Emchap's Shit from the Internet 02/19/20 🍠
Today I came home from an evening of therapy having and transit using to discover that the IRS had sent me mail For Official Purposes. This is a very quick way, it turns out, to find out what having a small heart attack might feel like. (It was a very thin envelope, which did briefly cause me to wonder if the IRS was rejecting me from college.)
It turns out it was nothing to worry about—as a somewhat charming counter to identity theft, they send you a piece of postal mail every time you use their website to request something about your tax record, and I'd asked for my summary of last year's a week ago. (Yes I'm a "files my taxes in February" person, there are dozens of us, we exist.) This was just enough time to forget about it completely, of course, and to assume I was being very efficiently audited somehow.
I am still sick with a lingering cough from whatever was wrong with me last week; OneMedical has assured me that coughing sometimes just takes a month to go away, which is absolutely enraging (bodies are a scam, etc.). But my mucus is mostly gone and the IRS isn't auditing me and some weeks that is all it takes to count as a win.
Shit to read
HIPAA is deeply inadequate for governing health tech and anyway Better Help is selling your data to Facebook.
I loved this look at one's relationship to beauty and one's body from a woman who was hit by a train and lost her legs. (She's also very funny on Twitter.)
Whelp this piece on Axe brought back some real visceral sense memories.
Hola Papi's newsletter is so good.
Bullish was the north star of my life decisions from about 19 to 24, and this recent, grim column on how to make progress with you're a dried-out husk of a person reminded me of why, as I read it from beneath my couch blanket.
Life under coronavirus and what it means for food.
Shit to eat
Go to a neighborhood council meeting. Not your neighborhood council, because your neighborhood council's website has been down for a month, but a neighboring (heh) one that seems to have its shit together.
Live tweet an hour and a half of close-to-the-ground civic engagement.
The high school's academic decathlon team came in third in the district!
Eat slightly too much from the free snack tray full of broccoli and a weird dip.
Decide that you do not need to sit through a debate about whether the neighborhood council's president's home remodel will be approved, and head across the street to a pie-based restaurant that serves good pancakes and mediocre everything else.
Order one of the everything elses, like a fool.
(Specifically, a turkey sandwich with onion and avocado on sourdough, served with fries.)
Prepare to pull out your book only to realize that you left it at home.
Open a different book on your phone.
Eat half the sandwich and very carefully pack up the leftovers for tomorrow's dinner. Order a slice of pie.
The pie is good, but not as good as you want it to be, which is the general theme of much of the restaurant's food. It is sort of comforting.
Once you have paid, debate taking a walk home, and decide that due to your existential exhaustion + it being 10 at night, you will call a Lyft.
Once home, shove the sandwich in the fridge and fall immediately asleep.
Shit to watch
Shit to buy
I want all of this cashmere to wear on planes.
A coworker recommended this sunscreen as a GOAT.