1. Victorian collage art and a catchy title? Of course I clicked on “The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850–60).” (The blood drops are ink, not actual blood, and it was a wedding gift for his daughter?) How cool that this weird object has survived 170 years.
2. This was enlightening: racist or otherwise hurtful phrases you should stop using. (The etymology of “picnic” isn’t actually racist like the article claims but its use was plenty horrifying.)
3. Accurate:
1. Danny Lavery tells us The Problem With Being Edited (it’s my problem, too):
I react with the same baffled fury and impotent rage of Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden: The idea of revisiting something I have already written puts me in the most confounding of moods, and I become sulky, contradictory, and capricious, unwilling to say what I actually think (“I don’t want to look at what I’ve written and think about it a second time, I’m unprepared to defend any arguments I might have made or furnish sources for any claims; please just do whatever you like for the second draft and let’s forget I ever had a hand in writing this”)
2. Bookbinding stuff: a collection of end papers from 1890 – 1930.
3. More digital archives: a collection of motifs used in tatreez, or traditional Palestinian cross stitch. (Gorgeous!)
4. Niche Manifestations on TikTok are my new favorite thing:
@nichemanifestations 🧿🪬Manifestation for cats to only throw up on hard surfaces, not carpet🐈⬛‼️ #manifestation #manifesting #pets #cats ♬ 777 Hz Angelic Healing Frequency – Emiliano Bruguera
1. The United Auto Workers Union went on strike at midnight this morning at three plants. As the NY Times reports:
This limited strike… could hamper the automakers because the sites produce some of their most profitable trucks, such as the Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle and the Chevrolet Colorado pickup.
The union has demanded a 40 percent wage increase over the next four years, pointing out that the compensation packages for the chief executives of the three companies have increased about that much, on average, over the last four years.
The UAW president Shawn Fain is my new hero. We absolutely love to see someone saying it like is: “It’s not that we’re going to wreck the economy, we’re going to wreck their economy, the economy that only works for the billionaire class.”
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2. This was cool: Proof of evolution that you can find on your body
3. Thinking about tomatoes yesterday made me realize I haven’t been to a farmers market this year (!) which reminded me of this: There Are Two Types of Farmers Market
Type 1 includes
The dreaded Type 2? CHAOS! and lavender
1. This story about a plumber was the “just trust me” rec from Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter and it didn’t disappoint: Man Called Fran
“Well,” he said, “let me put it to you this way.” Sean explained that he and his guys were “good plumbers,” whereas Fran, he and his crew had “crackhead power,” and sometimes you needed that.
“A crackhead will just throw himself at a wall, even if it’s totally pointless.”
Somehow I knew exactly what Sean meant.
2. I recently discovered Perfect Sentences, which is “a collection of the best sentences I’ve come across all week.” Exactly what it says on the tin!
3. This video from Kottke was mesmerizing: “The Chief” of a marble quarry in Carrara and the hand gestures he gives to the excavators as they break away big slabs. (I’m 100% sure there’s a term for that but I’m not up on my quarry language.) As the original post says, “Notice the tips of two fingers are missing. That’s how you get to be the boss.”
OMG this week FINALLY is nearly over… it hasn’t been busy, just long, probably because I’m waiting for the long weekend. Remember to support the unions and throw the bosses off your back and I’ll see you back here on Wednesday.
1. A playlist of Stax classics for Labor Day? Don’t mind if I do!
2. Never forget the power of withholding labor:
3. Me knitting during Zoom meetings:
4. And for most of America that thinks Labor Day celebrates the beginning of fall instead of the power of workers, here’s something, too:
1. Speaking of being hit by cars while riding a bike: You’re a Cyclist Who Was Just Struck by a Car Driver. Here’s Why It Was Your Fault.
“The only appropriate time and place to ride a bike is a time beyond time and a place beyond place, where the space-time continuum is bent so strangely you are both everywhere and nowhere, eternal and nonexistent.”
2. Prison Can Be A Hostile Place. Then the Birds Came.
3. Accurate: 
4. Also accurate:
1. Every word of this headline was designed to appeal to me and I couldn’t click to read it fast enough: Socialist Gym Rats Fought to End Slavery in America. 
I mean, these are also the passions burning in my heart!
2. We had some more monsoon rain but it stayed hot and oh my god am I not used to humidity. If only I could be a tomato in an ice box:
3. But if it’s fabric for an outdoor project it doesn’t count, right?
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1. Everything I like in one sentence! The Secret Feminist History of Butter Cows
2. Literary memes!
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3. …and some toilet ones, too.
— NE Ohio Regional Sewer District (@neorsd) March 3, 2023
1. Paul Reubens died this week. Here’s a 2016 interview about his comeback, his early years, and his favorite Walgreens. This is such a perfect artist statement:
‘‘I didn’t have jokes, and I wasn’t good at improvising,’’ Reubens said. ‘‘I was good at mugging and finding weird stuff.’’
2. More history: the origin of calling the remote a clicker was because the 1956 invention actually clicked. (I did not know this!)
3. This could have been my July. Right now August is looking less hot, at least.
1. More Catherynne Valente newsletter fire: Mark F***king Zuckerberg Is Not Your Friend just because he sucks ever-s0-slightly less than Elon:
Aaron Sorkin made a whole-ass movie about how much this guy sucks and he didn’t even get to the part where everyone’s new pal sold out the 2016 election and let antivaxxers rub their musk all over his site pre-, mid-, and semi-post-pandemic because dolla dolla bills, I guess, also possibly he may have evolved the ability to extract nutrients from human suffering and stupidity and now requires them to survive, because none of that had happened yet but Zuckerberg sucks so much just the rookie phase of his assholery justified a major motion picture to lay out just how dedicated he was to sucking as hard as possible.
2. Some word history as a palate cleanser:
3. Found via Instagram, 5 ways to think about your fabric stash, which I really like (no more guilt!):
5. Looking at your fabric stash (or buying it) is a way to engage in sewing when you don’t have time or energy to sew
What if you really don’t feel like making a quick project or you really don’t have time to sew anything involved? Then having a fabric stash is really handy for some future planning … because dreaming about future projects is also part of the creative hobby.
4. And finally, how did live footage of me end up on Twitter?
when you have a task pic.twitter.com/YNkkpgGH1A
— Alexis Gay (@yayalexisgay) June 12, 2023