all the world in bright rainbow

byjove:

countries will be like “nooooo our birth rate is falling exponentially and it’s effecting our economy” and immigrants will be like “hey can you let us in so we can boost your economy and fill your empty jobs and raise our children here” and inevitably the country is like “the only thing worse than a large scale collapse of our population is letting foreigners live here”


byjove:
America’s immigration policies are difficult enough but I read the immigration policies for some countries and it is batshit insane. they’re straight up like “we hate disabled people, we hate people who don’t speak our language, if you don’t have a $85k a year salary lined up for you, we don’t want you to move here. if by some miracle you jump through all the hoops and move here, it will take you 20 years to obtain citizenship and during that time we will not rent to you because you’re a foreigner.” damn bitch. fuck you.

lannamichaels:

I read foreign policy stuff and every few months, like clockwork, there’s an article about [insert country here] having demographic problems caused by not enough young people and What That Means.

And every single time, I have only two questions:

1. What is your immigration policy?
2. How much does it cost to have and raise a baby, both direct monetary and intangibles, such as does a woman destroy her entire professional career to do so?


Fixing both of those will fix every single falling population problem I have ever read about in those places. Because the answer is generally “both. both are bad.” And places where the second one is considered to be fine, the first one absolutely isn’t.

(I state these are the constant issues at play in foreign policy writings to contrast that with the stuff I’ve heard about from rural demographic problems where the issue is “we have young people, but they leave because there aren’t any jobs.” That is internal population shifting within a country and comes with other problems, ex: rent.)

• The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke, illustrated by Victoria Sawdon (2024): A light, forgettable short story previously, per the afterword, broadcast on the radio for a BBC Christmas thing in 2022. It's very Clarke, for better or for worse. The illustrations are good. IDK, this short story basically encapsulates everything about Clarke's magic systems that I don't like. It's a good short story but I would like it to make sense. Whereas Clarke is like "it doesn't have to make sense, it's magic". This worked much better for me in Piranesi.



• Will the Pigeon Graduate? by Mo Willems (2025): Good book but at the same time, it's very obviously a cynical ploy to hone in on the market that buys Dr. Seuss's Oh The Places You'll Go for new grads.



• Right Back at You by Carolyn Mackler (2025): Midgrade, time traveling letters book. 12 year old Mason lives in New York City in 2023 and is bullied in school. 12 year old Talia lives in an unnamed small town in Western PA in 1987 and is bullied in school. Together, they give each other encouragement and friendship, via letters they leave each other in their closets.
  
  Despite this, neither one of them actually considers in time that the magical time traveling letter wormhole will cease when Mason moves to Atlanta (his dad got a new job on sudden notice and "walked out" (aka did not walk out, but Mason and everyone in school treats it like his dad did, in fact, walk out) and was staying on his brother's couch until he got an apartment and Mason and his mom would move there after school ended in a couple months). This helpfully gives the author a way to wrap up the book at a decent-enough place, while still being within the constraints of a midgrade novel for page count.
  
  Recommended for anyone who thinks that there just aren't enough midgrade books about bullying. I snark, I snark. It's a very quick read, fine and enjoyable, and yes, there are age-appropriate time travel shenangians (Mason tells Talia the baseball game results so she can win bets against her brother; Talia uses Mason mentioning 'google' all the time to buy google stock ASAP for herself and for Mason, and sends him the money.)
  
  Content warning for some really severe antisemitism for a midgrade book that is, to be fair, about bullying. (Talia is Jewish and the only other Jew she knows is her optometrist. Mason isn't Jewish but knows plenty of Jews.)