Thank You, Alyssa Grenfell + La Gran Marcha + My ebooks

I got a pleasant surprise this week when Alyssa Grenfell, an ex-Mormon YouTuber with 374,000 subscribers, used my website (specifically this page) as a source in her latest video, "Why Good Mormon Girls Always Say Yes💍." I'm immensely flattered, and my mind is blown that someone with 374,000 YouTube subscribers has even looked at my website. If anyone is here because of her, hi, I'm also an ex-Mormon, and I have a ton of content related to Mormonism on my website, but currently on my blog I write more about politics because, well, if you can't guess, then we aren't going to get along. Also, I'm neurodivergent and stopped caring that I'm weird some time ago. I will say that as a young adult in the LDS Church, I was well aware of the high-pressure dating and marriage culture that Alyssa describes in her video, but I didn't personally experience it much. My YSA wards in Logan seemed more sane than that. When I watched "The Singles' Ward" I didn't think Wow, this is so relatable, I thought Wow, Provo Mormons are freaks.

My other favorite part of this week is that protesters ruined Shady Vance's ski trip in Vermont. I hope that was a wakeup call for him. Not a wakeup call that he's a bad person, because I'm sure he's already proud of that fact, but a wakeup call that Americans aren't going to quietly tolerate it. He must be scared. Fascists are cowards who act tough.

I'm still doing my part, of course. I wanted to go to every protest in Salt Lake, but I've already missed at least two put on by organizations that I wasn't following. Being unable to keep up with all the protests is a good problem to have. Yesterday, of course, I went to La Gran Marcha, a pro-immigration protest.

Right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley was there livestreaming and asking people questions. Reading the comments on his video was a depressing reminder that conservatives are still a. living in a different reality and b. trash.

Someone broke out in an argument with him near me, and I started filming in case it became violent. He was with some lady whom others later claimed was his mom, and she became speechless and walked away after people looked up her Facebook profile and called her out for being a Nazi. I didn't personally verify that she was a Nazi, but she made no attempt to refute that accusation. It's an embarassing video because I was too mentally challenged to keep my fingers out of the frame, but at least I'm not a Nazi.

And I took this clip of him getting yelled at for touching a child from someone else's video. It's really weird that he did that.

Of course, I wasn't in total alignment with the views of everyone at the protest either. Someone had a sign that said "Protect People Not Borders." I don't believe in having no border security. Someone had a large anarcho-communist flag. I don't believe in anarcho-communism. Nonetheless, I was happy to march alongside them because I agreed with them on the important point that almost everything the current administration is doing, including the way it treats undocumented immigrants, is evil. Give me an anarcho-communist over a Nazi any day. Or most Republicans, though I concede that some of the protesters are Republicans who actually want limited government and not a fascist theocracy.

The 50501 movement is doing another national day of protest on March 4 at noon because the self-proclaimed king has some big speech that day, probably to announce that our democratic republic will be reorganized into the First Galactic Empire. Go to fiftyfifty.one to find a protest near you. I know a lot of people have to work, but with every fiber of my being I urge everyone who can to participate before it's too late. I've just read about how Republicans in Congress are scared of what will happen to them if they stand up to the orange taint. We need to make them more scared of what will happen to them if they don't. (I am not advocating violence.)

Also, here's a new form to report DEIs to the Department of Education so they can fire all the teachers who aren't white. Please don't overload it with spam.

A lot of people are also boycotting Amazon, canceling their Prime subscriptions, and so on, due to Bezos' support of the current regime. I self-published my books through Amazon Direct Publishing because it was super easy, barely an inconvenience. Now I'm going to leave them up there just in case a conservative mistakes one for a picture book and buys it, but I'm branching out onto several other ebook platforms with Draft2Digital, which is also super easy, barely an inconvenience and what I should have done in the first place. I think all of these platforms are smaller than Amazon (for now), which should actually work to my advantage. Amazon is oversaturated with self-publications. Fingers crossed.