Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025. They’re in the open now with their plans to turn the US into a conservative autocracy.
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Entries for July 2023
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Influences
Greta Gerwig takes us on a whirlwind tour through 33 films that influenced the Barbie movie, visually, thematically, and in terms of plot/content. The influences include The Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Singin’ in the Rain, The Godfather, Oklahoma!, 2001, and Saturday Night Fever.
Then, Saturday Night Fever, I always had a sense of wanting this to be a movie with an amazing soundtrack. Saturday Night Fever obviously has this incredible soundtrack by the Bee Gees. There’s a documentary about the Bee Gees, and I’d seen it and was so touched by the Bee Gees, and I thought Barbie seemed so disco to me in her heart, because Barbie’s sort of — and I will say this as a lover of Barbie and disco — a little bit dorky in the best way. Saturday Night Fever was a movie that was driven by music, but not a musical. I guess we’re half of a musical.
Tomorrow morning (July 17) at 9am ET, a new web-only series by Steven Soderbergh called Command-Z premieres in which Michael Cera leads a team using a wormhole in a washing machine to alter the present by traveling back in time.
Managing Our Climate Emotions
Jia Tolentino writing for the New Yorker on What to Do with Climate Emotions:
Climate anxiety differs from many forms of anxiety a person might discuss in therapy — anxiety about crowds, or public speaking, or insufficiently washing one’s hands — because the goal is not to resolve the intrusive feeling and put it away. “It’s not a keep-calm-and-carry-on approach,” Davenport told me. When it comes to climate change, the brain’s desire to resolve anxiety and distress often leads either to denial or fatalism: some people convince themselves that climate change is not a big deal, or that someone else will take care of it; others conclude that all is lost and there’s nothing to be done. Davenport pushes her clients to aim for a middle ground of sustainable distress. We must, she says, become more comfortable in uncertainty, and remain present and active in the midst of fear and grief. Her clients usually struggle with this task in one of two ways, she said: they tend to be activists who can’t acknowledge their feelings or people so aware of their feelings that they fail to act.
Fun promo for a Doctor Who Blu-ray collection featuring a reunion between Tegan and Nyssa. So good to see them again!
A federal judge on the persistent ethical failures of the Supreme Court justices. “You don’t just stay inside the lines; you stay well inside the lines. This is not a matter of politics or judicial philosophy. It is ethics in the trenches.”
Jewelry carved from now-extinct giant sloths has been found in Brazil, which indicates humans were living in the Americas 25,000-27,000 years ago, much longer ago than once thought.
I’ve posted before about Florian T M Zeisig’s album of looping Enya samples (it’s in my regular listening rotation while I’m working) and he’s just released a second volume of new songs that are equally engaging.
Instruction Manuals for 6000+ Lego Sets, Courtesy of the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an international treasure, a trove of human creative output spanning decades and even centuries — a modern library of Alexandria. Among the collection is more than 6000 downloadable PDFs of Lego instruction manuals for projects ranging from old school sets like Fort Legoredo to big Star Wars sets like the Millennium Falcon to sets geared towards adults like the typewriter.
You can also look for instruction sets on Lego’s website as well as at Rebrickable, Brick Instructions, and at Brickset. (via open culture)
Project E Ink is selling “a $2500 e ink art piece that displays daily newspapers on your wall”.
Why Do American Diners Look That Way?
In this video from Architectural Digest, architect Michael Wyetzner runs us through why American diners look the way they do. Early diners took their cues from trains:
So let’s take a look at a typical American diner. So the outside has a shape that’s reminiscent of a train. In fact, that’s how diners got their name. They’re named after the dining car on a train.
Many of the design elements in a diner are based on the necessities of dining on a train in a railroad car, like booth seating and counter seating, and an open kitchen.
So I like these two photos because they show all the elements that go into the classic American diner. On the exterior, you have that stainless steel smooth curvature, you’ve got that Art Deco typography. And then on the interior you have the checkered floor, you have the booths, you have the globes, and you have the jukebox.
In the early part of the 20th century, trains were the dominant form of travel. If you look at some of the earliest diners, they were in fact, actual train cars that were placed permanently on the ground.
Later, cars and space travel provided inspiration in the diner’s evolution.
Watching this video of a complex set-change for a play at the National Theatre in London reinforces the extent to which the crews of plays/movies/concerts/etc. are engaged in a high-level, precisely choreographed performance as much as the actors are.
Uh, the world’s first salmon ATM? Located in Singapore, the machine “dispenses 200-gram fillets of frozen salmon from the fjords of Norway”.
What a landmark new study on homelessness tells us. “Lacking housing serves as a meaningful barrier to health care and income benefits, and is a key driver of discrimination in one’s daily life.”
Daniel Kaluuya’s Barney Movie Is an ‘A24-Type’ Film That’s ‘Surrealistic’ and for Adults, Says Mattel Exec: ‘Not That It’s R-Rated’. What an absolutely chaotic headline.
A Third of North America’s Birds Have Vanished. The bird population in North America has decreased by 3 billion birds in the past 50 years, “an absolutely profound change in the natural system”.
The whitest paint ever just dropped. “The paint’s properties are almost superheroic:” it reflects 98% of sunlight, reduces building surface temperatures by 8°F (up to 19°F at night), and decreases air-conditioning needs by up to 40%.
Though rare, throwing a perfect game isn’t the rarest single-game event in baseball. That honor goes to hitting two grand slams in a single inning, which has only been done once in more than 235,000 games.
Bill McKibben: To Save the Planet, Should We Really Be Moving Slower? This is a good read on a difficult challenge facing humanity.
Phyllis Diller Crashes All-Male Roast at the Friar’s Club Dressed as a Man (1983)
The Friar’s Club was founded in 1904 and, like other private social clubs of the era, their membership was male-only. Women could visit as guests but only after 4pm and the club didn’t admit its first woman as a member until Liza Minnelli in 1987.
One of the club’s biggest traditions was its closed-door luncheon roasts of celebrities, which over the years included roasts of Humphrey Bogart, Johnny Carson, Milton Berle, Redd Foxx, and Bruce Willis.1 A few women were roasted before 1987 (Lucille Ball, Martha Raye, Barbra Streisand) but they were not allowed as guests. They even sent the waiters out of the room for the roasts.
In 1983, after months of planning, Phyllis Diller dressed up as a man (named Phillip Downey) and attended the roast of Sid Caesar (she’s on the left in the photo above with her co-conspirator, Howard Rosen). Here are a pair of videos of Diller talking about her infiltration. To be fair, the Friar’s Club didn’t seem that mad at her because they roasted her just two years later.
In 2004, the club roasted Donald Trump (roastmaster was Regis Philbin) and the next year Trump served as roastmaster for Don King. What a weird time/place/thing.↩
The impossible paradox of car ownership. “Cars are harmful to the environment, expensive, and loaded with negative externalities. But the individual benefits to low-income people are too great to ignore.”
What if The Bear, but starring Lionel Messi??
We Asked 100 People to Scream as Loud as They Can
This is great: The Cut asked 100 people to scream as loud as they could in front of a camera. For some, it was cathartic while others found it uncomfortable. Some folks didn’t know how to scream which I don’t entirely understand?
This video reminded me a lot of Ten Meter Tower, one of my all-time favorite short documentaries, in which dozens of people are filmed jumping from a 10-meter diving platform for the first time. Both videos deal with inner vs. outer selves and people’s comfort with expressing vulnerability. (via colossal)
The Icelandic word “ísbíltúr” roughly translates as “ice cream road trip”. You load up the fam, go get ice cream, and eat it while you drive around.
The Great British Bake Off: Depression Meals Week. “For their signature challenge, the bakers were asked to prepare something, anything, with bread. Because, for the love of god, they need to eat today.”
Elstob is a variable font for medievalists that based on types used by the Oxford University Press in the 17th and 18th centuries. Try the specimens page to play around with features like ligatures and the long s.
Lawyers with Supreme Court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo. Suuuuper ethical. Is there anything that Thomas actually pays for himself? “So long as Papa gets some sugar” indeed.
How to Make the Potato Chip Omelette from The Bear
If you were left hungry by the food in season two of The Bear, Binging With Babish has got you covered. In this video, he recreates the potato chip omelette that Sydney makes in the second-to-last episode of the season. And then, he makes an adjacent dish, José Andrés’s tortilla española with potato chips. Just to contrast, here’s Andrés making it:
Double yum. See also How to Make Perfect Soft-Scrambled Eggs, Hey, Let’s Watch Jacques Pépin Fry Eggs (and make omelettes), and 59 Ways to Cook Your Eggs.
The Hollywood studios are gonna let the writer’s strike drag on “until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses”. What a bunch of cartoonishly evil rich fucks.
It’s Random Midsummer Shopping Day!
For the last few years, Amazon has spent a couple of summer days putting a bunch of their most popular items on sale for their Prime members. This year, Prime Day runs from July 11-12 and includes a number of things that I can personally recommend (or are currently coveting). Keep in mind that you need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of these deals: here’s where you sign up for Prime if you’re interested (there’s a free 30-day trial).
Ok first, there are a bunch of deals on Apple products, including the 2nd-generation AirPods Pro (20% off) that I am a big fan of. (That’s actually not a Prime-only deal, but it’s $50 cheaper than Apple sells them for.) The AirPods Max are $100 off, the 2nd-gen AirPods are just $90 (30% off), and the 3rd-gen AirPods are $30 off.
The latest Apple Watch (Series 8) is a whopping 30% off ($280) for the 41mm and 28% off for the 45mm ($309)…much less than what Apple sells them for. I really like my Series 7 (especially for the exercise stuff) and this is a very tempting upgrade.
The 13” M1 Macbook Air is on sale for for $750…that’s 25% off the list price. This is the exact computer I’m using right now and I love it. Still feels super quick and powerful, even a few years after it was released.
Moving on from Apple to Play-Doh. You heard me! 24 cans of Play-Doh for $14.49, who can resist? That smell still takes me right back to when I was a kid…
With Covid and wildfires, air purifiers are becoming more of a necessity for homes around the country. Here are a pair of well-regarded purifiers that are on sale: the Levoit Vital 200S is $30 off ($160) and the Winix 5500-2, which is 53% off ($117).
One of Prime Day’s biggest deals for readers is the Kindle (just $65, down from $100) and the Kindle Paperwhite ($90, 36% off). The Paperwhite is the one I use to read all my books these days.
Speaking of reading, check out these books that are on sale: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton ($6), One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ($10), The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu ($7.41), and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler ($8.14) (I just finished reading this!).
I have too many plants to take care of these days, but this hydroponic indoor garden (70% off!) sure is tempting. (I am almost positive your weed plant needs more light than this? And actual soil? But do some research…maybe it’ll work? 🤪)
One my family’s recent favorite board games, Splendor, is 47% off ($23.74). And while I was looking at that, I noticed that Splendor Duel is also on sale for almost 20% off…I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m tempted to give that a try.
KitchenAid’s smaller 3.5 Qt. Stand Mixer, which is lighter and takes up less counter space in smaller kitchens, is on sale for $260 (32% off).
Ok that’s all I’ve got, but if you don’t see anything here that interests you, your best bet is to head over to Amazon’s Prime Day page and start digging around. I know there’s a bunch more deals on things like kitchen items, TVs, fashion, tech products, and beauty products. Good luck!
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Drone Footage of a New Icelandic Volcano Erupting
A new eruption started yesterday in the general area of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano and drone pilot Isak Finnbogason was there to capture some footage. The shot of the lava flow beginning at the 1:00 mark is absolutely stunning.
This short video is an excerpt from a longer livestream Finnbogason did — here’s another short excerpt that shows just how large the eruption is and how close some people are getting to it:
He’s starting another livestream of the eruption in just a few minutes here (at 2:30pm ET) if you’d like to follow along.
The Secret to Delicious Food: Simultaneously Too Much and Too Little Salt
There’s a small moment in second-to-last episode of the season two of The Bear (extremely mild spoilers) that I liked even though you blink and you’ll miss it. One of the new chefs is tentatively salting some steaks and Sydney says “I need you to salt that like a sidewalk”. Cut to Carmy, who walks up muttering “Where’d you grow up, Arizona?”, takes the salt, and absolutely just drenches the steaks in salt. And I was like, yeah, that’s how you salt a steak!
Several years ago, I started noticing in various cooking videos how much salt chefs put in & on food, particularly meat. I already knew that ample salting was important to the flavor, but I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t going far enough. I was being timid with my salting, afraid of oversalting and ruining dinner. Around this time, I read a Wired piece by chef David Chang about his Unified Theory of Deliciousness and I’ve been following his recommendation about salting food ever since:
My first breakthrough on this idea was with salt. It’s the most basic ingredient, but it can also be hellishly complex. A chef can go crazy figuring out how much salt to add to a dish. But I believe there is an objectively correct amount of salt, and it is rooted in a counterintuitive idea. Normally we think of a balanced dish as being neither too salty nor undersalted. I think that’s wrong. When a dish is perfectly seasoned, it will taste simultaneously like it has too much salt and too little salt. It is fully committed to being both at the same time.
This is the way. You’ll screw it up sometimes and go overboard, but if you can consistently get right up to that edge, your food will taste the best it possibly can. This works particularly well with steaks and burgers…my burger went from “pretty good” to “holy shit” solely on the application of the proper amount of salt.
The Flooding in Vermont
Hey folks. I’m sure you’ve read about the heavy rains and the flooding in the Northeast, particularly in New York and Vermont. My town here in central VT did not flood last night (though some area fields may have) and appears to be out of danger but other places around me were not so lucky.
In particular, I’m stunned by the several feet of water that are currently covering Montpelier, the capital of Vermont and a place that I know pretty well. This is a video from late last night and early this morning of someone paddling around downtown Montpelier, surveying the flooding and interviewing locals:
The water is not rushing, just standing, and there is almost no one around — there’s an eerie quiet that’s punctuated by the sounds of alarms going off all around. And there’s just so much water. Here’s a drone view of Montpelier (photo) from this morning:
And the threat isn’t over yet. A nearby dam is close to capacity and if they need to release the water, it could quickly dump much more water into the city (UPDATE: the threat to the dam has thankfully subsided for now):
“This has never happened since the dam was built so there is no precedent for potential damage,” City Manager William Fraser wrote in a statement posted to Montpelier’s Facebook page at 3:53 a.m. “There would be a large amount of water coming into Montpelier which would drastically add to the existing flood damage.”
People who live along the north branch and in downtown Montpelier are at greatest risk, he said. The dam, located on the border of Middlesex and Montpelier, is located about three miles north of the city center.
With “few evacuation options remaining,” Fraser wrote, “People in at risk areas may wish to go to upper floors in their houses.”
I’ve walked those streets a lot. Been to many of those shops. Eaten in those restaurants. Watched dozens of films in those movie theaters. I cannot believe how much water there is. So many people are going to be displaced from their homes for weeks and months. Businesses will be closed for weeks? Months? Some may never reopen. I’m not sure what else to say here.
Other places near here flooded too: Richmond, Waterbury, Moretown, Middlesex. The freeway is closed in some areas and motorists were left stranded. Officials had to evacuate the State Emergency Operations Center in Waterbury.
Towns further south in Vermont got hit too: Londonderry, Weston, Shrewsbury.
One of the things I’ve been doing this morning is trying to figure out why some places (Montpelier) got hit hard while other low-lying areas less than 15-20 miles away didn’t. And I’ve come to the conclusion that water does not give a fuck. Not about logic or human life or property. It just flows where it wants. There’s more rain over here than there is over there — because a butterfly’s wing flapped halfway across the world.
Climate disasters, fueled by large-scale, human-driven changes in the global climate, are becoming more frequent. In the past few weeks in Vermont, we’ve had wildfire smoke from Canada forcing people to stay inside, a heat wave, and now this flooding. And Vermont is a place that is supposedly safer for climate refugees to go. But that’s the thing about a global climate crisis: it’s going to affect absolutely everyone absolutely everywhere.
Oh, I’d forgotten they were doing a Willy Wonka prequel with Timothée Chalamet in the title role; here’s the trailer. Color me skeptical…although it’s written and directed by Paul King, who did the wonderful Paddington films.
A report on one of “nature’s oldest wars”, bats versus moths: “a battle featuring echolocation, chemical defense, sonar jamming, stealth pursuit, and acoustic illusions”. Acoustic camouflage! Sonar jamming!
Revisiting the Long Boom
In 1997, Wired magazine published an article called The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980–2020 (archived). The subtitle reads: “We’re facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?” As you might expect, the piece makes interesting reading here in the actual future, particularly the sidebar of “10 Scenario Spoilers”:
The long boom is a scenario, one possible future. It’s built upon the convergence of many big forces and even more little pieces falling into place — all of them with a positive twist. The future of course, could turn out to be very different — particularly if a few of those big pieces go haywire. Here are 10 things that could cut short the long boom.
1. Tensions between China and the US escalate into a new Cold War — bordering on a hot one.
2. New technologies turn out to be a bust. They simply don’t bring the expected productivity increases or the big economic boosts.
3. Russia devolves into a kleptocracy run by a mafia or retreats into quasicommunist nationalism that threatens Europe.
4. Europe’s integration process grinds to a halt. Eastern and western Europe can’t finesse a reunification, and even the European Union process breaks down.
5. Major ecological crisis causes a global climate change that, among other things, disrupts the food supply — causing big price increases everywhere and sporadic famines.
6. Major rise in crime and terrorism forces the world to pull back in fear. People who constantly feel they could be blown up or ripped off are not in the mood to reach out and open up.
7. The cumulative escalation in pollution causes a dramatic increase in cancer, which overwhelms the ill-prepared health system.
8. Energy prices go through the roof. Convulsions in the Middle East disrupt the oil supply, and the alternative energy sources fail to materialize.
9. An uncontrollable plague — a modern-day influenza epidemic or its equivalent — takes off like wildfire, killing upward of 200 million people.
10. A social and cultural backlash stops progress dead in its tracks. Human beings need to choose to move forward. They just may not …
Numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10: check, check, check, check, check, check, check. And a couple of the others rhyme. Take #2: technology did increase production and the economy, but in the United States, this mostly just increased the wealth of a few and did not “trickle down” to the rest.
Can Modern-Day Italians Understand Latin? A Youtuber Puts It to the Test on the Streets of Rome. “As the conversation continues…it becomes clear that they can indeed figure out what he wants to know.”
Gatorade Cocktails Are Good. “Whenever I get a bit exhausted by the highbrow brinksmanship of my industry, drinks like these are a refreshing reminder that cocktails should be fun.”
I binged the first four episodes of Silo last night, the quickest I’ve watched a new show in years. Station Eleven + Snowpiercer + Severance vibes. Here’s the trailer if you want to check it out. Based on Hugh Howey’s book series.
The Anti-Defamation League: Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack. “From raising unfounded suspicions about mass shootings & elections to spreading hate speech against Jews, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community…”
The Trailer for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon
Well, this looks good: Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby star as Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte in Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film about the French dictator. The film will be out in theaters on November 22 and on Apple+ sometime after that.
“Check a bag, you glamorous beast.” I used to be solidly on team carry-on, but more recently I am checking a bag when travelling, especially if there’s a layover. Not having to shlep anything bigger than a small backpack around feels luxurious.
The Ambient Sounds of Japan’s Jazz Kissas (Listening Cafes)
Craig Mod recently finished a 16-day tour of jazz kissas in northern Japan. Jazz kissas are bar/cafes where one goes to listen to jazz, mostly on records and not live. Mod loosely defies them thusly:
Mostly defined as: Mid-20th century “listening cafes” for jazz music. But there is a lot of variance in this definition. Lots are coffee-focused cafes, fitting into the broader “kissaten” universe. But some are more bar-like, and some even jazz clubs (but for the most part, live music is rare). You can tie yourself in knots splitting hairs over this stuff. Though they’re traditionally known as “jazz kissa” — the shortened version of “kissaten” (fear not: even if you call them “jazz kissaten” you won’t suddenly turn into a pillar of salt). Some are seventy years old. Some forty. Some are five years old. The important defining element is simply: A presiding and effusive ever-abiding love for jazz, jazz, and more jazz.
At each stop, he recorded the ambient sounds of each kissa so that you can experience a little bit of the atmosphere at these places — here’s the full playlist. The recordings were done with a pair of microphones so that the audio is in stereo. This sounds great with a good pair of headphones!
50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon. There are 50 chapters, covering one text game from each year since 1971. Zork. Adventure. Dwarf Fortress. LambdaMOO. Universal Paperclips.
Useful word for our time: polycrisis. “the interplay between the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the energy, cost-of-living and climate crises […] where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part.”
Seven Rules For Internet CEOs To Avoid Enshittification
In a piece from January, Cory Doctorow outlined the enshittification lifecycle of online platforms:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
…
This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
Taking note of various platforms lighting themselves on fire recently, Mike Masnick offers a list of rules for the leadership of these platforms to follow to avoid turning into dumpster fires. Here’s rule #3:
Create more value than you capture. This one is not mine, but Tim O’Reilly’s, and it’s one that constantly sticks with me. As you’re developing a business model, the best way to make sure that you’re serving your users best, and not enshittifying everything, is to constantly make sure that you’re only capturing some of the value you’re creating, and are instead putting much more out into the world, especially for your community. Your investors will push you to capture more and more of that value, but again, when you start chasing that, you’re also spiraling down the enshittification curve.
IMO, some of what is going on with Twitter & Reddit is not enshittification per se, but more of a pushback against the power of their users. (I always think of Tron in instances like these. “I fight for the users!”) I think these CEOs know on some level that they’re making their product worse, but bringing their user bases to heel is worth the short-term headaches.
Subwaydle is a Wordle-like game where you try to guess the NYC subway transfers to use to get to your destination (e.g. “travel from Saratoga Av to 42 St–Port Authority Bus Terminal using 2 transfers”).
The Prescience of Octavia Butler
I just finished reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (so good!) and while doing a little customary post-read research on it, I discovered that Butler wrote a sequel in 1998 called Parable of the Talents and, uh… (from Wikipedia):
The novel is set against the backdrop of a dystopian United States that has come under the grip of a Christian fundamentalist denomination called “Christian America” led by President Andrew Steele Jarret. Seeking to restore American power and prestige, and using the slogan “Make America Great Again”, Jarret embarks on a crusade to cleanse America of non-Christian faiths. Slavery has resurfaced with advanced “shock collars” being used to control slaves. Virtual reality headsets known as “Dreamasks” are also popular since they enable wearers to escape their harsh reality.
Well, our present reality certainly checks a remarkable number of those boxes, including an absolute bullseye on “Make America Great Again”.
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