Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

I'm still on sabbatical, so some of the weekly digests will be from the Stone Soup archives! I hope you enjoy these old favorites as much as I do.

Also, here are some things that may interest you:

• ICE raids are in progress. Know your rights.
• Learn about and participate in the Tesla Takedown movement. A disruption in Tesla’s profits represents a massive blow to Elon Musk’s power and wealth. Also, their cars suck, their factories are notoriously dangerous, and they poisoned the groundwater in my hometown. So, y’know, fuck ‘em.
• How to call your reps: A step by step neurodivergent-friendly guide
• General Community Support Resource Links

-gailey

Fuck the Pit

First published on September 1, 2023.

Three years ago, I was on the phone with a health coach, and I was putting my foot all the way down.

This phone call was part of a program that feels—and felt even at the time—like some kind of miracle. My health insurance company (which has since stopped covering California residents) called me up at the beginning of the year to ask if I wanted to participate in a coaching program designed for people with autoimmune disorders. The concept of the program was not to diagnose or prescribe, but to search out the small daily irritants that add up to higher inflammatory responses in people like me. “You may not be allergic to corn,” the health coach said during our first phone call, “but we can find out if it makes you feel a tiny bit worse, so you can make strategic decisions about what you eat and when.”

The program lasted for a year, and was fully covered by my insurance program. I logged everything I ate and drank, all the medications and supplements I took, and all my symptoms, every day. Each week, I spoke with the health coach, who looked at correlations between all the data I handed her and suggested things like a week without sugar, a week of increased hydration, and gentle tweaks to supplements. If things didn’t work, we left them behind; if they seemed to make me feel better, we experimented more. It was a year of experimentation alongside a dedicated, focused study partner, trying to figure out what small changes we could make that might add up to increased function.

The results were frankly incredible. After years of struggling with chronic headaches, I finally found the right combination of daily hydration and electrolyte supplements to make my skull stop pounding. After years of unpredictable, awful digestive issues—many brought on by a long struggle with disordered eating—I managed to get my gut functioning normally. I learned how to increase my protein intake to keep my energy from crashing so hard, and I got on the road to listening to my body’s hunger signals—something I had spent my entire life learning to ignore.

This program wasn’t a silver bullet. It was constant daily work for a year, and intermittent check-ins for another year after that. And, just half a year into the program, I was already seeing a huge change. So why was I being so stubborn during the phone call that happened three years ago this week?

Alasdair Stuart Reviews: Warframe Diaries 3

The incredibly insightful Alasdair Stuart is a regular contributor to the Digest. Be sure to subscribe to The Full Lid for more brilliant pop culture analysis.

One of the first things that attracted me to Warframe was the fact I get a doggo. So when I hit one of the regular 'You need to boost your kit a little to get past this' roadbumps I did what anyone would do. I procrastinated. I discovered the doggoquest was active. It's called Howl of the Kubrow, and I'll never finish it. Here's why.

Kubrow are alien dogs, left behind on Earth by the Orokin, the alien race whose shadow all of Warframe takes place under. They're what you'd get if you crossed a bat with a cane corso. The bestest boys. The bestest SPACE boys.

The quest to get one starts with you liberating what's called an incubator segment from an evil scientist. It turns out that the Kubrow, because of their connection to the Orokin, are status symbols. They've gone feral but this particular scientist is trying to breed “pure” ones again. So, you go kill him and steal the technology and install it in your ship. So far so good. 

The next stage is the rough one. Or rather it can be. You have to get a Kubrow egg and there are two ways to do it. The passive one is to buy an egg from the Market place, which is exactly what it sounds like. I didn't know this was an option so I went with the other choice which, is honestly unpleasant. You break into a kubrow nest, destroy it and hopefully get an egg. You may or may not have to kill Kubrow to do it. It's an interesting beat, Warframe's “Solve most problems by stabbing them” approach colliding with its ludicrously deep worldbuilding. But I got my egg and I incubated it and...

WREX

This is Wrex! He is such a good boy. A big goofy ball of trilling owlbearbatdog fun who bounds around my spaceship. I got a dog! 

And then I noticed the quest wasn't done. It turns out that you have to take the Kubrow into combat, defend it against five waves of assault and “mature” it. Then you can go on missions with it as your companion.

So to be clear, this batspacedog puppy needs to be traumatised in order for it to be useful.

Or?

Wrex can be an adorable pile of fluff tumbling around my ship forever. 

Easiest choice I've made so far. One of the most resonant too. I'm a Warframe, a living weapon being ridden by someone I'm fairly sure is dead. My job is to show up, solve problems, usually to death, and leave. That's my choice. So is giving Wrex a life of his own and, in doing so, giving my character something a little more than somersaults and murder.

Good boy, Wrex.

Warframe is available for free on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Windows, and iOS

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In the meantime, do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

—gailey