Hey there! This is Nat Bennett, writing to you from Minnesota, where it is "warm," by which I mean "18 degrees Fahrenheit." When I step outside, the inside of my nose barely feels frozen at all!

Here's something I keep thinking about:

I used to live a few blocks down from Manny's, a coffee shop and "civic gathering place," owned by the titular Manny Yekutiel. Manny is Jewish, and gay, and he was raised in Los Angeles but he has family in Israel. His father is originally from Afghanistan.

I used to walk past there a few times a week, and often, especially this summer, it would be vandalized. Usually stickers, occasionally spray paint. On two occasions, broken windows. During the first big ICE protest in San Francisco, a group of people broke off from the main group and painted "fuck Manny" and "die Zio" and "the only good settler is a dead 1" on the walls. After that, any time there was a big protest against the administration, Manny's would have the windows boarded up, and a security guard outside.

Since then pretty much every time I've sat down to write this letter I've started by writing about it, then throwing that draft away and writing about something else. I have a huge pile of snippets of a longer essay. I just added about five hundred words to it tonight.

I don't want to let finishing that keep stopping me from a couple of things.

One: There's a weird energy about! A strange and unsettling thing is happening. "I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air."

I've seen a lot more antisemitism recently than I'm used to. I don't have a good handle on how much that's "there's actually more of it," and how much it is "I'm seeing more of it." I suspect a mix of both.

Two: I do not expect you to simple feelings about Israel, especially if you're Jewish, and especially if you're queer and Jewish.

There's much more to say, but that's what I have tonight.

Beyond that... man. I spent about three weeks this month fighting distributed systems bugs. Attended a truly startling number of football games in person. Spent a tragic amount of those games carefully inspecting the sidelines with my binoculars rather than watching the, y'know, actual game.

Are you familiar with the concept of a "sicko?" Football fandom has this really lovely concept of the "football sicko." I was introduced to it by The Athletic Football Show, which has a segment called "sicko street," which is essentially about bad games that you would only be interested in for weird, special interest reasons. Normal people watch games for reasons like, "Which team will score the most points and advance to the playoffs?" Sickos watch games for reasons like, "What will happen when the most-sacked quarterback this season plays against the defensive end with the most sacks this season?" or "Which team will be crowned the Worst Team of the Season?"

I think it's really beautiful. I think the term emerged in college football Twitter during the pandemic? But I've found it kind of charming that football fandom is so autism-inclusive. This is something about the fandom that's not really visible from the outside, which is mostly about the bro-offs and the screaming.

Anyway, I highly encourage you to speak of your special interests as a visit to, "the sickest of streets" from now on.

Speaking of autism in football: Can you guess which quarterback gifted each member of his offensive line a fossil, chosen from the quarterback's own personal collection?

One good thing about winter: It's a great excuse to make hot pot. We held our first hot pot dinner earlier this month, and I'm looking forward to many more now that we're not traveling as much. I tend to refer to this guide to hot pot at home. It's one of those things that, like grilling, has a very high "how much it impresses people" to "how much work it actually is" ratio. Even better if you get your friends to help you prep the veggies.

That's all I've got this, uh, year!

Thanks for reading, and more soon.

- Nat