Figured while I’m riding to the gym this is as good a time as any to stretch writing muscles as well as pass the time. I’ll try to make this a daily occurance.
A couple of weeks ago, Derek Chauvin was justifiably convicted of murder/manslaughter. It is an indictment on our system that the American public was waiting with baited breath. It’s unlikely in the future this country will do better and, in fact, will give more money to police. But, it is good to see someone held accountable. I pray that as the years pass accountability is commonplace and not a rarity.
On similar topic, I despise BLM for normalizing referring to black people as ‘black bodies’ in common discourse. As people are emboldened to record police misconduct (as they should, shudder to think how many of these cases go without recordings) we have people doing film review and All 22 deciding if a victim ‘deserves’ to be shot or if they ‘complied’ with an order. It’s made worse when many of these videos show the person’s life ending. It’s a dystopian world where we can freely watch the state execute people and part of it is due to normalizing referring to people as ‘bodies’ to be analyzed as opposed to people who’s lives tragically ended.
One thing this pandemic has taught me is that humans can adapt to be social even with restrictions. It may seem obvious, but I’m always fascinated by how much masking and distancing are in the norm. What fascinated me even more is when, over past year, we develop bubbles of safety with not just family but friends as well. An almost implicit trust that the people we are around do right thing to protect themselves and thus we can be unmasked/less distanced around them. Masks and distancing are common in all forms and media today. It’ll be a while before we go back to how we were, but I’m confident as quickly as we embraced this new normal we will embrace our ‘old’ normal. We can’t repress 2020 but my hope is we can learn from it and have a much more cohesive response going forward.
I personally will use this new normal to go out more and meet more people. I’ve been using dating apps for a while, but I think a major problem is it creates a negative feedback loop. Women are inundated with so many messages that it’s very unlikely they get back to you. From there, due to nature of apps and notifications, it can be difficult to maintain attention. I feel like for me I should try more organic way of meeting people and being as outgoing in person as I apparently am online.
See you tomorrow!
