I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but the lyrics to the Galaxie 500 song “Strange” seem to fit well with the current moment:
Why’s everybody acting funny?
Why’s everybody look so strange?
Why’s everybody look so nasty?
What do I want with all these things?
I find myself humming the song whenever I leave the house or go into a store these days. Everybody does look nasty in ill-fitting masks and DIY quarantine haircuts. What do I want with these things? Did I actually just risk my life to buy this bag of Peanut M&Ms?
I was mildly disappointed to discover that the song is actually just about going out to buy snacks while royally stoned. It kind of works anyway, though.
Anyway, speaking of looking nasty, check out this article in the Paris Review about the digital face, facial recognition algorithms, GIF-based digital minstrelsy, the a-reality of face-tuning, and so on.
Climate
What Rough Beast
So, yeah, they’re replacing the American flag with the cop flag at rallies now. Because it’s not about patriotism. It’s about obedience to power.
Wallace Shawn, writing in the NY Review of Books, has what may be the best take on the entire thing:
Trump has liberated a lot of people from the last vestiges of the Sermon on the Mount. A lot of people turn out to have been sick and tired of pretending to be good. The fact that the leader of one of our two parties—the party, in fact, that has for many decades represented what was normal, acceptable, and respectable—was not ashamed to reveal his own selfishness, was not ashamed to reveal his own indifference to the suffering of others, was not even ashamed to reveal his own cheerful enjoyment of cruelty…all of this helped people to feel that they no longer needed to be ashamed of those qualities in themselves either. They didn’t need to feel bad because they didn’t care about other people. Maybe they didn’t want to be forbearing toward enemies. Maybe they didn’t want to be gentle or kind. In a world in which the rich want permission to take as much as they can get without feeling any shame, and many of the not-rich are so worried about their own sinking fortunes that they find it hard to worry about the misery of anyone else, Trump is the priest who grants absolution.
The Old College Try
On October 26, Philly police gunned down a mentally ill Black man as his family begged for mercy. Protests have ensued, as they do. Police escalated the situation, beating protesters and bystanders alike, as they do. The administration of my beloved alma mater, known for requiring students to study social justice alongside math, science, and literature, sent out a profoundly counterproductive letter asking students to stop protesting. The students are now on strike.
Doomscroll
Slate on Kavanaugh’s incompetence as a jurist
Buzzfeed on white nationalists preparing for the post-Trump America
Brooklyn cops prohibiting people from handing out masks & PPE at a polling place
Austin cops encountered a right-wing revolutionary “Boogaloo Boi” with illegal firearms and turned him loose
The incredibly sad tale of Lauren Southern, the alt-right’s most famous woman
A comparison of US and European street safety (spoiler: we’re fucking it up over here)
Reuters on people who die in jail before trial
Joy
Adorable possum
Kind of creepy forty-thousand-year-old worms
Giant anteaters are really cool looking
Corgi x any other dog equals hilarious & adorable
Playlist
Here are some additional songs:
Deerhunter, “He would have laughed” (interesting rhythmic use of strings)
Fugazi, “I’m so tired” (a piano ballad, quite the departure from the usual sound)
M|O|O|N, “Dust” (chillwave excellence)
Secretly Ironic 