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Your Mum Does the Washing
The world’s political and economic systems can all unite over one central tenet: your mum does the washing.
Libertarianism:
Your mum does the washing.
You believe you did the washing.
Egalitarianism:
That one time you did the washing
is proof it’s all equal and
no one needs feminism any more.
Americanism:
Your mum does the washing.
It’s in the Constitution.
END OF DISCUSSION.
(thx, chris)
“This debate is entirely obsolete. To what extent is the constitutional order still in effect? If we must ask, we are fully in a crisis situation; once we don’t have to ask anymore, the constitutional order will have already been overthrown.”
“None of Us Knows What the Future Will Deliver”
On Friday, Heather Cox Richardson spoke at an event marking the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns at Boston’s Old North Church. The lantern lighting — “one if by land, two if by seas” — was part of years-long effort by some American colonists to resist what they thought of as unjust behavior by a tyrant king, and led to the start of the Revolutionary War. Richardson’s speech is well worth reading.
It was hard for people to fathom that the country had come to such division. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War, Bostonians looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.
That euphoria faded fast.
Almost as soon as the French and Indian War was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.
But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury, and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.
You can also watch Richardson give her speech at the Old North Church (she begins at the ~1:18:30 mark):
You can also listen to her read it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. (thx, meg)
Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf. “We need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”
Anxiety by Doechii (Official Video)
After an old, unreleased song (and accompanying video) called Anxiety went viral on TikTok a couple of months back, Doechii released it as a single last month. And now it’s got a shiny new music video.
While I prefer the charming homemade quality of the original that she made in her small NYC apartment at age 21, this version is pretty great too. It’s going to be super interesting to see what Doechii does next — looking forward to it!
A collection of movie mistakes, including a recently solved one from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. “Movies are handmade, and just like any other art form, sometimes the seams that hold movies together become visible to the audience.”
A depth comparison of shipwrecks around the world, from the Mary Rose (~40 feet deep) to the WWII warship USS Johnston (~21,200 feet) and everything in-between (Andrea Doria, German u-boats, Lusitania, Titanic (12.5K ft)).
Johnny Cash Covers Personal Jesus
While not nearly as popular as his amazing rendition of NIN’s Hurt, Johnny Cash’s stripped-down cover of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus is fantastic. Both songs are from Cash’s sixty-seventh studio album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (Spotify, Apple Music), which was the last one to be released before his death.
In case you want to listen to Johnny Cash all morning, here’s that version of Hurt and Bridge over Troubled Water (with Fiona Apple):
Oh, and his cover of The Beatles’ In My Life:
In the wake of Alex Ovechkin surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, here are a selection of other seemingly unbreakable sports records, from LeBron’s career points to Flo-Jo’s 100 meters mark.
Wonderful photos of Broadway legends reprising their most memorable roles, including Idina Menzel (Rent), Matthew Broderick (Brighton Beach Memoirs), Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl), and Dick Van Dyke (Bye Bye Birdie).
The Goalkeeper Who Got Lost in the Fog
This is a fun story about Sam Bartram, a goalkeeper who was accidentally left on the field when a 1937 game was called off during the second half due to heavy fog.
On Christmas Day 1937, Bartram was in the papers once more after a bizarre incident in a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. With the score at 1-1, the game had to be called off on 61 minutes due to thick fog. Unfortunately for Bartram, he was the last to be made aware. “Soon after the kick-off, [fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily.
“I paced up and down my goal-line, happy in the knowledge that Chelsea were being pinned in their own half. ‘The boys must be giving the Pensioners the hammer,’ I thought smugly, as I stamped my feet for warmth. Quite obviously, however, we were not getting the ball into the net. For no players were coming back to line up, as they would have done following a goal. Time passed, and I made several advances towards the edge of the penalty area, peering through the murk, which was getting thicker every minute. Still I could see nothing. The Chelsea defence was clearly being run off its feet.
“After a long time a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he gasped. ‘The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field’s completely empty’. And when I groped my way to the dressing-room, the rest of the Charlton team, already out of the bath and in their civvies, were convulsed with laughter.”
London fog is no joke.
P.S. BTW, the photo that frequently accompanies other online accounts of this story is not of Bartram. kottke.org: carefully fact-checking internet fun facts since 1998. 🤷♂️
Stephen King used to “grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories for $1”. He called them his Dollar Babies. Frank Darabont made one of these $1 films and later directed The Shawshank Redemption.
Don’t Let the Days Go By…
This is a lovely cover of Bush’s Glycerine by Allison Lorenzen and Midwife, set to a poignant series of very short videos of everyday life. Give this 20 seconds of your complete attention and you’ll watch the whole thing, I promise. (via @mariabustillos.com)
300 people in a small Michigan town formed a book brigade to move books to a local bookstore’s new location from its old one. The move took ~2 hours and “the brigade even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.”
‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers. “I have had some truly wild conversations about AI in a professional context that make me want to walk into the sea”.
Contemporary Oil Paintings by Sebas Velasco
Spanish artist Sebas Velasco does these cool oil paintings that seem more like snapshots than conventional portraiture, still life, or landscape. They’re captured from the height & distance of a camera, they have photographic depth-of-field, etc. I like them a lot. (via colossal)
Good god, the official US government website for Covid (covid[dot]gov) now redirects to a page on the White House site called “Lab Leak, The True Origins of Covid-19”. Our country is being run by conspiracy theory.
Yesterday’s Manchester United vs Lyon Europa League quarterfinal match was absolutely and completely bonkers. Check out the highlights.
The next Star Wars film will be called Star Wars: Starfighter, stars Ryan Gosling, will be out in mid-2027, and “will not be a prequel or a sequel, but a new standalone adventure with new characters set several years after ‘Episode Nine’”.
The Supreme Court Knows Trump Isn’t Listening Anymore. “If the justices wanted the president to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they know what words to use. They didn’t use them.”
Timeless Tips for “Simple Sabotage” From the CIA
In 1944, the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) produced a document called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual (PDF). It was designed to be used by agents in the field to hinder our WWII adversaries. The CIA recently highlighted five tips from the manual as timelessly relevant:
1. Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
2. Employees: Work slowly. Think of ways to increase the number of movements needed to do your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one; try to make a small wrench do instead of a big one.
3. Organizations and Conferences: When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
4. Telephone: At office, hotel and local telephone switchboards, delay putting calls through, give out wrong numbers, cut people off “accidentally,” or forget to disconnect them so that the line cannot be used again.
5. Transportation: Make train travel as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel. Issue two tickets for the same seat on a train in order to set up an “interesting” argument.
Ha, some of these things are practically best practices in American business, not against enemies but against their employees, customers, and themselves. You can also find the manual in book or ebook format. (via @craigmod)
I love this interactive visualization by The Pudding of the shared DNA of music (i.e. how “borrowed beats, loaned lyrics, and multipurpose melodies” are passed down through generations of music, from Edvard Grieg (1876) to Tupac).
Olympic Gold Medalist Dominates the 100m at Her Kid’s Sports Day Event
If you’re one of those people who watches the Olympics and wishes they’d put a normal person in the competition so we can see how fast the athletes really are, this one’s for you.
Eight-time Olympic gold medalist and a 10-time world champion sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce recently announced her comeback and for her first 100m race, she competed against the other parents at her son’s sports day event. And completely demolished them.
I love how she goes flat-out…no Usain Bolt showboating or looking around near the finish line. All business. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
Update: She did it back in 2023 too.
The Rise of the Infinite Fringe. “It used to be easy to kill a conspiracy theory. But the internet has made them immortal — and politically powerful.”
Matt Webb’s interesting observations on running his first marathon. “There are new experiences to be found, when you go past your limits, which aren’t like the old ones scaled up. They’re something distinct. Unanticipated and unanticipatable.”
So You Want to Be a Dissident? For many, the US has “crossed into a new & unfamiliar realm — one in which the consequences of challenging the state seem to increasingly carry real danger”. Here’s “a practical guide to courage in Trump’s age of fear”.
Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society. “The more pedantic one’s reasoning for a facility not fully satisfying the criteria for a true concentration camp, the better that bodes for a country’s future.”
“Toddlers (which includes defensive bureaucrats, bullies, flat earthers, […] and radio talk show hosts) may indicate that they’d like to have an argument, but they’re actually engaging in connection, noise, play acting or a chance to earn status.”
Harry Potter and the Problematic Author, a fanzine “on loving flawed media and feeling betrayed by a childhood hero”. “I was 11 years old when Harry Potter finally broke through my dyslexia and turned me into a reader.”
The American Revolution by Ken Burns
Filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt have made a 12-hour documentary series on the Revolutionary War that will debut on PBS in November 2025. Here’s a preview (YouTube, Bluesky):
From the press release:
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
An interesting thing about this series that sets it apart from some of his others is the star-studded cast: “Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, Ethan Hawk, Josh Brolin…” These aren’t narrators; they’re playing actual characters in the series (Giamatti reprises his role as John Adams and Claire Danes plays Abigail):
Our cast list has never been surpassed by Hollywood or any streaming service. [No one could afford to] film all the people who have read for us, but they’ve all generously done SAG minimum: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Laura Linney, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Damian Lewis, Matthew Rhys — and that’s [just] a third.
In this recent interview, a charmingly shoeless Burns shares his team’s philosophy when working on projects like The American Revolution:
Given his and his team’s past few projects, including The US and the Holocaust & The Vietnam War, it will be interesting to see how the Revolution is presented and how the film is received.
About those stories of the detection of a possible molecular signature of life on a distant planet: the molecule they are talking about can also arise without life. “That’s a rather huge caveat!” (It’s never aliens. (Until it is. (Someday.)))
“AI discovered wholly new proteins before it could count the ‘r’s in ‘strawberry’, which makes it neither vaporware nor a demigod but a secret third thing.”
Ben Werdmuller on how he would run Bluesky. “Anyone will be able to permissionlessly build on that platform, but Bluesky’s services will be there to provide the best-in-class experience and de facto defaults…”
Was The Great Gatsby’s titular character a Black man who passed for white? “To read the novel without presupposing any character’s whiteness is to discover which characters are identified as white and which are not.”
On the Real-Life Story of Deep-Cover Russian Spies Living As American Families. “People who crave external validation would never make the cut as illegals, she said. ‘A spy is an actor, but an actor that doesn’t need a public or a stage.’” Fascinating!
The Traditional Designs of Ukrainian Egg Decorating
From a 1968 book, a collection of illustrations of regional patterns & designs of the art of Ukrainian pysanky, or egg decorating. From the Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas:
Pysanky are raw eggs that are decorated using an ancient wax-resistance method. The word pysanky comes from the Ukrainian word pysaty (писати), “to write.” Pysanka is the singular and pysanky is the plural. The art of making pysanky is called pysankarstvo (писанкарство).
The designs are “written” in hot wax with a special tool called a kistka (кістка) which has a small funnel attached to hold a small amount of liquid wax. The wax protects the pores of the shell from the dye. The artist, known as a pysankarka (писанкарка) writes parts of the design, dyes the egg one color, and writes more until the end, when all the layers of wax are melted off to reveal the final design.
Pysanky are an ancient art, made in Ukraine and other Slavic countries for centuries. Though many people call them Easter eggs, pysanky were made long before Ukraine adopted Christianity. The ancient symbols were then reinterpreted through the lens of Christianity later on.
From more on the regional patterns of Ukrainian pysanky and some images of actual decorated eggs, check out this page. And for a look at how these intricate patterns are made, here’s a video:
(via present & correct)
Here’s the full trailer for season two of Poker Face (Natasha Lyonne, Rian Johnson). For this season, they have tripled down on special guest stars, incl. Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Kumail Nanjiani, Justin Theroux, Awkwafina, and Carol Kane.
Timothy Snyder on “the beginning of an American policy of state terror” (re: disappearing people to foreign gulags). “Whatever the government does is good, because by definition the its victims are the ‘criminals’ and the ‘terrorists.’”
The First Sighting of the Colossal Squid
A cephalopod captured on video in March has been confirmed as a juvenile colossal squid, the first live colossal squid observed in its native habitat.
It’s been 100 years since the colossal squid was formally described in a scientific paper. In its adult form, the animal is larger than the giant squid, or any other invertebrate on Earth, and can grow to 6 or 7 meters long, or up to 23 feet.
Scientists’ first good look at the species in 1925 was incomplete — just arm fragments from two squid in the belly of a sperm whale. Adults are thought to spend most of their time in the deep ocean.
A full-grown colossal squid occasionally appears at the ocean’s surface, drawn up to a fishing boat while it’s “chewing on” a hooked fish, Dr. Bolstad said. Younger specimens have turned up in trawl nets.
Yet until now, humans had not witnessed a colossal squid at home, swimming in the deep Antarctic sea.
(via @davidgrann.bsky.social)
Here’s a gift link to the WSJ article about Elon Musk’s “legion” of children that he’s had with his “harem” of women. “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates.” It’s all just so weird, gross, & white supremacist.
How Well Is [NYC’s] Congestion Pricing Doing? Very. “The number of complaints about excessive car-honking in January and February was 70 percent lower than last January and February.”
Seth Rogen Speaks Truth to Billionaires, Gets Censored For It
For the past 11 years, the Breakthrough Prize awards have “celebrated outstanding scientific achievements, honoring scientists driving remarkable discoveries in gene editing, human diseases, the search for the fundamental laws of the Universe and pure mathematics”. At this year’s awards, Edward Norton & Seth Rogen presented a prize in fundamental physics and Rogen took the opportunity to remind the audience — including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman — that the Trump regime is actively destroying the ability for people to pursue science in America.
And it’s amazing that others [who have been] in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science. It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr, very fast.
Rogen’s remarks were heard during the live presentation but have been scrubbed from the video on YouTube. I haven’t seen the uncensored video anywhere…drop me a line if you run across it?
The Guggenheim Fellows for 2025 have been announced and they include Miranda July, Nicole Krauss, Sheila Heti, and Sloane Crosley. (I have once again been overlooked. Next year!)
Robin Sloan’s monthly newsletter is one of my favorites, chock full of thoughts, recommendations, and links. The April 2025 issue is typically great.
New cookbook from Samin Nosrat called Good Things that includes “the things she most loves to cook for herself and for friends”. Nosrat is the author of the nearly ubiquitous Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Swamped Skies
Photographer Joshua Rozells on his photo of our increasingly crowded night skies:
The light pollution caused by satellites is quickly becoming a growing problem for astronomers. In 2021, over 1700 spacecrafts and satellites were put into orbit. Light pollution caused by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are the worst offenders because they are low Earth orbit satellites, and they travel in satellite trains. One can only assume the issue will exponentially increase in the next few years, with SpaceX alone intending to launch over 40,000 satellites in total. The space industry is almost entirely unregulated, with no limits on the amount of satellites that anyone is able to launch and there is currently no regulation in place to minimise the light pollution they cause.
David Graeber (co-author of The Dawn of Everything): Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.”
“Drew Struzan is a legendary movie poster illustrator, the man behind all the posters we grew up with. He started with legendary titles like Blade Runner, The Thing, and Back to the Future, and continued with Indiana Jones and Star Wars.”
“The Rise of End Times Fascism”
This is a really interesting essay from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor about the rise of end times fascism and the far right’s bet against the future.
The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.
It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.
Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.
And (emphasis mine):
If policing the boundaries of the bunkered nation is end times fascism’s job one, equally important is job two: for the US government to lay claim to whatever resources its protected citizens might need to get through the tough times ahead. Maybe it’s Panama’s canal. Or Greenland’s fast-melting shipping routes. Or Ukraine’s critical minerals. Or Canada’s fresh water. We should think of this less as old-school imperialism than super-sized prepping, at the level of the national state. Gone are the old colonial fig leaves of spreading democracy or God’s word – when Trump covetously scans the globe, he is stockpiling for civilizational collapse.
But:
In this moment, when end times fascism is waging war on every front, new alliances are essential. But instead of asking: “Do we all share the same worldview?” Adrienne urges us to ask: “Is your heart beating and do you plan to live? Then come this way and we will figure out the rest on the other side.”
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