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Jeanette Winterson on Substack

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Matt Wilson

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We talk about prison "abolition" and not prison "reform" not because we believe it's possible to create a system where no incarceration is necessary. We say "abolition" because we want to create systems that allow the establishment of a new reparative justice structure, which uses incarceration as little as possible, and which is not a reform of the current incarceration structure, which does not repair or do justice. We do not believe the current structure can be reformed.

Reforming our current incarceration system into a justice system would be like reforming a dog fighting structure into a dog training structure. (And before anyone accuses me of comparing people in prison to dogs - no, I'm not, but I am saying that people who run prisons treat people like dogs.) Dog fighting structures were never designed to train dogs. The people that run them aren't qualified to train dogs for anything but violence (and are incentivized to continue training violence). The incarceration system creates violence and antisocial behavior. It is incentivized to continue doing so. It was never meant to repair social harm.

Prison abolition means, piece by piece, cutting off the supply of bodies to the incarceration structure.

When drug users get medical care instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house drug users. When the mentally ill are given medical care instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the mentally ill. When homeless people are given housing instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the homeless. When impoverished people are given welfare and food benefits instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the poor. When youth are given opportunities outside of gangs, prisons have fewer gang members to house. We shrink the system, and we keep shrinking it. Next we create systems to reduce the population of domestic abusers. Next we tackle sexual assault. Every time it shrinks, we look at the remaining population and figure out what population we can tackle next.

That's how prison abolition works.

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i dropped by my favourite secondhand bookstore and found what is possibly the most incredible knitting book iver ever seen. that teaches you how to knit little gardens and sew them into a massive quilt 3d. the photos i took are atrocious and do NOT do this book justice

thats a PRIORY GARDEN WITH MONKS

IT EVEN TEACHES YOU HOW TO MAKE ALL THE TOOLS ABD BASKETS AND POTS AND PLANTS

LOOK AT THE SOME OF THE FOLIAGE

i have never been more upset to not have $30 ready to buy this. its incredible. i have to find it online somewhere. i knew the moment i saw this i had to share it with EVERYONE

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Hi Dr. Demon. My partner's mom exhibits traits and behaviors consistent w NPD. The other family members don't acknowledge it in any meaningful way, they just sigh and say "that's just how she is" even when it's crossing boundaries or hurting someone. As a partner, what do I do in this situation? My response when the behavior is directed at me in harmful ways has been to ignore it or enable it, mirroring what everyone else does. I've been doing this for 4 years now and I'm tired. I also have fears about having to take her in when she's older and be a caretaker or at least provide her space in our home - even though I don't want to do this, my partner has expressed wanting to do this. I love my partner and want to keep making this relationship work, and I also find my relationship with his mom to be the most difficult/harmful one in my life.

Let's put aside whether or not your partner's mom has NPD -- my thoughts on the utility of personality disorders as a framework for understanding or predicting behavior are already out there, and you can read them if you like here:

What I'm going to do is focus, as my favorite advice columnist Captain Awkward does, not on the potential psychological reasons why your partner's mom acts the way she does, but the behavior, and crucially, the behavior's impact on you. It doesn't really matter whether some psychiatrists would assign her a label that pathologizes some pretty common effects of attachment trauma. That's immaterial to the fact that she is doing a lot of shit that bothers you -- and that matters, and you deserve to address it for your own sake, regardless of what her own motives or backhistory are.

And to that end, I'd recommend: reading a shit ton of Captain Awkward! She really is the fuckin expert at diffusing tense situations assertively, wriggling oneself free of the grasp of manipulative and guilting people, and realigning family boundaries so that they work for you. Jen's writing concerns itself with behavior that you can take to maintain your own peace of mind, which is what ultimately matters and what you have control over. Here are a few select readings:

There's a lot of practical advice in her other columns about dealing with intrusive/invasive/guilting/irritating friends and coworkers that you might find useful in a roundabout way, too! Jen is a genius at unpacking social dynamics and making what can feel torturously complex and difficult suddenly very simple. Check her stuff out!

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Over The Waves by Setsuko Matsushima

art quilt

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some roots and a pomegranate

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By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.

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People left behind often interpret being cut off as a punishment, and I’ve read enough letters from the people who leave that I can’t say 100% that it isn’t intended that way, at least at first. A good sign that leaving was meant to teach a lesson is if they keep popping back up to see if you’ve learned yours yet. But if somebody goes away and stays gone? The simplest and best explanation is that they wanted freedom more than they wanted anything else. Freedom from you, from the institutions you might represent, from the situation that brought them to that point, from painful reminders, from a flurry of minor annoyances, from a lack of enjoyment or pleasure, from pressure or obligation to make the situation be any different. Freedom goes both ways, so when somebody hits that block button or tells you outright not to contact them anymore, they are telling you that there is nothing whatsoever you can do to fix whatever this is, and now you get to be free of it. Breaking up means that you don’t have to work on the relationship anymore. It’s done. Your work here is done. Grieve for what you lost. Then? Be free.

I love Captain Awkward so fuckin much

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Sticking the Landing: On Kickers

In our excerpt of episode 430 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, host Brendan O’Meara talks to author Louisa Thomas about kickers and entry points into stories. 

Sometimes it’s more like I have an idea, and I need to think about, well, what’s the lede? And that becomes the way into it, and then how does it develop? I don’t write an outline. I usually write a few notes. I have a document full of research or ideas or thoughts or interviews if I’ve done interviews, and then I just start writing.

For a profile, I block it out a little bit more. I still don’t have an outline, but I have beats I want to hit, and a general sense of structure. What’s sort of unusual is that I do a lot of the planning and even pre-writing in my head.

Read the full excerpt.

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Nectar-loving Ethiopian wolves may be the first carnivore pollinators

“The behaviour is interesting because it shows nectar-feeding and pollination by non-flying mammals might be more widespread than currently recognised, and that the ecological significance of these lesser-known pollinators might be more important than we think,” says Lai. “It’s very exciting.”

Lai and her colleagues at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme now hope to dig deeper into the behaviour and its ramifications. “Trying to confirm actual pollination by the wolves would be ideal, but that would be quite challenging,” she says. “I’m also very interested in the social learning aspect of the behaviour. We’ve seen this year adults bringing their juveniles to the flower fields, which could indicate cultural transmission.”

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No better feeling in the world than when your pet comes to hang out with you 💙

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Caper in the Castro is a legendary video game, not because legions of die-hard fans continue to play it, but because it was thought to be lost forever. Now, what is largely considered to be the first LGBTQ-focused video game (it was released in 1989) is on the Internet Archive for anybody to play.

The game is a noir point-and-click that puts the player in the (gum)shoes of a private detective named Tracker McDyke who is, in case you couldn’t guess by the name, a lesbian. McDyke must unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Tessy LaFemme, a transgender woman, in San Francisco’s Castro district, an historically gay neighbourhood.

OOOOOHhh!

The game was released as charityware – freely, with a strong request to give a donation an AIDS Charity of their choice. I’d like to push towards still following that and donating, if you’re able.

(And you might also want to donate to the Internet Archive, who is hosting it now, while you’re at it – they’re in the middle of a donation drive, and could use your support.)

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Anastasia Trusova on Instagram

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Jia Li (Chinese, b.1964), Summer Light, 2015, Watercolor on paper

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Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, a study said on Monday. While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested. For the new study, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savannah elephants in Kenya. The research "not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others," lead study author Michael Pardo said. "This indicates that elephants can determine whether a call was intended for them just by hearing the call, even when out of its original context," the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University said in a statement.

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