Archive of 2025 | alexandra's pile of notes

May 2025

Thousands of cis…

Enough scapegoating of trans women by politicians who refuse to confront male violence. Enough media sensationalism that profits from hatred while women of all backgrounds suffer real harm. Enough false feminism that abandons the most vulnerable women leaving all women at greater risk. Enough of those in positions of power making harmful decisions on our behalf under the guise of “protection”. Enough allowing our voices to be co-opted by those who would divide us. Enough attempts to remove people’s bodily autonomy - claiming they don’t know their own minds. WE WILL SPEAK FOR OURSELVES.

Permanent link to “Thousands of cis women sign petition rejecting transphobia: ‘We will speak for ourselves’”
How the Trump…

So Staten filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in February. It was the type of complaint that HUD used to take seriously. The agency has devoted itself to rooting out prejudice in the housing market since the Fair Housing Act was signed into law in 1968, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And, following a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that declared that civil rights protections bar unequal treatment because of someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, HUD considered it illegal to discriminate in housing on those grounds. Then Donald Trump became president once more. Two days after filing his complaint, Staten received a letter informing him that HUD did not view allegations like his as subject to federal law — a stark departure from its position just a month prior. The news gutted him. “I went through pure hell just to get turned away,” Staten said. (The property manager disputed Staten’s account and said he was…

Permanent link to “How the Trump Administration Is Weakening the Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws”
We have reached the…

This previous weekend was particularly nuts, with an older gentleman snatched from the streets of Paris' 14th arrondissement on May 1 by men in ski masks. The 14th is a pleasant place—I highly recommend a visit to the catacombs in Place Denfert-Rochereau—and not usually the site of snatch-and-grab operations. The abducted man was apparently the father of someone who had made a packet in crypto. The kidnappers demanded a multimillion-euro ransom from the man's son. According to Le Monde, the abducted father was taken to a house in a Parisian suburb, where one of the father's fingers was cut off in the course of ransom negotiations. Police feared "other mutilations" if they were unable to find the man, but they did locate and raid the house this weekend, arresting five people in their 20s. (According to the BBC, French police used "phone signals" to locate the house.) Sounds crazy, but this was the second such incident this year.

Permanent link to “We have reached the “severed fingers and abductions” stage of the crypto revolution”

February 2025

The hardest working…

In 2007, on my first trip to New York City, I grabbed a brand-new DSLR camera and photographed all the fonts I was supposed to love. I admired American Typewriter in all of the I 😍 NYC logos, watched Akzidenz Grotesk and Helvetica fighting over the subway signs, and even caught an occasional appearance of the flawlessly-named Gotham, still a year before it skyrocketed in popularity via Barack Obama’s first campaign. But there was one font I didn’t even notice, even though it was everywhere around me. Last year in New York, I walked over 100 miles and took thousands of photos of one and one font only. The font’s name is Gorton.

Permanent link to “The hardest working font in Manhattan”
Permanent link to “Cozy video games can quell stress, anxiety”
Permanent link to “Don't Believe Him”
Permanent link to “You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism”
Permanent link to “no ethical consumption under capitalism lol”

January 2025