saralang.bsky.social
Social media and digital strategist working with foundations, nonprofits, and advocacy groups. When I'm not working or talking about politics, I'm probably in my garden, hanging out with my kids, or baking cookies.
680 posts
2,027 followers
2,069 following
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Here's the letter Noem sent Harvard, as posted on X. Nothing alleges ANY specific violation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Nothing. She cites no law violated, no regulation broken, no policy ignored.
I don't care what you think of Harvard; this is clear weaponization of government.
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And I'm saying they may well! I just do not think it will be immediate, or easy, and that anyone who thinks "oh well, we will disappear regulations and I will be immediately safe from e coli and listeria" is likely not grappling with reality.
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My point is that I believe it would be hard to remove yourself from the risks of a contaminated food system at home, especially eating out at restaurants, even high end ones.
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I think the piece that we're talking past each other on is individual ingredients vs. 100% free from the American food system. Absolutely, rich people have access to all sorts of food others do not, much of which is imported or specially prepared or grown for them.
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I would be legitimately shocked if you could point to more than a few families in say, the top 5% whose food consumption is 100% independent of current US regulatory standards. I may be completely wrong - I'm open to that. But that almost certainly means no meals out, little grocery store usage, etc
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And I guess the question here is do Whole Foods and Erewhon, for example, set up their own safety screenings? Their own FDA?
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And this is doubly hard to do in high COLA cities where produce and meat and all are traveling in. Sure, some people will summer in the Hamptons w/ a private garden and a private chef but their dairy is still coming from off the island.
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I'm not saying there couldn't be a world where the rich and elite have easy access to a safe food supply and keep it from the bottom 90% or 95% or what have you. I do think that, at present, we don't have the infrastructure set up in the way some wanna-be elites believe we might.
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I think this goes back to @eschatonblog.com 's point though - it takes a very significant, bordering on paranoid effort, to really separate out from the commercial food supply. You can't just go to one grocery store, or put in one order. Could you? Maybe. But it's a significant effort.
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1200 words on "This jerk wants you to die of contaminated lettuce but look at how he feeds his family" feels like an instant hit if you can get it past the lawyers.
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So I get your point here, I do, though a surprising amount of that stuff is produced in the same factories or harvested in the same fields, and rebranded and relabeled to sell for more money. It would be, to my understanding, a pretty dramatic shift to be able to separate out completely.
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And maybe Erewhon or whoever will have their own safety standards. It wouldn't surprise me. But I am just curious about how they see this playing out (and would love to see some reporting on it if that is in fact the case!)
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Fair, I guess? I just know if I was rich as fuck, I'd have a private chef making me meals chock full of fresh delicious produce, and I'd rather not worry those meals would kill me. But what do I know.
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Your argument is quite clear - people seem very, very committed to deliberately misunderstanding you in a way that proves your point exactly.
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Or are all these specific rich people deep enough down the red pill rabbit hole that they don't eat produce and don't realize that bad beef can also kill you.
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If we have a four day school week without a four day work week - you can figure out the rest.
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I also understand as a woman that when we reduce childcare availability, broadly, it's women who are put in untenable situations - and sometimes children who are left in dangerous, even deadly situations.
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I understand as a parent of two young kids that, without childcare, I cannot work.
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I understand early childhood educators and teachers in k-12 who bristle at the idea that school is in any way childcare, or that the school schedule should be tied to parents' work needs.
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I'm surprised, it's easily 40% of my timeline right now. It's such an upsetting series of stories
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As ICE well knows, missing an immigration court date results in an automatic order of deportation which can be hard to reopen. So they have a pretty solid incentive built in up front to scare people into thinking it's not safe to go there. They've just never in the history of ICE done this before.
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Most women I know who spent their early 20s in DC could tell you some stories about what they thought was networking, what some dude decided was a date, and at best the awkwardness that ensued.
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I'm so sorry. Cancer sucks, and losing a pet is the worst.