Whole book: "Mutual Aid"

Mutual Aid by Dean Spade is a whole book available online. Subtitle: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).

This book provides a concrete guide for building mutual aid groups and networks. Part I explores what mutual aid is, why it is different than charity, and how it relates to other social movement tactics. Part II dives into the nitty-gritty of how to work together in mutual aid groups and how to handle the challenges of group decision-making, conflict, and burnout. It includes charts and lists that can be brought to group meetings to stimulate conversation and build shared analysis and group practices. Ultimately, helps imagine how we can coordinate to collectively take care of ourselves—even in the face of disaster—and mobilize hundreds of millions of people to make deep and lasting change.

I've only read a little bit of this, despite having it open in a tab for months. It feels hopeful, experienced, and direct, so I hope to read the rest eventually.

Links: Illness and health, questioning assumptions

“A history of post-viral conditions,” an excerpt from Invisible Illness at Sick Times, excerpted from INVISIBLE ILLNESS: A HISTORY, FROM HYSTERIA TO LONG COVID by Emily Mendenhall.

Medicine has transformed radically since Hippocrates. yet, there remains reticence to embrace the ways in which viral infections fuel long-term neurological and systemic disorders that can radically transform someone’s health. The striking parallels between the Spanish flu and post-viral syndromes that have emerged throughout history emphasize how much information we do have, and how history may be our greatest teacher.

"The Sick Times is an independent news site founded by journalists Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles Griffis. We report on the Long COVID crisis, COVID-19, and infection-associated illnesses."

(On a lighter note) 6th grader's science experiment answers, 'Do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on?' by Jacalyn Wetzel, Upworthy staff.

The results? Turns out that, no, cat buttholes do not touch every surface cats sit on. Now, let's all take a collective sigh of relief while we go over the details.

A Culture of Resilience by Lindsey Foltz, a beautifully written and photographed exploration of home food preserving in Bulgaria.

[I]ndustrial and small-scale agriculture; cultivated and wild foods; formal and informal economies; leisure and work do not function as stark polarities but rather in interconnecting, mutually supportive relationships through which home preservers practice, develop, and share their craft. The entanglement of formal and informal economies, domestic and wild foods, smallholders and industrial farms, local and global influences visible in everyday food practices in Bulgaria specifically and Eastern Europe more broadly condense in household cellars. As the cellar tour I describe below illustrates, these uniquely social practices provide resilience in terms of food security and the ability to pursue something more than mere survival.

What the World Got Wrong About Autistic People by Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP via andrewducker.

Prejudice is one reason decades of research got autism so wrong. Researchers measured autistic people against neurotypical expectations and called every difference a deficit. They tested empathy by measuring in-group preference and missed commitment to universal fairness. They measured creativity by counting the number of ideas and missed originality. They saw moral consistency and called it rigidity. They saw deep engagement and called it rigidity. They saw sensory richness and called it disorder.

Most critically, they failed to ask autistic people about their inner experiences. They studied autism without genuinely listening to the autistic perspective. For decades, science examined autistic people through a lens of pathology and deficit, rather than dignity, comparing us to animals while missing our humanity. But autistic people don't lack humanity. Research just lacked the humanity to see it.