA-B*15:01 is a genetic variant that protects people from being symptomatic with covid infection. They breeze through it. No symptoms

HLA-DRB1*11:04, on the same loci, damns people to the hell of Long Covid.

Miniscule shifts. Massive differences. These genes control, among other things, how a pathogen is seen by the immune system. Imagine the sars2 virus is a narcissistic abuser. HLA-B*15-01 is like, "Oh HELL nah," kicks his ass to the curb. HLA-DRB1*11:04 is like, "I dunno, I like a little danger. I can change him."

This is the most reliable genetic marker for Long Covid susceptibility they found. Lo and behold, I have it. Exactly as they described.
However, I do NOT have the second genetic risk factor, which might explain why my Long Covid, while debilitating, has been less severe than other people's.

This is live on 23&Me. Fwiw, by doing a shit-ton of science reading and diving into my own genomic sequences (in hooes of figuring out why I was still sick), I came VERY CLOSE to this same conclusion in 2022.

https://x.com/AlisaValdesRod1/status/1578592486557028352?t=1wPqmxfvls21vR3ZE5zTRA&s=19

I've written a biopic of classical composer Fanny Mendelssohn. I'm trying to find a producer and director now. Fanny lived in the early and mid 1800s, in Berlin. As research, I read books of letters she and her family sent to one another. A 🧵... They lived in a repressive and ominous time. Every member of the Mendelssohn household was a genius, talented, products of the enlightenment. Witty, compassionate, insightful. Fanny's father, Abraham...

Just saw an author friend's TikTok about the "notes" she got back on her latest book from copy editors at a big publisher. They are weeding out "ableist" DIALOGUE. Characters have to be allowed to speak like people, whether they offend people or not. Otherwise, it's unrealistic. If readers can't tell that characters aren't the author, we're fucked as a society. I'm writing a murder mystery. Why is the murder allowed, but having the murderer call someone "crazy" isn't? Because readers will now cancel writers if their villains say offensive shit.

Starting a thread on physical movement/elements that help keep my Long Covid in remission. This is not medical advice, just my story. It's part 4 of a 5-part protocol I created for myself. I have been symptom-free for 10 weeks. If I deviate from any part, symptoms return.

1/n Please note: I am aware of Post-Exertional Malaise in Long Covid. A recent and oft-cited study points to muscle abnormalities leading to worsening of symptoms with exercise in 25 people with LC compared to 21 people without LC.

But...

2/n

nature.com/articles/s4146…