a stray line from a George Packer essay in the latest Atlantic (on Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain) perfectly sums up how I think of what happened on Nov. 5 (emphasis mine):
We live in an age of human self-contempt. We’re hardly surprised when our leaders debase themselves with vile behavior and lies… when free people humiliate themselves under the spell of a megalomaniacal fraud.
the exodus (X-odus?) continues: Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X
we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives … The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.
to America: congratu-fucking-lations, you dumb sons of bitches
to the world: sorry; a lot of us did what we could
our neighbor’s sign, blown down by natural forces and facedown in the dirt – just as I hope that campaign ends up a week from now 🇺🇸🗳️🙏
via the latest newsletter from author Elif Batuman (this edition provocatively titled, “On Being Butthurt”), announcement of a Harris-Walz fundraising Zoom featuring a pretty darn impressive array of authors 📚🇺🇸
hey, nice date today. 10/10, no notes
a frankly staggering number of songs from a lot of excellent artists, all proceeds to flood relief in western North Carolina: Cardinals at the Window. $10 (or more) 🎵
I found this entirely inspirational (and the brilliant slogan didn’t hurt): ‘Because secondhand is feckin’ grand’: how clothes swapping became huge in Ireland
his ability to say this kind of thing is just absolutely mind-blowing to me:
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox News Digital.
“These are people that want to destroy our country,” he added. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”
best spice shop page I’ve ever read: Penzeys
From the environment, to racism, to health, to saving our democracy at home & growing it abroad, half the time Republicans are intentionally blocking the solution to the problems we face. The other half of the time they are the problem we face.
Ken Paxton, doing the nasty, anti-democratic thug work that Republicans feel they must do to maintain power: suing to stop voter registration drives
Friday Night Video: Howard Jones, Hide & Seek 🎵
I’d love The Guardian even if it weren’t, but sometimes its extreme Britishness just makes me happy
Baldwin added that [RJK Jr.’s] entire run “was a Hail Mary” – a phrase often used to describe a pass thrown in desperation but with little chance of success in the game of American football.
I finished the book Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. it was great! this book threw me in at the deep end, but was worth learning to swim in. gripping and fun 📚
I finished the movie Her. It was good. interesting sci-fi from a decade ago. it’s extra weird to me now that a real AI company would want to use that voice 🎬
a friend convinced me to subscribe to Peacock for the Olympics & it’s been great. we don’t have to settle for whatever NBC decides to show (or interrupt, or switch away from, etc.). we can put on, say, track & field replays, & off it goes 📺 (& hell yes I paid for commercial-free)
we’ve started posting weekly images of Mary’s artwork to her website. you can follow @maryg (on Micro.blog), or use RSS, or subscribe to get emails (also weekly). we want to share her work with everyone, so you’re invited regardless of whether or how well you knew her 🎨
Movement Voter Project puts up a call for help:
we need to invest at the same level we did in 2020… or at a higher level because everything costs more… while polling & enthusiasm is much worse
MVP builds local orgs for the long run, regardless of this year’s candidates. you can help 🇺🇸
new post: What International Football’s Like, in which a masterfully charming simile is deployed (by a professional English sportswriter, and then block-quoted by me) ⚽️
Heard this in the latest episode of The Guardian‘s Today in Focus podcast (which is consistently excellent, by the way) and loved it so much I transcribed it. Is it 2026 yet?
Hannah Moore (presenter):
Would you have expected [England] to have done better than that [in Group C]? Should they have been more exciting in the group stage?
Barney Ronay (The Guardian‘s chief sports writer):
Well, maybe? But international football’s often like that. I think we’re slightly spoiled by the club game where you see these intensely regulated teams, the amount of briefing and data that these players absorb, they understand every situation they find themselves in.
And international football’s not like that, it’s about feelings. It’s about the emotion of the occasion. It probably doesn’t translate well to television. I have to say, in the stadium, the games here have felt really exciting. They’ve been huge events.
Because international football is basically like Christmas, it’s this kind of disorderly meal, and probably isn’t cooked that well. But it has a great kind of pageantry around it. And you could probably pick it apart, and say: “this turkey’s really dry,” and, “why aren’t the potatoes crispier?” But, you know, someone’s singing a song, and Grandma’s got a hat on, and the dog’s just pushed over the tree. That’s what international football is, so it’s this emotional thing.
That’s from about 11 minutes and 30 seconds in to the episode Euro 2024: is it coming home?. A little rambling (see above), but in a good way.
new project from Molly White: Follow the Crypto; nice intro & explanation in her latest newsletter:
Did you know that the cryptocurrency industry has spent more on 2024 elections in the United States than the oil industry? More than the pharmaceutical industry?
happy first of the month, when we all switch our single AirPod usage from one ear to the other to keep the battery wear even. July is an odd-numbered month so as we all know that means it’s Left’s turn again
Saturday night video: Do It With a Rockstar, by Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra 🎵 🌈
I love this, from Wikipedia: Well he would, wouldn’t he?, “referred to as Mandy Rice-Davies Applies (MRDA)”
[asked during the trial] whether she was aware that Lord Astor had denied having an affair with her; Rice-Davies replied “Well he would, wouldn’t he?”
I really like this idea from Cal Newport that social media is ultra-processed content, analogous to ultra-processed food:
the users of social media platforms simulate something like the food scientist’s ability to break down corn and reconstitute it into hyper-palatable edible food-like substances
Mike Masnick argues that social media can’t be inherently harmful, saying, “The complaints here are with speech.” but while Doritos & Pepsi are (technically) food, that doesn’t mean they’re good for you
AI personified in 1986: Max Headroom in Paranoimia by The Art of Noise 🎵
Poetry, that’ll work
Come, sweet slumber
Enshroud me in thy purple cloak
Hmm, doesn’t even rhyme
another day of Euros, another Ukraine game bizarrely not being shown on any of Fox’s channels. I know it’s paranoid thinking, but I can’t help wondering whether that’s a coincidence from a broadcaster that’s shown perfect willingness to cozy up to the likes of Russia in 2018 & Qatar in 2022 ⚽️
new post: 600 Words About 1,000 Words, in which said writing stunt is found to have been worthwhile (and, thankfully, behind me) 📝
Last week I completed the writing stunt “1,000 Words of Summer”. Author Jami Attenberg started it a few years ago, pledging with a friend that they’d each write a thousand words every day for two weeks. Their simple accountability agreement went viral, and is now an annual event.
My own writing has been pretty steady lately, but slow. One morning each week I go to a coffeeshop before work and write until it’s time to come home and clock in to my remote job. I often intend to carve out more writing time in the evenings and on weekends, but wind up being too busy, or too tired, or both. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
So I read the 1,000 Words of Summer book, and subscribed to the Substack newsletter, and braced myself. It struck me as a lighter version of NaNoWriMo: just two weeks instead of a full month, and fewer words per day (to write 50,000 words in a November you have to average 1,667 daily words). I thought: I’ve done NaNoWriMo (once), I can do this. Can’t I? I faced the start date, June 1, with worry and a protective shield of ambivalence. We’ll just see; if I don’t do every day, there’s nothing lost.
And then I did it. Every single day, I frickin’ did it. I didn’t always feel like it, but even then I sat my ass down and started. I’ve done that plenty of times before, and some of those times I’ve gotten my ass back up a little while later and given up. On each of these fourteen days, I got going, and, happily, kept going.
The clear, simple goal of 1,000 words made it easier. In a sprint mode like this, for me, the first and last point of the exercise is putting down new words. Are they great words? Are they even good? How many of these will survive revision? Does this idea path I just started down fit logically with that scene from yesterday? Where the hell did this new character come from, and where will they go? Not allowing those questions enables momentum, and avoids all of the harder thinking, planning, and deciding that can stall out a regular writing session.
It’s also just fun, winging it and charging forward like that. Some ideas feel like they come out of my fingers more than my mind, the way they just pop out. I tend to be a plotter, but I also know I can get fenced in by that. This exercise shows the power of being a pantser, even if only in bursts.
I’ve come to realize, however, that the stuff that goes along with 1,000 Words of Summer (and NaNoWriMo, for that matter) doesn’t do much for me. There are communities of people on social media, forums, and Slacks, and there are the books, and for 1,000 Words there’s a daily inspirational email from Attenberg and other accomplished writers. (The book is a compilation of past years’ inspirational emails.) Nothing against those; they just don’t do anything for me. Thanks but unsubscribe.
I’m not going to try to continue this pace – the other thing I found is that I was mildly burned out after day 14 – and I’m not sure how much of these 14,606 new words will remain in this novel, but I’m glad I did this stunt. It reminded me that I can actually sit down and write, even on days when motivation is thin. It also reminded me to worry less about each scene fitting in perfectly, and to have fun.
and… scene! I stopped posting it daily, but I did it: I wrote a thousand words a day for two weeks (Ulysses tells me it’s actually a total of 14,606). I’m glad I did it but I’m glad it’s done. now to figure out what’s next 📝 #1000WordsOfSummer
me, finishing Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club: that was great. I wonder if they’ll make a movie of this
Wikipedia: YA THINK?
Spielberg’s production company bought the global film rights… Osman confirmed… that Helen Mirren would play Elizabeth, Pierce Brosnan would play Ron, & Ben Kingsley would play Ibrahim
📚🍿
The Dead Weather: I Feel Love (Every Million Miles) 🎵
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