It’s my twitterversary! I joined in May 2009, which is a whole lot of tweets ago.
Twitter gets a lot of flack. But for me twitter was always a place of collaboration, information, and support. Our monthly, now weekly, write club #LossLit has been going for years. We gather on Wednesdays to micropoem about loss. Amazingly, we never run out of it.
Disability twitter. Social Justice twitter. Writer twitter. SciFi twitter. I can’t fathom who I’d be in 2022 without them. I would have become someone different.
Our collective horror over the news that Elon Musk planned to just buy Twitter like it was a new pair of shoes was swift and ultimately useless. But… why? Why did we have zero input?
When the news first circulated, I tweeted @twitter: how can we help? Because when faced with a hostile takeover of what is effectively a crowd-sourced medium, why not ask the millions of creators inhabiting that space daily to participate in its defense?
I did not get a response. We did not come together to blackout Twitter in protest or even to leave once Elon Musk countered Twitter’s poison pill strategy with buckets of cash.
We are all still working on our exit strategies. I am already on Mastodon. Yet, disability twitter is not. Social justice twitter is not. Are we to rebuild the same spaces we built already? To do the work again? Just because it was sold out from underneath us?
Isn’t this just another kind of eviction notice? Why don’t the tenants have any rights? Especially when the tenants actually built the whole thing from some girders and beams Jack pounded together?
Twitter as code or algorithm is nothing without content. And yet, no content creator on Twitter who isn’t an owner or on the board has any say or makes any money. No one thought the users had any stake or any say in a company valued at $44 billion—value that was created by the users themselves.
In this process, which was several weeks from beginning to end, no one thought to ask the users anything. They didn’t think about the collective power inherent in their user-base, so they never tapped it.
If we all tap out, there is no Twitter to own. If we peter out, there is less Twitter to own. For me, this episode in social media upheaval calls into question the true nature of ownership. I mean, he might as well have used crypto to buy it. Because it only exists as what? Code, servers, an algorithm?
Like everything else: without the imagination and labor of people, it doesn’t exist. The people who create Twitter aren’t even employees. This is also true of Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and whatever else will come. We are volunteers. And one day, we’re going to stop volunteering. And then what will the platforms be worth?
Pasta e Fagioli with Chard and Fresh Tomatoes
This is a fresh twist on the traditional pasta dish (not the soup/stew). It’s called “pasta fazool” in Sicilian-American. My grandfather made this and it was always one of my favorites. As I started making it myself, I experimented and expanded and adapted, so it’s never the same twice. This one is a healthy foodie take on the traditional.
(Vegetables measurements are approximate. The beans used for this were cooked w/a bouquet garni, so I did not add additional herbs. If you’re using canned beans or dried, you will want to season to your taste.)
2 cups pre-cooked white beans (usually Great Northern beans)
½ onion chopped small
4 cloves garlic minced
1 – 1½ cups chopped fresh tomatoes
½ tsp salt (or to taste and depending on whether beans are salted)
¼ – ½ tsp black pepper
5 large chard leaves with stems (about 1/3 cup stems and about 3-4 cups leaves when chopped – leaves filled about 2 of your white small bowls)
1lb pasta medium sized shape, unfilled (we used farfalle which was yummy)
Grated parmesan to taste
3 tbsp Olive oil
2 tsp Butter
-Clean the chard and chop off stem ends. Separate leaves from stem. If stems are thick, cut in half longwise. Chop about the size you’d chop celery or about the same size as onion.
-Ribbon leaves and then put a course chop on them.
-Chop onion small.
-Mince garlic or use garlic press.
-Chop tomatoes.
-Boil water.
-Put 2 tbsp olive oil AND butter into heated pan. Add onions AND chard stems. Let them cook partway. Add a little salt. When they become soft, add garlic and stir the mix. Add chard leaves on top and add the rest of the salt. Stir the mixture. Let the leaves cook down a bit and then add tomatoes.
-When chard is cooked through, add the pre-cooked beans and stir. Add black pepper and stir. Keep heat low, just enough to heat the beans through and let the flavors mix.
-Cook and drain pasta. Rinse. Return pasta to rinsed pot. Stir in 1 tbsp olive oil to dress the pasta.
-When bean/chard mixture is heating, add grated parmesan and mix gently.
-Add bean/chard mixture to the dressed pasta. Mix gently so the beans don’t all smash. Heat on low if necessary.
You can add additional parmesan and chilli flakes at the table!
One of my fave follows
is @chiara.acu on IG. Their work is a refreshing revolution. An affirming breeze.
I’ve been enjoying hearing from folks. Please do leave comments or message me!