The week of January 20, 2024 was celebrating the greatest living American, Dolly Parton; refusing the tyranny of the clear plastic organizer; and don’t worry. It’s not just you — the earth is actually wobbling.

The Mash-Up Americans:

When we heard Biden cancelled almost $5 billion in student loan debt, our minds started thinking about how we’d repurpose that money if it were us. Spend it? Save it? Suffice it to say we’re brushing up on money matters by giving our interview with Wendy De La Rosa another listen.

Mash-Ups In The News:

How Asian Is Your Costco? Help Us Find SoCal’s Most ‘Asian Costco’ For Lunar New Year
LOS ANGELES TIMES

You know the reporter means business if there’s a fully fleshed survey involved. Even if you aren’t the average Costco shopper aka a married Asian American woman between 35–44, get in there and spill the tea!

How Octavia Butler Told The Future
THE ATLANTIC

Climate change, political tumult, general apocalypse — one writer pieces together a survival guide using Octavia Butler’s prescient novels that predicted it all.at.

We Live In A Golden Age Of Crybullyism
THE NATION

“Those in power, promoting austerity and war, no longer want us to fear them. They demand something much more sinister: that we feel sorry for them.”

When Families Need Housing, Georgia Will Pay For Foster Care Rather Than Provide Assistance
PROPUBLICA

Let’s get this straight: Spend millions to “keep families together,” but not if housing is an issue. Instead, spend more money putting them in foster care? Make it make sense.

The Crochet Coral Reef Keeps Spawning, Hyperbolically
THE NEW YORK TIMES

The long-running craft-science collaborative artwork that inhabits the Schlossmuseum in Austria, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, is the work of nearly 25,000 crocheters to date.

Black Activists Began Traveling To Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.
MOTHER JONES

“These trips, which some activists have called solidarity delegations, are all part of an ecosystem of activists and scholars who see freedom for Black people as inherently linked to the struggles of oppressed people around the world.”

Reviving The Classic American Burger
THE NEW YORKER

There’s a burger, and then there’s a “historically accurate” burger. Burger scholar (!) George Motz’s new restaurant offers diner items both past and present, with a side of nostalgia.

U.S. Health Care Isn’t Ready For A Surge Of Seniors With Disabilities
THE WASHINGTON POST

Not the news that those of us in the sandwich generation want to hear. The onset of COVID showed where the system is failing us, with progress being difficult, if not impossible.

Researchers Ask Why Regret Is So Rare For Trans Patients
ASSIGNED

“Why is regret so much lower for trans surgical patients compared to others? Some doctors argue that there is much that can be learned from gender-affirming procedures in other areas of medicine where regret is higher.”

The Abortion Provider Who Became The Most Hated Woman In New York
THE NEW YORKER

Two new books trace the nearly 40-year career of “Madame Restell,” an abortion provider in 19th-century New York — and the rapid changes in the medicine, morality, and law of pregnancy that shaped it.