“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
―
Hi kittens, I type this to you in the middle of both a literal and a metaphoric firestorm. Between a new Johnson premiership and the Mueller testimony, everything feels like it’s on fire. Meanwhile, Europe is consumed in a massive heatwave that is not prepared to cope with. People were sent home from work yesterday, and several of my coworkers were unable to travel safely as a result of breakdowns or delays caused by heat-induced malfunctions. Whatever you believe about changing weather patterns (spoiler, climate change is real), humans don’t really appreciate how much of our society and infrastructure is not built for any kind of permanent shift. Heat, cold, rain, drought, fire, tectonic plates…we are a resilient but stubborn species.
There’s a LOT to be mad about this week, so let’s recap. I’ve put together a nice batch of reading, and as always, there are lovely links interspersed with the political nonsense. To help keep your spirits up as we plan the revolution.
TRULY A MOOD TO END ALL MOODS https://t.co/lzHRago7vA
— Sam Sanders (@samsanders) July 24, 2019
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Last week the horrible-ness of the news took over, but this is still worth sharing.
This profile on Missy Elliot is wonderful. What an icon!
Also an icon: RUFUS!
This piece is about what we carry, physically and metaphorically. It’s also about gender and gendered work, again physical and metaphorical, so it’s very much in the venn diagram of my interests.
Short answer: blackmail, probably.
What a great piece on the nostalgia of a ceramic pattern! Growing up my mother used and collected Blue Willow china and for me it’s synonymous with the concept of “home.” I have a set myself, sadly in storage due to a trans-Atlantic move, but fully intend to stock my kitchen with it someday.
Yay! Good news for us and the Star Trek Enterprise, who I assume played some kind of covert role.
OH MY GOD I TYPED THE ABOVE BEFORE THIS WAS RELEASED AND CHILDHOOD ME HAS LOT ANY VESTIGE OF CHILL.
A wonderful longform piece that’s about the rise and fall of French cuisine, and therefore ALSO about the changing nature of culture, prestige, and taste. Small Dog Nation catnip!
A solution to radicalization online: making the opposite case? Well, at least maybe…
This is a horrible story about a failure of a law enforcement vetting system with some shocking results.
I WEPT at the trailer alone. (If you want to read the article which inspired the screenplay, voila.)
I am a woman caught between two governments, both headed by poorly be-coiffed showmen who have “failed upward” to prominence and now power via demonstrable lies, if not outright conspiracy theories. I think this piece in Politco on why direct comparisons between Trump and Johnson are not quite right, especially in terms of clout and especially with the European Union, is worth a read to get a sense of the international perspective. I’m exhausted by politics…
I’m exhausted, because it’s exhausting.
Here, have a bit of women’s history and art history delightfully combined.
If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention. This individual was (thankfully!) released, but how many more victims of this will there be? How many violations of citizenship or residency right are “acceptable collateral damage?”
…that is certainly one way to quit!
What if you invented something truly groundbreaking in terms of human communication…and it backfired? “It dawned on me that this was not some small subset of people acting aberrantly. This might be how people behave. And that scared me to death.”
Sign me up for ANY job where the descriptor “flair for darkness” is an asset!
We live in the upside down. (Update, the designer speaks!)
I was not really expecting the Mueller testimony to change anything: the battle lines are drawn and no one is shifting. But the nightmare scenario for me is now that bad actors (foreign and domestic) realize they can get away with meddling in our elections, they’re going to do it again. Mr. Mueller said their attempts are ongoing and Congress just failed to pass election protection legislation. Either it’s criminal ignorance or criminal bad faith.
So much to look forward to.
Small Dog Syndrome 
I never watched Mr. Rogers so this cult is really interesting….and the film looks great!
LOVE Blue Willow…https://www.simplemost.com/10-interesting-facts-classic-blue-willow-china/
I watched Mr. Rogers Neighborhood every day as a child and am a PBS devotee so I am one of the cult. But I also like that there is this tiny cult of people who just look back with intense nostalgia on a person who, by all accounts, was not in the least problematic and whose only premise was kindness. We need more of that. Most of our other heroes are falling like garbage dominoes these days.
It’s interesting — I can’t think of anyone like that for Canadians, at least in my generation. I know the current toxicity of politics and discourse makes this film a perfect antidote — even for a few hours — to how desperately sad and ugly things are. It’s very very depressing!