ten important things for 10k

thank you for reading!

I hit 10,000 subscribers! Wow!

If Jade FAX was a room, at this point, it would be very large. I think all of us would fit into the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle (the coolest room I’ve ever seen), and then some. That is very intimidating!

At the same time, I’m a Gemini. I was born to discuss, debate, and communicate. I am lucky to do it, sometimes, in the public sphere and be received well for it. And to be honest, it feels pretty good to hit a milestone during Gemini season, which has already been full of multiple birthday celebrations, graduations, and more. I saw a quote right before I went back to school (in reference to Kendrick Lamar’s release of Not Like Us) saying that Geminis are meant to communicate in the public arena, given our God-given quick tongues, adaptability, and ear for gossip. (It makes me a good reporter!) I am genuinely glad to have a giant, metaphorical room to share my endless, endless, endless takes, and to have people actually respond to me. Thank you!

Instead of a LinkedIn-y note, I wanted to share ten important things that came to mind when reflecting on my last year on Substack. I have been a reader of Substack for longer, but last year, I quit my job to go back to school and start freelancing. Creative writing school was imminent, and I had written in the language of nonprofits for so long that I had forgotten how to write for me. My first few pieces of this publication were me proving to myself that I still had the talent—maybe the chops. My Philadelphia summer in my friend’s guest room, where I wheeled my clothes to USPS weekly to fill Depop and ThriftUp orders, produced the piece because of which many of you now follow me.

I have learned so much since then. The below isn’t advice. They aren’t thoughts. They aren’t necessarily lessons. They are just ten important things. Enjoy.

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1. Delete and deactivate your Meta + X profiles. There's no liberation like liberation from tech billionaires! Posting your leftist takes on X, Instagram, WhatsApp, or god forbid, Facebook—depending on who you are—may be doing you and your communities more harm than good. Meta is a surveillance company. Musk & DOGE are willing to do whatever they need with your data to make a quick buck. Keep yourself safe, take back your attention, and fuck with their wallets a little. (Use Signal to organize instead.)

2. A critical argument, a personal essay, and a diary entry are all structured very differently, and each requires very different pieces to be successful. It doesn't matter if it starts with "Personal”! If you're allowing someone else to read it, it still requires the building blocks to make it a readable and successful personal essay. Think about your hierarchy of meaning, trim the excess, and know the conversation you're entering—well.

3. Get international news coverage from international news sources. I learn this over and over; perhaps it’s the naivety of Third Culture Kid-dom. But privately owned, legacy newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have little interest in reporting beyond propagandizement. The last nearly-two years of genocide in the Gaza Strip of Palestine has clearly demonstrated this, just as every interaction between the United States and the "Middle East" usually does. The major players of the U.S. propaganda machine are purposefully selective about whose humanity they acknowledge; you'll rarely find empathy for a Palestinian, a Russian, an Iranian, a Chinese, a Libyan, or a Venezuelan, even if there’s an -American at the end of their nationality. Enemies of the state are reported as enemies of the state, regardless of their humanity or socio-historical context.

   See an example from this weekend's coverage of the missiles exchanged between Tehran and Tel Aviv—the result of unprovoked Israeli aggression, but also a longtime fear for Iranians and Israeli settlers alike.

   

   The New York Times covers the impacts of Israeli air strikes in Tehran, Iran. June 15, 2025.

   Note what's captured between Tel Aviv and Tehran. In Iran, you see burning nuclear plants, destructed military sites, and nonspecific images of clouds of smoke. We see cars fleeing the city, sure, but we never get the chance to see an Iranian’s face. But in Israel, The New York Times provides opportunity to connect with the actual human beings. We see people rushing to bomb shelters, stepping through rubble, sifting through their homes. Destruction of property is labeled: apartment buildings. There are humans there, worthy of recognition.

   

   The New York Times covers the impacts of Iranian air strikes in Tel Aviv, Israel. June 15, 2025.

   I am not one to compare the value of a human life. But the facts are: the civilian casualties on both sides are not equal at the time of this writing. In only four days, 224 Iranians have been killed; Western media has not shown their faces, and has not reported their names. Yet if it were up to The New York Times, the Bad-City, desolate chador of the IRI is independently motivated to snuff out the beacon of light¹, the bloom in the desert² that is Tel Aviv. The 24 Israelis killed in Iranian air strikes ultimately come first in their reporting. With this math, I’m left with my least favorite answer: it appears an Iranian is only worth 1/9 of an Israeli.

   But here’s the kicker, for my fellow outraged Iranians: This Orientalist, racist framing is only a fraction of the media violence committed against Gaza, against Palestine, and against all Palestinian people since the creation of the state of Israel. The United States and the media puppets beneath have told you exactly whose truth they listen to. If you want the truth about Iran, listen to Iranians. If you want the truth about Palestine, listen to Palestinians. Look to Al Jazeera, Al-Monitor, Reuters, AP, Jadaliyya. Look to the impacted people in your life. Know and avoid propaganda when you see it.

4. Even nonfiction has a plot. Follow it.

5. Always being the nice one can shoot you in the foot. Be the bitch when you need to be.

6. The small things are important, but so is prioritization. There will be time to discuss it all, but when things get serious, opining becomes a distraction. When it comes time to share your big take, make sure it's backed up by material involvement and material action. The hands which washed pepper spray out of the teary eyes of an 18-year-old feel more sacred than those which called Sabrina Carpenter a sexy baby. That’s just me, anyway.

7. The three Abrahamic religions are more similar than they are different. Our stories are the same. Our God is the same. The names and the language and the traditions differ, but are all deeply interrelated. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam each contain wonder and fun and beauty, just as much as each contain histories of religious violence, colonialism, and strife to survive. Each practice and each culture, also, deserves a chance to thrive. I think there should be more opportunities for the three of us to thrive together.

8. Getting a cat solves most problems. Achieving this through the Cat Distribution System makes you believe in God.

9. Writing scared makes it better. Do it anyway—you can always delete.

10. Understanding the history of the land you live on gives you answers. I am not of the Americas—none of my ancestors have been. But while one side of my family enjoyed mountains, seas, cities, and countrysides in the Old World, the other settled in the Central Valley and Coast of California. It was the mid-1800s, just as the United States officially colonized what was previously Mexico. Chicano families watched as the border shifted over them, bringing new violence in the land that had always been their home. More strange-looking people like my ancestors moved into their previously established communities, creating new complexities among bountiful soil, long stretches of farmland, and the beautiful ocean air.

    But it wasn't just the Italians, Slavs, and Irish, like those in my family, who moved into the young state of California to work. Chinese families, traveling overseas to find working in the exploitative railroads which made a name for my hometown, made do in the same new place. Japanese families followed them once the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 slowed rail progress. The generations passed, California solidified itself as a frontierist fantasy even beyond the Gold Rush, and more and more people joined the tapestry that is California.

    Arab and Iranian and Armenian families added new flavor to Southern California in their various escapes from war, occupation, and genocide throughout the 20th century. Indian, Afghan, and more South Asian families moved into my dad's hometown just before the Dot Com Boom, in search of opportunity and an end to economic instability…largely caused by U.S. and U.K. Nigerian, Ethiopian, and Eritrean families followed a similar pattern, ending up in major centers like Los Angeles and the Bay Area. And through all of it, the Indigenous people of the land (The Ohlone Tribe, in my hometown) fought to remain. Through it all, the Mexicans—the Chicanos—who are today labeled immigrants watched their land transformed into a tech capitalist playground, complete with policies villainizing their existence.

    I am a sixth-generation Californian, but I am also a guest. The ocean is cold to me, I get fog-burns, and I am very allergic to poison oak. I get to be from California, but California does not owe something to me. California, as a community, does owe something to Chicanos: therefore, so do I. The militarized ICE raids, protest crackdowns, and the villainization of Latino immigrants is only a continuation of almost 200 years of policies aimed to expel the Mexican people from what was very recently their own land. And when expulsion doesn't feel possible, history shows us control is the next option. Less than 50 years ago, the California state government subsidized sterilization procedures for Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American women living in Southern California.³ These procedures were coercive—a purposeful act by California to curb their public assistance costs, based entirely on racism and eugenic ideology.⁴ These actions by the state represent mass reproductive injustices, and caused generations of Chicanas to mistrust the medical system, as well as as deal with infertility, reproductive issues, and other traumas. Control has gone too far, before. Control is going too far, right now.

    When law and fact and humanity is gone, history is where I turn. It is my understanding of the histories in my home state which help me understand who we really are, outside the media narratives and the romanticized TikToks. We are just as schizophrenic and narrativized and complicated as the United States, itself. We have done just as much good as we have bad. And we all owe something to those who've seen California through more generations than we. I trust those who remember. I trust the old Watsonville families and the man who sells giant strawberries just off my freeway exit and only takes cash. I trust those who are working in the backrooms, in the behind the scenes, on helplines and in hushed tones, making sure that our communities can remain home with their families—where they belong. Those who remember hold a history I am fortunate to learn. They embody a legacy far nobler than settlers on this land could ever understand.

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That’s all <3 Love each other, be kinder than you want to be, cover your face and turn off your phone at protests. Love you, bye.

1. From Birthright Israel alumna, 2009: “Israel is a beacon of light in the Middle East.”

2. A Zionist slogan first used in 1969 by then-PM of the young state of Israel, insinuating a literal and metaphorical desert in Historic Palestine before European Jewish settlers moved in.

3. No Mas Bebes.

4. No Mas Bebes.