Soup, Luigi, and Santa’s Trans Sister!?

Hey friends,

Hope you’re all hanging in there. My go-to soup recipes? Thanks for asking: my favorite is this Tuscan white bean soup, but I’ve also made this lentil soup a few times lately because if some guy ate it every weekday for 17 years (do you think he knows he’s autistic?), it’s gotta be good. Right now I am making a third soup that is basically just cauliflower, because I am trying to mix it up but am also soooo lazy. All that to say: please send your favorite vegan soup recipes (or other lazy person vegan recipes) tysm.

I was off-work and offline most of the week, so I do not have any real news to share, although we are very very close to actually getting a Portland tour venue nailed down! In the meantime, we’ve still got tickets to the Gender Ordeal shows in Washington DC, San Francisco, and Seattle (late show only), if u need a last-minute gift for a transgender coastal elite in ur life.

In personal news: I’m back in Brooklyn, and I’ve learned that Luigi is also here? We are neighbors, basically. When will we kiss??? (Btw, Luigi is taken care of re: legal funds, so if you’re feeling the urge to support him, it would be cute to support a community bail fund or activist legal fund in his name!)

By the way, if you’re writing to someone in prison, it’s worth reading this. And speaking of mail, here’s one more plug to put us on your holiday mailing list, why not! It’s weird to be continually talking at y’all without much response — even though I know that’s literally the job — and it’s always so nice to hear from you. PO Box 50297, Brooklyn, NY, 11205. :)

Now that I’m back, I’ll be working on finishing up a really fun Gender Conceal episode for later this month, as well as prepping for January’s Gender Reveal interview with <redacted> hehe. We should also have a grant winner announcement out soon! (Someone sent me $2,000 for the grant program the other day, which is so nuts [complimentary], so now we get to award a few extra grants, which rules!)

~

Speaking of “I’m back”: you can’t see this because of the way text works, but I left for a while to finish up the soup. Then I deleted the hyperlink I had included for the recipe because tbqh, you don’t need to make this soup. Then I wrote a long thing about friendship and care, and then I deleted it because that’s simply not what we do here at this newsletter! What we do are Links, so here’s Links & Stuff.

Company time:

• Amazon and Starbucks workers are both on strike right now, which I assume does not affect you because I assume you do not patronize those businesses anyway. But if you do, fyi!

• I really enjoyed this exercise where you draw logos from memory (a premise that allows you to feel smug if you’re good OR bad at it) and this elaborate analysis of the results

• Spotify is replacing real songs by real musicians with… generic music by sadder, uncredited musicians

• Movie theaters are just playing Amazon Prime now???

Organizing:

• Jaya interviewed the brother of Mahmoud Almadhoun, who was killed by Israel for organizing Gaza Soup Kitchen (which u can support here btw!!!)

• The Portland Mercury talked to protesters about why protests have dwindled and the answers make a lot of sense imo!

• Margaret Killjoy on staying alive (cw: suicidality)

• And meanwhile, in the other sense of “organizing” …

Something nice for Christmas:

• This story made my grinchy heart grow three sizes :) :) :) :)

• Io restocked these beloved (by me) stickers and also has a file of free graphics btw!!

• Had a great time revisiting this one for no reason ;)

That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll do some end-of-year wrap-up stuff. Actually, I’m realizing that I never wrote up the results of the patron survey?? So feel free to remind me to, uh, do that in a couple weeks.

Anyway, thanks for being here. Here’s your weekly Rhubarb.

Photo: A closeup of Ruby's face with her eyes closed in the sun

Xo,
Yr resident gender detective