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The world’s political and economic systems can all unite over one central tenet: your mum does the washing.
Libertarianism:
Your mum does the washing.
You believe you did the washing.
Egalitarianism:
That one time you did the washing
is proof it’s all equal and
no one needs feminism any more.
Americanism:
Your mum does the washing.
It’s in the Constitution.
END OF DISCUSSION.
(thx, chris)
On Friday, Heather Cox Richardson spoke at an event marking the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns at Boston’s Old North Church. The lantern lighting — “one if by land, two if by seas” — was part of years-long effort by some American colonists to resist what they thought of as unjust behavior by a tyrant king, and led to the start of the Revolutionary War. Richardson’s speech is well worth reading.
It was hard for people to fathom that the country had come to such division. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War, Bostonians looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.
That euphoria faded fast.
Almost as soon as the French and Indian War was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.
But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury, and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.
You can also watch Richardson give her speech at the Old North Church (she begins at the ~1:18:30 mark):
You can also listen to her read it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. (thx, meg)
After an old, unreleased song (and accompanying video) called Anxiety went viral on TikTok a couple of months back, Doechii released it as a single last month. And now it’s got a shiny new music video.
While I prefer the charming homemade quality of the original that she made in her small NYC apartment at age 21, this version is pretty great too. It’s going to be super interesting to see what Doechii does next — looking forward to it!
While not nearly as popular as his amazing rendition of NIN’s Hurt, Johnny Cash’s stripped-down cover of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus is fantastic. Both songs are from Cash’s sixty-seventh studio album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (Spotify, Apple Music), which was the last one to be released before his death.
In case you want to listen to Johnny Cash all morning, here’s that version of Hurt and Bridge over Troubled Water (with Fiona Apple):
Oh, and his cover of The Beatles’ In My Life:
This is a lovely cover of Bush’s Glycerine by Allison Lorenzen and Midwife, set to a poignant series of very short videos of everyday life. Give this 20 seconds of your complete attention and you’ll watch the whole thing, I promise. (via @mariabustillos.com)
If you’re one of those people who watches the Olympics and wishes they’d put a normal person in the competition so we can see how fast the athletes really are, this one’s for you.
Eight-time Olympic gold medalist and a 10-time world champion sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce recently announced her comeback and for her first 100m race, she competed against the other parents at her son’s sports day event. And completely demolished them.
I love how she goes flat-out…no Usain Bolt showboating or looking around near the finish line. All business. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
Update: She did it back in 2023 too.
Filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt have made a 12-hour documentary series on the Revolutionary War that will debut on PBS in November 2025. Here’s a preview (YouTube, Bluesky):
From the press release:
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
An interesting thing about this series that sets it apart from some of his others is the star-studded cast: “Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, Ethan Hawk, Josh Brolin…” These aren’t narrators; they’re playing actual characters in the series (Giamatti reprises his role as John Adams and Claire Danes plays Abigail):
Our cast list has never been surpassed by Hollywood or any streaming service. [No one could afford to] film all the people who have read for us, but they’ve all generously done SAG minimum: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Laura Linney, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Damian Lewis, Matthew Rhys — and that’s [just] a third.
In this recent interview, a charmingly shoeless Burns shares his team’s philosophy when working on projects like The American Revolution:
Given his and his team’s past few projects, including The US and the Holocaust & The Vietnam War, it will be interesting to see how the Revolution is presented and how the film is received.
From a 1968 book, a collection of illustrations of regional patterns & designs of the art of Ukrainian pysanky, or egg decorating. From the Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas:
Pysanky are raw eggs that are decorated using an ancient wax-resistance method. The word pysanky comes from the Ukrainian word pysaty (писати), “to write.” Pysanka is the singular and pysanky is the plural. The art of making pysanky is called pysankarstvo (писанкарство).
The designs are “written” in hot wax with a special tool called a kistka (кістка) which has a small funnel attached to hold a small amount of liquid wax. The wax protects the pores of the shell from the dye. The artist, known as a pysankarka (писанкарка) writes parts of the design, dyes the egg one color, and writes more until the end, when all the layers of wax are melted off to reveal the final design.
Pysanky are an ancient art, made in Ukraine and other Slavic countries for centuries. Though many people call them Easter eggs, pysanky were made long before Ukraine adopted Christianity. The ancient symbols were then reinterpreted through the lens of Christianity later on.
From more on the regional patterns of Ukrainian pysanky and some images of actual decorated eggs, check out this page. And for a look at how these intricate patterns are made, here’s a video:
(via present & correct)
A cephalopod captured on video in March has been confirmed as a juvenile colossal squid, the first live colossal squid observed in its native habitat.
It’s been 100 years since the colossal squid was formally described in a scientific paper. In its adult form, the animal is larger than the giant squid, or any other invertebrate on Earth, and can grow to 6 or 7 meters long, or up to 23 feet.
Scientists’ first good look at the species in 1925 was incomplete — just arm fragments from two squid in the belly of a sperm whale. Adults are thought to spend most of their time in the deep ocean.
A full-grown colossal squid occasionally appears at the ocean’s surface, drawn up to a fishing boat while it’s “chewing on” a hooked fish, Dr. Bolstad said. Younger specimens have turned up in trawl nets.
Yet until now, humans had not witnessed a colossal squid at home, swimming in the deep Antarctic sea.
(via @davidgrann.bsky.social)
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) is a big ol’ movie dork, and it’s endearing to watch him break down all the different types of film, aspect ratios, and projection options as he explains how many ways you can watch his latest movie, Sinners, when it comes out this week. Super informative too if you’ve always wondered about the different IMAX formats and just what the heck it means when someone you love gets excited about 70mm.
Ok so I’ve watched the trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme, a couple of times and I still don’t know what it’s actually about? But from the looks of things, it is more of the same for people who like that sort of thing, which is lucky for me.
Also, Michael Cera might be the most Wes Anderson-coded actor that’s never before been in a Wes Anderson movie.
Anne Applebaum writes about how Trump, Bannon and other MAGA conservatives love what Hungarian Prime minister Viktor Orbán is going to his country.
Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom — which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025 — puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.
Oh, and the corruption:
The Hungarian businessman and a Hungarian economist I spoke with — both of whom insisted on anonymity, for fear of retaliation — had separately calculated that NERistan amounts to about 20 percent of the Hungarian economy. That means, as the economist explained to me, that 20 percent of Hungary’s companies operate “not on market principles, not on merit-based principles, but basically on loyalty.” These companies don’t have normal hiring practices or use real business models, because they are designed not for efficiency and profit but for kleptocracy—passing money from the state to their owners.
An organization called Direkt36 has made an hour-long documentary about the corruption enabled by Orbán…it’s free on YouTube:
Move over Ford Edsel, Pontiac Aztek, and AMC Pacer, there’s a new automotive flop in town: the dumpster-forward Tesla Cybertruck.
After a little over a year on the market, sales of the 6,600-pound vehicle, priced from $82,000, are laughably below what Musk predicted. Its lousy reputation for quality — with eight recalls in the past 13 months, the latest for body panels that fall off — and polarizing look made it a punchline for comedians. Unlike past auto flops that just looked ridiculous or sold badly, Musk’s truck is also a focal point for global Tesla protests spurred by the billionaire’s job-slashing DOGE role and MAGA politics.
“It’s right up there with Edsel,” said Eric Noble, president of consultancy CARLAB and a professor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California (Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen, who styled Cybertruck for Musk, is a graduate of its famed transportation design program). “It’s a huge swing and a huge miss.”
It’s impossible for me to drive past one of these things without laughing at and/or mocking it. I was out driving with my daughter last week and a Cybertruck came into view and before I could even say anything, she said, “it’s just so *bad*”. (via @mims.bsky.social)
I am still stinge watching my way through the second season of Strange New Worlds, but the third season of the show premieres sometime this summer, so I’d better finish it up before then. Anyway, I love this show and crew and the trailer looks appropriately kooky and wacky so let’s goooo!
Folks, I can’t even today. I gotta tap out. I hope to be back with you tomorrow.
In this 10-minute video, John Lithgow reads each of the lessons from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Bookshop).
Number two: defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of our institutions unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about — a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union — and take its side.
Snyder himself made a series of 20 videos a few years ago in which he reads each lesson and then provides more context on what it means. Here’s the first episode on anticipatory obedience (he starts reading after a short intro, at about the 2:40 mark):
Lesson number one is: do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
So, this is the first lesson because it’s about the basic choice we make when we confront difficulty. It’s about the choice of all choices: are we going to go with the new flow or are we going to stand — if only a little bit, only hesitantly — as long as we can against the current?
Again, the whole series of 20 videos can be accessed from this playlist.
This excerpt from Conan O’Brien’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is quite good.
Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age, and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance. Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote, “Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.”
(thx, andy)
In a stage production that premiered last year in London, Steve Coogan played four roles (Dr. Strangelove, Captain Mandrake, President Muffley, and Major TJ Kong) in an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. The play was adapted for the stage by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley. A filmed version of the play is currently playing in theaters…here are some trailers and clips from that:
The play’s run has ended and I don’t know if it will be restaged elsewhere, but like I said above, a filmed version is showing in theaters and you can look for tickets near you.
P.S. In the original version, Peter Sellers was supposed to play the same four characters as Coogan does in the play but was reluctant to play Major Kong. In the end, Sellers sprained his ankle and couldn’t play Kong in the cramped airplane set, but he still played Mandrake, Muffley, and Strangelove. (via @fritinancy.bsky.social)
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)
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)
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.
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?
In 1945, the US Department of War (the precursor to the Dept of Defense) produced this educational film on the “destructive effects of racial and religious prejudice” and the use of such prejudice to gain power.
Reel 1 shows a fake wrestling match and “crooked” gambling games. An agitator addresses a street crowd; he almost convinces one man in the audience until the man begins to talk to a Hungarian refugee from Germany. A Nazi speaker harangues a crowd in Germany denouncing Jews, Catholics, and Freemasons. Reel 2, a German unemployed worker joins Hitler’s Storm Troops. SS men attack Jewish and Catholic headquarters in Germany, and beat up a Jewish storekeeper. A German teacher explains Nazi racial theories; the teacher is dragged away by German soldiers.
It’s a good watch, but perhaps keep in mind this was produced at a time when American citizens were imprisoned for being of Japanese descent (among other things…Jim Crow, sexism, discrimination of LGBTQ+ people, etc.)
In his latest video, Mark Rober shows how easy it is to fool Tesla’s self-driving capability (they use cheaper video cameras) when compared with other self-driving cars (which use lidar). Big Wile E. Coyote energy from the Tesla here.
Oh and he also uses lidar to map out the interior at Disneyland’s Space Mountain ride, which is entirely in the dark.
Disney has uploaded the first three episodes of season one of Andor to YouTube:
No idea how long they will be up or if they’re visible outside of the US. I started an Andor rewatch last week and I am finding it more enjoyable and interesting than I did the first time around. The writers obviously did their research on how fascism, dictatorships, and rebellions work — in almost every scene, you observe characters reacting and interacting with the constraints of bureaucratic totalitarianism. Very interesting to watch in this political moment. (via @rebeccablood.bsky.social)
This is the dumbest thing but it had me rolling in the aisles this morning: Star Trek TNG Theme but the theme music is coming from the Enterprise-D. It takes a bit to get going, but I laughed so hard when the ship whooshed by for the first time.
The same creator has made a number of videos in this vein, including The Imperial March but it’s coming from Vader’s chest control panel and Star Trek DS9 Theme but the theme is coming from DS9 Ops.
High up in a pine tree in California’s Big Bear Valley, a pair of eagles guard their nest…and we can watch them live on YouTube.
The nest is located in Big Bear Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. It is about 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine tree. It is the current home for Jackie & Shadow, a local bald eagle pair.
The female eagle Jackie laid three eggs in January and two of them have hatched in recent days and the third egg is hatching as I write this at Friday around noon. You can scrub back through the video to see the chicks and some feedings. Or take a look at some of the clips of important moments in this YouTube playlist; here’s one from yesterday:
A full log of the important events is available on the Friends of Big Bear Valley website and you can see tons of photos & videos on their Facebook page. (thx, rion)
A few days ago, on March 2, the first lunar lander operated by a private company landed successfully on the Moon. The video of the landing is really something — I wonder if I will ever get accustomed to or tired of watching footage of spacecraft landing on other bodies in our solar system? The answer is a resounding NO so far…this is cool as hell.
You can read more about Firefly’s Blue Ghost on Wikipedia. The mission delivered 10 science and technology investigations to the surface of the Moon for NASA. (via phil plait)
I recently rewatched Glass Onion and had a couple thoughts about it.
1. Before settling in to watch, I’d remembered that Edward Norton’s mega-billionaire character Miles Bron bore some resemblance to Elon Musk, but I’d forgotten that the whole plot of the movie revolves around what a blustering dope, what a dumb charlatan, what a dim-witted con man Bron/Musk is. As we endure this political moment dominated by halfwit flimflammers, witnessing Bron’s downfall orchestrated by a gay detective and a Black woman was surprisingly cathartic.
2. I love films like this! Like Knives Out, Glass Onion is stacked with acting talent, helmed by a great writer/director, funny & dramatic, and, crucially, doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a sense that everyone is having a good time, with a wink at the audience. And they’re just flat-out fun to watch. Is there a name for movies like this? A micro-genre? The type of movie you could imagine Muppets being a part of without too many changes?
I’d include movies like the Ocean’s series, Lucky Logan, some of Wes Anderson’s films, perhaps Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot trilogy, and maybe even Mike White’s The White Lotus series. Like, what do we call these winking prestige ensemble dramedy thrillers? (Surely we can’t call them “winking prestige ensemble dramedy thrillers”.) And what other films would you include?
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