“At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.” 
― Edgar Allan Poe

Gruntlings, it’s been another long week, but happy solstice. We made it to the halfway point!

At time of writing I’m unsure if we’re head towards another war in the Middle East, Boris Johnson is probably going to be Prime Minister, and another assault allegation has been made against my president. You’ll find out more as soon as I do…

Enjoy the weekend, and if you’re feeling dispirited by the general state of things, don’t. Turn it into action. Fuel something you are passionate about this weekend, even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.

I worked for a police department for five years, and I am not at all surprised to read this reporting at all. My memory of the attitudes towards my then coworkers is much more around gun culture, hyper social conservatism, and militia group interest than overt racism but if the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that racism and misogyny are inherent to these other forms of extreme views, as do certain attitudes towards how they should be able to do their jobs. And worth noting that my old department is embroiled in a scandal about unethical or unlawful dissemination of records. I don’t think all cops are bad, not by a long shot! But I do think we need to look at their systemic power when it leads inevitably to abuse, admit what’s broken, and fix it.

Some people have way too much money.

I’m pretty sure he cheated on her, but nice to hear things are back on track (or at least their PR teams are excellent at their jobs).

Another week, another report that would paralyze or end an administration in normal times. This week the New York Times reported that cyber warfare with Russia is ramping up…and that Pentagon officials aren’t necessarily briefing the President about it. Because they’re afraid he would countermand the work, or divulge it. Cool…. If they’re wrong, this is a horrific breach of the chain of command and if they are right, he probably should have that command in the first place.

I am excited for this exhibit coming to the British Museum!

On The Media has done a new series, about the issue of home eviction in America. Should be a good, and powerful listen.

We’re going to run out of planet.

Let us all be chastened for our snark. All hail Boaty.

“In recent years, there has been enormous concern about the time we spend on our web-connected devices and what that might be doing to our brains. But a related psychological shift has gone largely unremarked: the way that, for a certain segment of the population, the news has come to fill up more and more time – and, more subtly, to occupy centre stage in our subjective sense of reality, so that the world of national politics and international crises can feel more important, even more truly real, than the concrete immediacy of our families, neighbourhoods and workplaces. It’s not simply that we spend too many hours glued to screens. It’s that for some of us, at least, they have altered our way of being in the world such that the news is no longer one aspect of the backdrop to our lives, but the main drama.”

The short video on egg yolks you didn’t know you needed. I now want to make all of these recipes.

…have we all been doing this wrong for centuries? The New Yorker was immediately on the case.

Are straight men ok? (Trick question, we know the answer is “no.”)

Wait…is anybody okay?!

Let’s line up a little summer pleasure reading, shall we? This list of delightfully diverse romance novels is a good place to start and includes the line “Agatha Christie but make it gay!” So you know it’s good.

Speaking of book’s Hannah’s next novel FOUL IS FAIR is coming, and she’s currently hosting an ARC giveaway content on her social media.

Another week in America, another mass shooting. A local photographer managed to photograph the shooter before the attack started and honestly, as much as I don’t want to elevate this man’s profile, it’s such a simple example of what extremism actually looks like in American that I think it needs to be shared. It’s not an brown person of indeterminate origins, it’s typically a white guy in glasses with a horrifying arsenal that no civilian needs. (Continuous developing story at NPR.)

I’m with the swan.

All the bad faith handwringing about whether “detention centers” are “concentration camps” or not, when THIS is happening, “A 14-year-old girl from Guatemala said she had been holding two little girls in her lap. ‘I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too,’ she said.”

We are not safer as a country without a confirmed Secretary of Defense–and a competent one at that. My family and its military members is less safe. The political is personal as well as vice versa.

“Two months into his detention, an immigration officer came to Mr. Mutu with an offer. As he understood it, if he gave up his claim for asylum, he would be deported back to Romania with Constantin. He agreed, and on June 3, 2018, he was released from his cell and loaded into a van. He looked everywhere for Constantin and asked the officers where his son was, but was not given a clear answer. At the airport, he refused to board without the baby. The immigration officers, he said, told him that Constantin would be handed to him once he had taken his seat. But the plane lifted off and the baby never came.” THIS. SHOULD. NOT. BE. POSSIBLE.

This is a parody. Cool cool cool…

I spend a lot of time thinking about how America seems to have squandered a half century of goodwill and leadership in what feels like record time (by historical standards).

Start that podcast.

The longform read that gripped me this week was about the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight 370. It’s riveting: “The disappearance of the airplane has provoked a host of theories. Many are preposterous. All are given life by the fact that, in this age, commercial airplanes don’t just vanish.”

The last link is a really hard hit, so here: have a cheerful dive into the wackiest hats of Ascot this week first.

Famed advice columnist E. Jean Carroll published a gut punch of a piece about her list of “hideous” men. Yes, it includes the president, but that’s not necessarily the most powerful part of the piece–I’m deeply angry to type–it’s that he was is just one of many men who continues to get away with it all. “And many women my age just “get on with it” too. It is how we handle things: Chin up! Stop griping! We do not cast ourselves as victims because we do not see ourselves as victims. While the strategy has worked for me, I wish I hadn’t waited so long to say something about two of my Hideous Men.”