Category: Friday Unrelated Information

1. Should I send this to the realtor and see what she can find?

2. I’m actually doubtful that this is the year a new house will happen–work is still so slow and it’s not like public health is getting more finding any time soon. I’m filling the day/coping by continuing the organization blitz. I got the gift wrap area in the basement and the garage shelves done this week:

3. The NY Times has a big “FAQs about death and dying” article, which…doesn’t sound exactly comforting, but they really nailed the tone. Plus, the comments are so human. I guess death is the universal human experience. (Also: make a will! We finally got our trusts/advance directives/pet trust set up this year and that Being Prepared feeling is great.)

1. I went to IKEA on Wednesday just to feel something but I think it worked to get me out of my funk: I re-organized the drawers in my sewing table and now I’m plotting how to update the boxes that are holding all the thread and interfacing. I’m also eyeballing a flat file to get bookbinding stuff out from under the loveseat? That’ll fix me.

2. A longer read about a writer getting detained and then applying for the Global Entry program, and how the urge to conform comes for us all:

One might imagine such negative experiences with authority would engender nothing but antagonism toward it, that the lesson learned would be to say, Fuck what other people think, I’m going to be myself! / rainbow flag emoji. I don’t want to discount my multitudes. I do sometimes feel this way, and my political views trend in that direction. But whenever I find myself in situations like “getting Global Entry,” my deep programming kicks in and I find myself firmly on the side of the machine, such to the extent that I will root against an elderly woman with a walking cane for the crime of “asking questions.”

3.  I laughed for about three minutes at this. As a comment says, “I too want to be woken out of a coma by every key on the piano played at once over and over again by a small horse.”

 

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A post shared by Mini Therapy Horses (@minitherapyhorses)

1. This is an excellent reminder from Mariame Kaba (via Laura Olin):

We notice and pay the most attention to cruelty and inhumanity and that’s actually because our brains focus on the negative over anything else. But I like to remind us that the reason stories of cruelty are so shocking to us is that they go against most people’s natural instincts. How else can we explain human survival to date? We mostly work cooperatively and we are often concerned with helping others. This is reflected in the world in small and big ways. We have to train our brains to notice.

2.This is a little more technical than I can follow but you know I’m going to click anything titled “infinite sea shanty” (also via Laura Olin).

3. I think of this EVERY TIME I water my plants now:

 

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A post shared by Nicole Johnsey Burke (@gardenaryco)

1. The Fictional Brands Archive is exactly that–a compendium of brands seen in cartoons, movies, and TV. Favorites include ACME, Buy n Large, Encom, and Lumon.

2. Continuing the imaginary theme: An architect and 3D designer “has created nearly two dozen digital renderings of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unrealized concepts.”

3. This hit way too close to home, when “home” means you can only afford a moderate fixer-upper in the area you want to live in:

 

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A post shared by Deric Cahill (@deric_cahill)

1. The Onion (yes the satire site) took out a full page ad in the New York Times last week to run this editorial mocking Congress’ cowardice. It is AMAZING:

Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and groveling. Now is not the time to say, “Enough is enough,” and have the tough conversations about resisting the ongoing assaults on American liberty. This is the time to let the wave of apathy and indifference roll over you as you think about getting a really nice renovation to your house in Kalorama.

2. This was really fun to scroll around in: the Historical Tech Tree, “an interactive visualization of technology from 3 million years ago to today.” With links to Wikipedia and related technologies! (Just getting this link ready to post today, I clicked around and discovered Egyptian blue, the first synthetic pigment!)

3. This is the best train ad I’ve ever seen:

 

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A post shared by Amtrak (@amtrak)

I have tomorrow off for Juneteenth and took Friday off as well for a long weekend. When I was thinking about this week, I wanted to go to the pool in the afternoon and get some sewing in and organize a little bit in the basement and generally just chill.

Well, WE ARE NOT CHILL over here this week (but I haven’t gotten any new bed bug bites after two nights on the air mattress, hooray!) and I’m going to be pulling everything out of every closet and letting it bake in the car and vacuuming every baseboard and laser-focusing on any speck that MIGHT be a bug and generally Cleaning Through It.

Which is all a long way of saying, here are some links for the weekend!

1. This is the sound and face I make when I think about BUGS crawling over my FACE and feeding on my FLESH in the NIGHT:

 

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A post shared by San Antonio Zoo (@sanantoniozoo)

2. Yep.

3. There is a band on TikTok that is doing covers of songs but changing the lyrics to be about discount crab legs. I’ve had “You bought crab legs! Cheap crustaceans!” in my head for days now.

@crabsmackband “Smells Like Steamed Crablegs” Live from the WhiteHart Cafe #smellsliketeenspirit #nirvana #livemusic ♬ original sound – CrabSmack

1. Poe should have written a horror story about mosquitos in a house where you can’t see them and don’t know where they’re coming from yet you keep getting fresh bites regardless of whether the house is closed up or not and every bite itches for at least a week and it slowly drives you mad…

2. Ahem. I’m pretty sure I have a mosquito bite allergy, but the name of said allergy enrages me almost as much as the mystery and the itching: skeeter syndrome.

3. Mysteries I can get behind: List of unexplained sounds.

1. Since I liked a theme for getting dressed so much, maybe I need a theme for taking a walk to get myself to do it more.

2. … or I could stay inside and just keep scrolling, since yesterday was a really good day to Be Online.

3. This is a wonderful piece about deadlifts from The Guardian. Click through to see the first image, whatever you do.

1. I hadn’t even heard of Jan Todd before this! Jan Todd May Be the Reason You’re Lifting Weights

2. This column from a Harvard student to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is withering and amazing, down to the title (“Come At Me, Bro“):

Maybe it’s because I didn’t get married at 17, or because I’ve never witnessed my husband get his head shaved by Donald Trump on national television, or because my pedagogical experience leans more front-of-classroom, rather than distributing-bookmarks-featuring-scantily-clad-lady-wrestlers. Some way or another, I’ve never been quite able to figure out how you think.

Until now.

Secretary, you spent nearly three decades as a WWE executive, where you orchestrated such spectacles as “The Undertaker vs. Kane: WrestleMania XIV” and “WWF Badd Blood: In Your House.” Suffice to say, you respect a good fight. And thus I say: Come at me, bro.

3. Nothing like a little Ram Dass to remind me to stop spiraling about the near future of my job or buying a new house:

1. Happy long weekend! I can’t think of anything more fitting for Memorial Day than this:

TANK vs TESLA

“We’ve crushed fascism before and we’ll crush it again”

– ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank

[image or embed]

— Led By Donkeys (@ledbydonkeys.org) May 7, 2025 at 10:46 AM

2. Raccoon amusement park. That is all.

3. I didn’t know T.S. Eliot was made a deputy sheriff (!) and “spoke to an audience in Dallas of 7,000 people in a sports arena” (!!).