DUCKLINGS, I’m not dead. I’m just still a bit overloaded at work and adjusting to summer (as I’m forced to do every year) in a country without in-built cooling. Plus birthday celebrations, plus COVID spiking again, plus…

You get the idea. I’m not neglecting you, kittens. Mommy’s just busy. Have some reading material to make up for it.

Living your life publicly, not so much as a celebrity but as an artist who has and is expected to mine your own life for content the way that comedians and personal essayists do, must be a strange sort of daily conundrum. Like many people, I liked John Mulaney The Wife Guy, and was sorry to hear about his relapse and divorce. But also know that as public as his life is…he’s just a person going through some pretty excruciating stuff that most people only have to deal with on the inside. He has to become the next version of himself under a pretty unforgiving spotlight.

Fascinating and bizarre read!

Dystopia is looking a lot less impressive than 80s action movies led us all to think it would be.

This week in Mormon news: why the rebrand-that-the-leadership-denies-is-a-rebrand is a futile effort. Which is why the “this week in Mormon new” moniker is staying.

Also Mormon adjacent, this opinion piece is incredibly interesting and powerful to read: “This story is about human trafficking on the spiritual plane. It’s about cults: who builds them, lures us in, and how we stay enslaved.” Also read the article it’s responding to in the first place.

I love beauty, makeup, and skincare as much as ever, but the fundamental changes the industry has undergone (specifically the pivot to fast-fashion-like production and distribution) has affected my view of it as a whole. I’m sure there’s something worthy of therapy in the fact that the democratization of beauty makes it less interesting to me, but I’m not prepared to do the work of unpacking it.

SHARKS, or Why London is Bonkers.

I found this story fascinating, even though I think the circumstances that provoked it clearly heart wrenching for the parents involved. How exactly IS citizenship conferred? Birthplace apparently is less important than genetics…as if American-ness is in our chromosomes. It’s a whole new meaning to the phrase “accident of birth.” I don’t expect this to hold up long term unless we moving towards a society where citizenship and race become intertwined. WHICH IS HISTORICALLY REALLY BAD, YOU GUYS.

She needs to Jurassic Park herself immediately! #lifefindsaway

I will not regret any piercings or ink in old age, I’m fairly sure. I know people talk about this but in all the usual cheesy ways, my additional piercings are very meaningful to me and not necessarily done to be trendy.

This is both hilarious and sad: a former US president is now a failed blogger.

GOOD. THIS IS VERY GOOD. Next abolish tax havens globally. [ETA, of course I got my hopes up to be crushed by capitalism. After patting themselves on the back for this, the UK for one immediately began messaging they will exempt the very industries who need the be better regulated and taxed the most. Capitalism always wins…]

TAX. THE. RICH. Not just because society is missing one of its key support systems but because the non-taxed income is spent manipulating the political system anyway. Collective decisions about taxes is democracy, personal and self-interested decisions about wealth that control political systems is oligarchy. ProPublica‘s initial reporting here.

Annnnnnnd I’m sobbing….

What fantastic history to preserve; good for the owners for doing that work.

Thank god, let it die.

Oh look, a milestone we really didn’t want to reach – and more context as to why short term or one-off fixes won’t work. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 1000 years unless captured and each year we dump about 40 billion metric tons into it. You can ride bikes and recycle everything until the day you die, but no one person or even one community can put that number into reverse.

So, what you’re saying is that all these conveniences we’ve been experiencing are artificially low in price because actual labor is required? “And while it’s painful to pay subsidy-free prices for our extravagances, there’s also a certain justice to it. Hiring a private driver to shuttle you across Los Angeles during rush hour should cost more than $16, if everyone in that transaction is being fairly compensated. Getting someone to clean your house, do your laundry or deliver your dinner should be a luxury, if there’s no exploitation involved.”

I will never not signal boost stories about buying clothing second hand or custom made – AND paying for it appropriately.

A very interesting profile about a very interesting media person.

…I’m not sure we deserve to survive as a species…

Lest we forget that this is on the rise everywhere, but the investigation by both the New York Times (excellent two part series on The Daily about this) and some other outlets really brings the problem to life beyond headlines.

And let’s end on a despondent note, shall we?