“At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.”
―
Happy weekend, kittens! Jeff is at a friend’s birthday abroad this weekend, and I’m cheerfully scheming of what I can get away with in his absence. In the midst of all that, I’m also getting a lot of adult tasks done like the usual household maintenance and laundry because adulthood is a never ending list of monotonous chores. Weekend Links
Procrastinate with me by enjoying this nice batch of weekend reading I’ve put together for you. I’m obviously biased, but I think this is a rather nice assemblage of pop culture, feminism, PRIDE celebration, fashion, politics, and archaeology. Why else do you people come to this dinky little site?
The uncomfortable State Visit is over, and here in the UK we’re using some pageantry in the form of Trooping the Colour as a palate cleanser, whilst my president is awkwardly stepping on his own NASA message and conflating the Moon and Mars on Twitter. Totally on par examples of the symbolic role of the state.
I never get over these stories. How do people just misplace this stuff!?
Kimberly Clark–drag queen and YouTube legend of anti-beauty-consumerism–is back!
There is a great interview with Stephen Colbert in the New York Times this week, and it will not surprise you at all to hear that I loved his thoughtful answer to why he loves Tolkien so much. He is a noted fan and, as all the best fans are (regardless of what their fandom is centered on), his reasons for his love are deep and personal. Speaking of, he also gives an excellent answer to what he sees the differences are between good and bad for you faith, interverweaving his own religious faith and life history.
I need this tattooed somewhere.
My interest in J. Crew think pieces is inexhaustible but this Vanity Fair article is pretty darn good despite the plethora of options from which to choose. “The narrowness of the world the company first opened a window to is now, thankfully, a thing of the past. There is no one way to look or dress “American.” So how do you resuscitate a brand built on this definition? And is there still room for it?”
Ooh, our next bonnet and corset drama is coming!
Anne Helen Petersen drops her latest deep dive.
Some commentator made the point that at most other points in human history, the inability to plant or harvest an estimated 70% of ones crop might be considered something of a setback…
Step aside, Florida Man!
An excellent piece from Tom and Lorenzo about some of the history and mythology around the Stonewall Riots. Fascinating, PRIDE Month appropriate, and important.
While I’m not at all a fan of those who try to claim Shakespeare was not Shakespeare…I have to admit I liked this article at The Atlantic!
There is an unsubtle connection between misogyny and terrorism. “In 2018, a few months before Beierle stood in that studio, the Southern Poverty Law Center added a new category to its tracking list of hate movements around the country: male supremacy….While old-guard white supremacists revered women as the mothers of the race, younger bigots despise them as just one more group responsible for eroding their status.”
It’s summer. Wear sunscreen.
Rhianna is getting her money, in the literal definition of goals.
There was a fun experience going around social media and specifically Instagram this week, where some simple instructions showed users how to access the information that is used to control the ads that they see on the platform. The joke was, that almost everyone was baffled by what their data showed as their interests…it was almost always weird or wrong (if you believe people on the internet talking about themselves…but mine certainly made little sense!). The consensus opinion being that people are liars or the algorithms are not as strong or correct as we are often led to believe. I lean towards the latter. Algorithms, for all they control our world, are man-made things. Popular science YouTuber Veritasium happened to make a video about this from the YouTube perspective this week, which is worth a view if you want to understand the fraught relationship between platforms, creators, and views–as well as how sensationalism has overtaken…everything. This is true of our politics, media, and publishing worlds as well.
Babies and young children are dying in facilities in which they should not be being held in the first godamn place. If you have extra cash to spare this week, throw it at RAICES who is doing important work on the border. Our president may not be able to make up his mind whether he’s pro or against tariffs (and trying to avoid a fight with his own senate) but children are still dying.
Like everyone else in the world, I am debating whether or not I could pull off THAT Fleabag jumpsuit. I suspect not. I suspect I may buy it anyway….
Straight Pride…I can’t even. What a basket of WTFery.
Exhibit 1,403,582 why PRIDE matters (read the story):
Homophobia functions very differently for gay men and lesbians. Gay men are offensive to straight people because they have sex with men. Lesbians are offensive to straight people because they do not have sex with men. https://t.co/sNMK9TEveP
— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) June 7, 2019
Small Dog Syndrome 
Lots to read here!
I read most of AHP’s story about home-owning milennials….and she was smart to write this.
The only way I would ever have afforded to own my own home (since journalism pays poorly and is a very insecure industry) was thanks to an inheritance from my maternal grandmother I got at 25 and used at 30 with a significant (50%) down payment)…since I had no job at the time and my fiance-later-husband-later-ex was an MD and banks will lend them anything.
I love owning my home (we still have a mortgage as we needed some $$$ out of it when we re-financed) and pay $2,000 a month for it, which is pennies for our area for a one bedroom, spacious, top floor, river view, pool, parking, garage, etc…
We put in $70,000 in renovations and have spent at least another $5,000 over many years on various floor/wall repairs and new windows. Our monthly maintenance has almost doubled, from $500 to $850+ a month. We do skip all the costs of roof/boiler/furnace/yard, etc. of owning a house.
My parents have done very very well buying and selling real estate (my father’s small town Ontario Victorian home doubled in price in 4 years)…but not us. Our apartment remains VERY and badly under-valued so we are fighting hard now (w Jose on the co-op board) to get our hideous 1960s era lobby and hallways updated. When I tell NYC friends what our places sell for (so cheap) they gasp…and we are a 40 minute commute to midtown.
So, as an investment of that initial $$$. Not good. Emotionally, yes.
Here in the UK, there is a substantial part of culture that expects parents to help adult children get on the property ladder because it’s assumed that even successful young adults can’t make enough for even normal, modest homes in typical residential areas. This is massively exacerbated in London, of course. I think homeownership was more independently achieved in the US (at least since the 1950s) but this is a distant dream for many my age.
We want to own a home someday (still haven’t figured out or agreed where exactly…shhh), but even at 33 and fairly successful for where we are in life, I have a hard time envisioning HOW we’re going to do it.
It’s very tough w/o family $$$ help and/or a HUGE mortgage with 5 or 10 percent down-payment….which was possible in the U.S. (and let to the housing crisis with liar loans to people who really could NOT afford the homes) while Canada, for example, was demanding (I think) 35% down….a lot.