Birds do it
Bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let’s do it
Let’s start a plague
— The Library Owl 🎄🎅🦉 (@SketchesbyBoze) March 1, 2020
What could possibly go wrong? While we wait for the end of the world (if not The Virus, then perhaps The Asteroid? Perhaps The Spider?) let’s take a quick look at why we deserve it.
We’re headed into the end of the decade, which means we’re going to see a lot of wrapups and retrospectives. “The Worst Takes of the 2010s” is at least fun. Ish. But my favorite meaningless speculation is about what we’ll call this next decade. Last time around, it was roaring. Of course, it was at least 1925 and probably closer to 1930 before people started calling it that. But my vote for this decade is burning.
The Arctic is passing the critical tipping point at which melting permafrost will belch out aeons of carbon dioxide stored in the accumulated frozen mud, accelerating climate disaster again.
As usual, The Onion has a great take, with the headline “Critics In 2030s Ask Why Teen Climate Activist Isn’t In Abandoned School Bailing Water And Shooting Enemy Foragers”
Twitter comedy interlude
DOCTOR: I have good news and bad news
ME: Oh no, what’s the bad news
DR: The earth is dying and we will run out of natural resources in 10 years
ME: Uh wow, what’s the good news
DR: You won’t be around to worry about it
— Michael Enjoys the Work of Helen Hunt 🌶 (@Home_Halfway) November 27, 2019
The cruelty is the point
If you haven’t seen it on the back of pickup trucks recently, you ought to be aware of this flag, which is labeled as a ‘blue live matter’ flag. That blue line represents police, standing between society and disorder. Disorder, of course, represented by, you know… *looks around nervously* a bad element.
People who fly this flag claim to support the police, but they know what they’re doing: this is a taunt. When Black people assert that their lives matter, this flag yells back: “No they don’t.”It is, fundamentally, a fascist flag, asserting the primacy of the armed force of the state over civilian lives. That’s one reason why it’s so beloved by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, whose entire appeal to voters is that he stands between (Black) Baltimore and (White) suburban Marylanders.
So, if you don’t know, now you know. You’ll see the flag around. Watch out for people flying it.
Police shot and killed a UPS driver whose truck had been hijacked, and UPS issued a bizarre and now-retracted statement that, while mourning his death, also thanked the police for their bravery in shooting an unarmed hostage. No word on whether they were considering rebranding the trucks with that thin blue line flag.
We got to go to Delos this week, the highlight of a long-delayed honeymoon trip. The whole island is currently a museum and UNESCO world heritage site with maybe 14 residents, all of them archaeologists. Everyone else can visit for the day, usually via ferry from nearby resort-heavy Mykonos.
Delos been mostly uninhabited for centuries, but its status as the mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis made it an important holy site for almost a thousand years leading up to the first century BC. In 478 BC, it became the neutral capital of the Athens-dominated Delian League. Although it traded hands a few times, it prospered as a port and slave-trading center for hundreds of years, making it very wealthy indeed.
A series of pirate attacks culminated in 69 BC with a thorough sacking and looting. As trade routes shifted, people moved away. As worship of Apollo faded, people moved away. It simply didn’t matter any more. It’s been an archaeological site since 1872. What’s there is stunning: an entire town reduced to its crumbling walls, an enormous theater, faded mosaics of Dionysus in banquet rooms that undoubtedly hosted epic orgies. A number of key statues have been moved for preservation and replaced with replicas, including the melted-looking Naxian Lions and a famous depiction of Aphrodite smilingly beating Pan with a shoe. What’s missing is more significant: all the metal. All the wood. All the cloth. Even a lot of the stone. There’s a giant marble plinth with notes about the enormous statue of Apollo that it used to hold. The British Museum has a foot, the Athens Museum a hand. The head is long since stolen and lost. A lot of the body was apparently chopped up and used in other sculptures or buildings.
In other words, the entire place is a monument to hubris and a reminder of the fragility of empire and stone and everything we build or do.
And after a few hours of being humbled by ancient ruins, we turned around and got back on the ferry to Mykonos, with its new port served by cruise ships and its old port served by mega-yachts, the water coming up just to the edge of the charming bars and restaurants of Little Venice. And its adorable street cats. Not long after that, we got on a plane and flew halfway around the world, spewing carbon dioxide all the way. So today I feel humbled, and hypocritcal, and troubled by the rhymes of history.
(Coincidentally, the song “Mykonos” by Fleet Foxes is about someone failing to get sober after a trip to rehab in Mykonos. I don’t know why anyone would attempt rehab there. Mykonos seems like it would be one of the worst possible places in the world to get sober. Our hotel’s welcome book actually included a brochure for an IV rehydration hangover treatment.)
Your context sets your expectation, which is why the climate apocalypse seems totally normal. (There are roughly half as many birds as there were just a hundred years ago…)
A second example: one Key Largo neighborhood, already used to intermittent fall flooding, has been substantially flooded for more than 40 days. “For us now, this is normal life,” one resident says.
I’ve been thinking recently about the end of objective reality. Not in any objective and real sense, of course. Objective reality is still out there. But how do we know what it is?
The New York Times, still the paper of record (or so I’m told) employs a columnist who thinks that masturbation is somehow harmful. (This is an actual thing he said, not some screenshot fake. I think.)
We can all joke about how this year is the 50th anniversary of when they faked the moon landing, but David Brooks is this very moment allying himself with the very reputable Jewish magazine Tablet to try and redeem the wildly antisemitic trope of “cultural Marxism.” Does the Prime Minister of Israel believe in the race “science” he’s been pushing? (I mean, someone claims he’s doing it? I mean, it’s still live on his official account, so maybe that’s actually a thing that’s happening?)
According to KnowYourMeme.com, contemporary use of the phrase “this is fine” to mean the exact opposite comes from a comic called Gunshow. The specific strip featuring the dog in the burning building denying that anything is wrong is subtitled “The Pills Are Working.”
See also “having a normal one,” or “having a very normal day,” meaning losing your goddamn mind.
BLDGBLOG notes that this would be the perfect setting for a post-apocalyptic horror movie: “unwary climate refugees of the near-future hiking through the forests of a superheated American South… approaching a super nest the size of train yard, its buzzing mistaken for the hopeful drone of distant machinery. ”
A few weeks ago someone asked me what I do for work, and I had a very hard time coming up with an answer that fit into just a few words. I don’t know why I didn’t come up with something exciting and funny (Amethyst broker to the stars! Sex instructor! Marijuana sommelier!), or simple and accurate (nonprofit marketing freelancer). But I was stumped. I hesitated. What do I even do? Who am I? How did I get here? (Letting the days go by…)
More recently, I made a political donation and the form required me to list my occupation and employer. I started to write down my title and the hospital where I’m currently working, but then I realized that’s not strictly accurate. I don’t work for the hospital. I work for a temp agency that’s a subsidiary of a larger temp-agency holding company.
So I put down “temp” and the name of my sub-agency, since I can’t actually remember the name of the holding company. Then I felt sort of insignificant and temporary. And then I reminded myself that we shouldn’t let ourselves be defined by our jobs but by ourselves: “in a society where you are what you do full-time — and you’re only as good as how much you earn doing it — identifying yourself as anything can feel like a form of hubris.”
And then I went and listened to the song “Amethyst” by Low forty or fifty times on repeat. The color bleeds and fades to white…
The Buzzfeed style guide is the definitive resource for correct spelling on the internet. Not sure whether “O-face” gets a hyphen and a capital O? Buzzfeed will tell you it does! Unsure of the correct number of r’s to put into the Cardi B catchphrase “okurrr?” Buzzfeed knows! It’s a minimum of three, but more if you’re really emphatic about that affirmative. Okurrrrrrr?
So, let’s talk economic policy: Misguided austerity policies have impoverished people all over Europe and the US, but the NYT has an incredibly crushing example of how it’s played out Cumbria, abandoned by the young, by bus service, by hospitals. If you read nothing of the article, just know that it ends with someone lamenting that “it would have been a wonderful place to die.”
Actually, no. You know what, they all sort of go together. “Pro-life” legislators close rural hospitals, urban hospitals, family-planning clinics, sexual-education programs, childcare programs… and then claim Democrats are the party of death.
Mainstream Republicans
Turning Point USA is a college-Republican group. A leader at the Las Vegas chapter has recently been ousted after a video of him went viral. Guess what he was saying?
Imagine being at the beginning of a campaign in which every democratic candidate is going to be called a baby-killer who wants to let immigrant rapists into the country to illegally vote and worrying that impeachment will “energize” the republican base.
— Mass for Shut-ins (podcast) (@gin_and_tacos) May 8, 2019
(What stage of capitalism are we in where fast food chains care more about mental health than most public officials?)
Hindsight will be 2020 Paul Krugman has a warning about the old white guys running for office this year: they are arrogant enough to think they can transcend partisanship. Biden thinks he can “reach across the aisle” and Sanders thinks he can sweep across divides with idealistic policy. Neither seems to grasp what will actually happen if Dems take the presidency but the Senate and Supreme Court are still dominated by what’s basically a rebooted John Birch Society. Speaking of which…
Here is an official statement from the White House, claiming that Democrats kill babies:
As Democrat Governors in NY & VA advocate for late term abortion & even infanticide – & Democrats in Congress refuse to allow a vote on the Born-Alive bill – TODAY in Times Square an ultrasound will be shown for all to see, demonstrating the miracle of life. #AliveFromNewYork
Let me reiterate: the Vice-President of the United States is claiming that his opponents are in favor of legal infanticide. This is how you incite murder. This is how you get support for refusal to cede power after losing an election.
When I broke my hand in college, I set the bone & splinted it myself. This was the first time I found out this wasn’t normal, because I grew up either w/o insurance or w/ my mom’s terrible work insurance & not enough savings to ever afford the copay
— torrin a. greathouse (@TAGreathouse) May 4, 2019
My first boyfriend committed suicide at 19 after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and not being able to refill his meds or get treatment after being released from the psych hospital. A thousand other things, but it all started there.
My father killed himself so he wouldn’t bankrupt the family trying to treat his Parkinson’s. He was my best friend. We did a Go Fund Me for his medical care and ended up using it for his funeral
— Erin Dewey Lennox (@ErinDeweyLennox) May 3, 2019
In Oct of 2018 My friend niema went on Facebook asking if anyone had any Albuterol she could have because she couldn’t afford to get any at the time. She died early the next morning after an attack. She was an amazing human being. pic.twitter.com/V6MD8KaRii
When my employer told me I needed to come back to work or else my families health insurance would lapse.
I took that phone call while sitting in a PICU room next to my 4 year old who was in a medically induced coma
The other day, Spotify recommended me a playlist of new rock music, which is something of a reminder that rock music is now a specialty genre. Even before 2017, when hip-hop officially became the most popular genre in the US, rock was in a decline behind pop and hip-hop and r&b. But when the Coachella music festival didn’t even have any rock acts in the lineup, it was pretty clear that rock had lost its salience to the broad popular-music consumer audience.
They just don’t seem to be minting any new rock stars these days. Quick, name a rocker under 60. (Subscriber #7, I’m sure you can, but come on, Ty Segall is a niche artist.) Jack White, maybe? He’s well-known enough, I guess, but I bet you he can still walk down the street without being mobbed by fans.
So, rock stars are fading away. But the metaphorical “rock star” is still everywhere. Post Malone’s mumbled hip-hop anthem “Rockstar” was at the top of the charts for weeks, Rockstar energy drink is in every corner store, Rockstar Games is the video game company, and every other job listing describes what they want in a “rock star” contributor.
What do we even mean by “rock star” in the post-rock era?
Post Malone obviously means excess and debauchery (and the scene has definitely gotten excessive and debauched—this profile of flavor-of-the-week rapper Lil Pump is horrifying and sad). Rockstar energy drink just means everything’s turned all the way up: loud music, bright graphics, assertively gross energy drink flavors, and way too much caffeine. Rockstar games… yeah, also excess, both in the games themselves and in the long hours it takes to produce them.
What do employers mean by rock star? Not getting drunk and trashing the conference room, but still someone whose skills and performance earn them leeway for misbehavior. And obviously, a dude. (How many of you thought about Meg White when I mentioned her ex-husband Jack? Aside from subscriber #7?)
I’m guessing that in a few years, we’ll think of that metaphor as yet another overlooked sign of something amiss in our culture. (Although not that overlooked, given the number of articles with titles like “You Shouldn’t Hire That Rock Star Candidate“).
Anyway, one of the new rock songs bouncing around is called Sawed-Off Shotgun. It’s about giving in to mental illness, addiction, and pointless violence. Good times. If it ever gets any radio play, I look forward to finding out whether they bleep the words “shotgun” and “oxycodone” the way they would in a hip-hop song.
Some supervisors even gave their officers pre-signed blank warrants — in effect, illegally handing them the authority to begin the deportation process.
Hey, you remember what happened after Baltimore police were acquitted in the death of Freddie Gray? Cops rapidly decided that rather than comply with rules against brutalizing the citizenry, they’d just quit doing their jobs. Results were … not good.
The department’s officers responded swiftly, by doing nothing. In Baltimore it came to be known as “the pullback”: a monthslong retreat from policing, a protest that was at once undeclared and unmistakably deliberate — encouraged, some top officials in the department at the time believe, by the local police union.
…
Batts admitted he was having trouble getting officers to do their job. “I talked to them again about character and what character means,” he told me and other reporters following a City Council hearing.
That’s the truly cruel thing about it. We actually do need law enforcement, and too many poor and minority communities suffer from a paradoxical combination of not enough law enforcement and too much policing.
A brilliant little essay came across my feeds last week, from a fashion/not-fashion blog called Man Repeller. It’s about this temptation to “rise & grind,” to monetize every hobby and make it a side-hustle:
We live in the era of the hustle. Of following our dreams until the end, and then pushing ourselves more. And every time we feel beholden to capitalize on the rare places where our skills and our joy intersect, we underline the idea that financial gain is the ultimate pursuit. If we’re good at it, we should sell it. If we’re good at it and we love it, we should definitely sell it.
As it turns out, turning a passion into a career is not always a path to happiness. It can be a path to an unbalanced life.
I hadn’t thought about it much, to be honest, but it resonates with me. When I was writing a lot of poetry, I didn’t try to get it published. When I started this newsletter, I didn’t even consider signing up for Patreon and asking people to contribute. I already have several jobs. I don’t need another. Yet.
SURE ANIMALS USUALLY DIE BECAUSE SOMETHING IS EATING THEM OR WHATEVER BUT AT LEAST THEY NEVER LIE AWAKE AND WONDER IF THEY SHOULD HAVE GONE TO GRAD SCHOOL
Polarization
I have a recurring disagreement with one of my subscribers (hi Dad!) about whether it’s important to respect conservatives and engage seriously with their ideas, since they’re our fellow countrymen and we owe it to them, even if we disagree.
I’m not the only one saying this. Brad DeLong, a self-described “Rubin Democrat” and well-known moderate Democrat, says the Democratic Socialists should drive the bus now, since being a moderate requires a good-faith negotiator on the right side of the aisle, and his team of moderates were clearly wrong when they thought they could find a middle path through compromise:
“Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”
Don’t trust low unemployment numbers as proof that the labor market is doing fine—it isn’t. Not Working is about those who can’t find full-time work at a decent wage—the underemployed—and how their plight is contributing to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism.
WTF, Possibly NSFW
CES, the global consumer electronics expo, issued an award to a woman-led company for its groundbreaking work on female sexual health. Then they rescinded the award, claimed the product was obscene, and banned the company from even attending the expo. Par for the course in the consumer electronics space.
(Yes, I’m aware that I am linking to an article about the downsides of entrepreneur-obsessed hustle culture and to an article from a newsletter about entrepreneurship called The Hustle. I contain multitudes).
Secretly Ironic 