I am in the country most entertained (and indignantly shocked) by #swedengate, where every day I fight tooth and nail with family, friends, neighbors and strangers alike to refuse food, gifts, and other favors. That’s right, I am in Turkey 🇹🇷
Okay that’s enough patriotism for now. It’s my birthday in 15 days and I am excited and grateful to complete a quarter of a century on this planet. I know things have been rather bleak lately but I believe that I am doing everything I can for the people I love and care about and that’s all we can really ask for at the end of the day. ❤️
Movies 🎥
Green Book (dir. Peter Farrelly, 2018)
Sully: Miracle on the Hudson (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2016)
The Pursuit of Happyness (dir. Gabriele Muccino, 2006)
Crip Camp (dirs. James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham, 2020)
If Anything Happens, I Love You (dirs. Will McCormack, Michael Govier, 2020) — Especially timely…
PK (dir. Rajkumar Hirani, 2014)
Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (dir. Sam Raimi, 2022) — now that we have multiverse superhero stories, they are more entertaining than ever…. the illuminati! the cameos! mothers! a third eye (with terrible cgi)!
Articles 🖊
The Politics of Denunciation by Kristian Williams
This story from HONY about how much impact a single person can have. Simply by being there, and by caring. May DiCo lead a long and prosperous life so he can continue to be a channel of grace and hope. Here’s how you can support his work.
The Case Against the Trauma Plot by Parul Sehgal — “Trauma has become synonymous with backstory, but the tyranny of backstory is itself a relatively recent phenomenon—one that, like any successful convention, has a way of skirting our notice. Personality was not always rendered as the pencil-rubbing of personal history.“
Substacks 📑
Anti-Mimetic Communication by Luke Burgis — “Words matter. Truth matters.”
Don't Feed Your Conscience to the Dogs by Luke Burgis — “When the conscience compels, we must follow. But when the conscience is under attack, we must fortify and protect it.”
Consistency is Proficiency by Ava — “But consistency always comes before proficiency. The first step is identifying what you’re willing to do every day for the rest of your life.”
If You're Mothering a Gender Nonconforming Child... by Lisa Selin Davis — “The other thing we have to do is fortify our children to navigate a world that doesn’t understand them.”
Mikko Harvey's "For M" by Devin Kelly
Sean Thomas Dougherty's "Grief's Familiar Rooms" by Devin Kelly
#100: New idea trending by Haley Nahman — “Social media was designed to sell ads and then evolved to do it better. Everything else it promises is functionally neutered in that process. The internet may be a good place to start a conversation, but it’s not built to finish one.”
#102: No worries if not by Haley Nahman — “It makes sense to me that “no worries if not” is largely a millennial refrain. It’s a cowed expression. In many ways, we’ve been cowed by orthodoxy, by decorum, by the way things have always been done, even if they don’t actually work for anyone anymore. This is the darker comedy of the meme, and possibly the optimism of it.”
The Gentrification of Disability by Freddie deBoer — “But something is truly lost when the public face of mental illness ceases to be a schizophrenic person struggling to maintain their grasp on self-control and becomes instead a member of the professional class who tells jokes about their Ritalin consumption online and labels themselves #neuroatypical on Tinder.”
Perhaps the Barriers to Entry for Creative Work Have Become Too Low by Freddie deBoer — “I fear that because it’s so easy to make something, now, people feel no pressure to make anything particularly ambitious.”
Yes, I Got That Reference. But Who Cares? by Freddie deBoer — “Today’s reference media attempts to cut the line by borrowing that resonance from the past. It’s a sad statement about our power to create meaning in fiction and, if nothing else, will inevitably lead to diminishing returns.”