“The April winds are magical,
And thrill our tuneful frames;
The garden-walks are passional
To bachelors and dames.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson    

Happy weekend, my poppets. After two shortened weeks at work, it’s been a bit difficult to get into the groove and the weather has turned cool again, but we are soldiering through. Aided by a heaping dose of nerdery with the first “summer” blockbuster film and awaiting the next Game of Thrones episode with equal parts longing and dread! Other than that we are just catching up on lost sleep this weekend and cleaning our apartment like staid and steady grown ups. Laundry will no doubt feature heavily.

The news is once again a pile of angst-inducing horror, but I’ve tried to pull out some of the better reads on the internet for you this week to help make sense of it all. We have royal gossip, internet culture, linguistics, and comedy to get you through the weekend. Share your favorite finds from the online world and tell me what you’re up to in the comments.

Horrible…Holy Week this year has been filled with heartache…

“It’s not cool anymore to be manufactured.” Uh oh, has the latest backlash begun?

Incels genuinely terrify me, but this story of the evolution of this radical online community is gripping and informative. At the root of a lot of male radicalization (a growing global problem) is isolation, pain, and emotional mis-education. Couple that with human tribalism, the unique self-sorting mechanisms of online culture and good ol’ reliable misogyny and you get a toxic stew of resentment and rage. Marinate in that for long enough the oft blurred lines between “irony” or “trolling” and real life simply fade. It doesn’t matter if you really are a violent misogynist or just pretending to be one online…the acts of extremism are on the rise regardless.

Related to the above, as with so many things, women of color saw the dangers coming and tried to warn us. We need to shut up, listen, and learn as a society, we might yet save ourselves some future heartache.

Seems obstruction-y?

At some point I just need to accept that this blog will turn into a fan site for the Museum of English Rural Life. I love them.

I am both sicked and not surprised by this story…

We are reaching an interesting point in society. Long able to avoid actual principled stands by being able to hide behind pseudo philosophy and jargon (radical transparency! Free speech! No political correctness!), we now have too many instances of bad faith from too many people and platforms which thrived by making those claims. We seem to be losing patience for it. Either you believe all violent extremism is bad, or you accept that some is more allowable (white supremacists) than others (jihadists). Either you believe you have the right to make judgements about what spaces you offer people, or insist that everyone participates and has the ability to do horrible things on your platform. Both options have positives and negatives. Both options have consequences. Both options will make you unpopular with some powerful people. Pick one anyway. That’s principle.

And to flip this on to consumers, we need to be thinking ever more critically about the platforms we are choosing. No one is forcing us onto Twitter or Instagram, but our voluntary participation is changing us anyway.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT.

I want to befriend this absolute badass.

Fashion as a legal tool.

Yes, I have seen Avengers: Endgame and found it deeply satisfying. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is such an interesting narrative vehicle and with both it and Game of Thrones drawing down this season, I’m curious to see if pop culture will continue to live in this current space where worldbuilding and intersecting arcs last for years, or if we’re going to return to more standalone pieces of entertainment. Or indeed if something wholly new pops up!

Didn’t do the homework for Avengers? You’re covered:

Didn’t watch the Marvel movies leading up to Avengers: Endgame? @RoyWoodJr has you covered. pic.twitter.com/ZKIWCKO97j

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 23, 2019

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Fascination with the royal family being what it is, I think this take on the powers of optics to a group of people (particularly the women who marry in!) when you are often denied a voice is pretty spot on. And I for one think that at the moment those women are doing most of the heavily lifting for the brand of the monarchy while those to the manor born are making the job harder! (The latest tea, if you care about such things. I’ve said it before but it still stands, you could not have paid me to marry into this family!)

The medievalist/Game of Thrones crossover content I crave.