The Audacious Roundup
For the week of January 6th
AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGS
Our January selection is Private Rites by Julia Amrfield. We will have a live book club discussion with the author on January 26h at 2 pm EST/11 am PST. Please note that this is a different time from our usual discussions because the author lives abroad. Registration is open! I hope to see many of you there.
THE NEWSLETTER WEEK IN REVIEW
PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL NEWS
Bitter Southerner included my essay about Tik Tok, The New Pornographers, as one of their best pieces of the year.
Opinions is out in paperback. The Portable Feminist Reader is coming out in 2025. Pre-orders are now open and it is always a huge help when you pre-order. Stand Your Ground is OUT NOW! Megan Pillow and I wrote a book called Do the Work. The Tenth Anniversary edition of Bad Feminist is available.
Debbie Millman has a new book, Love Letter to a Garden, and it will be published on April 15th, 2025. Also included in the book are 10 recipes by me—a mini cookbook if you will. Pre-orders are open!
You can watch the powerful documentary Survivor Made online for free if you need it to be or for a modest fee if you can swing it.
This week I am writing from our home in Los Angeles which hasn’t burned down though we remain vigilant. I am grateful for that but worried not only about the next several days but for all the people who have lost so much. The Pacific Palisades, where we were going to move, is completely gone. Altadena, a predominantly Black community, has also been destroyed by fire and here is a list of Black families with GoFundMes. It’s… shocking. It’s beyond shocking, honestly. As is often case, people with disabilities are not receiving the critical assistance they need, even for evacuation. It’s pretty grim here but I am heartened to see that the city (the people, not the bureaucracy) is absolutely stepping up and mutual aid is really rising to the occasion that our governmental infrastructure seems incapable of handling. And while this is heartening, it’s also infuriating. GoFundMes only work if you know enough people who can afford to contribute and if those people care enough about your individual plight. It’s a popularity contest for survival. We see this all the time, where people make pleas for the money to receive much-needed healthcare or offset funeral costs or rebuild their lives after a natural or unnatural disaster and it is absolutely unsustainable. We all deserve better from our government and most of us, sadly, know they don’t care.
Celebrities like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have made donations to the victims of the fires but again… benevolence is not a policy solution.
Gavin Newsom is governing and talking about his plan for recovery. There is a lot of misinformation being spread so Newsom created a fact-based website. Pathetic that this needs to happen. The paparazzi are running into the fires to get photos of celebrity-related fire news which says something about our cultural priorities and it ain’t good.
Also, incarcerated people being paid pennies, are on the frontlines of fighting these fires. Yes, climate change is a current and ongoing catastrophe. We need to reckon with that more than we are.
Before all this, California had a budget surplus but now…. probably not.
In Gaza, the death toll now surpasses 46,000. Reports say Israel and Hamas are nearing a ceasefire agreement. We shall see. And, in the meantime, mourn these incomprehensible losses and the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people.
The first human bird flu death in the U.S. has been reported.
In Virginia, a hospital worker has been accused of… and I cannot believe what I am about to type, breaking the bones of Black babies in the NICU. Incomprehensible what people are capable of. I just…. what do you even say?
The 119th Congress has been sworn in.
As Trump continues to talk about colonizing Greenland and Canada, someone thought to ask people in Greenland how they feel about it.
Special counsel Jack Smith has resigned. And in news that will shock no one, his report claims that Trump would have been convicted for election interference.
Clear, the airport service, has ambitions that extend well beyond the airport. That’s kind of interesting given that oftentimes, the Clear lines are much slower than pre-check and non-pre-check TSA lines. It’s all broken.
An in-depth article from Vulture about the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman. It’s pretty horrifying and Amanda Palmer seems about as culpable as her ex-husband.
Zuckerberg who, with all his billions, has been unable to buy himself a decent personality or avail himself of therapy is making Meta/Facebook into a shithole to be avoided at all costs by removing any guardrails for hate speech and saying his company, which is 2/3 men, needs to be more masculine. A walking parody. If you want to delate Meta and it’s ecosystem of apps, here’s how. And if you can’t or don’t want to, that’s fine, too.
Should we rethink homework for kids?
Books by women of color that you can look forward to in 2025, compiled by R.O. Kwon. And Lit Hub also has a list of anticipated books.
Did a romantasy author plagiarize one of her peers?
“Rawdog,” is the word of 2024.
Bob Dylan has a nemesis.
One of the MoviePass guys has plead guilty to crimes.
Behind Burlap & Barrel, the spice company (whose products I really enjoy).
TikTok is going to have to cease operations in the US. Probably. The youths are flocking to Red Note as “Tik Tok refugees,” which…. okay!
In an excellent essay, Joel Grey asks if contemporary audiences will heed the message offered by the musical Cabaret. I certainly hope so. (Also, the revival is really good On the night we saw the show, with Redmayne as the lead, Joel Grey and John Kander (?!) were in the audience and were brought up on stage after. It was a remarkable moment.
A conversation with Pedro Almodóvar.
ProPublica is hiring for several positions.
There’s a new Bad Bunny album. I enjoy his music but the mumbling is a lot for me because I am old. Still…. NUEVAYOLLLLLLL!
RE Zuckerberg...I truly hope that a "Bluesky for FB" solution is created soon. I would quit FarceBook in a second, but....soooooo many local bands, local businesses, groups, etc use it as their only means of advertising events and similar. And yes, if you can afford it, Burlap and Barrel is amazing and the best turmeric.
Burlap & Barrel has the best cumin. Stay safe. Everyone. Stay safe.