Now, even if Musk had been elected to office, this would still be one of the worst abuses of power in American history. That is unquestionable. No one in the executive branch has the legal authority to unilaterally cancel congressional appropriations. No one has the legal authority to turn the Treasury payment system into a means of political retribution. No one has the authority to summarily dismiss civil servants without cause. No one has the authority to take down and scrub Americans’ data unilaterally. And no private citizen has the authority to access some of the most sensitive data the government collects on private citizens for their own unknown and probably nefarious purposes.
Bouie has also regularly been posting videos to his Instagram (bio: “National program director of the CHUM Group”) and TikTok.
This fantastic two-minute video, from a guy named Rich, neatly explains why the anger and frustration of Trump’s supporters has been growing over time — why the pushback on things like diversity, equity, inclusion, trans rights, and LGBTQ+ issues seems to be increasing and the hate grows more overt. It has to do with an idea called an extinction burst.
Here’s a transcript of the video:
The Trump spike in racism, sexism, and hate — it’s the emotional foundation for the entire Make America Great Again movement, that nostalgia for when life in America was simpler and paler. But as soon as we began addressing it — boom! extinction burst.
This term is why I love science so much. You can take an idea from one field, like psychology for example, and apply it to another field, like political science, and the principles still apply.
Extinction burst is actually really simple. It’s when you have a behavior and a reward, and you withdraw the reward in order to change the behavior. When you do that, usually to change an undesirable behavior, the behavior itself increases in frequency and intensity for a short period of time until ultimately the subject changes the behavior and then that behavior goes extinct.
This is like you’re at the store and you’re swiping your credit card, and it doesn’t work, and so then you swipe your credit card like 15 more times until you’re so angry you’re freaking out, and you’re about to scream an F-bomb in the middle of Toys R Us. And then you say, “I’ll just pay with cash”. Swiping is the behavior and the payment is the reward. So when the swiping doesn’t work and you don’t get the reward you need, you get madder and madder and you try it more and more until you change the behavior, which then results in the extinction of the original behavior.
Now, extinction burst at the national level is much slower, but in this case we actually know very clearly what triggered it: it was Obama’s election in 2008. Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Movement, the birther movement, and ultimately MAGA. It is a 10-year tsunami of rage in the face of inevitable extinction.
This is why Republicans are still so angry. They know they know Trump winning can’t stop it, and they know Trump in office can’t stop it — they can feel the inevitable extinction of their own terrible beliefs.
At this point, the only thing that’ll stop it is if we let up. If you stop interfering with that undesirable behavior, it will go back to normal. So no, you’re not crazy; yes, you are doing the right thing; and yes, if you persevere, the extinction burst will end.
Note that this isn’t an explanation of where the Tea Party & MAGA movements came from; many people have written about how MAGA can be understood as a reaction to Obama’s election — subsequent events like Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, the election of a Black woman as vice-president, the legalization of gay marriage, etc. have kept the indignities coming.
Rather, the extinction burst concept explains why the reaction seems to be getting more extreme, from QAnon to an increased number of book bans to anti-trans laws to anti-abortion laws to Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes in public to openly expressed racism by many Republican politicians to January 6th to the 2025 Coup. We are seeing behavior that 15-20 years ago would have been almost unthinkable — now it’s daily. They are swiping the card and getting madder and madder.
Tantrums: A child who has learned that tantrums result in attention from their parents may initially escalate their tantrum behavior when their tantrums are no longer reinforced. This escalation is an extinction burst, as the child is attempting to regain the attention they once received.
Protesting: When a person has been reinforced by being excused from a task or activity, they may initially increase their protest behaviors, such as whining or arguing, when the reinforcement is no longer provided. This increase in protest behavior is an extinction burst.
Persistence: In some cases, individuals may persistently engage in a behavior that previously led to reinforcement, even if the reinforcement is no longer present. For example, a child who used to receive a treat for asking repeatedly may continue to ask repeatedly, hoping for the treat, even when the treat is no longer given. This persistence is an extinction burst.
And in adults:
Cell Phone Addiction: If an individual is accustomed to receiving instant gratification through social media notifications on their cell phone, they may experience an extinction burst when they attempt to reduce their screen time. They may initially intensify their checking behavior, hoping to regain the previous level of reinforcement.
Gambling: In the context of gambling, an individual who has previously experienced wins and rewards may exhibit an extinction burst if they suddenly stop winning. They may increase their gambling behavior, hoping to recreate the past reinforcement.
Smoking Cessation: When someone tries to quit smoking, they may experience an extinction burst in the form of increased cravings and even heightened smoking behavior. This burst occurs because the expected reinforcement (nicotine) is no longer being received, leading to an initial escalation in smoking behavior.
Backed by a full band, horns and two background singers, Doechii’s performance was a masterclass in creativity. Sporting vintage academia looks, complete with matching cornrows and beads, Doechii delivers a freshly rearranged medley of cuts from ALLIGATOR BITES NEVER HEAL, tailored specifically for Tiny Desk. While hip-hop remained at the core, she truly gave us everything: a jazz arrangement of “BOOM BAP,” heavy rock vibes on “CATFISH” and a Southern praise break outro on “NISSAN ALTIMA.”
She closed her set with “Black Girl Memoir” from her debut album, Oh The Places You’ll Go. Before performing, she shared, “I wrote this song specifically for Black women. As a dark-skinned woman, there’s a very unique experience I’m trying to internalize … This is dedicated to all the beautiful Black women in the room.” While her star has been steadily on the rise since her debut, 2024 is shaping up to be the year Doechii cements herself as a household name.
In 2002, Fred Rogers wrote a parenting book as a resource for caregivers of children aged two to six. One of the topics he covered was how to talk to children about tragic events in the news. Rogers begins by noting that even young children can pick up on when adults are feeling distressed:
In times of community or world-wide crisis, it’s easy to assume that young children don’t know what’s going on. But one thing’s for sure — children are very sensitive to how their parents feel. They’re keenly aware of the expressions on their parents’ faces and the tone of their voices. Children can sense when their parents are really worried, whether they’re watching the news or talking about it with others. No matter what children know about a “crisis,” it’s especially scary for children to realize that their parents are scared.
In times of crisis, kids need to feel safe:
In times of crisis, children want to know, “Who will take care of me?” They’re dependent on adults for their survival and security. They’re naturally self-centered. They need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grownups they don’t even know are working hard to keep them safe, too.
Parents need to step away from the news in order to be present for their kids and for their own well-being. The 2025 equivalent of limiting TV viewing would be “put down the phone”:
It’s easy to allow ourselves to get drawn into watching televised news of a crisis for hours and hours; however, exposing ourselves to so many tragedies can make us feel hopeless, insecure, and even depressed. We help our children and ourselves if we’re able to limit our own television viewing. Our children need us to spend time with them – away from the frightening images on the screen.
We need to let kids know that whatever they’re feeling is natural:
If we don’t let children know it’s okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way. They certainly don’t need to hear all the details of what’s making us sad or scared, but if we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them.
Angry feelings are part of being human, especially when we feel powerless. One of the most important messages we can give our children is, “It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hurt ourselves or others.” Besides giving children the right to their anger, we can help them find constructive things to do with their feelings. This way, we’ll be giving them useful tools that will serve them all their life, and help them to become the worlds’ future peacemakers — the world’s future “helpers.”
And of course, we can urge kids to look for the helpers:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.
Update: On the first anniversary of 9/11, Fred Rogers recorded this brief message about tragic events in the news. Here’s the video followed by a full transcript:
Hello, I’m Fred Rogers. Some parents wonder how to handle world news with their young children. Well, we at Family Communications have discovered that when children bring up something frightening, it’s helpful right away to ask them what they know about it. We often find that their fantasies are very different from the actual truth. What children probably need to hear most from us adults is that they can talk with us about anything and that we will do all we can to keep them safe in any scary time. I’m always glad to be your neighbor.
This was one of Rogers’ last recordings before he died in early 2003.
I did not think I was going to watch this whole video when I started but I totally did. Some absolutely incredible shots & rallies in here. (thx, dunstan)
In deciding the Oscar Best Picture winners from 1927-2023, let’s say you relied on the contemporary ratings of films on Letterboxd instead of the Academy vote totals of the time. Sometimes, you’d get the same answers but rarely. You’d get lots more foreign films from directors like Ozu, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Leone, Bergman, and Tarkovsky. You’d get Best Picture wins for The Empire Strikes Back (over Ordinary People), Do the Right Thing (over Driving Miss Daisy), and Brokeback Mountain (over Crash). And Paddington 2!
Looking at just one year, 1999 was a good one for movies but the Oscar nominees were on the safer side:
American Beauty
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense
Season two of Severance is underway and while the first episode didn’t have an opening title sequence, the second episode debuted a new sequence. The season one intro was inducted straight into the Unskippable Intros Hall of Fame and season two’s intro is just as good. Once again, the titles were done by Oliver Latta, who was found by Severance producer Ben Stiller via his Instagram account.
You’re actually doing it. I mean, we’ve all dreamed of blow-drying our balls out in the open, but you’re actually doing it in front of me and at least sixteen other people who just finished exercising at this pricey sports club. Some of us will do it in private in our homes, or in a hotel room using a hairdryer a stranger might have just used to style their hair for that big business meeting in Denver. But not you. You are not confined to such social norms, norms that usually keep flapping, flag-like balls out of my eyes.
Director Denis Villeneuve steps into the Criterion Closet to choose and talk about a few of his favorite films, including Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, Steven Soderbergh’s Che, and Seven Samurai. At one point, he says, “We all look like Smurfs next to Fellini.”
In June 1971, the BBC aired a segment on a “mysterious” and “niche” sports imported from America called “jogging”. It’s in black & white, which makes it feel even older than it is, and they interview (while jogging!) Tory MP Ernest Marples, who says he often jogs to Parliament from his house in a lounge suit. This is something straight out of Monty Python…more interviews with people while they are running please.
Oh this is just delightful: for the opening of his documentary film on the history of music on SNL he co-directed with Oz Rodriguez, Questlove produced what the NY Times calls “a high-speed, six-minute DJ mix of SNL music highlights”. So. Good.
From the same piece in the Times, Questlove explains how it came about:
It’s impossible for me to phone anything in, even if I wanted to. I just wanted to throw the ultimate D.J. gig and hook you in from the gate. It started off small, and it couldn’t stop.
In the beginning, I was just going in five-year intervals — what’s the three strongest moments between ‘75 and ‘80? — and do it that way. But I’m so programmed as a D.J. it’s physically impossible for me to gather a group of songs together and not start — that’s my version of improvisation. And once you put, like, 17 songs together, you have a conversation with yourself: “OK, are we really doing this?”
My producers said: “It’ll never happen! The clearance, the clearance!” This is the first time that I realized my diplomatic position in music. People say, “Ahmir, you might be the next Quincy Jones, because your whole thing is more social than creative, knowing the right people, knowing who’s who.” There were at least 19 situations in which I had to come hat in hand to said person, and mind you, this is for two seconds — Michael Bolton singing “Love Is a Wonderful Thing” just once.
He got every clearance except for Luciano Pavarotti:
The only outright no that I couldn’t fix was that Luciano Pavarotti was going to be part of the Bobby McFerrin-Busta Rhymes mash-up. But it was too much to explain to his estate, and I couldn’t go to Italy and whatever. It could have been brilliant, Bobby McFerrin and Pavarotti going toe to toe.
The film premieres tonight on NBC and will be available on Peacock starting tomorrow.
Update: The YouTube video is now barely watchable — 2/3s of the screen is blurred. You’ll have to watch the film on Peacock to get the full experience.
I love to be on a bus that’s so crowded that there’s people hanging outside the door when the bus takes off and then they settle in like cornflakes settle into a box, and there’s always room for one more body.
If you’ve never been on a bus or train like this, have you even travelled?
I just love to expose people to examples of things they would never encounter at home. Culture shock is a constructive thing. It’s the growing pains of a broadening perspective. To me, there are two kinds of travel: There’s escape travel, and there’s reality travel. I want to go home a little bit different, a little less afraid, a little more thankful, a little better citizen of the planet.
I love escape travel (my recent trip was 90% escape) but the trips I really value are the ones that change me.
Media consumption modes could also probably be sorted into escape and reality. I’ve watched/read a lot of escape/comfort/easy media over the past year and am trying to ease myself back into stuff that’s a little more challenging.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, Travel makes a person wiser if less happy. I’ve always had this hunger to be more engaged. Not necessarily more happy, but more engaged.
As someone who is often puzzled by how to answer the “are you happy?” question, I appreciate this perspective. Happiness is generally not my goal, something closer to engagement is.
Lulu, I’m in this sort of thing in my teaching where I remind people there’s three kinds of travel: You can travel as a tourist, a traveler or a pilgrim.
Ok Steve, is it two kinds of travel or three? 😉 Here’s his explanation of the three types:
Most travelers I know, they’re proud to be known as a traveler as opposed to a tourist: “I’m more thoughtful — I’m not just here to shop and get a selfie. I’m here to immerse myself in the culture and learn.” That is a traveler, to become a temporary local. A traveler learns about the world, but I think a pilgrim learns about themselves, and you learn about yourself by leaving your home and looking at it from a distance. You learn about yourself, I think, by trying to get close to God in your travels
Yeah, the pilgrim thing definitely resonates with me — “transformational travel” he calls it a paragraph later.
The most frightened people are the people who have never traveled, whose worldview is shaped by commercial news media. And the people that are not afraid are the people who have been out there and met the enemy. My most powerful travel experiences have been going places where I’m not supposed to go: Cuba, Palestine, Iran. The friendliest people, the most curious people, the people that need to meet me and I need to meet them. When they meet me, it’s tougher for their propaganda to demonize me, and when I meet them, it’s harder for my country’s propaganda to dehumanize them. It’s a powerful thing.
In his ongoing series Cartoon Evolution, Dave Lee looks at how the character of Bugs Bunny has changed and evolved since his debut in 1938 as an unnamed rabbit in Porky’s Hare Hunt. It didn’t take long for the character to find its stride. From Wikipedia:
While Porky’s Hare Hunt was the first Warner Bros. cartoon to feature what would become Bugs Bunny, A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released on July 27, 1940, is widely considered to be the first official Bugs Bunny cartoon. It is the first film where both Elmer Fudd and Bugs, both redesigned by Bob Givens, are shown in their fully developed forms as hunter and tormentor, respectively; the first in which Mel Blanc uses what became Bugs’ standard voice; and the first in which Bugs uses his catchphrase, “What’s up, Doc?” A Wild Hare was a huge success in theaters and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cartoon Short Subject.
In 2017, Audible released a pair of immersive audio dramas of The X-Files, with David Duchovny as Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Scully, that fit “somewhere between season 10 and 11” of the TV series. Then at some point, Audible removed them from their site/service, making them completely unavailable. So, a fan put them up on YouTube for X-Files fans to enjoy.
Since 1997, using only Middle Ages tools & technology, a group has been building a medieval castle in a French forest.
In the heart of Guédelon forest, in an abandoned quarry, a team of master-builders is building a 13th-century castle from scratch. Quarrymen, stonemasons, carpenter-joiners, woodcutters, blacksmiths, tilers, carters and rope makers…are working together to revive heritage craft skills and to shed light on the world of medieval construction.
For the final video in their current series, Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou of Every Frame a Painting tackle one of the fundamental questions in filmmaking: where do you put the camera? I was especially struck by Greta Gerwig’s comments about camera movement in two of her films:
Well, I kind of had an image of Lady Bird that I wanted it to be almost like stained glass windows in churches, because it is Catholic school and all of that. I was thinking of everything as a presentation within a frame. But then when I got to Little Women, I had the opposite feeling. I felt like I wanted the camera to be alive and curious and a dancer. Like I almost wanted the camera to start young and then get older, like the girls did.
So that’s all for now from Every Frame a Painting…hopefully they will be back soon with a new project because I truly love their perspective on how films are made.
The console looks a lot like the original, but it’s bigger. In the video, the Joy-Con controllers are black with colored accents, and they attach to the side of the console instead of sliding on and off. The Joy-Cons appear to snap on quite easily — leaks have suggested they could be attached via magnets.
It looks like there’s going to be a new Mario Kart game (huzzah!) and the Switch 2 will play Switch games, although “certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2”. As for what Nintendo hasn’t revealed at this time, it’s a long list — and The Verge has some questions:
Perhaps the most glaring omission in the Switch 2 reveal was the fact that Nintendo didn’t say anything about how powerful the new console is. We can see that the console is bigger, but what’s the screen size? Is it OLED or LCD? Is the screen resolution still 720p? Is 4K resolution supported?
Though visible for a few brief moments, the reveal video showed off the Switch 2’s new dock. What’s the docked resolution? Is it just a charging shell, or is it still required for TV play? Can you dock the Switch 2 in the original Switch dock, or will it support all the super-portable third-party docks?
Very excited for the Switch 2, but I’ll admit I will be slightly less enthused if it doesn’t support 4K resolution while docked.
Following on from last year’s successful trial, the Australian Open is once again broadcasting all their matches, nearly live and in their entirety, on YouTube — but with animated avatars in place of the players. Here’s how it looks in practice, kind of Wii Tennis; this is a match between Coco Gauff and Jodie Burrage from a few days ago (the animation starts just before the 35-minute mark:
The matches are only delayed by two minutes (the system needs some rendering time) and viewers get to hear the the audio & commentary from the actual match. From The Guardian:
The technology made its debut at the grand slam last year and audiences peaked for the men’s final, the recording of which has attracted almost 800,000 views on YouTube. Interest appears to be trending up this year and the matches are attracting roughly four times as many viewers than the equivalent time in 2024.
The director of innovation at Tennis Australia, Machar Reid, said although the technology was far from polished it was developing quickly. “Limb tracking is complex, you’ve got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton,” he said. “It’s not as seamless as it could be – we don’t have fingers – but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes.”
This video includes a significant amount of footage from the endings of several films, most notably “Challengers,” “The Substance,” and “I Saw the TV Glow.”
The musical choice for Nosferatu had me cackling — an absolute perfect selection. Here’s the full list of his selections:
25. The Outrun
24. The Breaking Ice
23. Megalopolis
22. Hard Truths
21. The End
20. Babygirl
19. Juror #2
18. The First Omen
17. Between the Temples
16. The Brutalist
15. Flow
14. All We Imagine as Light
13. Evil Does Not Exist
12. The Substance
11. Close Your Eyes
10. I Saw the TV Glow
9. Nosferatu
8. The Beast
7. Challengers
6. A Different Man
5. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
4. Anora
3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
2. No Other Land
1. Nickel Boys
On a personal note, I’ve seen only two of these films — three out of the six movie theaters I usually go to within an hour’s drive of my house permanently closed in 2024. There’s a lot less diversity in offerings now…everyone has to show the same blockbuster stuff because that’s what most people want to see and I don’t really care for the experience offered by the one remaining theater that shows more arthouse stuff. As usual, Ehrlich has got me fired up to fill in the gaps in my film watching, though it’s going to be impossible for me to see Nickel Boys until it comes out on streaming in like April or May.
Ernest Wright has been making scissors in Sheffield, England since 1902. This video takes a look at how they make one of the their most sought after models.
In this episode of Sheffield Makes we visit Ernest Wright to follow the production of the Kutrite kitchen scissor, a complex design that’s woven into Ernest Wright history.
The Kutrite pattern of flat kitchen scissors was designed by Philip Wright in the early sixties and produced till the eighties. After an absence of decades, the Kutrite model is proudly being produced in Sheffield once again.
A person who makes scissors by hand is called a putter, short for putter togetherer. The Putter is a four-minute silent film by Shaun Bloodworth that shows putter Cliff Denton making scissors.
As much as I would hate to see su filindeu fade away, I understand why Abraini doesn’t want to teach it to any Canadian or Greek chef who calls her out of the blue. Sure, after several years, she may succeed in passing on the skill, but as she told me, when you take something that is so intertwined with a specific place, a specific event, and a specific pastoral code, and you present it in a different context, “it’s no longer the threads of God; it’s just pulled pasta.”
“There are only three ingredients: semolina wheat, water and salt,” Abraini said, vigorously kneading the dough back and forth. “But since everything is done by hand, the most important ingredient is elbow grease.”
Abraini patiently explained how you work the pasta thoroughly until it reaches a consistency reminiscent of modelling clay, then divide the dough into smaller sections and continue working it into a rolled-cylindrical shape.
Then comes the hardest part, a process she calls, “understanding the dough with your hands.” When she feels that it needs to be more elastic, she dips her fingers into a bowl of salt water. When it needs more moisture, she dips them into a separate bowl of regular water. “It can take years to understand,” she beamed. “It’s like a game with your hands. But once you achieve it, then the magic happens.”
Have you ever wanted to browse art from the Metropolitan Museum in a first-person shooter interface? You are in luck because DOOM: The Gallery Experience exists.
DOOM: The Gallery Experience was created as an art piece designed to parody the wonderfully pretentious world of gallery openings.
In this experience, you will be able to walk around and appreciate some fine art while sipping some wine and enjoying the complimentary hors d’oeuvres in the beautifully renovated and re-imagined E1M1 of id Software’s DOOM (1993).
They sourced the art from the Met’s Open Access collection and in the game you can click through to see each piece on the Met’s website. Here’s a video of the gameplay:
Today is the fourth anniversary of the attack on Congress and attempted coup of the United States government and the man who incited it will be sworn in as President of the United States later this month. On this dark day, it is important to remember what happened and why, so I went back and looked at some of what I posted in the aftermath of the attack. Here are a few of the videos, articles, and thoughts worth a second look.
Most of the videos we analyzed were filmed by the rioters. By carefully listening to the unfiltered chatter within the crowd, we found a clear feedback loop between President Trump and his supporters.
As Mr. Trump spoke near the White House, supporters who had already gathered at the Capitol building hoping to disrupt the certification responded. Hearing his message to “walk down to the Capitol,” they interpreted it as the president sending reinforcements. “There’s about a million people on their way now,” we heard a man in the crowd say, as Mr. Trump’s speech played from a loudspeaker.
The America Firsters and other invaders fanned out in search of lawmakers, breaking into offices and revelling in their own astounding impunity. “Nancy, I’m ho-ome! ” a man taunted, mimicking Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining.” Someone else yelled, “1776 — it’s now or never.” Around this time, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country. … USA demands the truth!” Twenty minutes later, Ashli Babbitt, a thirty-five-year-old woman from California, was fatally shot while climbing through a barricaded door that led to the Speaker’s lobby in the House chamber, where representatives were sheltering. The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, later said that she’d had a “close encounter” with rioters during which she thought she “was going to die.” Earlier that morning, another representative, Lauren Boebert — a newly elected Republican, from Colorado, who has praised QAnon and promised to wear her Glock in the Capitol — had tweeted, “Today is 1776.”
Importantly, Mogelson’s piece connects Jan 6th to other right-wing militant actions incited by Republicans and Trump:
In April, in response to Whitmer’s aggressive public-health measures, Trump had tweeted, “Liberate Michigan!” Two weeks later, heavily armed militia members entered the state capitol, terrifying lawmakers.
Wednesday was an extremely traumatizing event. And it was not an exaggeration to say that many members of the House were nearly assassinated.
And:
The Democrat said that she worried during the storming of the Capitol about other members of Congress knowing her location and did not feel safe going to the same secure location as her colleagues because of members who believe in the QAnon collective delusion and “frankly, white supremacist members of Congress … who I know and who I have felt would disclose my location,” saying she was concerned there were colleagues “who would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, etc.” She said that she “didn’t feel safe around other members of Congress.”
AOC’s comments and concerns highlight something I’ve been trying to be clear about in my own writing here: this was not an attack on the Capitol Building. This was an attack on Congress, the United States Government, and elected members of our government. It was a coup attempt. Can you imagine what the mob in those videos would have done had they found Nancy Pelosi? Kidnapping or a hostage situation at the very least, assassination in the worst case. Saying that this was an “attack on the Capitol” is such an anodyne way of describing what happened on January 6th that it’s misleading. Words matter and we should use the correct ones when describing this consequential event.
“We weren’t battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel,” he said in the first public account from D.C. police officers who fought to protect the Capitol during last week’s siege. “We were battling 15,000 people. It looked like a medieval battle scene.”
Someone in the crowd grabbed Fanone’s helmet, pulled him to the ground and dragged him on his stomach down a set of steps. At around the same time, police said, the crowd pulled a second officer down the stairs. Police said that chaotic and violent scene was captured in a video that would later spread widely on the Internet.
Rioters swarmed, battering the officers with metal pipes peeled from scaffolding and a pole with an American flag attached, police said. Both were struck with stun guns. Fanone suffered a mild heart attack and drifted in and out of consciousness.
All the while, the mob was chanting “U.S.A.” over and over and over again.
“We got one! We got one!” Fanone said he heard rioters shout. “Kill him with his own gun!”
For This American Life, Emmanuel Felton interviewed “several Black Capitol Police officers in the days after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th to find out what it was like for them to face off with this mostly white mob”:
Emmanuel Felton: Have you ever been in a fight like that?
Officer Jones: No, not like that. No way. These people were deranged, and they were determined. I’ve played video games before. Well, you know, zombie games — Resident Evil, Call of Duty. And the zombies are just coming after you, and you’re just out there. I guess that’s what I could relate it to — Call of Duty zombies. And the further you go, the more and more zombies just coming. You’re just running, running, running. And they wouldn’t stop. You’re seeing they’re getting their heads cracked with these batons, and we’re spraying them, and they don’t care! It was insane.
Right-wing terrorism in American has very deep roots, and those roots have grown since the 1990s as Republican rhetorical attacks on the federal government have fed them. The January 6 assault on the Capitol is not an aberration. It has been coming for a very long time.
The team at Howtown closed out 2024 by investigating the spice level (i.e. the Scoville ratings) of the lineup of hot sauces on the popular YouTube interview series Hot Ones while also teaching us about how hot peppers evolved and how pepper spininess is measured. (Spoiler: the sauces are not as hot as advertised.)
Cheers to Adam Cole for Peter Pipering this particular passage:
By picking peppers, they could pinpoint the precise percentage of each patch that was pungent, and some patches were more pungent than others.
Spanning four decades, the series opens with the shocking disappearance of Jean McConville, a single mother of ten who was abducted from her home in 1972 and never seen alive again.
Telling the story of various Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, Say Nothing explores the extremes some people will go to in the name of their beliefs, the way a deeply divided society can suddenly tip over into armed conflict, the long shadow of radical violence for all affected, and the emotional and psychological costs of a code of silence.
Veteran Republican Marian Price intends to sue Disney+ after she was depicted shooting Jean McConville in one of the most notorious murders of the Troubles, a law firm has said.
Mrs McConville was abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972, becoming one of the disappeared.
Her body was eventually found more than 30 years later at a beach in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland.
Ms Price, 70, also known by her married name Marian McGlinchey, has denied any involvement.
Well, I really don’t know what happened here. One minute it was the second week of January 2024 and the next minute we’re a scant 12 hours away from 2025 — a ludicrously futuristic date, a sci-fi date. And I didn’t do a media diet post all year! I have no excuse; it just…didn’t happen. Over and over and over and over again — it just kept not happening!
As penance, and for my last post of the year, here’s a giant media diet recap of (almost) everything I read, watched, listened to, and experienced in the year of our lord 2024. (I’ll try to break it up into smaller chunks next year… 🤞)
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I am just totally in the tank for how Rooney writes about power dynamics & interpersonal interactions. I think maybe this is my second-favorite of hers after Normal People? (A)
Shōgun. My favorite show of the year by a mile — so good all around. (A+)
Developing AI Like Raising Kids. Engaging and wide-ranging podcast conversation between Alison Gopnik and Ted Chiang about what caregiving and designing AI systems might have in common. (A)
GNX. The latest album from Kendrick Lamar has been on heavy rotation in my car since it came out. (A)
Dune: Part Two. I loved this, particularly in IMAX. It’s a better film than the first part and very rewatchable (I’ve seen it ~5 times?). I hope Villeneuve does another one. (A+)
Dune. I went back and rewatched this after seeing Dune: Part Two and it all made so much more sense. I can’t remember ever seeing a sequel that improved the first film in retrospect. Empire Strikes Back maybe? (A)
XOXO 2024. It was so good to see so many old friends and meet some new ones. (A)
The 2024 total solar eclipse. Not quiiiite as mind-blowing as my first time, but it was great to bust out the telescope and share the experience with friends and eclipse newbies. (A+)
May December. Natalie Portman & Julianne Moore were both fantastic in this. (A-)
The Incredibles. A perfect movie. No flab. Hits all the right notes. (A+)
The Incredibles 2. When this came out, I preferred it to the first movie. Now having seen them back-to-back, the sequel is not quite the equal to the original. But still great. (A)
Anatomy of a Fall. A gripping legal & family drama from director Justine Triet. (A-)
The Big Dig. A nine-part, in-depth podcast on how the massive Boston highway project got done. Would recommend for governance and infrastructure nerds but also for anyone who is curious about how things get done (or not) in America. (A)
Princess Mononoke. My favorite Ghibli movie — so great to be able to see it at the theater. Just gorgeous. (A)
Mad Max: Fury Road. My umpteenth rewatch confirms: a perfect movie. (A+)
Godzilla Minus One. Not a Godzilla scholar, but this is certainly the best Godzilla movie I’ve ever seen. A real gem of a movie. (A)
Funspot. Billed as “the world’s largest arcade”, the real attraction of Funspot for me is the 250+ classic games and pinball machines (Star Wars, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Burgertime, Gorgar, Dig Dug, Mr Do!, etc.) I took my teenaged kids here last summer and they loved it. Plus, $20 in tokens kept the three of us entertained for almost two hours. (A)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I watched this twice — the first time I thought it was alright (was Anya Taylor-Joy the right choice for the lead?) but I loved it the second time around (Anya Taylor-Joy was the right choice for the lead). (A)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It’s been awhile since I’ve fallen in love with a Star Trek series, but this one got me hooked right away. (The commenters in this thread were spot on with their recommendations.) I absolutely love the cast and the episodic format. I blazed through season one, am still stinge watching season two, and am delighted that the show has been renewed for two more seasons. (A)
All Fours by Miranda July. A truly weird book that I loved. Listen to the audiobook version if you can…July’s voice acting (I can’t really call it mere narration) really adds to the experience. (A)
Lawrence of Arabia. I’d never seen this before but I got a chance to see it on a big screen this summer and was blown away by it. A truly gorgeous film. (A)
The Zone of Interest. I’m not a particular fan of Jonathan Glazer, but this film was brutal and chilling and boring. The sound design was absolutely brilliant. (A-)
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Brodesser-Akner is a hell of a writer. (A)
Capitalism. Another banger from Scene on Radio, which you may remember from their excellent podcast series on whiteness, American history, and the climate crisis. Their series on capitalism is typically thought-provoking and informative. (A)
The Great British Bake Off (2023 season). When each new season of Bake Off starts, I’m always like “who are these chuck-a-lucks?” and by about the fourth episode I’d run through a wall for any of the bakers. Such a great format & vibe to this show. (A)
Poor Things. Really enjoyed this. Emma Stone was fantastic. (A-)
The Diplomat (season two). I can’t tell if this show is actually good or if I just really, really like it. But I’ll tell you who’s actually good though: Allison Janney — she swooped in for the final two episodes and upstaged the rest of the really talented cast. (A-)
Gladiator. Rewatched in anticipation of the sequel. A neeeearly perfect movie. I can’t really even put my finger on why it isn’t quite flawless — there’s like 3-5 minutes that could be reworked or cut or something. But still, a great film that I love to watch. (A)
Things Become Other Things. I regret to inform you that the irritatingly nice & talented Craig Mod is also good at writing memoirs. The bastard. (A)
Chernobyl. I rewatched this with my son this fall and I’d forgotten just how good it is. One of the best TV things of the past decade. The courtroom scene with Legasov and his blue & red cards is one of the best & simplest explanations of the reactor’s explosion you’ll find anywhere. (A)
James by Percival Everett. It’s a close call, but I think this retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was my favorite book of 2024. The audiobook version, narrated by Dominic Hoffman, is fantastic. (A)
Dookie Demastered. Green Day “demastered” their 1994 album Dookie into 15 “obscure, obsolete, and inconvenient” formats, like wax cylinder, Fisher Price record, Teddy Ruxpin, and player piano roll. Brilliant. (A)
Shōgun by James Clavell. I’m nearly halfway through this 1300-page behemoth, but I wanted to include it here because I’m blazing through it and enjoying it so much. (A-)
How Playwright Annie Baker Made the Movie of the Summer. This podcast conversation between Sam Fragoso and Annie Baker is fascinating because of Baker’s polite but insistent refusal to adhere to the social conventions of a media interview. (A)
Conclave. I can’t decide if this film is overwrought or just the right amount of wrought. Well-acted though and compelling. (B+)
Cléo from 5 to 7. I appreciated this film more than I enjoyed it. (B)
Fallout. A promising first season; I’m glad they’re doing another. (B+)
Past Lives. Greta Lee is great in this. And that last scene, ooof. (B+)
Moonbound by Robin Sloan. Was pretty charmed by this, in part because it was fun trying to connect the narrative & themes of the book to Sloan’s preoccupations on his mailing list over the past 2-3 years. (B+)
For All Mankind (season four). My pre-season musing about this show being “a prequel/origin story for The Expanse” hold up pretty well, I think. (B+)
The Holdovers. A mostly wholesome Christmas-time Breakfast Club. (A-)
The Great (season three). This didn’t have the zing of the first season, but it was better than the second. (B+)
Reservation Dogs. I am going to get yelled at for this but I enjoyed the first season more than the subsequent two. I appreciate what they did with the second and third seasons on an intellectual level (it’s brilliant, multi-generational storytelling) but I found my attention drifting as I tried to keep up with all of the connections. (A-)
Civil War. I’d like to see this again — I’m still not sure if I liked it or if it was any good. (B)
Constellation. Was disappointed with this show. Would have been an interesting three-episode series — instead we got eight ponderous episodes. (C)
3 Body Problem. Netflix did pretty well with this adaptation and the changes made sense. Looking forward to see where they go with the next season. (B+)
The Three-Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu. Well, after watching the TV series, I went back to read the three-book series for the third time. Was a little let down this time for whatever reason. (B)
Alien. Saw this in the theater over the summer and didn’t like it quite as much as I have in the past. (B+)
The Gilded Age. A gorgeously filmed and costumed guilty pleasure. Who is going to keep making this kind of series after Julian Fellowes retires? (A-)
Rebel Moon. Aka Zach Snyder’s Star Wars. Couldn’t finish this it was so bad. What a hack. (D)
Leave the World Behind. I watched this way back in January and had to paste the title into Google to see what it even was. I remember it being pretty uneven. But it also introduced me to Myha’la. (B-)
The Marvels. I honestly don’t remember much of this, just that it didn’t have the, uh, goodness of the first one. (B)
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Saw this on the big screen this summer, which was worth it for the pod race and the “duel of the fates” lightsaber battle at the end. (B-)
Petite Maman. A film of quiet impact by Céline Sciamma. I didn’t know anything about this going in and was delighted by where it went. (A-)
Frankenstein.Hot Frank Summer! I really tried to get into this but just couldn’t…I got bored and gave up a third of the way in. (C+)
Devs. Rewatched this with my son and didn’t like as much as I did the first time. I found it a little too self-serious. (B+)
Star Wars: The Acolyte. Uneven but with some good moments. Glad I watched it, even though the show got cancelled. (B)
Avatar: The Last Airbender. I thought they did a good job casting the characters for this live-action series. But there’s a magic to the animated series that they didn’t capture. (B)
Fall Guy. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt were charming and the rest of it was fine. I enjoyed the dragging of Tom Cruise. (B)
Deadpool & Wolverine. Rotten Tomatoes has this at 78% and that seems right…I liked it about 78%. (B+ (I grade on a scale apparently))
Ponyo. Another Ghibli movie I got to enjoy on the big screen. (B+)
North Woods by Daniel Mason. I would have liked this more without the magical realism. Some great parts though. (B+)
Rebel Ridge. I really enjoyed this one. This movie felt like a throwback of sorts: a solid thriller with no bells and whistles. Reminded me a bit of The Fugitive. (A-)
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. I enjoy the Shaun shorts more than the films, but this one had an impressive number of sci-fi references in it…the kids got annoyed at me pointing them out. (B+)
The Wild Robot. Hilarious at times, but a bit too pat when it came to the main plot/emotional core. (B)
The Good Place. Third time through on this one…a comedy classic that stuck the landing. (A)
Gladiator II. I wanted this to be better. Denzel Washington was fantastic, as was his sleeve-work. Love that the co-emperors were basically crypto YouTube bros. (B)
Alien: Romulus. Very good Alien installment. I was on the edge of my seat for the last third of the movie as the heroes raced against the inevitability of gravity — one of the best action/thriller sequences of the year, I’d reckon. (B+)
Moana 2. Watched this with an audience filled with little kids and when Maui appeared on the screen for the first time, a little boy said “Maui” in a quietly awed voice, instantly charming the entire theater. (B)
Mr Salary by Sally Rooney. I had no idea this short story existed until a few months ago. It was written before she published her debut novel. (B+)
Elf. It was nice to see Bob Newhart — I’d forgotten he was in this. (B)
Inside Out 2. Pixar is still the best studio for making kids’ movies that appeal to all ages. My kids were like, yep, pretty much what it’s like being a teenager. And I identified both with Riley and her parents. (A)
Radical Optimism. Underwhelming compared to Future Nostalgia, but I do like Houdini a lot. (B)
Curator James Payne’s Great Art Explained channel is one of YouTube’s gems. For his latest video, he takes a look at Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper and explains what makes it such an unusual, impressive, and revolutionary work of art. Here’s how the main part of the video begins:
Milan, 1494: Leonardo da Vinci was an exceptional man, and everyone who met him described him as a genius. And yet, he was now 42 years old — a middle-aged man in an era when life expectancy was 40 — And he still hadn’t produced anything that would be considered a masterpiece by his contemporaries. Many of his works were unfinished or in private collections, there were no great public works that people could see, no architectural marvels and no distinguished altarpieces for cathedrals. Nothing that could be considered worthy of his potential.
Then, he was asked to paint a wall.
I found the discussion of how Leonardo’s knowledge of theatre — he was charged with “creating lavish plays and pageants for the Duke of Milan” — informed his work on The Last Supper particularly interesting. You’ll never see this painting the same way again after watching this video.
These biological systems are comprised of eight mussels with sensors hot-glued to their shells. They work together with a network of computers and have been given control over the city’s water supply. If the waters are clean, these mussels stay open and happy. But when water quality drops too low, they close off and shut the water supply of millions of people with them.
According to The Economist (archive), more than 50 such systems are now deployed in Poland and Russia to help protect water supplies:
The system is nifty. When the molluscs encounter heavy metals, pesticides or other pollutants, they close their shells, explains Piotr Domek of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, who has worked on the project for three decades. To create a natural early-warning system, Mr Domek and his colleagues collect the clams from rivers or reservoirs, and attach a coil and a magnet to their shells. Computers register whether their shells are open or closed by detecting changes in the magnetic field.
“In the case of a terrorist attack, an ecological disaster or another contamination of the water supply, the clams will close,” says Mr Domek. This, in turn, will automatically cut off the water supply. The clams, he thinks, are life-savers. “If contaminated water goes straight to our taps, we will get poisoned,” he says in “Fat Kathy”, a short film that celebrates the invaluable bivalves.
Each worker mussel spends three months on duty — after that, they become too accustomed to their new surroundings and are no longer sensitive enough to properly monitor the water. For retirement, they are gently tossed back where they came from.
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