Curious about RSS Feeds??? Wanna spend less time scrolling? Quitting Twitter?I curated a COVID-themed OPM file to help get you started.
Just download the file, upload it to whatever feed-reader you use (I love CommaFeed, but here's a list of other ones), and enjoy.
I will also update the links section SOON, probably today, to include all of my recommendations. Please contact me with any you think I should add.
11/8/2024
FAN-CLUB Updates: I updated the layout, hoping it's more responsive now!! Also added the new mini CR box to the library, and a photo of all the current air purifiers in a stack
10/15/2024
REMOTE WORKSHOP THURSDAY 10/17! In collaboration with the Boston Anarchist Bookfair, I'll be presenting a workshop this year a few days before! It's fittingly all about how we can make events safe(r) from COVID-19. I'll be implementing many of the practices discussed in this workshop at the bookfair this weekend -- which will require masks indoors, encourage testing/proper isolation as needed, and utilize air purifiers fans and far-uvc in a layered mitigation approach. Please join me in spreading the word and making these practices more normalized and easy to implement!!!
9/24/2024
FAN-CLUB Fall 2024 Survey!!!!
please check out this super quick survey and pass along to any Boston-ish DIY/punk/queer event planners and musicians and live music enjoyers in yr orbit
I wanna figure out how I can make this project useful/accessible/better understood in the BOSTON DIY/PUNK/HC/QUEER community, in particular, bc that's my community (even tho I am not as involved in person as I once was). If you are in a band, book shows, or work at a venue, your feedback would be especially helpful. But I really wanna hear from everyone. (It's also totally ok and even maybe extra helpful if COVID isn't something you usually think about rn)
9/6/2024
We Have the Tools updates: Just added some zines *not made by me* to the printables page, a couple articles and a new link to the Links page !!
7/30/2024
Teaching another workshop THIS THURSDAY at 6 PM (EST)!
I'm rooted in the DIY punk community in Massachusetts, and helped run COVID-safe(r) gigs in Cambridge from 2022-June of this year. This experience will inform the workshop, but the content should be applicable to many types of events.
It really sucks we have to fuckin DIY public health now too, but as the saying goes, we keep us safe.
This workshop will go over ventilation techniques, how to use air purifiers and far uvc, navigating testing/masks, and other mitigation practices.
Musicians are at unique risk of issues related to long COVID, but we don’t have to continue the cycle of sickness being imposed on us. We can protect each other and keep shows going with the right knowledge and tools.
RSVP or get alerted for the next one here: http://fan-club.neocities.org/skillshares
7/12/2024
Three months flies by when you are buried in a campaign as emotional as this one was. I think we may have lost our organizing space, our venue, the one place I've been able to consistently organize safe(r) shows and workshops in. The space that hosted the FAN-CLUB lending library. There's so much more that happened there, and reasons it hameant so much to so many people and myself, but it's too much to put into words today. I've been operating under a heavy blanket of denial or maybe optimism that we could save it from closing, but now the building really is closed (and with two of our CR boxes locked inside lmao). So time to regroup.
I'd like to invite folks to a brainstorm sesh this week to talk about next steps; what types of spaces might work, ideas for other ways to keep the library accessible, etc. If you're interested, please send me a message via the contact form to RSVP so I can send you the link. And here's a little graphic you can share:
thanks for the support and apologies for the radio silence and/or falling into a bit of an instagram trap the last few months. I was sooo determined to keep the website as the most updated source of info, but I have been lazy and canva-pilled. I'll do better!!!!
4/5/2024
I held a skillshare on 3/28 over Zoom to talk about how we can make shows safer from COVID (and why that's important)! I'm proud of how my slides came out, and the structure of the presentation, but I'm excited to keep improving upon it. If you're interested in joining for the next one, you can sign up for updates here.
I also recently completed the Tempest air purifier build, with the help of my partner! It is SUCH a sturdy guy, built to last thru any Boston hardcore punk show. So now we have 3 CR boxes (classic style), 1 Tempest purifier, 1 set of Far-UVC lights, and 1 Vitalight CO2 Monitor to lend out to shows and events in greater Boston. Sign up here to reserve.
So those are my most recent updates, but I might edit this when I get home to include pictures. Turns out, getting in the habit to blog is harder than I remembered.
3/12/2024
These are FAN-CLUB updates;
I brought the CR boxes and far-UVC lights to a show at Deep Cuts! The staff were supportive and I spoke to sooo many people throughout the night about the project! I don't normally go to shows where masks aren't required, but I really want more people to know about these tools and how they can borrow them. So I took a risk, did what I could to protect myself and my friends, and I'm glad I did. Even if one of the CR boxes got a little damaged in the process :P
NUKIT/the Cyber Night Market, MY HERO, donated one of their TEMPEST air purifier kits to the Fan Club. I am so so excited to add another air purifier option, especially one that is a little quieter and more portable than the CR boxes. I launched a fundraiser on Twitter and Insta yesterday, and the outpouring of support has been incredible. We surpassed the goal amount for buying the additional parts for the TEMPEST, and have been able to pay myself back for some of the money I've fronted for other items (CR Box parts, Far-UVC lights, etc). I can't wait to start builting this thing!!
We will be lending fans to a couple of drag shows coming up, and our Far-UVC torches are currently on tour with a solo artist. It's so great to see word spreading all over the Boston area so that more people can these mitigations in action. Soon, we'll have more air purifier options, and another set of far-UVC lights to lend out, so that availability is as reliable as possible.
Finally, I'm working on a mobile version of the site. It will also work on desktop if you find all my silly buttons and boxes distracting!! Recently, I've also added a photo gallery, cleaned up the FAQ a bit, and just tweaked things here and there...it's a work in progress and I enjoy the learning process that building this site has been giving me.
Thanks ya'll for the support!!!!
2/11/2024
Sorry for the lack of updates. I've recently been focusing on another site ... to spread the word about events in support of Palestine. It's MA-focused, but includes some remote actions as well. If you'd like to check it out, it's here: http://abac.neocities.org/.
I'm going to finally add the BLIS K12 probiotics to this site shortly and also get some for myself. I'm starting an in-person temp job and freaking out about the added risk involved. I assume I'll be the only one masked, but we'll see next week. Fingers crossed there's good ventilation at least.
2/2/2024
OK Fan-Club is on instagram now, but don't expect us to post much lol.
1/17/2024
I decided to get over myself and just make an instagram for Fan-Club, but it got suspended within just a few days. I know that it's because I took some extra steps to protect my data/privacy and to not have it immediately associated with my personal account or other unrelated projects. I signed up on a VPN, with a different email address from my other accounts, and did not log-in on my phone until I had logged out of my other accounts. I also did not give my phone number. It's the phone number that got me. I cannot appeal the decision without a phone number; and they say explicitly that they need this data both for pushing ads and suggesting accounts. I am torn about this. I obviously want as many people to see this project as possible, but I also 1. don't want to manage more social media and 2. don't want to keep feeding META's disgusting data hoard. Idk. There must be a way to do a project like this without instagram...right?
1/11/2024
The show I helped out with last weekend went really well. Here's a thread on twitter I wrote about it with some photos and stuff. tldr; we set up the far-UVC lights for the first time!! And I set up an info table where people could learn about far-uvc, air purifiers, etc (and grab free masks and tests and zines). 
I was almost late for this show because I decided to build the third CR box DAY-OF + I wrote up how-to guides for the far-uvc and cr boxes. There's a printed one that I'm keeping inside the Nukit case as well. I updated our stock and the request form on the FAN-CLUB site so that's all accurate now! We haven't gotten any requests yet, though, so clearly I need to do more outreach.
(I am determined to not made an instagram for these projects but it's starting to feel inevitable...)
I'm going to add this to the links section but I just want to highlight this amazing resource on T-Cells I saw today from lizwhatsherface. I really appreciate the way that she organizes her information for anyone to understand and share easily. Be sure to check out some of her guides and share them widely!!!
That reminds me of just how much I need to update this site (We Have the Tools). Now that my coding is improving a little (and my knowledge on Far-UVC and other tools!!!) I have a lot I've been meaning to change and add to make this more useful. If there's anything that you'd like to see added or changed here, as always, please let me know. I really appreciate the feedback. I know it's a little slower than social media, and a lot of the amazing accounts that have been sharing research. But this site was started as a way for me to organize what I was learning, so I never want to rush to output info that I don't understand well or have sources for. I hope that by including the links section, and now this blog, it can help to supplement the info that I have here in the meantime.
xx
1/1/2024
MY NUKIT TORCHES ARRIVED! I bought the set of 4 far-uvc lights from Naomi Wu's Cyber Night Market to use at events I'm volunteering at/lend out to the community via Fan-Club. They came with a cute carrying case and pretty straight-forward instructions, so they're a perfect item to share among bands and bookers who want to make their shows a little safer. That said, it's still a newer/lesser-known technology so I'm thinking about how I can best spread the word and make sure there's a demand for them. It's hard because I go to very few shows now (just the ones I help out with where we have mitigations) so how to I talk up these things when I;m not really seeing people irl? One of the factors that made me put these projects off for so long. But it's started, and I have these tools to share, and it's a new year, so I'll do my best.
12/25/2023
Added a couple things to the links section; Julia Doubleday's blog, The Gauntlet... in BOOKS, "Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped our History" By Vidya Krishnan (finished the audiobook a couple weeks ago, fantastic book and excited to dig into some of her other writing) and "Health Communism" By Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant of Death Panel Pod. I'm not finished reading that one, I put it down for a while bc I'm having trouble finishing non-audio non-fiction for whatever reason. I added an audio player to my fan-club page to share recent podcast episodes I liked. Idk if I should add the player to this site as well? Is that too much? Same code so it would be easy. hmm. Speaking of Fan-Club, I realized the zine I uploaded as a PDF didn't line up right with the images...I thought PDF would be the best way to make that work without ruining the images but I guess not. May need to just code it as a webpage?? IDK. I'm new. If you ask I'll literally mail it to you because that's more fun anyway (and I know most people don't even have printers anyway).
12/23/2023
Recent podcast episode I recommend: Live Like the World is Dying -- S1E101 - Leah on Disability and Preparedness
"...we just need to accept responsibility and fix shit. And that's the preparedness thing that you've been talking about is like, you look at your list of problems, and then you figure out how to do it, and you become really inventive about how to do it. And our problem is that Covid is around and so our solution can't be, "no more live music," because that is a part of living that we should appreciate. Right? But it also can't be "Pretend it doesn't exist." -Margaret Killjoy, host of the show. (Audio and written transcript both available)
Site updates: I don't think I'm feeling the sidebar. Going to keep playing around with the layout some more. Also need to add more mask recs now that Project N95 is closing...RIP. I've been thinking about how I'll use this blog/for what and also whether I can have the same microblog for both of my COVID-related sister sites (this one and Fan-Club). So expect some changes and maybe broken links as I figure it out.
Fan-Club Updates: I got another box fan and should be able to finish the third CR box this weekend. I added a donate button but I'm tryna think about more exciting fundraising I could do. CR box stickers? A virtual show? Stay tuned...
12/20/2023
added a sidebar and blog area for updates. added some articles to the "tools we've lost" toolbox. also fixed the spacing between elements within the toolbox.