Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

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2021 baseball pandemic

2021 Baseball and the Pandemic

April 15, 2021 /

In past seasons – 2019 and the rather odd 2020 season – I’ve always looked forward to watching baseball. But the 2021 season is already underway, and so far I haven’t paid much attention to it. I ignored almost all of spring training.

Oh, I’ve thought about driving to Cedar Rapids to watch Minor League baseball. I even mentioned it in my post on getting my second COVID-19 shot. So, baseball never totally left my mind. But it’s different this season. I went from looking at box scores and stats every day in 2020 (2019, 2018, 2017, and so on) to maybe checking them once or twice a week in 2021.

Why? I don’t know. Despite writing a post on 2020 baseball silliness, I’m not angry with Major League Baseball for choosing to play last year. Given that people play baseball outdoors in a fairly light contact environment, I thought the decision made sense. I’m not angry with MLB for opening stadiums to fans in 2021, thought I thought the Texas Rangers went overboard.

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covid-19 shot

Second COVID-19 Shot

April 12, 2021 /

Three days ago, I had my second shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. It’s still a little hard to believe that companies rolled out a vaccine in such a short time period. It’s also just…amazing to take the step and see some hope for the future. It takes me a step closer to the end of the pandemic.

Since I updated on my side effects from the first shot, I’ll also say a bit about the second. Like many people, the second shot was rougher for me than the first. I didn’t get the same waves of dizziness and nausea as I did with the first. But I was much more sore and tired. And I had a pretty bad headache. Luckily, these symptoms only lasted for about a day.

That takes us to the next steps. I’m looking forward to a lot of things: visiting my parents, seeing friends in-person, watching baseball. Many of these things are long overdue.

ya basta

April Reading List (2021)

April 8, 2021 /

It’s time for another monthly reading list! For this month, I’ve been turning to a bit more fiction, as well as some more literary non-fiction. Now that we’re more than a year into COVID-19, I’m thinking a bit about what I’d be reading in a coffee shop. I think most of these would make great coffee shop books.

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Political Language: 3 Tips

April 5, 2021 /

political language

I’ve focused quite a bit in this blog on issues of political language: how what we say affects us, and how our concepts of, say, intersectionality, privilege, or equity guide the things we do. Often whether we know it or not. I write about these issues in the service, of course, of deeper leftist projects.

In this post, I’ll shift a bit to giving advice on political language. What should we keep in mind when using political language as a part of our organizing efforts?

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social media trust
Social media trolling, fake, anger, bullying and scandal signs.

Social Media Erodes Trust

April 1, 2021 /

For a post on April Fools’ Day (but not an April Fools’ Day post), I wanted to touch on the sense many people have that social media is bad for activism. When I try to put this idea in its most plausible form, I come up with the claim that social media erodes trust. Whether it also does other things, its erosion of trust stands out as key.

Let’s roll with that and see where it takes us.

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