I love dead metaphors, the little phrases and comparisons you repeat until they’re meaningless, but then sometimes notice as metaphors and have to think about. I love the way they drift and then return, like letting your eyes unfocus and then snapping the world back to clarity.
You always hear adolescents described as “coltish” but seeing the new crop of 9th graders at the high school down the street is a reminder that they really do run around like baby horses not quite sure what the hell to do with all their limbs. (Also, did I get older or did teenagers suddenly get really loud? Get off my lawn!)
Or, of course, the short leash, which you’ll recognize if you have a dog and a selection of leashes: the short one is for training and control.
The phrase “hot garbage” is often used to describe people’s opinions, usually in trivial disputes over taste in pop culture or music or decor. Google Trends says that it’s less common than “dumpster fire,” but both are common enough that you don’t really pause to think about what they mean.
But think about it for a minute. Imagine rot and maggots and leachate. Think about burning plastic and rotten food and greasy smoke that will never wash off. Think about the time you accidentally walked past the dumpster behind the grocery store on a Monday morning in August, when everything wasted and worthless had been there all weekend festering. Think about how close you came to actually vomiting.
Speaking of Congressman Steve King (R-IA), “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans,” he said recently, of an Austrian party linked with Nazism and far-right violence. He said this as praise. This was the same trip on which he visited Auschwitz and then wanted a second opinion from a less-Jewish source.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme
Late 19th/early 20th century political cartoons about Irish immigration part 1, part 2 and part 3.
The sincerity and passion with which the right holds to the principle that you should under no circumstances listen to what marginalized people are saying about how they are impacted by events is impressive.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 29, 2018
It’s getting bleak in herre (so take off all your hopes)
Activists delivered an 11-foot-long sculpture of a bent and burned heroin spoon to the Massachusetts state capitol this week.
The Economist investigates how California manages to be simultaneously one of America’s richest and poorest states.
Profiles of people who left the country rather than pay student debts.
We are all disposable and when we are gone we will soon be forgotten. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with your corpse rotting in your car parked on a busy street for a week before anyone notices.
Cultivating joy
OMG this cat is amazing
Spookycat is adorable
Curious octopus investigates camera
Secretly Ironic 