Hi team,
Welcome to the twenty-seventh installment of Furloughed. Maybe it’s a newsletter about things I’m doing while furloughed, things you can do, or both.
This week I have begun getting ready to move to Bristol for a bit. My partner is staying in Oxford but will come to Bristol as and when, until he discovers how great it is and we move there forever. Or a town nearby. Or a town near Oxford. Just anywhere but Oxford. I am excited because where I’m going there will be a garden and a bathtub and like three entire bedrooms. And I’ve a friend with a dog down the road and many more friends across the city. Lovely.
I have started to pack very slowly. So far, this has meant pulling out an old suitcase to put food items in, then spending quite a bit of time escorting a spider out, then freaking out about spiders generally, having a restless night and looking up humane spider catchers. I do not like the Evening Standard, but conservatives can be quite good on practical things like where to buy the best spider catchers. And it *is* the end of July and I *am* freaking out about Autumn arachnids already.
Oh, and we had another power cut. The power company sent this message after, which is hilarious.
Things to watch
Short things
Why you’ll never be a billionaire…
And a video about context anxiety.
And a powerful video from the RNLI about why they rescue migrants.
Series
Mainstay recommendations are City of Ghosts and Waffles + Mochi. And We Are Lady Parts. We continue to watch Black-ish. I finished Never Have I Ever Season 2 this week. I also started watching the outstanding Paranormal on Netflix. Terrifying stuff. Like the echoes of Amelie in the protaganist.
Documentaries
We watched another of those ‘minimalist bros’ documentaries on Netflix. The best part was when a guy in the audience in Vegas said they’re just removing themselves from the fight and I thought, “yes! Exactly” — they’re banging on about how to live in small spaces (the apartments some of the minimalist couples were living in were bigger than ours FYI) and have less stuff, but it still all fits into a neoliberal individualistic framework. A bunch of dudes talking about saving themselves by having less might in essence be the same as all the billionaires who have bought bunkers in New Zealand for when the climate emergency comes for them. Save yourselves, don’t bother building community together…
Films
Last Saturday, on movie and homemade pizza night, we watched Ant-Man. It was good. We might watch Midsommar tonight.
Things to read
Conditions that led to 2011 riots still exist today, experts warn
‘Between [2010 - 11] and 2019-20, the national budget for youth services was cut by £372m when adjusted for inflation, down 73%. Some of the areas affected by the riots have experienced even steeper cuts. In Haringey, where the riots originated, the youth services budget fell from £5.6m to just £970,000 – a cut of 85% when taking inflation into account.
‘In 2010-11, police in England and Wales stopped and searched 115 out of every 1,000 black people, compared with 17 per 1,000 white people – meaning black people were 6.7 times more likely to be targeted. But in 2019-20, black people were 8.9 times more likely to be searched than white people.’
Warhammer maker Games Workshop hands staff £5,000 bonus after lockdown sales surge
Feel good
Simone Biles and the rise of the ‘great refusal’
“[That] Biles, perhaps the greatest gymnast ever, on the biggest stage of all, chose herself over yet another accomplishment, gives hope to a generation of Black Americans, famous and not, that we too might refuse the terms of success our country has offered us.
“Biles’s courageous decision echoes the actions of other Black public figures, from Naomi Osaka to Leon Bridges... They are helping us all build a new muscle, helping us put one simple word at the top of our vocabulary: no.
“We are, I believe, witnessing the beginning of a great refusal, when a generation of Black Americans decide to, in the words of Maxine Waters, reclaim our time. Simone Biles, famous for what she does in the air, has shown the way by standing her ground.” — Casey Gerald
Tokyo 2020: Germany's Olympic women's gymnastics team ditch leotards for less revealing unitards
High court victory for Stonehenge campaigners as tunnel is ruled unlawful
Campaigners including archaeologists, environmental groups and druids have won a high court battle to prevent a controversial road project that includes a tunnel near Stonehenge.
RNLI sees 2,000% daily increase in donations after criticism of asylum rescues in Channel
Things to listen to
Podcasts
Mainstay recommendation is this Blindboy podcast with Emma Dabiri. And more Blindboy - How to Solve the Housing Crisis. And a podcast about doughnut economics.
I loved the story about food as a bridge in the episode of The Moth below. I remember, in primary school, my friend’s mum bringing in honey cake and teaching the class about Rosh Hashanah. (Obviously it shouldn’t be up to the mothers of minoritised children to help educate non-minoritised children).
Music
Pulled this straight from trending. Dhurata Dora is German-born Kosovo-Albanian and based in Berlin. Bada bing, bada boom.
Join a union and find your local mutual aid
You can join a union to help protect yourself and others. And your local Mutual Aid group.
“Despite mounting evidence women have been disproportionately furloughed or made redundant while absorbing more of the unpaid work associated with the pandemic, we were concerned we weren’t seeing policy changes to reflect that, particularly ahead of the third lockdown,” said Clare Wenham, co-author of Why We need A Gender Advisor on Sage. — UK government ‘failed to consider gender’ in its response to Covid pandemic — Hannah Summers
Sustainable Suppression
Avoid the three Cs - Confined. Crowded. Close-contact settings. Mask up.
Here’s this week’s Independent SAGE briefing. And their vaccinations FAQ if you or people you know have vaccine questions. They have also put out a document about the continuing need for support measures.
Where Did The Microchip Vaccine Conspiracy Theory Come From Anyway?
‘Tracking medical misinformation is a relatively new and underfunded field of public health. Of the flood of money dedicated to coronavirus vaccine research, production, and distribution since the pandemic began, Smyser said, “less than one-half of 1 percent of global funding has gone to any research or any programs addressing misinformation.”’
A video on how to ventilate a room
After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic
People to listen to
Things to do
See what’s #1 all around the world (thanks middle sis)
Sign up for some newsletters that digest the news, like 1440 and BuzzFeed’s Incoming and Goats and Soda and the DDN newsletter (at the bottom of the page)
Sign this petition: Add Sickle Cell to the Prescription Charge Exemption List
Make a Corsi cube to filter a room/ set up a crowdfund to make them for classrooms
Send me any fun things to do or look at you see so I can include them!