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I like these collage-like artworks by Tavares Strachan. One of the figures depicted above in the third piece, just above the queen, is polar explorer Matthew Henson, who was the first person (maybe?) to reach the geographic North Pole in 1909 as part of Robert Peary’s expedition.
Watch All of the Commercials That David Lynch Has Directed: A Big 30-Minute Compilation. “The New York Department of Sanitation engaged Lynch’s services to imbue their anti-littering campaign with his signature high-contrast ominousness…”
Jess Piper on speaking to people in conservative areas of America about Trumpism. “You are going to have to tell them the truth. You know the truth. We have to be in the streets.”
The Hubble Space Telescope “has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday”. Just enter your month and day of birth to find out what it saw. My birthday image is of the Egg Nebula (shown above):
Where is the center of the Egg Nebula? Like a baby chick pecking its way out of an egg, the star in the center of the Egg Nebula is casting away shells of gas and dust as it slowly transforms itself into a white dwarf star.
The Egg Nebula is a rapidly evolving pre-planetary nebula spanning about one light year toward the constellation of Cygnus. Thick dust blocks the center star from view, while the dust shells further out reflect light from this star. Light vibrating in the plane defined by each dust grain, the central star and the observer is preferentially reflected, causing an effect known as polarization. Measuring the orientation of the polarized light for the Egg Nebula gives clues as to location of the hidden source. The above image taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope is false-color coded to highlight the orientation of polarization.
Cool! I like my birthday nebula. (via the morning news)
Waldo Jaquith on why he works in the open (blogging, open sourcing software, etc.): “I’ve long worked in the open, overwhelmingly for one reason: it increases enormously the surface area for success.”
The Haunting of Verdant Valley is a photo book about Silicon Valley. “Anonymous office parks, pristine corporate campuses, and fading remnants of past industries tell the story of a region built on extraction — of resources, labor, and attention.”
Russian hackers find ways to snoop on Ukrainian Signal accounts. (Hmm, 18 people in the Yemen bombing chat, some w/ ties to the Kremlin — what are the odds Russia has ongoing, realtime access to US national security comms via Signal linked devices?)
McSweeney’s is documenting the “cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes” of the 2nd Trump administration. This is a great resource.
World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics (track & field, etc.), is introducing “mandatory testing for anyone entering female competitions to verify their biological sex”.
Frustrated that the US Treasury Department is walking back plans to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, Dano Wall created a 3D-printed stamp that can be used to transform Jacksons into Tubmans on the twenties in your pocketbook.
Here’s a video of the stamp in action. Wall told The Awesome Foundation a little bit about the genesis of the project:
I was inspired by the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and subsequently saddened by the news that the Trump administration was walking back that plan. So I created a stamp to convert Jacksons into Tubmans myself. I have been stamping $20 bills and entering them into circulation for the last year, and gifting stamps to friends to do the same.
If you have access to a 3D printer (perhaps at your local library or you can also use a online 3D printing service), you can download the print files at Thingiverse and make your own stamp for use at home.
Wall also posted a link to some neat prior art: suffragettes in Britain modifying coins with a “VOTES FOR WOMEN” slogan in the early 20th century.
Update: Several men on Twitter are helpfully pointing out that, in their inexpert legal opinion, defacing bills in this way is illegal. Here’s what the law says (emphasis mine):
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
The “with intent” bit is important, I think. The FAQ for a similar project has a good summary of the issues involved.
But we are putting political messages on the bills, not commercial advertisements. Because we all want these bills to stay in circulation and we’re stamping to send a message about an issue that’s important to us, it’s legal!
I’m not a lawyer, but as long as your intent isn’t to render these bills “unfit to be reissued”, you’re in the clear. Besides, if civil disobedience doesn’t stray into the gray areas of the law, is it really disobedience? (via @patrick_reames)
Update: Adafruit did an extensive investigation into the legality of this project. Their conclusion? “The production of the instructional video and the stamping of currency are both well within the law.”
A judge chastised vandals of a Paddington Bear statue: “His famous label attached to his duffle coat says ‘please look after this bear’. On the night of the 2nd of March 2025, your actions were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for.”
Long waits, waves of calls, website crashes: Social Security is breaking down. A deep-dive into the Trump administration’s gutting of Social Security (a long-time conservative goal).
In this episode of This American Life from a few weeks ago, Masha Gessen read an excerpt from their book Surviving Autocracy about the particular kind of lie used by autocrats like Putin and Trump.
Lies can serve a number of functions. People lie to deflect, to avoid embarrassment or evade punishment by creating doubt, to escape confrontation or lighten the blow, to make themselves appear better, to get others to do or give something, and even to entertain.
However unskilled a person may be at lying, they usually hope that the lie will be convincing. Executives want shareholders to think that they have devised a foolproof path to profits. Defendants want juries to believe that there is a chance that someone else committed the crime.
People in relationships want their partners to think that they have never even considered cheating. Guests want the host to think that they like their fish overcooked. These lies can be annoying or amusing, but they are surmountable. They collapse in the face of facts.
The Trumpian lie is different. It is the power lie or the bully lie. It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it while denying that he took it. There is no defense against this lie because the point of the lie is to assert power, to show I can say what I want, when I want to.
The power lie conjures a different reality that demands that you choose between your experience and the bully’s demands. Are you going to insist that you’re wet from the rain or give in and say that the sun is shining?
I believe the bully lie fits into the same general category as fascists seeing hypocrisy as a virtue — it only really makes sense when you think about it in terms of domination or power. (thx, caroline)
What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler. This “comical figure” was regularly ridiculed in the German & international press right up until he became chancellor. It did very little to sway his supporters’ fervor.
Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal (No Man’s Land) was attacked by a group of 15 armed Israeli settlers and then arrested by the Israeli army. “They let the settlers attack him and then the army abducted him.”
The expanding size of American cars over the past few decades is increasing congestion by reducing the vehicle capacity of roadways. SUVs are longer, require more braking distance, and drivers behind them need to leave more space to see around them.
A recent study found that Black Lives Matter protests had a “significant and decisive impact” on the 2020 election. “This represents one of the most consequential impacts of a social movement on electoral politics in recent history.”
For some reason, Warner Bros. has uploaded 41 of its movies to YouTube that are free to watch. Among them, Waiting for Guffman, The Accidental Tourist, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia, The 11th Hour (Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate change movie), The Science of Sleep, The Avengers (the 1998 non-Marvel spy flick with Ralph Fiennes & Uma Thurman), and Mr. Nice Guy (w/ Jackie Chan — this has the highest number of views on the list by an order of magnitude).
(via tedium)
Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America by Elie Mystal “reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption”.
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans. “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans…”
Ikea Australia posted an ad referencing Severance — “for work that is mysterious and important” — which features an MDR cluster of four desks.
I really liked this thread from independent bookseller Charlotte Moore-Lambert; it starts:
being an indie bookseller in the helltimes has felt both very stable and very stabilizing, and part of me wishes everyone could be on my side of the counter for a little while, because I think it would help some of you be a little less cynical and doomy right now.
One of her observations:
little old Southern ladies come in looking for books to help them better understand their kids or grandkids who are transitioning and/or gender nonconforming. people want to connect with their autistic kids, their chronically ill siblings, their immigrant neighbors. I see it every day. every day.
Here’s the whole thread on one page.
Archaeologists have found 1.5-million-year-old bone tools in Tanzania. “This finding has pushed back systematic bone tool production by more than a million years and challenges previous assumptions about the technological capability of early hominins.”
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
Yeah, this is basically why I don’t waste time anymore railing against the many hypocrisies of conservatives — they’re not gotchas that you’re catching them in, they’re part of the domination.
Utrecht’s fish doorbell is up and running again to help spawning fish navigate the city’s canals. “If you see a fish, press the doorbell. This alerts the lock operator to open the lock.”
“A string of high-profile arrests and detentions of travellers is likely to cause a major downturn in tourism to the US, with latest figures already showing a serious drop-off.”
Senator Schumer Votes to Let the Big Wooden Horse into Troy. “Yes, there’s danger in opening our gates to this statue. But there’s also danger in keeping it out… the danger of eroding the sanctity of the gift-giving process.”
Using paint in water to simulate clouds or smoke, Rudy Willingham created these magical scenes of characters from Severance (Instagram).
Willingham also created this cool animated zoetrope record with dancing Severance characters.
An analysis of pop music’s greatest two-hit wonders. “Pop stars are remembered because they are very famous. One-hit wonders are remembered for the opposite. Two-hit wonders are stuck in the middle.”
What the hell? Saturn now has a total of 274 moons. That’s so many that they may have to relax the naming conventions because there aren’t enough Norse deities to cover them all.
A great behind-the-scenes look at the work and process of artist Amy Sherald in these two videos from Art21.
In her studio in New Jersey, artist Amy Sherald paints portraits that tell a story about American lives. Her face just inches away from a canvas, the artist carefully applies stroke after stroke, building her narrative through paint. “I really have this belief that images can change the world,” says Sherald, a belief she acts upon in her compelling paintings, which depict everyday people with dignity and humanity. Following the tradition of American realists like Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, the artist uses her paintings to tell stories about America. Searching for models, settings, and scenarios that would convey the kinds of stories she wanted to tell, Sherald began to populate the world of her paintings with everyday people in everyday situations.
Sherald’s exhibition at The Whitney opens next month. (via the morning news)
In seeking information on how 21st century humans lived, future archaeologists will rely on fossils of soda cans, chicken bones, clothes, and concrete. Oh and, “wherever those future civilisations dig, they are going to find plastic”.
The MFA in Boston is putting on an exhibition this spring and summer called Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits.
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) once wrote, “What I’m most passionate about…is the portrait, the modern portrait.” This passion flourished between 1888 and ‘89 when, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, the artist created a number of portraits of a neighboring family—the postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children: Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. Van Gogh’s tender relationship with the postman and his family, and his groundbreaking portrayals of them, are at the heart of this exhibition, which is the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits and the deep bonds of friendship between the artist and this family.
The BBC has more on the show and the artist’s relationship with the Roulin family.
“So much of what I was hoping for with this exhibition is a human story,” co-curator Katie Hanson (MFA Boston) tells the BBC. “The exhibition really highlights that Roulin isn’t just a model for him — this was someone with whom he developed a very deep bond of friendship.” Van Gogh’s tumultuous relationship with Gauguin, and the fallout between them that most likely precipitated the ear incident, has tended to overshadow his narrative, but Roulin offered something more constant and uncomplicated. We see this in the portraits — the open honesty with which he returns Van Gogh’s stare, and the mutual respect and affection that radiate from the canvas.
The exhibition will run at the MFA from March 30 to September 7, 2025 and then move on to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from October 3 to January 11, 2026.
Am I excited to see this exhibition? Yes. Is this post an excuse to post 1889’s Portrait of Joseph Roulin, one of my favorite van Gogh’s? Also yes. Win win.
From Teen Vogue, a profile of Vivian Jenna Wilson. “She barely thinks about her father [Elon Musk]. ‘I’m not giving anyone that space in my mind. The only thing that gets to live free in my mind is drag queens.’”
There’s a letter at the end of this post that’s very much worth the read, but I have to explain some context first because otherwise it won’t make any sense. So:
The Trump regime has been targeting law firms “whose lawyers have provided legal work that Trump disagrees with” with executive orders that take away their security clearances and terminate their federal contracts. Yesterday, Trump rescinded his order against the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in exchange for a bribe in the form of the firm providing “$40m in free legal services to support his administration’s goals”. The settlement also includes an apparent agreement by Paul Weiss “to disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in its hiring and promotion decisions”.
Another of the law firms targeted by Trump is Perkins Coie, which has filed a lawsuit to fight the EO:
On March 11, 2025, we filed a legal action in response to a recent Executive Order that unlawfully targets Perkins Coie. The order violates core constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and due process. At the heart of the order is an unlawful attack on the freedom of all Americans to select counsel of their choice without fear of retribution or punishment from the government. We were compelled to take this action to protect our firm and our clients.
In response to the Paul Weiss settlement news, Rachel Cohen, an associate at another law firm, Skadden Arps, sent a company-wide email to her colleagues last night with her “conditional” resignation notice, outlining her frustration with her firm’s unwillingness to support Perkins Coie’s lawsuit and related matters. She posted the letter to LinkedIn in image form — here’s the whole thing as text (boldface mine):
With gratitude and urgency.
Jeremy and colleagues,
Many deals I work on have concepts of conditional notice. This is mine.
Please consider this email my two week notice, revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment, which should include at minimum i) signing on to the firm amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie in its litigation fighting the Trump administration’s executive order against it, ii) committing to broad future representation, regardless of whether powerful people view it as adverse to them, iii) refusal to cooperate with the EEOC’s request for personal information of our colleagues clearly targeted at intimidating non-white employees, (iv) public refusal to fire or otherwise force out employees at the Trump administration’s directive or implied directive and (v) public commitment to maintenance of affinity groups and related initiatives.
This is not what I saw for my career or for my evening, but Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEl, representation and staffing has forced my hand. We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here.
When I went to law school and to Skadden, I did so in pursuit of agency. I was driven by a desire to be in rooms where decision-makers were, to get to play a role in things that mattered, because things felt so needlessly terrible. It never occurred to me that the people in those rooms might feel that they were powerless. I am forced to hope that our lack of response to the Trump administration’s attacks on our peers, both those at other large firms and the many people in this country with far fewer resources, is rooted in feelings of fear and powerlessness, as opposed to tacit agreement or desire to maximize profit. I still hope that is true. But it has not yet been borne out.
It feels mortifying to say “I suspect you know who I am,” but I suspect you know who I am. Over the last few weeks, I have devoted an inordinate amount of time trying to leverage various relationships and privileges to get our firm and broader industry to admit that we are in the throes of early-stage authoritarianism and that we are uniquely positioned to halt it. There is an open letter (now signed by over 600 other AmLaw 200 associates, many of them at this firm), mainstream media coverage and an oped explaining why I feel this way.
To anyone who feels sympathetic to the views I’ve espoused but wonders why I have taken the path I have: on Thursday, March 6, after the issuance of the Perkins Executive Order, I sent emails to multiple trusted partners in management asking to help with whatever response we coordinated.
One of them replied offering to talk and then failed to reply to my email asking for a time until a week later, significantly after I had begun speaking publicly. Know that I attended internal meetings about this topic, sent emails to decision makers, avoided commenting on the EEOC investigation publicly or airing any internal firm discourse publicly.
I did all of these things out of hope that we would do the right thing if given time and opportunity.
The firm has been given time and opportunity to do the right thing. Thus far, we have not. This is a moment that demands urgency. Whether we are failing to meet it because we are unprepared or because we don’t wish to is irrelevant to me — and to the world — where the outcome is the same. If we were going to resist, we would have done so already. If we were not going to respond to the EEOC (a refusal that would be fully legal), the firm would have already told us.
This is the first firmwide email that has been sent on this topic. What. Are. We. Doing.
Colleagues, if you question if it is as bad as you think it is, it is ten times worse. Whether what we measure is the cowardice in face of lost profits, or the proximity to authoritarianism, or the trauma inflicted on our colleagues who are nonwhite, or the disappointment that I feel in this moment, take what you suspect and multiply it by a factor of ten. Act accordingly.
I recognize not everyone is positioned as I am, and cannot act the same way. But do not recruit for this firm if they cannot protect their employees. Do not pretend that what is happening is normal or excusable. It isn’t.
To the many superiors, support staff and friends that I know I disappoint by making this announcement firmwide instead of talking to you first, I sincerely apologize. There are so many thank yous that I have for so many people at this firm. Please know that if you suspect that you have helped me or taught me or cared for me, that I agree and am eternally grateful. In the coming days, I will make every effort to reach out to you separately, but there is urgency here that makes it impossible to go to each of you first. I will do everything in my power to mitigate difficulties caused by my unexpected departure.
Like any self-important adolescent, I spent most of my high school history classes wondering what I would do in the moments before true horror or chaos or where my values were tested and demanded great sacrifice. I do not wonder anymore. I know who I am. I thought I knew who we all were.
Thank you for the opportunity. My personal email is cc’d. I wish each of you the best, and that you use the privileges you hold to work for the best for others.
Rachel
Cohen offered an update shortly after publishing her letter:
As an update, I no longer have access to my firm email, so I guess it’s just notice.
They owe me a payout for 24 accrued vacation days. Thank you and good night.
(via @annabower.bsky.social)
Severance has been renewed for a third season. “Stiller said ‘the plan is not’ to have fans wait three years for the next season’s release.”
More online showings of Eno coming up (March 27-30). “You must be watching on the date and time specified for each livestream. There is no delayed viewing. These versions of the film will never be shown again.”
The editor in chief at Science: I Was Diagnosed With Autism at 53. I Know Why Rates Are Rising. “The rise in diagnoses is the result of greater awareness, better identification (especially among women and girls) and a broader definition…”
What is the opposite of fascism? Living freely, colorfully, openly. Humanizing. Connecting with others. Gathering. Hoping. Following your dreams. Communing. Nurturing. Refusing despair. Laughing loudly.
Coco 2? Pixar will produce a sequel to Coco, set to come out in 2029. It joins Incredibles 3 and Toy Story 5 in development at the studio.
New issue of The HTML Review, “an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web”. Love the TOC interface — the web can still be fun!
Writing for the New York Review (archive), Sally Rooney profiles “genius” snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan. But much of the piece is spent on the mystery of how O’Sullivan and other athletes are able to do what they do without thinking.
Take the last frame of the 2014 Welsh Open final. The footage is available online, courtesy of Eurosport Snooker: if you like, you can watch O’Sullivan, then in his late thirties, circling the table, chalking his cue without taking his eyes from the baize. He’s leading his opponent, Ding Junhui — then at number three in the world snooker rankings — by eight frames to three, needing only one more to win the match and take home the title. He pots a red, then the black, then another red, and everything lands precisely the way he wants it: immaculate, mesmerizing, miraculously controlled.
The last remaining red ball is stranded up by the cushion on the right-hand side, and the cue ball rolls to a halt just left of the middle right-hand pocket. The angle is tight, awkward, both white and red lined up inches away from the cushion. O’Sullivan surveys the position, nonchalantly switches hands, and pots the red ball left-handed. The cue ball hits the top cushion, rolls back down over the table, and comes to a stop, as if on command, to line up the next shot on the black. O’Sullivan could scarcely have chosen a better spot if he had picked the cue ball up in his hand and put it there. The crowd erupts: elation mingled with disbelief. At the end of the frame, when only the black remains on the table, he switches hands again, seemingly just for fun, and makes the final shot with his left. The black drops down into the pocket, completing what is known in snooker as a maximum break: the feat of potting every ball on the table in perfect order to attain the highest possible total of 147 points.
Watch a little of this sort of thing and it’s hugely entertaining. Watch a lot and you might start to ask yourself strange questions. For instance: In that particular frame, after potting that last red, how did O’Sullivan know that the cue ball would come back down the table that way and land precisely where he wanted it? Of course it was only obeying the laws of physics. But if you wanted to calculate the trajectory of a cue ball coming off an object ball and then a cushion using Newtonian physics, you’d need an accurate measurement of every variable, some pretty complex differential equations, and a lot of calculating time. O’Sullivan lines up that shot and plays it in the space of about six seconds. A lucky guess? It would be lucky to make a guess like that once in a lifetime. He’s been doing this sort of thing for thirty years.
What then? If he’s not calculating, and he’s not guessing, what is Ronnie O’Sullivan doing? Why does the question seem so strange? And why doesn’t anybody know the answer?
You can watch that final frame on YouTube:
There’s also a short interview with Rooney about the piece and other things.
I also mention that frames of snooker are expected to continue even after competitive play has concluded. Players don’t just get to a certain number of points and then stop because they’ve won the frame; they continue until the break imposes its own conclusion. There’s something so strange and excessive about that—it seems to belong to the realm of aesthetics rather than sport.
I used to write a lot about what Rooney examines in her essay — the effortless brilliance of top performers — under the subject of relaxed concentration. Still as fascinating as ever.
Here’s the trailer for Shopping for Superman, a crowdfunded documentary on the 50-year history of local comic book stores — as well as their shaky future.
Shopping for Superman, guides viewers through a 50-year journey revealing the origin story of their friendly neighborhood comic shops and the people fighting to keep their doors open.
Since it began, the retail comics industry has contracted by over 75% with more shops closing every month.
After five years of diminished sales, a global pandemic, and the digitization of retail shopping dominating most markets, Shopping for Superman asks the question, “Can our local comic shops be saved?”
Shopping for Superman, does more than explain the history of retail comic book shops. Its underlying narrative reveals how shops directly influenced comic book publishing to cultivate some of the most daring and controversial materials ever committed to print.
Through the evolution of comics, bolstered by shop owners, local communities gained access to safe spaces for individuals having a crisis of identity, a place that promoted literacy and critical thinking in areas where those things are scarce.
Audiences will see, first-hand, just how necessary their support will be in keeping these shops open and available for future generations.
Ha, Improved Relative Time lets you ditch BC and AD for designations like ABW (After Barbed Wire), BHCS (Before High Carbon Steel), AIP (After iPhone), and ASCR (After Supersonic Combusting Ramjet). No ATSDB (After Trial-Size Dove Bar) tho…
Beautiful Public Data posts about the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII using historical documents from the Library of Congress & National Archives, including photos by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.
What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America’s unbeautiful suburban sprawl. “Somewhere along the line, the American Dream became to live alone, surrounded by all of this, rather than living in connection with other people.”
In this video for Wired, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies fascism & authoritarianism, answers questions from the internet about dictators.
Why do people support dictators? How do dictators come to power? What’s the difference between a dictatorship, an autocracy, and authoritarianism? What are the most common personality traits found in tyrants and dictators? Is Xi Jinping a dictator? How do dictators amass wealth?
The Sticker Box and the Woodstock Message Tree. “What makes this sticker-covered electrical box even more interesting is its location. It sits right across the road from the former site of the Woodstock Message Tree.”
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