Author: Aaron Weber

Automation and mechanization have always led, in the end, to greater prosperity. You know the story: hand-weavers revolted against the machine loom, but now everyone can have more than one pair of pants and people have new jobs like choosing clothes for celebrities or using sandpaper on new jeans to give them an authentic hand-distressed look. But maybe, just maybe, this time is different. The debate has gotten predictable enough that it’s almost possible to automate the creation of thinkpieces about it.

This analysis of the McKenzie Global Institute report is pretty grim:

Economists have always believed that previous waves of job destruction led to an equilibrium between supply and demand in the labor market at a higher level of both employment and earnings. But if robots can actually replace, not just displace, humans, it is hard to see an equilibrium point until the human race itself becomes redundant.

As a counterpoint, Eichengreen argues that the the pace of automation-driven change is not as rapid as some fear, and that jobs will be more likely to adapt than to disappear entirely. Still, we’re definitely in an era where “lifelong learning” isn’t an aspiration for thoughtful people but an absolute requirement for economic survival.

Anyway, we all know the story. In the long run… 

Bang bang
When the Black Panthers started the carrying long guns in public, Ronald Reagan was moved to sign a gun control law to outlaw the practice. Huffpo interviews some folks to get a look at the state of black gun ownership today.

Cultivating secrecy
The cabinet is shrouded in secrecy: Many agencies refuse to release information on meetings, in what definitely seems to be an attempt to hide the patronage and influence of the wealthy and powerful.

Meanwhile in North Carolina, Trump is turning the judiciary back to the bad old days, nominating a protege of Jesse Helms. Helms was a dinosaur and an embarrassment even in the 1990s, when Farr worked to help him suppress the black vote. The voter suppression, gerrymandering, and disenfranchisement operation Farr abetted kept Helms in power until 2003. (Also of note: He’s a graduate of wingnut-favorite Hillsdale College…)

Cultivating interest
A history of Washington’s worst intersection.
The world’s first comedy film, from 1895: a 45-second prank video.

Cultivating joy
Redditors see this dog and immediately begin a parody of “Shorty got low…”

Awkward kitten practices…. something.

Camo cat.

A quick update on things missed over the holiday: Alleged journalist Mike Cernovich, best known for promoting the Pizzagate hoax, showed up on Reddit and encouraged users to ask him anything. It did not go well. At all.

The state of Wisconsin gave $3 billion in incentives to Foxconn to build a giant plant. Only they did not write the contract very well. It did not go well. At all.

Trump raged at refugees from Haiti (“they all have AIDS”) and Nigeria (“will never return to their huts after seeing the US”). He denies this. Immigration policy is, in general, not going well. At all. 

Trump tweeted a statement thanking Turning Points USA, a group credibly accused of illegal politicking and racist bias.

A Palestinian girl was arrested for pushing soldiers away from her front door. A journalist from the mainstream, centrist, wide-circulation newspaper Maariv Daily called for collective rape as punishment: “In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.“

Firing Mueller may be impossible, but Trump is undermining the FBI elsewhere for partisan purposes. 

Ed Burmila’s in The Baffler this time, with a warning about the looming danger of nuclear war: It’s a THAAD, THAAD, THAAD World. (See also this Twitter thread from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service professor Colin Kahl).

An iced tea company called Long Island Iced Tea didn’t feel that naming a nonalcoholic beverage company after an alcoholic beverage was misleading enough, so they changed their name to Long Blockchain. Shares soared because now it sounds like it’s related to BitCoin.

Jared and Ivanka’s landlord is getting a sweet deal on some mining leases from the Trump administration. 

The latest sexual harassment allegations are at Vice Media, which is totally unsurprising. The surprise: the HR director who covered up their harassment problems used to work for Harvey Weinstein covering up his harassment problems!

Hey remember when

The evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby conspired with ISIS to smuggle ancient artifacts out of Iraq so they could hasten The Second Coming. We talked about this for like 3 days, max. It’s been a fucked up few years — T. Finn (@The_FinnSA) December 22, 2017

Freedom is Slavery
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head sure seems to be getting off to a quick start.

Mulvaney’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau no longer defines protecting consumers as part of its mission. https://t.co/7xWUi656gl — @mattyglesias December 22, 2017

Cultivating schadenfreude
10 pints into his evening, a London 22-year-old goes viral with a truly epic crotch injury. (He’s OK).

Cultivating joy
Baby bat getting belly-rubs.
Top 10 movies of 2007. No, not this year. 2007. He’s working on his own schedule, guys.
Forgot to wrap one last present…

It’s the Friday before Christmas. Offices are closing early, flights are full, and package delivery services are booking plenty of overtime. Presented with not very much commentary, a bunch of links I thought were cool. Have a great weekend. 

Fascinating
19th century womenswear was incredibly flammable. 
Cordyceps are … incredible. (Thanks Paul! Other readers – I love getting feedback & tips, just hit reply).
Stats of the year! For the UK, it’s the percentage of land that is densely developed (1%). For the US, it’s the number of people killed by lawnmowers  (69. Nice). 

Freedom is slavery
Typographical errors in warrants lead to inaccurate arrests and charging innocent people.
Ajit Pai’s FCC presses to define not-broadband as broadband.
Guns are allowed in the TN legislature… but not signs, because those are dangerous.
Key difference between Nazi propaganda and official White House statements on immigration: America uses different fonts and a cleaner graphic design.
Callista Gingrich, envoy to the Vatican, attended the funeral of disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law. Everyone had nice things to say about each other. 

Hey remember when

Remember when a war criminal drank poison in court and it was like the eight craziest thing that happened last week and you probably already forgot because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 2017 — Gin and Tacos, a division of Raytheon (@gin_and_tacos) December 20, 2017

Cultivating joy
Cat does not enjoy Christmas at all.
Secret squirrel?

We’re on our way to the heist the Republican party calls tax reform. That’s exciting. I guess.

Sic transit gloria etc etc
Just as the center of hip-hop has shifted from New York to LA to Atlanta, so the centers of culture and joy shift. The US may still be the global cultural hegemon, but people are beginning to chip away at it. We all fail to learn from each other.

On second thought
Actually, go back to the New Yorker article about Atlanta hip-hop. I really like this one. The way it mentions the ever-present downside and danger of the music business, stating things without really stating them, is clever. And it’s just an interesting angle on the music and culture industry generally. 

Thomas is relatively new to the music industry, having evidently been successful in his first career, which he declines to discuss. “He come from the streets,” Lee says, by way of explaining why neither of them will explain more. Unlike Lee, who grew up in Indianapolis, Thomas is from Atlanta, and, when the two began working with Migos, Thomas’s local reputation was a great asset—he was known to the proprietors of the city’s clubs as a generous patron, and an unusually well-connected one.

And then compare to this Nat Malkus New York Times editorial which leaves unstated and unimplied those things which really should be made explicit:

Congressional Republicans, traditional defenders of states’ rights, will deliver an unexpected one-two punch to state tax systems if the current version of their tax bill becomes law as expected.

As though “states rights” were ever a principle. As though federalism had ever been anything other than a cudgel to disenfranchise the minority. 

It’s one thing to say “a mysterious past” and leave implied that a gentleman was once an investment banker (what “streets” do you think he came from to get that kind of cash? Wall Street, obvs) and has now moved on to a more reputable and ethical career as a music promoter. It’s quite another to take for granted that manifestly bad-faith slogans are in fact good-faith principles.

Tropes
Year in review, aerial photography edition.
Year in review, general photography edition.
Year in review, archival digitization progress edition.
Year in review, poetry edition.
Year in review, year-in-review edition.

Voting
After a recount, Democrats have taken one additional seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, bringing it to exactly evenly split between them and Republicans. Margin of victory for that last critical seat: One vote. NEVER SKIP VOTING.

Twitter interlude
AI can’t quite tell whether a photo is of pornography or of a desert. Thirsty bros everywhere say “send dunes.”

Um…okay Google…not so sure about this one pic.twitter.com/fgkmKlV7d0
— Sulome Anderson (@SulomeAnderson) December 19, 2017

Cultivating joy
Fence is no obstacle.
Baby fox playing.

I’m losing my job in 10 days. It’s an unpleasant (but not disastrous, in my case) side effect of living in a dynamic market society: sometimes you’re on the destroyed side of creative destruction. 

I’ll be fine (although I would appreciate any referrals, lovely audience). I am in the right place and have the right skills, and I should be able to make the transition to the next thing and the next thing and the next. It feels a bit ridiculous to be constantly jumping and hustling, like some kind of 8-bit video game character. It’s not forever, but 40 or 50 years is quite a long time to keep Mario in the air and out of a bottomless pit.

But given the Hobson’s choice of endless jumping or endless falling, well… better jump and try not to think about what happens if you don’t stick the landing. Tertium non datur. If you’re lucky, the music will keep going longer than you do.

If you’re still dancing when it stops, the dislocation can be profound. Between 1890 and 1950, the skilled craftspeople of Gloversville, NY made 90% of the gloves sold in America. It was a good run for anyone who lived there before the industry died. Notwithstanding that one guy doing couture mittens for $450 a pop, they don’t make much there these days.

Anyway, forgive me if my holiday spirit is dampened, but I’ve been humming along with the Pedro the Lion song Penetration, which may be one of the best ever written about personal, professional, artistic, and moral failure:

We’re so sorry sir but you did not quite make the cut this time
And we’d appreciate it if you cleared you stuff on out by five
Don’t take it personal
Everyone knows you did your best
If it makes it easier
You should look at it from our perspective

The whole album, in fact, is excellent (see Genius.com for annotated lyrics). Released in 2002, it may be one of the last concept albums made before streaming services made albums as a concept almost entirely irrelevant.

Ominous warnings
China is developing a nationwide credit scoring system with truly Orwellian implications: it measures not only creditworthiness but also patriotism, quality of social interactions, shopping habits, and social media usage.

So the system not only investigates behaviour – it shapes it. It “nudges” citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.
… 
A person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.

Oh, and we’re dangerously close to an ill-considered war with North Korea. Just throwing that out there.

Epistles
Brad Delong writes a stark warning to the plutocrats:

To be blunt: a social democratic middle-class society is much better society in which to have a large stock of entrepreneurial, inherited, or rent-derived wealth than is a communist society. But it is also a much friendlier society to the wealthy than is a fascist society. And social democracy and fascism—hard or, if you are lucky, soft—are the only options the future will allow: tertium non datur.

Vincent Bevins writes a stark warning to the productive and industrious:

LinkedIn is a death cult. Becoming a guy that posts on Linkedin is essentially like joining a religious extremist group, but for first-world people that went to Stanford. You’re lost, you don’t know what to do with yourself, so you latch onto the dominant ideology, and throw your life into its service.

Jeet Heer writes a stark warning to Third Way Democrats noting that, well, tertium non datur:

Suburban ex-Republicans are worth pursuing, but not at the risk of diluting liberal policy commitments. While opposition to Trump is helping to swell Democratic ranks, the truth remains that excessive centrism will dishearten core voters. Watering down the party’s identity only ensures more defeats further down the road, when Trump won’t be around to scare up an ad hoc Democratic coalition.

Cultivating joy
This year in animal achievements.
One of these dogs is not like the others.
TFW you’re not sure if you missed your stop.
First contact.
… Wait, instead of ornaments?

Krampus is coming. This newsletter is more likely to be delayed, absent, or incomplete for the remainder of the month. (Traditionally, Krampus comes at the beginning of December, but let’s be real, we are living in an all-Krampus-all-the-time world right now. For evidence: the inevitable “Trump Scandal Year In Review” article  has arrived and it is long.)

Centrism is dead
More from Ed Burmila: Republicans fire up the base by giving them what they want. Their base wanted racism, false piety, and tax cuts, and goddamnit they’re getting that. Democrats, if they’re going to succeed beyond 2018, need to listen to their base and start giving them what THEY want: healthcare, progressive taxation, immigration, civil rights enforcement, and so on. At the very least, when you’re Doug Jones and you win an election on a wave of enthusiasm for keeping sexually abusive creeps out of office, don’t try and downplay the allegations against a sexually abusive creep.

Meanwhile in bad news: Alabama sheriffs, New Jersey medical examiners, California rehabilitation centers, water quality in the DC offices of the EPA.

Culturing culture
The Awl has a recurring Monday bit with kind of ominous trance music and it’s pretty good for when you’re in the mood for ominous trance music and a really bleak caption. 

Before consuming a cultural product, you can now check Rotten Apples to see if there’s a sex predator involved. (See also the service provided by Does The Dog Die? which allows you to avoid movies including any number of unpleasant things, including animal suffering, clowns, and seizure-inducing strobe effects).

Did your elementary school gym class ever contain square dancing? Is your state’s official dance square dancing? It’s probably because Henry Ford was an incredibly virulent racist and antisemite. I’m not kidding. He hated black people and jazz so much that he spent vast sums of money funding country music and square dances to promote white music. 

Cultivating joy
Cat being a jerk.
Boop.

Hurricanes happen even without global warming, even large ones, and we can’t be certain that the damage of any of this year’s storms was caused by human-driven climate change.

But at least three weather data points this year were so far outside the realm of normal that we can be reasonably certain that this particular weather isn’t just weather, but climate: The record-high global temperature average, the record-high summer temperatures in Asia, and the record-high temperatures of the North Pacific.

The good news is that it’s quite likely that many people alive today will be alive to see just how crazy the weather gets! We’re going to be living in some interesting times.

Fortunately, our leadership is up to the… no, wait. It’s not. The president filled out his absentee ballot wrong in last month’s NYC elections. Actually the whole family did: Jared forgot to mail his ballot, Melania forgot to sign hers, and Ivanka mailed hers too late. But the president got his own birthday wrong on the form. Don’t worry though, he’s got a very good brain. Best brain. Still good. Yes.

It’s OK though, because they dynamism of the American economy and the children are our future and here’s a must-read article titled FML: Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression.

This is why the touchstone experience of millennials, the thing that truly defines us, is not helicopter parenting or unpaid internships or Pokémon Go. It is uncertainty. “Some days I breathe and it feels like something is about to burst out of my chest,” says Jimmi Matsinger. “I’m 25 and I’m still in the same place I was when I earned minimum wage.” Four days a week she works at a dental office, Fridays she nannies, weekends she babysits. And still she couldn’t keep up with her rent, car lease and student loans. Earlier this year she had to borrow money to file for bankruptcy. I heard the same walls-closing-in anxiety from millennials around the country and across the income scale, from cashiers in Detroit to nurses in Seattle.

This also goes a long way to explaining why anxiety and panic have replaced depression as the touchstone American mental illness these days. (Hey remember when it was hypomania? Those were fun times.) 

Twitter Interlude

Set Up Your Optimization Process. I Will Meet You There, In The Crack Between What You Want And What You Ask For. https://t.co/KtGrmHXKz6 — Moloch Chan (@MolochChan) November 23, 2015

These claims about the future implications of Go AI are {species_data(‘human’).adjs_by_target_state[:complacent].sample(2).join(‘ and ‘)}. — Steven Kaas (@stevenkaas) March 11, 2016

Omg friends, TIL the term for ‘mansplain’ in French is ‘mecspliquer’.
Mec = bro
“expliquer” = to explain
“M’expliquer” is reflexive; it literally translates to “I explain myself.”
This is such a *delightful* portmanteau I can’t even. — Renée Stephen (@ReneeStephen) December 14, 2017

Takedowns
No, you dumbass, that’s not how fraud works.

Moar Politics
Mention Our Revolution, the group that arose from Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign last year, to a moderate voter, and they’ll say it’s terrible branding for a political movement. Revolution? Socialism? When are progressives going to realize that conservatives have 49% of the votes, more of the electoral college, and 99% of the guns? How can liberals be so out of touch?

Michael Tomasky argues that it’s Republicans who are out of touch, at least with the parts of America where innovation and opportunity happen. Hillary Clinton, he points out, may have won only 15% of the counties in the US, but those small physical areas contribute 64% of the US GDP.

Personal essays
Mimi O’Donnell on her marriage to Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Professional climber Beth Rodden on her personal journey of obsession and fear and love (the kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is only part of it).

Cultivating hope
Alabama makes it really hard for poor rural black people to vote. Fortunately for Lowndes County residents, a former sharecropper named Perman Hardy has the almost superhuman energy and dedication it takes to overcome those obstacles, get voters registered, and get them to the polls.

Cultivating despair
You can now buy a Christmas-themed dummy surveillance camera to emphasize to your children that just like the cops, Santa is literally watching them at all times.

Cultivating joy
Elusive.

USA Today is the definition of a middle-of-the-road newspaper. They’ll give you some stats, some weather, some info, but they’re not known for a strong editorial platform. So when they start going HAM, something is very strange. So here’s the latest official USA Today middle-of-the-road moderate editorial board opinion about the president:

A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.

See also: Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) voted against Trump’s candidate Roy Moore in the special election this week, and even Jeff Sessions, the Klan-sympathizing right-wing lunatic and former senator who vacated the seat to bring injustice to the Justice Department, won’t say whether he was willing to put his vote down in Moore’s column.

A significant number of conservatives went with a write-in vote for University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. I can’t say I really blame them. Unlike Moore, Saban, who is both the best-loved and best-compensated public employee in the great state of Alabama, at least has some idea of how strategy, planning, and management work.

AI hype cycle
Botnik Studios has been posting some pretty hilarious AI-generated stuff over the past few months, including this Dear Abby video which advises us that “It is important to be ashamed of the members of your family.” But how much of this is actually neural networks learning to speak almost like people, and how much of it is clever marketing?

For a bit of perspective, let’s go to Actual Data Scientist and pal Alex Baker: 

I don’t doubt they use neural networks to generate word sequences, but I think that there is a lot of human curation, and I think they basically use their tech as a lightly-skewed die roll and cherrypick the best stuff from it and say “an AI made this!”

In general they’re very Buzzfeedy about how they put things. The clickosphere figures that saying “We used readily available tech to barf nonsense. Here’s the best nonsense we found.” didn’t generate enough clicks, so they label it as “We trained a typewriter to control monkeys, and the result’s better than Shakespeare!”

Pensive
How Chinese scholars view Western elite institutions, especially global views of the role of luck and hard work and merit.

If you like the sad/funny shows, the frequently animated adventures of guys (and it’s usually guys) like Bojack Horseman, Rick Sanchez, and Sterling Archer, you owe it to yourself to read this article in The Awl about comedic portrayals of depression, addiction, and dysfunction. 

Our willingness to believe that sadness in an intelligent affliction actually helps elide the fact that addiction is a perfect, classic sitcom trope: because addiction is a cycle, and the point of the sitcom is that nothing will ever change. The same cast of characters will have essentially the same conversations about different situations, perhaps in different settings. Archie Bunker will be racist; Rachel Green will want to go shopping; Rick Sanchez will be an asshole to his grandchildren and everyone else, too.

Cultivating optimism
The world’s top motorcycle racing competition has announced an electric motorcycle race series for 2019. It’s only a few races for the first year, and the bikes are a little heavy, but they go 0-60 in 3 seconds and top out at 140 mph, so it should still be real racing. Auto racing series Formula E is also making strides.

Why does this matter? If we’re going to decarbonize the auto industry, we need to go electric. Because racing is both a branding exercise and a technology testbed for manufacturers, a racing series is a pretty good sign that electric is coming. (For example, as motorcycle manufacturers began developing 4-stroke motors, MotoGP phased out 2-strokes, which accelerated a global switch to the cleaner 4-stroke combustion process).  

A successful racing series means more attention from consumers and more investment from manufacturers. If Moto-E and Formula E can eventually become even half as popular as MotoGP and Formula 1, that’s a really good sign for electric vehicle success and carbon output reduction.

Cultivating joy
Christmas dog!

Big dogs meeting little dogs: adequate replacement for therapy?

What was Doug Jones’ walkoff music as he finished his victory speech? “Teach Me How to Dougie.” (Errybody love me you ain’t messin’ with my Dougie).

Reminder: Christmas lights and palm trees don’t mix.

Volcanoes are amazing. Here are some photos.

What’s peak 2017? In the 2020s, what will we look back on as a emblematic of this tire fire of a year?

Was it the sort of year when you wonder how a white supremacist winds up as an EEOC compliance officer at a minority-owned company?

Was it the nostalgia for the merely terrible national discourse and leadership of the George W. Bush years?

I bet there was no point in 2008 at which you thought, “Nine years from now the leading voices in the GOP will make Joe the Plumber look like Voltaire.” — Ed Myrrh-mila (@gin_and_tacos) December 12, 2017

Was it when the Republican party started fighting with the American Bar Association because they disagree about whether judges should be competent?

Was it when an Army buddy of an alleged pedophile Senate Candidate tried to give an example of moral behavior and it still involved underage prostitutes? Or when the candidate’s wife tried to claim they weren’t prejudiced because they have “a Jew” as one of their attorneys?

Between Kayla Moore rebuffing anti-semitism by citing her “Jew” lawyer and the president rebuffing sexual assault charges by sexually harassing a sitting senator, this has been a great 12 hours for own-goals. — Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) December 12, 2017

Was it something more subtle, like this analysis from The Awl of what went wrong with Dilbert as Adams began to love the boss more than the worker, loving in Trump all the same things he used to mock about managers.

Or maybe Scott Walker wearing a festive Christmas sweater to celebrate the season of generosity while gutting the state’s safety net and drug-testing food-stamp recipients. 

Or the technological absurdity of Waze and Google Maps directing people down roads that are empty because they’re on fire.

Realistically it’ll probably be the constant drumbeat of sexual harassment being uncovered. The long-delayed acknowledgement of something that men have known about but not quite understood, and women have long understood but not been able to get taken seriously. The year when you see a male celebrity or professional role model mentioned somewhere and wonder if he’s dead, or just dead to you now. (Read the Ken Friedman rundown. It’s horrifying.)

That and the collusion. Yeah, that’ll be in there.

#RollTide
Reports from Alabama yesterday included active voters suddenly marked as inactive and voting machines breaking. And cops showing up to check voters for outstanding warrants. Yet somehow decency and the colossal strategic mistakes of the Republican party ran together and Doug Jones won the special election.

Cultivating amusement
Massachusetts Gothic: “Why is that field red? The children ask. It’s a cranberry bog, the adults repeat. Just a cranberry bog. The eyes in the bog do not blink.”

The 2017 Hater’s Guide to Williams Sonoma.

A collection of rejected New Yorker covers called The Not Yorker.

What if we made twee indie romances in the Star Wars universe?

What if you took a neural net and asked it to write a Harry Potter novel?

Cultivating joy
Snow day elephant

Unable to operate the straw on the iced coffee, a dog falls asleep with his nose in the cupholder.

Shoulder-mounted kitten.

(This whole newsletter is much funnier autotuned and sung to the beat of California Love)

The Alabama special election is today, so it’s worth taking a look back at a 2014 piece from the New Republic on how the accomplishments of the civil rights movement are being reversed, especially in Alabama. Basically, the Republican party is wrecking everything like some kind of right-wing parody of Social Distortion lyrics.

We have to go
The neighbors have complained
We have to go
The walls have all been stained
They have to know
They can’t stop us now
They have to know
We could burn this town

It’s almost comical how bad a candidate Moore is. At a recent rally, one of the candidate’s (very few) friends from his service in Vietnam told a tale of upright moral behavior: When Moore accidentally went to a brothel with underage prostitutes, he turned around and left. Didn’t shut it down or anything, didn’t stop other officers from going there, but, you know, he didn’t personally patronize that brothel.

See also – Why Roy Moore supporters can’t/won’t change their minds.
See also – Alabama makes it hard to vote. On purpose.
See also – UN officials tour Alabama, are appalled.
See also – what comedians are gonna do with this material.
See also – Judge preemptively orders Alabama not to delete any records or images of this election.

Education policy gets less boring

Even less/more boring: Network policy
For more than 100 million Americans, internet access is available only through companies whose adherence to existing net neutrality regulations has been… subpar. And the rules, such as they are, are about to get looser. Call or write your legislators. 

My milkshake brings the ducks to the yard
Anti-bullying campaign comes to screeching halt as victim’s family revealed to be racist as hell. #MilkshakeDuck never dies.

Twitter interlude

SOME CALL IT INTIMACY ISSUES

OTHERS CALL IT EMOTIONAL CAMOUFLAGE

EITHER WAY I AM NOT COMING OUT FROM BEHIND THIS BUSH PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE — NOT A WOLF (@SICKOFWOLVES) December 11, 2017

Cultivating interest
JStor celebrates obsolete words.

Cultivating joy
Steve Mnuchin is non-awful with this one weird trick.
This is the bravest, cleverest chipmunk.