Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
1. I’m sorry, I think every politician that wants to lionize Charlie Kirk should be required to read some of his quotes to someone who’s never heard of him. Because COME ON.
2. Related, I couldn’t agree more with this:
3. OK time to lower our blood pressure–I just learned about “bike buses” and they are incredibly wholesome:
(The lady with the cowbell!)
1. Do you want to learn about the ancient Americas? Check out Ancient Americas on YouTube. I felt like I was sitting through a college lecture (positive).
2. Do you want to hear the departure jingles of a train line in Tokyo? Check out Yamanotes, “a web-based music box for playing the departure melodies of each station on the JR Yamanote Line/山手線 on the counter-clockwise (内回り) loop! ” (I like Kanda/Shinagawa best, I think.)
3. Do you want to act like this donkey sometimes? I do too.
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1. Happy Labor Day weekend! Fun fact, the rest of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1 but the US changed to the fall to not be seen as supporting socialism, because of course (eye roll). As Prof. Wikipedia tells us,
Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland was one of those concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe. In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative, formally adopting the date as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.
2. As this article puts it, it’s a bad time to be a hobbyist who likes to shop overseas. I’ve gotten emails from four different fabric shops that they’re just suspending shipping to the US rather than try to deal with all the tariff mess. Is America great yet? (extreme eye roll)
3. I’m waiting on bids from a couple contractors for the basement finishing. I can only hope that one of them includes a drywall guy in an alien suit:
@fuentescardi El Ovni.. estoy cansado jefe 🤣🤣 #fyp #foryourpage #drywall #foryou #satisfying #viral ♬ sonido original – FuentesCarDi
1. My brain has done a 180 from “find a new house” to “REMODEL EVERYTHING HERE”–now I’m thinking about a built-in pantry cabinet in the stairwell and why not update the light fixtures everywhere and hey, I bet an epoxy floor in the garage would be nice! I guess we’ll see how long my energy/money lasts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2. I’ve also spent the last two days pulling everything off the basement storage racks so I can move them out of the area with the plumbing rough-ins, which also involved sorting and culling and re-organizing. I feel this in my soul:
3. From Casual Archivist, a collection of old diner paper placements. What does your egg preference say about you?
1. After I got sad about summer ending I had to go find the “throw the comb away” passage from Astrid Lindgren, because summer definitely isn’t over yet.
To worry about the future was the wrong attitude toward life, he said. One should enjoy each day as it came. On a sunny morning like the present one, life was nothing but happiness. How wonderful it was to go straight out into the garden in pajamas, feeling the dew-wet grass under one’s feet, and then take a dip from the jetty and afterward sit down at the painted garden table to read a book or the paper while drinking delicious coffee.
2. This article about chimpanzee cultural practices had me wheezing:
Rogers soon realized the chimps had certain cultural norms, starting with a classic: grass in the ear. On Aug. 16, Juma stuck grass in his ear, followed by four more chimps that week. Then on Aug. 27, Juma plunged the grass into another, more distant orifice, in what the researchers call an “unprecedented variation” of grass-in-ear.
3. I’ve decided this is going to be me for the foreseeable future:
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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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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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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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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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