Live this New Year with Considered Agency
Well, 2025 begins.
I’ve been fighting what may be the flu (once again, I tested negative for COVID, meaning I’ve still never tested positive!), so I’ll forgo any big celebratory posts. Plus, the passage into 2025 doesn’t feel all that happy.
So I wish that, in your own personal and professional life, you have a wonderful 2025.
I wish that in your political life, you find a way to be the most effective, healthiest defender of democracy you can be.
Peace and best wishes!
Best to you in the new year,
‘…the passage into 2025 doesn’t fell all that happy.’
No, it doesn’t, but, if anybody needs a smile, I find the Dalek Relaxation Tape usually does the trick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJSQFzw1pEE&ab_channel=alreadytaken74
If you find that too frivolous, then, when we humans work together we can create beauty that makes one weep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LYnNEALm6o&ab_channel=VOCES8
This is a beautiful planet; humans, while flawed, are amazing; and things, while bad, are not hopeless.
Things are far from perfect but Happy New Year :-)
thx for the relaxation polarity
so good for our bare, cynical reality
Another New Year.
Meh. “Because there’s bugger all down here on Earth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk
Unless of course (per the comments) when you open your fridge and it is flames and a voice that says Zuul…
Get well, EW. Lots of of chicken soup! (As long as it tests negative for H5N1.)
Peace and best wishes to Marcy and the rest of the crew, and likewise to everyone here.
Get better Marcy!
It sure sounds funny saying that since there is nobody better than Marcy.
Thank you Marcy and associates, thank you for your insight, compassion and light. Be well and all the best this year.
So sorry you’re under the weather Dr. Wheeler, may you feel better soon.
I don’t do resolutions for the new year very often but I think you’ve provided one for 2025 that’s practical and doable every day.
May we all feel and use our agency as we best can and may we find peace and healing when it’s needed. And I intend on making it a happy new year. I will not surrender that to the Trump cult and administration.
So Happy New Year to the best comments community I know!
feel better Marcy! glad you tested negative for COVID too. cheers to embracing our agency in 2025 and beyond.
On the Death of Laozi
The fingers tire feeding the flames
but the fire burns on
and we do not know
when it will come to an end
– Chuang-Tzu
The highest goodness, water like,
Does good to everything and goes
Unmurmuring to places men despise;
But so, is close in nature to the Way.
If the good of the house is from land,
Or the good of the mind is its depth,
Or love is the virtue of friendship,
Or honestly blesses one’s talk,
Or in government, goodness is order,
Or in business, skill is admired,
Or the worth of an act lies in timing,
Then the goal of the Way is peace
By which no one goes astray
– Laozi
HAPPY NEW YEAR ! ! !
thx i love it
Happy New Year, Marcy and to the entire EW crew. Heal quickly, stay strong! You and your crew are a treasure.
Happy New Year Marcy, Rayne, EoH and everybody else who makes this site great!
Thank you Marcy and everyone at Emptywheel who make this a wonderful source of information, education, wit and analysis.
Thanks for providing approximately 5 years worth of analysis in 2024, Marcy, and I hope you get well soon.
Thanks to everyone for contributing to the many conversations here—many still ongoing.
Happy New Year to all—time to strap ourselves in for the ride!
Happy New Year Dr. Marcy.
Rest is Best!!!
Thanks for the many posts putting the puzzle pieces together. Thanks to EW colleagues and family.
2025 Another Space Odyssey – Buckle up.
My mental-health project has been buying 15 paperback copies (not from Amazon, but from Powells.com) of Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny”, and giving them to various friends who I think would benefit from it. It ain’t much, but it lets me feel like I’m doing something more productive than stewing in my own juices. Feel better, Marcy, and thanks for all your posts/podcasts through the years.
It’s really a great idea. I’ve reverted to dead tree books from the local bookshop.
I had forgotten the placidity I feel with a book, especially a book I take my time reading. Hope you can absorb the same feeling prior to the 1500 days following Jan 20
I average at least one book a week from the library. All fiction. Ihave to escape totally. I’m loving Irish and English both especially now. Niall William’s, all of his books and Paul Murray, Bee Sting and Julia Phillip’s two books and David Nicholls and on and on. Thank you for all you do to help me stay moving forward away from despair.
When folks ask me why I don’t do Amazon, I start by telling them that Bezos et al. killed off far too many of the local bookstores I loved.
Hmmm . . . Does Bezos have six fingers on his left hand? (Asking for a friend)
Same here. No amazon, no Whole Foods, no Washington Post.
Hope you feel better soon, Marcy. Don’t overlook a PCR test for RSV, it is running wild over here.
For my own mental health I have had to eliminate/minimize contact with the Trump believers. Unfortunately, I am stuck dealing with a bunch of them in my daily work contacts. I can’t try to help them see the light, or I lose business. I would love to be able to bring reality to the deluded.
To help me feel like I am doing something positive, I have just subscribed to The Atlantic and I am going to subscribe to Mother Jones in an effort to support actual journalism. I have popcorn stores and a large supply of liquor laid in because I think the next few weeks are going to be very interesting.
“Happy New Year” seems a bit naive, I am going to quote Virgil and wish everyone “audentis fortuna iuvat.” Fortune
Favors the Bold.
A new-year’s thank you to all from a long-time reader. This is the only site on my horizon where I read ALL the comments with gratitude. It seems the only appropriate response to such valuable posts.
Always a bright shining sight upon emptywheel shores,
always happy to see words and numbers flip and mesh here!
Fog, darkness, lies, tricks, harsh, waves, be damned.
our home wintergreen wreath is synthetic material so
as to not muss the supernatural
juniper grows free in the backyard
kicking off this year as i do most, flaming marshmellows with a blowtorch and whacking them with the a prop, today it’s a 5 iron…mmm, rhubarb pie ska : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT8xQrxgqZ0
power pop punks look fwd: Nada Surf-in front of me now. so manys words past in the verse, but a powerful clear short chorus count rayne might <3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5aToiQ3co4
chill where? Trampled by turtles-where's my mind. jam magic-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZvVeQI0heg
our concept of our solar system is upside down. i recommend gargling that and listening too, if electro&techno excite you, .vril : https://vrilofficial.bandcamp.com/album/saturn-is-a-supercomputer-omd909
Come by and share the elderberry syrup for your lungs, and 'Cure Tooth Decay' by Ramiel Nagel for your bite and mind. 20yrs of grinding my teeth down due uber-stress, yet these have kept me healthy and intact.
I pray this is the year the medical equivalent of a path forward takedown of extractive disease bearing capitalism so lovingly done in 'Cure Tooth Decay' arises… don't think I will find the time, but my eye, ears, mind are multiplexing the path always, positive wellspring, negative focus.
HBS –
FYI: Ramiel and also a number of other health gurus, who advocated fermented cod liver oil, are dead.
My wife had wise words: “May this year be better than we can possibly imagine.”
Otherwise, reading from the library, going to live shows, and acting locally as much as possible.
I hope you can feel better very soon, Marcy!
Wishing all the best for the coming year to everyone here and their loved ones.
<3
our information and mental health pipeline here at EW: we can all “throw a few pennies in the old man’s cup” to support it.
the work is stupendous. let’s reward it as much and well as possible.
may 2025 surprise on the upside!
Speedy recovery, Marcy. Being ill during the holidays is especially daunting. I hope you feel better soon. I hope to see you and Nicole on Friday. If not then, then next time.
Wishing a safe and solid new year to you and to all the regulars and irregulars.
I just want to wish bmaz a good new year. Hate to say it but I miss a bit of the prickly cactus!
To Marcy, a speedy and complete recovery.
To the Emptywheel Gang:
Keep your chin up,
your head down,
your nose to the grindstone,
your shoulder to the wheel,
and your eye on the ball,
and you’ll get by.
Best Wishes to all in the new year.
There’s plenty of beauty in the world and the human spirit.
Here’s a bit of it.
Sajanwa kab aaoge – Dadra in raga Pahadi – Kaushiki Chakraborty – Live at BCMF 2014
https://youtu.be/oiyiMTKsAXI?t=10
Janus is a two-faced god
Who looks both forth and back;
And some, who might well think that odd,
Still understand that tack.
For headwins are a common thing
When Winter rears his head:
Our bearings make the rigging sing
And ease our sense of dread.
“Headwinds.”
Where’s spellcheck when you need it?
…although “headwins” is appropriately positive!
Get better soon! We got hit with a bug too but on Christmas! Not covid, but it still required a ton of rest to get well.
Thank you for all you do, for guiding me as a reader to be “the most effective, healthiest defender of democracy you can be.” You bring clarity and light to the cloudy and dark days.
Take care. Send good thoughts your way for a quick recovery.
May peace, good health and care surround you and the Emptywheel family in 2025.
Trying hard not to be Debbie Downer but the incoming administration has one of the lowest collective empathy scores ever recorded, in a tie with Caligula, and only 2 points behind Genghis Khan.