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Octavia Yearwood has dedicated her life to mentoring and supporting young people who have experienced adversity. Yearwood is no stranger to adversity herself, having spent several years in foster care. Now, she’s using her knowledge, experience, and expertise to mentor teens in youth prisons in her program, “How the Hell Did You Do That?!”

The supplementary program is based off of Yearwood’s 2017 interactive book with the same title. The book’s goal is to help young people overcome trauma and adversity by using critical thinking, coping skills, literacy, and social and emotional learning, and is used as a key tool in the program. Though Yearwood works with teens who are often offhandedly labeled as “problematic” or “at-risk,” Yearwood prefers to use the term “trauma-sensitive youth” as a way to center their background and resilience.

“You do not need to have a degree to be compassionate and to know and understand and empathize with a young person,” Yearwood said. “I think that people don’t tap into their human side or their childhood self enough so that they can relate [to young people]. People always think, I didn’t have this shared experience with this young person, so I can’t relate. But if you really just get past that and dig a little deeper, you realize that you have so much insight to offer young people who are experiencing traumatic childhood experiences.”

Yearwood partnered with Dr. Lauren Shure of Barry University to create the curriculum for the interactive program. Shure is the program’s lead mental health specialist and is considered by Yearwood to be a “vital anchor” to the program’s success. The pair initially piloted the program for two years in Miami, Florida, before officially launching it in two New York juvenile detention centers for young men—Horizon Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx and Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brooklyn—in July. The program is largely remote, so there was no need to adjust it to adhere to COVID-19 protocols. Though the curriculum isn’t gender-specific, Yearwood says she was especially excited to work with young men.

“When I think of organizations that really work for young people, they often focus on young girls,” Yearwood said. “It was really awesome to be able to have a moment to really focus on young men … I think we don’t give young men enough credit for their openness and for their ability to be tender and vulnerable when you give them space.”

Any program in juvenile detention centers must first be cleared by administrators, and fortunately for Yearwood, she had an acquaintance working at a detention center who had read the book and championed the program to be implemented. Once the program is cleared, the facilities lease the program for one year. Next, staff is trained onsite by Yearwood on the material within the book and how to navigate discussions.

“I train them on the program so they can start to understand and prepare themselves for the shifts and the changes that those young people are going to face when they’re reading this book,” Yearwood said. “The program is going to make them be introspective and make them think about their past and future, both of which can be really hard and intense, especially for a young person still navigating and learning who they are.”

Once the program is picked up at a site, participation is required. The program only accepts 30 participants per 10-week cycle, and roughly three to four cycles are doable in a one-year period. Participants engage in weekly chapter reads and are expected to answer questions and prompts at the end of each section of the book. The questions and prompts cover topics related to family relationships, forgiveness, self-esteem, and self-image. Though she isn’t in the room during the discussions, Yearwood still finds a way to connect with the teens. The participants are shown a video of Yearwood answering each of the questions in the book, where she opens up about herself and her personal experiences.

“I wanted to make sure that I created a program that didn’t just give these kids a book and say, ‘Y’all go ahead and do your required reading,’” Yearwood said. “If we know anything about self work, we know that if we can avoid it, we will. That’s why you have people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s still working through problems they had when they were 15 years old.”

The answers to the workbook questions are sent over to the mentors on Yearwood’s team, who reflect on the responses and write a letter back about what they interpreted from the answers in that chapter. Since youth counselors often deal with heavy workloads and oversee hundreds of kids at a time, Yearwood wanted to ensure participants in her program received more one-on-one attention. The program provides one mentor for every three participants, so each teen is able to receive personalized feedback and attention throughout the program.

“[The mentor’s response] could be something like, ‘What’s up, Tommy? I loved the way you talked about yourself when you described yourself as brilliant and bright. I used to find it hard to find positive words for myself,’” Yearwood said. “They’ll also give them some advice and some encouragement to go on throughout the week.”

Mentorship is one of the key aspects of the program, and helps teens receive support as they learn more about themselves and their ambitions. Each mentor is vetted and trained under Yearwood’s company, Team Ohhh. Mentors are chosen carefully based on their background and are paired up with a detainee of their same race so they can better relate to the teens’ experiences.

“If kids see themselves in you and can relate to you, they can expand on themselves,” Yearwood said.

If a mentor suspects their mentee needs additional help based on their responses, they’ll schedule some time for them to speak to a mental health specialist who can address their needs. The team’s mental health specialists also gather data about how each teen responds to each chapter in order to improve the effectiveness of the program and provide more detailed feedback at the end of the 10 weeks.

So far, the program is only offered in two juvenile detention centers in New York, but Yearwood’s 2021 goal is to implement the program in at least six detention centers. Her long-term goal is to expand it into every school and juvenile detention center in the nation. In the meantime, she has some advice for young people who feel tossed aside or are experiencing hardship:

“Adversity births legends,” Yearwood said. “Be as bold as you can and don’t ask for permission to be great.”

Carolyn Copeland is a copy editor and staff reporter for Prism. She covers racial justice and culture. Follow her on Twitter @Carolyn_Copes.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by our national media. Through our original reporting, analysis, and commentary, we challenge dominant, toxic narratives perpetuated by the mainstream press and work to build a full and accurate record of what’s happening in our democracy. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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As the clock ticks down to Jan. 20, this country is experiencing something it has never seen before. Acting president Donald Trump is dismissing the results of an election that indisputably removed him from office, while loudly rallying disparate factions of his supporters to publicly demonstrate, using loud, angry threats of violence, in an attempt to intimidate elected federal lawmakers into disregarding those election results. The people who he is summoning to fulfill his wishes number among what most Americans would traditionally consider our country’s worst specimens: violent white supremacists, anti-government militia, neo-Nazi groups and others from our society’s fringes. Their collective end-goal, fairly stated, is the transformation of this country into a racist republic, with violence as its means of enforcement.

This is occurring in the context of a pervasive, national propaganda effort instigated and supported by fringe, right-wing media, much of it nationalist and white supremacist in origin. These platforms have spun an alternative, wholly fictional world where the election was somehow fraudulent and the product of a mythical conspiracy to deprive Trump of his rightful victory. Despite being rooted in nonsense and fabrication, this contrived mythology has nonetheless acquired such force and power that a large number of congressional Republicans—at least in the House of Representatives—are willing to abet and encourage it, disregarding their oaths both to the Constitution and to their country.

Only a few years ago the prospect of something as potentially destructive to our democracy as this would have been consigned to the realm of speculative fiction. Yet that is exactly where we are, right here, right now, as Congress prepares to certify former Vice President Joe Biden’s substantial and incontestable victory in the Electoral College on Wednesday.

Just how incredibly far the country has descended into this poisonous cesspool in such a short period of time can be discerned by reviewing the potential attendees who Donald Trump has been urging the entire week to demonstrate “wildly”—and implicitly, violently—in the streets of our nation’s capital as Congress votes.

As The Washington Post reported a week ahead of the vote: 

Four seemingly competing rallies to demand that Congress overturn the results of the presidential election, which their participants falsely view as illegitimate, are scheduled on the day Congress is set to convene to certify electoral college votes.

[…]

Formal rallies are planned most of the day and will draw pro-Trump demonstrators to the Washington Monument, Freedom Plaza and the Capitol. But online forums and encrypted chat messages among far-right groups indicate a number of demonstrators might be planning more than chanting and waving signs.

Threats of violence, ploys to smuggle guns into the District and calls to set up an “armed encampment” on the Mall have proliferated in online chats about the Jan. 6 day of protest. The Proud Boys, members of armed right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists have pledged to attend.

Individuals scheduled to attend and speak at the rallies include convicted criminals Roger Stone and George Papadopolous, both of who were pardoned by Trump for crimes that relate to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s involvement with the Russian Federation during Trump’s 2016 campaign.

According to the Daily Beast, the predominant topic concerning these Trump supporters is how they can bring weapons to the rally in an effort to physically prevent Congress from ratifying Biden’s victory.

Trump diehards from across the country have organized their travel to Washington on “The Donald” forum. One of the hottest topics on the site is how protesters can bring guns to D.C., which would count as a local crime in nearly all circumstances under Washington’s strict gun laws. Others have talked about breaking into federal buildings or committing violence against law enforcement officers who try to stop them from storming Congress.

“I’m thinking it will be literal war on that day,” one popular comment posted last Wednesday read. “Where we’ll storm offices and physically remove and even kill all the D.C. traitors and reclaim the country.”

That last bit is fairly telling as to what really motivates these people: a blind, mindless desire to inflict pain on others for no good reason other than the fact that they would enjoy it. There is really no issue, no policy outcome, no coherent plan that any of them could point to as something they’d like to see implemented—only the desire to reclaim the hate that Trump has so graciously given them the opportunity to spew over the last four years. This vocal minority has seized on the collective fiction that the election was somehow “stolen” from their hero, not because that narrative makes any sense, but because blind, unquestioning acceptancebinds them together and makes them feel strong and consequential.

The one thing that unites these criminals and hate groups is the threat of violence that they carry with them, both implicitly and explicitly. Their purpose has nothing to do with defending democracy as we know it. Rather, these protesters’ purpose is to assist Trump’s attempt to unlawfully seize power by subverting our democratic institutions, because Trump has catered to their hate and grievances like no other American leader in modern history. These right-wing devotees see Trump as their first real chance to exert their power and legitimize their hatred and anger, with their ultimate goal to dominate, or preferably exterminate, Democrats and those “others” who support them. The people who will gather on the streets of D.C. next week are the same people who just this weekend vandalized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home with graffiti depicting a pig’s head.

Left to their own devices, these people do not present a credible threat to our republic. But the fact that they exemplify and represent the delusions of millions of Republican voters, so much that elected officials feel compelled to submit to their wishes, should really horrify all decent Americans.

If you have the time I would recommend checking out Rick Steves’ Fascism in Europe. The famous travel writer, generally recognized as the leading authority on European travel, concisely but thoroughly takes us back to the rise of European fascism, its causes, its manifestations and its ultimate effects, in this one hour departure from his standard lighter fare of dispensing travel tips and advice. At the seven-minute mark, he includes footage from Benito Mussolini’s rallies in Italy during the 1920s, rallies which pre-figured the far more lethal rise of Adolf Hitler.

Trump’s physical and behavioral similarities to Mussolini have been noted by several sources, dating back to well before he entered the Oval Office. In an analysis Ruth Ben-Ghiat penned for The Atlantic in August 2016, the parallels between the two are clearly stated, and are worth restating here at length.

Ben-Ghiat explains how Mussolini’s adoption of a “political outsider” stance served him so well in corrupting not only the Italian public but also flummoxing traditional politicians at that time.

A mercurial hothead, Mussolini reveled in his role as a political disrupter. His crisis-mongering platforms contained a confusing blend of socialist and nationalist tenets, trafficking in contradiction and paradox, the better to challenge traditional ideas about politics. “Does Fascism aim at restoring the State, or subverting it? Is it order or disorder?” he taunted Italians in print six months before he took over as prime minister.

His grassroots followers spoke more directly, terrorizing Italy’s hinterland as a prelude to claiming control. Taking Mussolini’s incendiary rhetoric to heart, his blackshirts beat and executed thousands of political opponents—including priests—at rallies and on trains, in shops, schools, and taverns. Everyday violence primed the country for an exceptional outcome: In 1922, Mussolini staged a march on Rome and demanded the post of prime minister from the terrified king.

Italians learned in the 1920s what Americans are learning in 2016: Charismatic authoritarians seeking political office cannot be understood through the framework of traditional politics. They lack interest in, and patience for, established protocols. They often trust few outside of their own families, or those they already control, making collaboration and relationship building difficult. They work from a different playbook, and so must those who intend to confront them.

Ben-Ghiat emphasizes the personal bond that Mussolini created between himself and his base of supporters, and in particular the way that Mussolini tested the boundaries of what was considered “acceptable” behavior, by threatening and humiliating specific groups and individuals. This is exactly what we have seen over the five years since Trump came down that escalator, and what we are seeing now with Trump’s efforts to retain power by manipulating his followers, and channeling their anger towards specific targets.

Americans need to understand exactly what they are going to witness on Jan. 6 as they watch the worst of what America has produced converge on the National Mall. It will be a mob, un-American in every sense, carefully primed for the acceptance of fascism and ultimately, totalitarian rule. It is unthinking and cannot be reasoned with or talked to. It has one purpose: to inflict pain upon—and ideally, eliminate– those who would oppose it, with no questions asked. And by all indications, it has one of this country’s two major political parties firmly in its grasp.

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It’s 2021, and everyone is happy about that. However, COVID-19 cases are still exploding, vaccine distribution is still stumbling, and hospitals are overwhelmed. Because, unfortunately, just flipping the calendar page failed to make the virus go away.

Despite some dents in the curve caused by reduced testing and reporting over the holidays, daily new cases of COVID-19 remain at near-record levels. The reason they’re not even higher is easily seen by looking at two of the largest hot spots in the nation: Houston and Los Angeles. In the last three weeks, the rate of positive tests in both those cities has gone from less than 5% to over 20%, reflecting just how inadequate the testing program is to handle the soaring case load. With the poor reporting through the holiday period, it’s likely to be at least two weeks before we know where the nation is at the moment, and perhaps another week before the results of all the holiday travel/get-togethers are factored in.

‘Which means that Joe Biden is likely to be putting his hand on a Bible just as the nation is facing, not just another crunch, but one that puts an unprecedented strain on the healthcare system.

Over ten months into the pandemic, the states with the highest number of deaths per population are … New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. Yes, North Dakota and South Dakota have been working very hard to dislodge these states at the top of the list, and considering that those states have actually skipped out on reporting for several days, they may have even moved up a notch, but what’s amazing is just how long the Northeast stares have held thus extremely dubious “honor.”

Despite a surge across the South in the summer, and a largely Midwestern surge in the fall, despite case counts that put the original Northeast surge in the rear view, those states still took the biggest hit from the novel coronavirus. And the reason isn’t hard to see. Right now, the case fatality rate for COVID-19 in the U.S. stands at just over 1.7%. But at the end of May, that case fatality rate stood at 5.5%.

Part of that difference came because a year of wrangling with the SARS-CoV-2 virus has given doctors and nurses insight into the best ways to treat patients. Anti inflammatory steroids help with patients needing breathing assistance. Monoclonal antibodies, though still in low supply, are very effective for patients in early stages. Even intubating patients on their sides rather than their backs has made a difference.

But the biggest difference in care is simply… care. The reason those death rates were so high in the early days is because the healthcare system was completely unprepared and overwhelmed. And here’s something that hasn’t changed: The fatality rate for untreated COVID-19 remains around 10%.

Which means that stories like Los Angeles hospitals having to treat patients in gift shops,  or Texas setting hospitalization records five days in a row are a huge red flag. Case fatality rate has been declining slowly since that first surge of cases, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. A genuinely overwhelmed system at this point could quickly generate a peak in deaths that would reverse that trend. And while doctors have learned, they’re also incredibly exhausted. Not just exhausted, actually, because over 2,000 healthcare workers in the U.S. have died from COVID-19.

It’s not enough to say that this is a critical point, because every moment of this pandemic has been critical. Every moment is a moment when good actions can make things better, and continued inaction will make things worse. And every moment is also frustrating because the changes we make today aren’t visible for weeks.

The coronavirus didn’t magically go away in the spring. It didn’t magically go away just because the endless year finally ended. It won’t go away just because Joe Biden moves into the White House. It will only go away when there is adequate testing, efficient contact tracing, effective social distancing, widespread use of masks, and effective distribution of vaccines.

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As the U.S. passes the grim milestone of 20 million COVID-19 cases, much of the world is bracing for a stunning surge in the virus’ spread, courtesy of millions who ignored public health recommendations and traveled for the recent holidays. The deadly virus didn’t stop more than 7 million people from flying during the week before Christmas, and that’s just in the United States. 

Those numbers represent just a fraction of typical holiday travel numbers, back in the days before COVID-19. Airlines, of course, are bleeding money, and their employees have faced reduced hours, layoffs, furloughs, and buyouts for the better part of a year. Concurrently, denial of the absolutely-real pandemic is rampant, particularly among the Trumpian right, who have seen their soon-to-be ousted leader and his acolytes politicize and ridicule the wearing of facial coverings to help thwart spread of the novel coronavirus. 

With these facts in mind, it should come as no surprise that many of those who might be willing to board a plane in a pandemic might also be unwilling to don a mask. A stunning new analysis from The Washington Post’s Michael Laris indicates that airline workers—much like retail workers who were violently assaulted, treated like a Kleenex, and even killed for daring to ask people to comply with mask requirements—are facing abuse at the hands of reckless air travelers. 

In a review of “more than 150 aviation safety reports filed with the federal government since the start of the pandemic,” The Post found that passengers of the anti-mask stripe boldly exploit the allowance to remove masks while eating and drinking. 

Asked to mask up, one passenger pulled out a large bag of popcorn and nibbled her way through it, kernel by kernel, stymieing the cabin crew for the length of the flight. Others blew off requests by chomping leisurely on apple slices, between occasional coughs, or lifting an empty plastic cup and declaring: “I am drinking!”

Another report describes an unmasked man who charged up the aisle, stopping just 18 inches from a flight attendant. “He sneezed directly in my face, making no attempt to cover his mouth, pull up his mask or turn towards the row 1 window,” lamented the employee, who was, thankfully, wearing a mask that caught the brunt of the man’s sinus explosion. 

Airlines, of course, are quick to note such reports, and thus anti-mask passengers behaving badly, are quite rare—claiming otherwise could deter travel by those who understand that masks work. But Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist and Carnegie Mellon professor, begs to differ, telling The Post that “if you see 100 (reports), there are probably 1,000 or 10,000. This is a widespread enough phenomenon that it needs to be taken seriously.”

COVID denier-in-chief Donald Trump and his administration don’t even support mask mandates at cocktail parties, much less on the federal front. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao repeatedly has quashed calls for mask requirements on public transportation. 

President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to ask the nation to mask up for at least his first 100 days in office; he also plans to issue a first-day mask mandate in federal buildings and on interstate trains, planes, and buses. 

Whether or not people will comply remains to be seen. 

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Let’s take a moment to remember Sen. Ted Cruz, back in 2015, after then primary hopeful Donald Trump accused Ted’s dad of being a part of a conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy. Yes, Trump did say that. Nothing Trump has said or done, no low has been too low that one could not have assessed that this was the future we were looking at 

What so many people continue to want and pretend at is that the Republican Party, whose ideas and ideals Donald Trump so very clearly embodies, complicity in the Trump administration and his corruption and negligence, is somehow surprising. It isn’t. It’s a corrupt organization built on greed and the centralization of power. Their only policy platforms are fear and anger and bigotry and the use of those emotions to control a society.

The abject intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the GOP is never as obvious as the grand turn around the entire leadership of the party concerning their attitudes toward Donald Trump once he became the president of the United States.

Here’s a video of Ted Cruz responding to accusations made by Donald Trump, that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. More importantly, in this clip, Ted Cruz, full of shit forever and ever, tells the news media that he’s really going to tell everyone what he thinks about Donald Trump.

I guess that changed? I guess it didn’t matter? I guess all of those truly awful character traits work perfectly for leading the Republican Party. It’s pretty simple to understand in the end.

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In a year that has brought an impeachment, a raging pandemic, far too many tragic deaths, a hopeful election, and months of increasingly aggressive sedition aimed at overturning the government of the United States, could there still be a story to top them all. Well … maybe. 

The biggest story of 2020 might be one that didn’t hit the press until mid-December. Or it could be nothing. Because back in April and May, for a combined period of 30 hours, scientists at the Parkes Observatory in Australia listened in on a signal. A radio signal. One that they believed to be coming from the sun’s nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The nature of that signal could rock humanity’s beliefs about the universe and introduce perhaps the most groundbreaking discovery in history. Or it might have been someone warming a burrito. Despite what the wild-haired guy says on cable, it’s not aliens, because it’s never aliens. But the longer people have looked, the more of the “easy explanations” have been eliminated.

The story first leaked to The Guardian on Dec. 18. That the researchers involved, and those carrying out the analysis, sat on the data for eight months without spilling the beans makes it clear they understood exactly the reaction that comes any time someone pops up claiming to have discovered a possible sign of intelligent life in space. There will be jokes. The words “little” and “green” will be used. And skepticism tends to run right past the bounds of appropriate into dismissive.

There are very, very (and … very) good reasons to be skeptical. Not least of all because several past natural phenomena have first been thought to be potential signals of intelligence before astronomers and physicists figured out just how “clever” nonliving matter could be. In the most cited example, pulsars—regular points producing rapidly repeating patterns of “signals” at both radio and other wavelengths—turned out not to be either massive transmitters or some spectacular variety of space pharos. Instead they are the rapidly spinning neutron star cores left behind by exploded giant (but not supergiant) stars. Which kind of makes it not all that surprising that it took a bit for someone to find the explanation.

In another famous (or infamous) case, what had appeared to be a set of signals recurred so frequently that they were given a name: perytons. These signals kept returning over and over for 17 years, baffling scientists until the installation of a new instrument revealed that the mystery signals actually came from a microwave oven at the facility. And what facility would that be? Why, Parkes Observatory in Australia. That was just five years ago.

Oh yeah. You better believe they are checking everyone’s lunch schedule.

Another good reason to be skeptical of this report is that the researchers involved seem to have found exactly what they were looking for. This data was collected by the Breakthrough Listen project, a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project founded in part by Stephen Hawking and funded primarily by Israeli-Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner. The signal itself was first detected by a student, Shane Smith, who tagged it as BLC1, for “Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1.” That’s right. This is the first candidate they’ve found.

Anyone who stumbles across the very thing they hoped to locate, and does so practically in their own backyard, has to be held to quite a high standard of proof.

However, as Scientific American reports, after months of wading through the data, searching for possible sources of interference, and reviewing the contents of the signal, the scientists involved remain hopeful. The signal appears to come from a point source at distance rather than something close at hand. It also appears to be quite narrow in bandwidth, which would be somewhat unusual for a natural source. Finally, not only does the signal appear to originate from the area of Proxima Centauri, the researchers believe it shows signs of a regular shift that might be expected if the source was actually a planet orbiting that star.

As it happens, Proxima Centauri is quite a complex little system. It’s a red dwarf star, the most common kind of star in the universe, quite a bit smaller and cooler than our sun. In fact, it’s so small and cool that, despite being the nearest star to our own, it can’t be seen by the naked eye. (It also can’t be seen at all from the Northern Hemisphere, so plan a trip and bring at least a good pair of binoculars.)

This small star is believed to  orbit around the binary star Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. (Proxima is also known as Alpha Centauri C.) Those stars are larger yellow stars, more similar in size and temperature to the sun. Exactly what that orbit looks like, or how long it’s been going on, is the cause for a lot of computation and a lot of frustration. (Read Three Body Problem from Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin if you want to understand more about why this is so difficult to suss out.)

Little red Proxima is known to have at least two planets which, for perfectly sound planet-hunter reasons, are known as Proxima B and Proxima C. Proxima C is about 7 times the mass of Earth, making it roughly the same size as Neptune. However, it’s not clear if the planet is actually a gas giant or just the kind of oversized rocky world known as a “super Earth.”

Proxima B is where it really gets interesting. The planet is located very close to the star, much closer than Mercury is to the Sun. So close, in fact, that Proxima B’s “year” is just 11 days long. However, because Proxima Centauri is so much smaller and cooler than our sun, this close orbit places Proxima B squarely in the “habitable zone.” Which means nothing except that the level of radiation received by the planet is such that it could potentially have liquid water on the surface. Water is something that scientists believe is critical to everything we understand as life. Proxima B is also not a lot larger than Earth—about 1.17 times the mass of Earth. As far as Earth-like exoplanets go, Proxima B is a pretty decent candidate.

And, in interstellar terms, it’s right next door. Like right next door. This is absolutely the closest star out there. Why, it’s so close that if the Voyager 1 probe happened to be aimed in the right direction (it’s not), it would pass by Proxima in just … 71,000 years. 

Space: It’s big.

There are reasons to be dismissive of the idea that there could be life on Proxima B. For one thing, red dwarf stars may be smaller than yellow stars like our sun, but they also tend to be rather grumpy. Red dwarf stars have frequent storms and eruptions that would hit a close-orbiting planet like Proxima B with so many energetic particles it might quickly strip away any atmosphere. Not all scientists think this is the case, but if there’s going to be life around red dwarf stars, it would take some mechanisms we don’t yet understand. In Proxima’s case, there is also the complication of that maybe-orbit around the Alpha Centauri binary star, which could cause serious instability over time both for the red star and its planets.

Breakthrough Listen has been going to sites around the globe, buying up time on radio telescopes, and listening in for signals like what seems to have been detected at Proxima. It is definitely the hottest show in the whole of the many decades of SETI. So, as might be expected, SETI.org is … completely skeptical. Their latest news release contains what amounts to a sneering dismissal of the possible signal from Proxima Centauri. 

Besides emphasizing that this is only a candidate, the biggest thrust of the article is just how unlikely it would be to encounter intelligent life at the next system over. Not just intelligent life, but life at a technological stage so similar to our own that it’s using radio signals that we can detect and possibly identify. All of which is a pretty good point. In fact, the director of Breakthrough Listen has announced that the signals are “likely interference” that will soon be explained. 

Still, as SETI researcher Franck Marchis says in his conclusion … 

2020 has been a crazy year on so many levels, even in the field of SETI. After the mysterious appearance of monoliths and the announcement of the galactic federation, we now have BLC1, a curious and mysterious signal that might—or might not—have come from Proxima Centauri. It’s probably not alien and we will confirm this soon. Of course, as a SETI Institute scientist, nothing would please me more than to be proven wrong.

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No matter the day, month, season, or year, there is one subject that conservatives love to rally over. What is it? How low-income people spend their money. Especially when that money comes in the form of government assistance, like EBT food stamps, subsidized housing, or Social Security Disability Income (SSDI). People absolutely love to pontificate about whether poor folks should be able to buy soda and candy with food stamps, if able-bodied adults should need to do some form of community service in exchange for financial assistance, and, of course, the conspiracy theories about seeing someone with an iPhone or designer handbag or car using an EBT card in the checkout aisle.

This subject is unfortunately quite evergreen but feels particularly timely as on Monday, GOP Assemblyman Brian Manktelow, representing Wayne County, New York, argued that the state’s eviction moratorium contributed to the spread of the novel coronavirus. How, you might ask? As reported by the Times Union, according to Manktelow, people spent money that would otherwise go to rent on “large televisions, new cars, socializing.” Unsurprisingly, he had no evidence to support this claim. 

Manktelow is far from alone in spreading this sort of classist argument, however. People absolutely love to police how low-income folks spend their money or resources. How often, for example, do you hear gossip and judgments about what people allegedly see being purchased by someone using EBT? There are countless conspiracies out there that folks essentially blow their monthly food assistance on lobster, soda, and cakes. As someone who grew up on EBT, I know firsthand that isn’t the case. I also worked as a cashier at a supermarket for years; I didn’t witness that sort of spending even once, either. 

In addition to not being true, it’s also important to recognize, though, that low-income folks deserve treats and enjoyment as anyone else. What some might see as a “splurge” or “unnecessary,” like desserts or a nice cut of meat or fish, might be for a child’s birthday party, an anniversary, a cultural or religious holiday, or simply a once in a while treat. The reality is, we can’t know the frequency or reason behind other people’s purchases because we’re standing behind them in line once. And that’s fine, because it’s no one’s business but theirs. 

Countless articles give “advice” on how to cut spending habits to build wealth and shift out of poverty. You’ve likely heard the advice about making coffee at home, not eating so much avocado toast, or living at home for as long as you can. Even if well-intentioned, the advice is generally patronizing because it ignores the fundamental socioeconomic disparities that thrive in our capitalist culture. If you’re only making minimum wage, you cannot save up for a down payment on a house simply because you no longer buy avocados or lattes. If you’re facing a mountain of medical or personal debt, you can’t build up an emergency fund simply by purchasing produce that’s on sale. 

So, why are strangers so invested in how low-income people spend their money? My personal guess is that people find it easier and more immediately satisfying to judge what’s closest to them. It’s easier to judge an individual person, or a collective group, rather than to judge the structures that keep people in these cycles of poverty. Telling a low-income person to make their own coffee at home, for example, feels like the quicker fix than trying to get elected officials to reform laws and regulations that make poverty a lifelong trap.

Anti-poor rhetoric has been around for a long, long time, and as we know, Ronald Reagan really lit an ongoing fire under it with his “welfare queen” fixation. That’s an element of this conversation that is tricky but important: Many people qualify for public assistance but don’t seek it out. Why? Shame. Where does that shame come from? Society. Sometimes judgments come from people who share poverty—or are close to it—and that can be steeped in deep self-loathing and criticism. Basically, “I’m not as bad as those poor people” or “I struggle but I don’t accept hand-outs” mentalities. 

All of that said, you can’t personal finance your way out of generational poverty and systemic oppression, but financial literacy can empower your choices and help you feel more autonomous and informed, especially for young people who may have access to credit opportunities for the first time as they turn 18. When we consider intergenerational poverty, too, making financial literacy attainable to everyone via public education also helps work toward systemic change. 

But again, that’s about changing the big-picture structure. Not shaming people for buying a coffee with almond milk. 

This post was originally published on this site

NY Times:

Senate Overrides Trump’s Veto of Defense Bill, Dealing a Legislative Blow

Republicans joined Democrats to deliver President Trump the first veto override of his presidency in the last days of his term in an overwhelming, bipartisan vote.

Dana Milbank/WaPo:

Meet the Trump saboteur in charge of undermining Biden — and America

If, in the new year, pandemic vaccines aren’t available as promised, Americans can’t return to work because economic relief isn’t delivered or an adversary successfully attacks the United States because national security agencies couldn’t pay for new defenses, a hefty share of the blame should be placed on a man you’ve probably never heard of: One Russell Thurlow Vought.

As President Trump’s budget director, he conspicuously failed in his stated goal of controlling the debt. Despite his efforts, the debt increased by $6 trillion on his two-year watch as director of the Office of Management and Budget, the biggest jump in history.

He also has been disastrous in his fiscal forecasts. On Feb. 10, he predicted 2.8 percent growth for the year, saying, “our view is that, at this point, coronavirus is not something that is going to have ripple effects.” A few weeks later, the economy collapsed.

ProPublica:

Inside the Fall of the CDC

How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus.

[CDC expert Jay] Butler’s team rushed to finalize the guidance for churches, synagogues and mosques that Trump’s aides had shelved in April after battling the CDC over the language. In reviewing a raft of last-minute edits from the White House, Butler’s team rejected those that conflicted with CDC research, including a worrisome suggestion to delete a line that urged congregations to “consider suspending or at least decreasing” the use of choirs.

On Friday, Trump’s aides called the CDC repeatedly about the guidance, according to emails. “Why is it not up?” they demanded until it was posted on the CDC website that afternoon.

The next day, a furious call came from the office of the vice president: The White House suggestions were not optional. The CDC’s failure to use them was insubordinate, according to emails at the time.

Fifteen minutes later, one of Butler’s deputies had the agency’s text replaced with the White House version, the emails show. The danger of singing wasn’t mentioned.

Early that Sunday morning, as Americans across the country prepared excitedly to return to houses of worship, Butler, a churchgoer himself, poured his anguish and anger into an email to a few colleagues.

“I am very troubled on this Sunday morning that there will be people who will get sick and perhaps die because of what we were forced to do,” he wrote.

NY Times:

In Minority Communities, Doctors Are Changing Minds About Vaccination

Many Black and Hispanic Americans mistrust government officials, and instead have turned to physicians they have long known.

But the assurances of Black and Hispanic doctors can make an enormous difference, experts say. “I don’t want us to benefit the least,” Dr. Wiley said. “We should be first in line to get it.”

Many physicians like her now find themselves not just urging friends and relatives to get the vaccine, but also posting messages on social media and conducting group video calls, asking people to share their concerns and offering reliable information.

Boston Globe:

Boston infectious disease specialists: Our New Year’s resolutions

As we ring in a new year, here are our resolutions; please consider joining us.

Resolution #1: We resolve to double down on measures to protect ourselves, our families, and our community so we may endure the current surge of COVID-19 cases. We all can do our part by covering our faces anytime we are with anyone outside our immediate household, by maintaining at least 6 feet of physical distance, following hand hygiene and environmental control measures, and by not going to work or school when feeling unwell. Masking, including while indoors, is safe and more effective in preventing COVID-19 — including the coronavirus mutation first seen in England — than any other tool we have available today and clearly works to prevent transmission of the virus.

CNN:

Democratic early vote turnout concerns GOP in Georgia runoff

Republicans directly involved in the Georgia runoff for two US Senate seats are increasingly concerned that the Democrats are outperforming their pace in early voting as compared to the 2020 general election.

The better-than-expected turnout in early voting by registered Democrats puts a new level of pressure on Republicans to turn out their base voters on the final day of voting, January 5.

Republicans always anticipated that much like in the general election, the bulk of their voters would vote in the traditional fashion — in person and on Election Day. The party did make a concerted effort to encourage their supporters to vote early or by mail-in — but they fully understood that President Donald Trump’s consistent attacks on mail in voting would make that a difficult sell. According to two different GOP operatives familiar with the Republican analysis of data being collected, Republicans need an impressive turnout on Tuesday, January 5 in order to overcome the Democratic turnout in the two weeks of early voting leading up to Election Day.

“We’ve always known we need a big Election Day,” said one of the operatives. “It is the same as the General (Election).”

Harry Enten/CNN:

How Biden defied history at every turn to win

Many future presidents lose the Iowa caucuses (e.g. Trump), but they’re usually competitive. No future president in the modern primary era (i.e. since 1972) finished below third place in Iowa. John McCain was, before Biden, the only eventual major party nominee to come in fourth place in Iowa. But he at least came within 0.3 points of third place….

More amazing is what happened next: Biden got blown out in the New Hampshire primary.

Biden came in fifth place in New Hampshire. He won less than 10% of the vote. No major party nominee had ever finished lower than second in New Hampshire in the modern primary era.

In pretty much any other year, a fourth place finish in Iowa and a fifth place finish in New Hampshire would spell doom for a presidential candidate.

That’s especially the case when Biden followed up his Iowa and New Hampshire showings with a distant second place finish in the Nevada caucuses.

This post was originally published on this site

Welcome back, happy holidays, and so forth. Still bored and stuck at home? Good, keep doing that. Until there’s enough vaccine for everybody, everybody needs to plant themselves at home as much as possible. Read a book. Play some games. Watch television.

If you’ve gone through everything your television has to offer and come up empty, you’re welcome to join us for our quick tour of the best of anime. (See: Part 1, Part 2.) Note, yet again, that this is an effort on our part to introduce American viewers to a genre of entertainment that keeps hooking international viewers and which has poked new life into American animation studios with continuing proof that not everything animated has to be a kids’ show or a stakeless sitcom.

Last time around we name-dropped just a dozen or so of the most famous anime series to ever be produced—at least, of the ones that you can easily find in American markets and which have English voiceovers that eliminate the need for subtitles. That was a pretty shallow pool, so this time we’ll give advice on recent and current hits that you can easily find, primarily on Netflix. As with last time, we’re going to focus on shows that have been translated to English and don’t require subtitles, and none require explaining much in the way of cultural differences (though you might benefit more if you know why someone would be particularly embarrassed to turn into, of all possible animals, a tanuki.)

So here are some of the newest shows worth trying.

Violet Evergarden

For those that like: War stories, romance, Fullmetal Alchemist

Adapted from the Japanese light novels (literally, what it sounds like: short novels, either stand-alones or as series, typically targeting young adults), the anime adaptation by Kyoto Animation is gorgeous, moody, and dreamlike. War veteran Violet, a child soldier, attempts to integrate into post-war society as an Auto Memory Doll, a professional typist used by the illiterate and the wealthy to ghostwrite letters. Prosthetic, robotic arms and hands allow her to type—but Violet has so repressed her emotions, and is so generally unfamiliar with everything about non-war living, that she cannot grasp the most central role of her job, the process of turning the jumbled or vague descriptions her clients give her into the delicate or diplomatic prose of a professional letter-writer.

This one gets an enthusiastic thumbs up. It’s simply gorgeous as animation, with an episodic plot slow-paced enough to do justice to Violet’s attempts to become the direct opposite of a professional war machine through force of her own will, but never so sluggish as to feel overdrawn. What you won’t get is much in the way of explanation as to where Violet came from. She will remain, for the most part, a mystery.

Carole & Tuesday

For those that like: Music, sci-fi, Behind the Music but on Mars

Carole is a refugee from Earth, now squeaking out a living on barely terraformed Mars with a series of odd jobs while composing and playing music for uninterested street passerby. Tuesday is a rich and sheltered teen who, inspired by Cyndi Lauper, runs away from home to pursue a musical career because that’s what an aspiring musician ought to do. The two meet and, of course, a perfect musical partnership is born.

The music is the point of the show, and the focus of every episode. Against a sci-fi background, the pair competes against a let’s-say eclectic group of other aspiring groups, including, eventually, model Angela, who is attempting to move past a career as child star by reinventing herself—more than a little cynically—as the perfect pop idol.

The rest is a withering satire of the entire music industry, from an unlikely volunteer manager and a hyper-abusive eventual producer to a series of pompous fellow amateurs and a certain self-absorbed DJ. Industry in-jokes run rampant. On the now-habitable Mars, nearly all music is written and perfected by computer algorithm; composing songs without such tools, as the near-penniless Carole and Tuesday do, is considered archaic. Genetic engineering, politics, and terrorism all come into play, along with an anti-refugee furor to create a Trumpian political atmosphere that threatens to bring it all down. The story feels written for this precise moment in time.

The show is multiracial and set on a Mars where transgenderism is commonplace and uncontroversial, though the rationale given for that transgenderism—”it’s because of the radiation”—feels cheap. It may not be entirely family-friendly, due to music industry behaviors of drinkin’, cussin’, and carrying on, with the most fraught scene being a particular performance by “The Mermaid Sisters,” a quartet of drag queens whose unconventional lyrical choices will be repeated ad nauseam by your youngest children on their next Zoom call to grandma.

BNA: Brand New Animal

For those that like: Batman or film noir, but with furries

Alternate, much better title: Fluffy Detective Shirou-san

This is an unlikely entry, at first glance, and its promotional materials make it look a bit different from what it ends up being. But it’s worth a try. We first meet Michiru, a Japanese teen, as she flees to Anima City while pursued by human hunters. Born a human, after a traffic accident Michiru has found herself transformed into a “beastman,” or half-human half-animal. Specifically, she’s now part tanuki—a Japanese “raccoon dog.”

Once we enter Anima City, a self-governing refuge for beastmen in a world that holds them generally in contempt, the tone turns out to be something different. We are in a crime drama: Michiru meets the silver-haired wolf beastman Shirou, a superhuman-even-in-this-crowd keeper of the peace that cooperates with the city’s mayor to root out dangers to the city. Shirou solves these problems in the traditional Batman manner: by punching people. Repeatedly.

Not entirely by coincidence, Michiru soon finds herself at least tangentially involved with every new threat appearing in Anima City, from a suspicious new religion to an all-powerful medical conglomerate with a maybe-shady interest in “helping” beastmen. She becomes the gruff Shirou’s unasked-for sidekick, and crime-fighting ensues.

This one had the potential to go all sorts of wrong, since the initial pitch might have gone something like “What if we make a Clint Eastwood police drama, but absolutely everybody is a furry the whole time. Clint, the mayor, everybody.” Fortunately it is not that—and if you were hoping it was, you will kindly keep that to yourself, please—but instead something of a blend of Miyazaki-adjacent anthropomorphisms, a hyper-saturated color palette, and an unassuming hero-and-villain tale. It fits the niche of pleasantly weird without being disturbingly weird.

What’s more, while it at first sets off alarm bells as perhaps just another cute Japanese girls with animal ears clone, it actually takes its cues and core premise from Japanese folklore, rich in tales of animals and animal spirits taking human form to blend in with or pull pranks on unsuspecting humans. The beastmen of Anima City are creatures that have always been around and able to transform to human shapes, but were driven out of centuries of hiding after humanity encroached on traditional homelands. Once able to survive by convincing humanity they were the world’s gods, the shapeshifters are now treated with revulsion and contempt.

My Hero Academia

For those that like: X-Men

Available on Crunchyroll, My Hero Academia is among the closest analogs to an American superhero show in the anime world. After humans began being born with quirks, or in the X-Men’s parlance mutant powers, the inherited mutations spread until essentially all the world has superpowers, though not all are as super as others. This leads, of course, to “superhero” becoming a legitimate profession—a heavily licensed and regulated one, in fact, with elite schools that teach heroism amid relentless consumerism and popularity rankings that dictate how much money would-be superheroes can make and whether they can make a go of it at all. At the top of this food chain is All Might, the blond all-chin-and-eyebrows American-styled superpuncher that the entire world looks up to. He’s the show’s Superman stand in.

Izuku Midoriya, on the other hand, is a gentle hero-obsessed kid and ultimate All Might fanboy whose dreams of becoming a professional hero were dashed after his family doctor tells him that he has ended up one of the rare humans born with no superpowers at all. He is devastated, and cannot accept it.

Hero and fan meet by accident, and neither turn out to be what the other presumed them to be. The all-powerful All Might is a dying superhero whose injuries in the line of duty are now too serious to ignore, one still trying to maintain his public appearance and do heroic deeds through sheer force of will. And Midoriya, All Might later concludes, may have what it takes to be a hero after all.

This one is a straight-up superhero show with no complications, both a homage to Marvel and DC comic book heroes and willing to poke fun. Its charm comes from Midoriya’s earnestness and single-minded obsession with becoming what he thought he could not, and from fellow Hero Academy students who range from the usual comic relief and one-notes to a few capable of holding the show on their own.

But there’s nothing too deep about it, even with its look at superheroism as popularity contest, and as shounen it can suffer from the Naruto flaw of dragging the latest battle-of-the-moment out longer than it needs to. The most recent season, featuring a low-stakes villain who commits few actual crimes but mostly films himself being a petty nuisance in the hope of attracting online fans, is weakest. But it’s ongoing, and more episodes are expected soon.

If you liked that and want more superhero action, or if you didn’t like it but are still a DC-and-Marvel junkie, you might go a bit further and try:

One-Punch Man

For those that like: Superheroes, comedy

A gentle send-up of superhero and shounen action shows both, One-Punch Man is what it says on the tin: a hero who has physically trained himself to be so strong that he can defeat any opponent with a single punch. Saitama may be the strongest hero in existence, but his unassuming demeanor (and atrocious written test scores) land him in the bottom rungs of the Hero Association.

There is a plot, and indeed our bored and boring hero does indeed end up having to save the world, but all that is ancillary to Saitama’s quest to find someone, anyone, he can fight without leveling them immediately. It’s not that he’s vain or power-hungry or is itching for the same treatment other heroes get as they make their rounds; he’s just bored.

Little Witch Academia

For those that like: Harry Potter, Kiki’s Delivery Service

There’s not much to say about this one. It is the story of a group of friends in a school for witchcraft, there are plots and morals and scary things and failures and victories and so forth, and if you do not like it you are probably a monster. That’s all there is to it. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.

Available on Netflix, Little Witch Academia has for years now had a devoted internet fandom, all of it focused on why aren’t you making more episodes of Little Witch Academia or why are you not making more episodes of Little Witch Academia right now. That should tell you all you need to know about whether it’s worth a try.

But what about?

We’ll close out this time with two recent ultra-hits that don’t quite hit their marks, but that can’t go without mention because someone will mention them:

Attack on Titan

For those that like: Steampunk, military, giant monsters, horror, gore

Attack on Titan is a post-apocalyptic entry with quite the innovative hook, in its initial episodes. A medieval-styled fragment of humanity is trapped behind tall walls; the rest of the known world has been occupied by giant humanoid monsters that will eat whatever normal-scaled humans fall into reach. They are battled by a small military force that uses steampunk-ish grappling gear to soar through the air (and within range of the giants’ only weak spots) like awkward fighter jets. Our hero is heroic, but a bit thickheaded; his survival is largely due to his two childhood friends, who also join the military after the giants breach their village’s walls.

The mystery of how humanity came to be this way—and conflict with a central government that seems to know the truth, and be hiding it—gives the show its intrigue. This is a horror-and-adventure show that does not skimp on the gore.

But: As the show’s central mysteries become less mysterious, the explanations feel less intriguing than the original premise and a too-strong conspiracy-to-mystery ratio sets in. For a show about giant murder monsters, the show can drag. Our main hero never finds much in the way of personality, primarily being a brick tossed around by the rest of the plot, and everything after the first season feels like it’s struggling to maintain momentum. Again: This is a horror show, with lots of blood and gore and horrific deaths. In a few later-season episodes, though, it can sometimes feel like it’s shrunk down to something resembling an overly dramatic and military-heavy Scooby Doo episode. The flaws make it hard to recommend as a top-tier entry.

Sword Art Online

For those that like: Sci-fi, fantasy, swords and sword accessories

This is another tough one. The plot of the original Sword Art Online, and the premise around which all later transformations of the series rely, is the near-future invention of new virtual reality equipment so advanced that it allows gamers to become immersed in fantasy worlds that look and feel absolutely real. This is accomplished with virtual reality helmets that tap into and manipulate the brain’s electric signals directly. It all goes wrong on day one, when the technology’s designer traps the gamers now logged into his game inside by removing their ability to log out and with new code that will kill any player in real life if their helmets are removed or if their characters die in his game world. The experiment: How will this world be different if the would-be players are now literally putting their lives on the line each time they attempt to defeat the dungeon’s increasingly powerful monsters?

Rather than explain the series’ flaws, it might help to describe the results. Each Sword Art Online story consists of two parts. In the first, an elaborate new world is created with interesting characters, environments, and premises. In the second, the writing gives out and all of that gets tossed in the trash for a quickie ending that abandons all those good things and just … moves on. Over and over.

The premise of being trapped in a computer-generated reality is a popular one, probably because our technology seems to tantalizingly close to being able to accomplish such things—but also because abandoning this world in favor of a new one in which you are not an unremarkable nobody, but the savior of an entire alternate reality is, let’s face it, just as surefire a hit as any other story of discovered superheroism. In a virtual reality, anyone can be their own Mary Sue.

And this series, a mega-hit, has perhaps 80% of the elements of something superb. It’s the other 20%, all of it due to atrocious writing, that can end up grating. Entire story arcs that disappear with the flimsiest of resolutions. The constant trope of our hero saving his harem of online allies, after each of the skilled and perfectly capable female characters is hobbled by plot device and now requires their male savior. The population of casual murderers wandering the streets and internets of near-future Japan, as an aside, itself seems rather brazenly off-kilter.

But the death knell is in its cookie-cutter portrayal of its main villains, nearly all of which are demonstrated to be villains through the same repeated plot device of sexually assaulting our female hero before our male hero dives in to save the day. That’s it. Every villain is just that, and every new villain’s evil plot is explained while they are menacing a female captive in ways that the show’s staff seems to have a pointedly gross desire to dwell on. In the latest season, our male lead is reduced to a mindless shell after his brain is essentially short-circuited by the equipment being used—but he still manages to save his forever-expanding collection of smitten love interests, including the ones already established to be well capable of smearing their opponents’ corpses across three kilometers without any help. It again follows every season’s path of pairing a new interesting world with a climax so telegraphed that it makes you embarrassed to have watched any of it. There’s so, so many better shows—this one you can pass on. Maybe a future remake will fix what’s so badly broken and give us the original show audiences found so compelling.

Instead, you might try Log Horizon, which takes a nearly identical premise, puts smart characters at the helm, and turns the whole thing into an extended study on, of all things, the economic and political ramifications of trapping its gamers in its alternate world. You know, between sword fights. That one ends on a cliffhanger, but the long-awaited continuation is finally starting up again in the next few weeks.

Next time: Into the breach. You’ll want to turn on the subtitles for these next hits and hidden gems, but it will be worth it.

This post was originally published on this site

While it can feel like thinking back to March is like thinking back about 100 years, it was, in fact, less than a year ago. If you were in the United States, we probably all experienced something relatively similar—debates on whether or not to buy or make our own masks (or wear them at all), how much food to stock up on, if you’d be working from home for a long time (if at all), and, somehow, how not to gain weight. Yes. Diet culture roared into the early stages of the pandemic and made itself known. Little time passed before the internet was filled with jokes about the “Quarantine 15,” a riff on the “Freshman 15” students might gain during their first year of college. With talk of “soft pants” (formerly known as sweatpants), closing gyms, and, frankly, less socializing, a lot of people fretted about how to maintain or lose weight amid a global pandemic.

As we near the New Year, diet culture is likely to return with its standard vengeance, even as we still continue to face a global health crisis. In the face of diet culture, I give you this sentiment: You can eat what makes you happy and you don’t have to feel bad about it, Quarantine 15 or not.

Obviously, the big caveat when it comes to talking about food and diet is that you and your doctor know best. If you’re on a special diet or restrictions under a doctor’s guidance, of course, you should listen to the medical professionals in your life. Same with if your restrictions coincide with an ethical or religious belief system that’s important to you. My point is not that everyone should feel pressured to eat everything in front of them with unfiltered abandon, but rather, to drop the morality of food, and especially morality in certain kinds of food. 

Here’s one example. When scrolling social media or reading headlines, how often do you see people push foods, meals, or recipes as “healthy” or “good for you” or “better” or “real”? While this obviously varies a bit on which corner of the internet you find yourself in, I’d say it’s pretty insidious. And here’s the thing: Food is food. Health is subjective. What does it mean for a food to be “good”? Sure, it could refer to your calories or your macros. “Good” can also refer to a much-loved family recipe, appealing smells and textures, a filling portion, or a meal that’s fast to prepare.

Here’s another common example. While we often read the word “real” to mean a food isn’t processed, the truth is, even the most processed, lab-made food is, well, real. And the truth is that when diet culture tells us only certain foods are “real” or “good,” there’s a whole of classism and ableism wrapped up in those ideas. Whether you make your French fries from scratch or they come frozen from a tray, the food is still real. And what you choose should be a choice based on what works for you, not what a diet influencer tries to shame you into.

What we eat does not make us good or bad people. Food can be one reflection of our values—vegetarianism or veganism, for example, or buying from local vendors or small businesses. Food can also be an extension of other goals—if you’re training for a major athletic feat, you may prioritize some food choices over others. But no food is inherently good or bad, and eating (or not eating) something doesn’t change your integrity as a person. 

And if you’re wrestling with the argument of, well, what about health? Here’s a study to chew on. One 2017 study suggests that perceived weight stigma actually poses a greater health risk than what people ate. The same study found that weight stigma poses an equal health risk to that connected with a lack of physical activity. So, yes. Weight stigma and fatphobia can be legitimately damaging to people’s health.

Want to eat holiday cookies? Go for it—and only use the word “indulge” if it speaks to you with warmth. We’re surviving a literal pandemic. If there’s a time to be kinder to ourselves and drop the diet culture pressures, it’s now.