Friday Unrelated Information

1. If you haven’t read Patricia Lockwood’s essay about surviving the rona, do it. It’s equal parts hilarious and terrifying (she was never hospitalized but had delusions): Insane After Coronavirus.

My mind had moved a few inches to the left of its usual place, and I developed what I realised later were actual paranoid delusions. ‘Jason’s cough is fake,’ I secretly texted a friend from the bathtub, where I couldn’t be monitored. ‘I … don’t think his cough is fake,’ she responded, with the gentle tact of the healthy. ‘Oh it is very, very fake,’ I countered, and then further asserted the claim that he had something called Man Corona.

2. This is accurate:

3. This is helpful:

1. Have you ever wanted to see the Duck Tales intro recreated  only using stock footage? Here you go:

(from Kottke)

2. Just no.

3. I hate this/I love this:

A friend’s male assistant is a fake email account she runs because people called her “difficult” and “impossible” for having small windows of availability until “he” started running interference and then people just accepted she was fucking busy. I AM VERY INTO THIS.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) July 29, 2020

4. It’s hot out, our leadership has failed us, things seem terrible everywhere–take care of yourselves this weekend, friends. No doomscrolling.

1. I had to remind myself of this post from Austin Kleon’s blog:

2. Always here for footprints in the sand jokes:

I saw 2 sets of footprints, one belonging to me & one to God.

I saw at times there was only 1 set of footprints.

It troubled me, so I asked Him about it.

He said, “My child, when you saw 1 set of footprints, it was when you refused to wear a mask, so I got far away from you.”

— Hank Smith (@hankrsmith) July 15, 2020

3.There’s an Instagram account that’s just cats chattering and chirping and its handle is @ekekekkekkek, which is brilliant.

1. I spent way too much time yesterday clicking through Window Swap, which is pretty much what it says: Look out of other people’s windows around the world. Mesmerizing.

2. A short essay about the appeal of jumpsuits:

Put one on and you feel both armed (with the ability to do at least one useful task) and liberated (from the toil of wearing multiple garments at once).

3. More fashion: a New Yorker piece about what to wear at home, with lots of recs for extremely fancy pajamas–but also fashun history and facts!

Recent retail-sales data reflect a world where there’s nobody to dress up for except your cat. In April, clothing sales fell seventy-nine per cent, the largest decline since records have been kept. But tracksuit purchases were up seventy per cent, and sweatpants eighty per cent. Sales of pajamas rose a hundred and forty-three per cent. Evidently, pants are cancelled (unless they come with an elastic waistband). Their sales declined thirteen per cent. The new focus is above the waist.

1. This was another challenging week but hey, look, it’s Friday!

2. Part of the week’s challenges included being on set with a LOT of crew to film a commercial I wrote, as Utah sees new coronavirus cases climb every day. Everyone wore a mask but distance was…minimal…and it just added another layer to a day that’s already stressful.

This Kottke post sums up how tiring any return to “normal” is  (“many of us are constantly running risk calculations in our heads for every little thing we do and don’t do”) AND included this XKCD comic:

3. For no particular related reason at all, here’s some great work from Paperback Paradise (which can be a little NSFW):

1. Well, um, it’s the Fourth of July weekend so we can celebrate America? I guess? Maybe in the abstract? I have Friday and Monday off so I’ll be back here Tuesday.

2. There’s a long and damning piece in The Atlantic about the utter failure of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic. The 3 Weeks That Changed Everything: Imagine if the National Transportation Safety Board investigated America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

What if the NTSB were brought in to look at the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic? What would its investigation conclude? I’ll jump to the answer before laying out the background: This was a journey straight into a mountainside, with countless missed opportunities to turn away. A system was in place to save lives and contain disaster. The people in charge of the system could not be bothered to avoid the doomed course.

3. Ben and Jerry’s–the ice cream company–has a great post about what it means to “defund the police.” 2020 is a trip.

4. Stay safe. Hang in there.

1. The brown bear cam from Katmai National Park in Alaska is live. At time of writing this morning, there was a bear just chillin in the waterfall, waiting for a salmon to swim into his mouth.

2. Bob Dylan has a new album out? And an interview with another old guy in the NY Times about many things. I had to laugh at this:

There is a lot of apocalyptic sentiment in “Murder Most Foul.” Are you worried that in 2020 we’re past the point of no return? That technology and hyper-industrialization are going to work against human life on Earth?

Sure, there’s a lot of reasons to be apprehensive about that. There’s definitely a lot more anxiety and nervousness around now than there used to be. But that only applies to people of a certain age like me and you, Doug. We have a tendency to live in the past, but that’s only us.

3. This just makes me laugh:

1. Happy Juneteenth! I am ashamed to admit that until this week, I had a foggy idea that June 19th was the date of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. No, it was June 19th, 1865 when the news of the Civil War’s outcome and the ending of slavery in the U.S. reached the last group of enslaved people in Texas. Suddenly this phrase I’d been seeing on protest signs made a lot more sense:

(via Eiselle Ty, who has lots of info)

2. For no reason whatsoever, here’s a bit about how apples go bad and how they spoil each other.

3. And here’s a bit about what Georgia O’Keefe cooked.

1. I stopped counting the days of lockdown since our state opened up a few weeks ago…and now we’re seeing our rona cases increase again. As Kottke put it: Jesus Christ, Just Wear A Face Mask!

2. This is allegedly written by a former police officer, but it’s unverified, so….take it with a grain of salt. But even as a thought exercise versus actual opinion, it’s powerful:

3. I need this on a shirt:

1. Well, here we are. Halfway through 2020, which has not pulled ANY punches (to put it mildly). I like this, though:

As therapy has taught me, change is SO HARD and feelings are SO UNCOMFORTABLE–but it’s worth it. It’s worth it.

2. Also?

(via)

3. Surprisingly hard: Antidepressants or Tolkein?

4. Take care of yourselves, everyone. Wear a mask and, if you can, turn off the news and get some sun.