On the podcast this week, we talk about bad bosses, and how hard it can be to tell whether your supervisor is holding you to a high standard, or whether they're just being a bully. This is a familiar line of questioning for me. When I'm in a challenging situation or a relationship, I often ask myself: Is this hard in a constructive way or hard in a destructive way? Am I growing as a person, or am I losing myself? I almost never know the answer right away. It seems like it should be obvious, that these things are polar opposites, but what can I say? Being a human is very confusing.

And on that ::shrug:: of a note, let me wish you a happy Friday. I hope that you, like me, are excited for the meaningless milestone of leaving January behind. (WHY has this month felt like a year? Why???)

The Silicon Valley economy is here, and it’s a nightmare. A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images—it might spell the end of privacy. Why Democrats still have to appeal to the center and Republicans don't. The lucrative, largely unregulated, and widely misunderstood world of vaping. What is there to learn from the Goop show? A large group of writers asks Oprah to reconsider American Dirt. Kobe Bryant and "complicated legacies." Everything you know about housing is probably wrong. Reconsidering a feminist rift between sci-fi writers Joanna Russ and Ursula K. LeGuin. Simone de Beauvoir on love as a joint project. "Senior Discount" by Ali Liebegott. The past and future of punctuation marks?!

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The new season of Down for Whatever has some incredible guests. A Thing or Two with Claire and Erica has been a delight lately. And the joint episodes of Code Switch and Death Sex and Money about interracial friendship are crucial.

That was me at the beginning of this interminable month. Here's me today:

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Moms for Housing, a collective of homeless and marginally housed mothers. "Before we found each other, we felt alone in this struggle. But there are thousands of others like us here in Oakland and all across the Bay Area. We are coming together with the ultimate goal of reclaiming housing for the community from speculators and profiteers." 

I'm also calling my city councilmember in Los Angeles to ask for more services for people who are unhoused—not sweeps. And I've been paying attention to Nithya Raman's platform on homelessness and housing.