Category: Links

• NY Times: The Secret Campaign in China to Save a Woman Chained by the Neck. Interactive piece on a woman in China who was probably trafficked but we’ll never know because China quashed the story. The piece is as much about the quashing as the original woman’s plight.
• The Sunday Long Read: What do you do after you accidentally kill a child? A very sad story about a very sad man. I kept thinking, though, that in a world where we didn’t have to drive all the time, maybe the child who died would still be alive.
• The Honest Broker: The World Was Flat. Now It’s Flattened. An interesting take on how culture standardizes and stagnates these days.
• Bloomberg: What We Lose When Our Memories Exist Entirely in Our Phones. I, too, miss my physical tickets to shows that I could keep in a memento box.
• Marie Claire: Meet the Millennial Women Buying Their Own Engagement Rings. This is a very sticky topic, and I say that as a feminist who picked out her own (non-diamond) ring while she was living with her fiancé in the house we bought together.
• Defector: They Should Call It The Free Piss. Defector on Bari Weiss’ Free Press. Inside baseball if you’re not terminally online, but since she’s heavily involved in the University of Austin, I’m always down to read about how awful she is.
• Liberal Currents: Roadmap to American Reconstruction. Realistic about our short-term prospects with some ideas about what people can do. I think my biggest problem with it is that the going viral/appeal to the center concept relies on people caring or being shamed, and I think that’s less possible than it was in the 60s during civil rights. Some folks have no shame.
• AP: Violent and sudden. What a firing squad execution looked like through my eyes. All the warnings in the world. If you have feelings about the death penalty, expect to feel them.
• BBC: Operation Atacama: The $1m cactus heist that led to a smuggler’s downfall. I had never heard of the Copiapoa cactus until I read this article, nor did I have any idea that people smuggled exotic plants, though I’m unsurprised to learn they do.
• My Goodness! From Jo Elvin: Are you unemployable if you’re not on Instagram? This is about her Gen Alpha kid but it’s kind of a frightening question. I remember when you had to keep a Facebook that was clean for jobs. Now I guess you have to have three social media accounts at a minimum. I’m glad I’m old and past job hunting.

I got sick, so enjoy some things I have been reading:

• The Guardian: They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed. If you’ve been in tech long enough you’ve run into some really weird people who are probably perfectly safe. This bunch is not that.
• Vox: The great American classic we’ve been misreading for 100 years. Vox wants us to reread Gatsby as being about broligarchs.
• Atlas Obscura: The Artist Who Turned Dublin’s Pubs Into Galleries. Harry Kernoff. When I get to Dublin, I’ll need to look for his art.
• The Flytrap: The Enshittification of eShakti. EShakti, for those who never bought from them, was an Indian fashion company that custom-made clothes in a variety of sizes over a lot of different aesthetics. They went out of business a couple of years ago (as far as we can tell; the last time I looked the site was still up) but nobody knows the details. It was a great place to buy basics though their vibe was often a little too femme for me. And nobody knows quite what happened.
• Atomic Junkshop: Of Breakfast Cereals and Cults. I knew about graham crackers but not about Ralston Purina!
• TechDirt: Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not). They’re not wrong about how most horse race political reporting is completely useless right now.
• Talking Points Memo: Toward a Theory of Civic Sede Vacantism. I generally think Marshall is a bit too enthusiastic about coverage of the horse race mentioned above, but this is him using his background (history) to rise to the moment.
• The Guardian: Centuries-old leasehold system to be abolished in England and Wales. Always interested in seeing the vestiges of medieval law in the present day, even if it’s just ending them.
• The Cut: Perfume Culture Is Starting to Stink. I’m into perfumes, not the way these folks are. But I really get that closing line.
• Outside: I Took My Work Outside Every Day for a Month This Winter. Here’s What I Learned. I’d consider this if I still lived where I had a porch with a swing.
• NY Times: Her Father Took Her on a Trip to Pakistan. The Police Say It Was a Trap. It was an honor killing. Horrifying.

Eruditorium Press: The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman). Part of a much larger (book-length, I think) story the author is writing on English comics, this very long essay is focused on the career of Neil Gaiman. It does cover his abuse of women, especially toward the end, but it’s also damning intellectually and emotionally even before you get to that.
Jo Blo: Hundreds of your Warner Bros DVDs probably don’t work anymore. Today I learned about disk rot, which is hitting most of the DVDs manufactured between 2006 and 2008 by WB. Apparently a bunch of classic Hollywood films are effectively gone: not on streaming and the DVDs have rotted. I guess it’s gonna be a pirate’s life for a lot of people.
CNN: A Ramadan etiquette guide for non-Muslims. A lot of this is common sense, but maybe common sense isn’t that common.
Reactor: Severance Is the Future Tech Bros Want. I’m beginning to think I’m going to have to watch this show.
Fritinancy: The new New Colossus “With apologies to Emma Lazarus and Percy Bysshe Shelley”. Ouch.
The Guardian: ‘A chilling effect’: is Hollywood too scared to touch hot-button documentaries? I’d like to see a number of the films described in this article, but I’m a pinko commie.
CultureMap Houston: New study proposes converting Houston offices into dorm-style apartments. I’d’ve done this when I was a young single if it had been an option.
Weird Medieval Guys: My favourite etymologies: “to curry favour”. Today I learned the very medieval origin of this term.
NY Times: A Day of American Infamy. You know things have gone to shit when you’re agreeing with Bret Stephens.
Seattle Times: To understand right-wing media’s power, study improv and theater of influencers. Interesting approach to this topic.
NY Post: Hey, RFK: Go to Texas and prove you mean it on vaccines. New York newspapers hate the Trump administration.
Bleeping Computer: Apple pulls iCloud end-to-end encryption feature in the UK. It’s a warrant canary: the UK government demanded a back door and gagged them, so all Apple could do was pull the feature. Related: Washington Post: Biden Justice Department downplayed U.K. demand for Apple ‘back door’. If that’s actually true (according to the article, it looks like the report in question preceded the demand), bad cess to them. If it’s not, the Post should have written a better headline.
The Guardian: A cosmic Jackson Pollock: Kathleen Kennedy’s Star Wars tenure has been marked by chaos. It boggles me that this article doesn’t discuss the misogyny of a small but vocal set of Star Wars “fans”. I don’t disagree with what the author says, but he missed a bet there and also by failing to compare and contrast with the work of Kevin Feige on the MCU. There was a lot of that kind of discussion when the MCU was hot and Star Wars was not, but now that they’re both in the dumps, nobody wants to talk about how hard showrunning a vast, interconnected story universe is. Much of my thinking is informed by articles about Kennedy’s departure like this one at Lainey Gossip: Intro for February 27, 2025 which is mostly about Kennedy.
Fansplaining: Sam Wilson Deserved Better Than Brave New World. I hesitate to go to Marvel movies these days and this expresses a lot of my hesitation here despite the fact that one of my favorite actors is in a lead (antagonist) role. Also: See what I mean about Star Wars?
Food & Wine: What Is the Guinness Widget and How Does It Work? This was pretty interesting to me because back in the 1990s I drafted a statement in support of a work visa for a guy who’d been involved in developing the original can widget for Guinness. This is a different process.
The Verge: Cars will need fewer screens and more buttons to earn 5-star safety rating in Europe. I drive a touchscreen car and while I’ve adjusted to it in the months since I’ve owned it, I think this is a wise move.
BBC: A border split my family’s language. Now I’m bringing it back. It’s Sindh and I’d never heard of it.
Publisher’s Weekly: Readerlink Will Stop Distributing Mass Market Paperbacks at the End of 2025. This means your supermarkets and box stores, which are two-thirds or more of the market, are going to stop carrying mass market paperbacks completely. We’re going to hardback/trade paperback/digital as our book formats.
Eater: What Should You Do if ICE Comes to Your Restaurant? Probably good to know, and about what I expected.
Ukulele magazine: Great Ukes: Alvin Keech May or May Not Have Invented the Banjo Uke, but He Certainly Helped Popularize It. Today I learned.

• Nicole Kidman Worked With 19 Female Directors in Eight Years After Vowing to Do So: Things Only Change by ‘Actually Being in the Films of Women’. Good for her.
• Dazed: We all know too much about each other. “Social media and location-sharing apps have normalised the constant surveillance of our friends and partners. But is access to all this information about one another fuelling anxiety and FOMO?” I think a lot of the hype around social media overload is overblown but the idea that kids are constantly sharing locations with friends a little unnerving. I share my location with my husband and occasionally others for short-term planning. I can’t imagine leaving it on with my friends.
• The Guardian: Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface experienced record heat in 2024. See where and by how much – visualised. The visualization is really impressive.
• BioGraphic: The American Lobster’s Baby Bust. It’s climate change, but the mechanism is very interesting.
• Ars Technica: What is device code phishing, and why are Russian spies so successful at it? Today I learned.
• BBC: James Bond’s long-serving producers give control to Amazon. I grew up watching the OG Connery and Moore movies with my dad, and I’m here to tell you: Bond is over. How can you do anything like Bond in a world where Apartheid Clyde and his DOGE underlings have taken over the US government? There’s no way a Bond movie can top reality any more.
• Elle: ‘I’m Platform Agnostic’ – Why The Key To Success On Social Media Is Disloyalty. I’m not making a paying career out of blogging but if I were trying to, I’d absolutely keep my finger in a lot of social media pies.
• Marie Claire: Mary Ellen Matthews Is the Woman Behind Every Portrait on ‘Saturday Night Live’ Since 1999. This was a cool story on a topic I knew little to nothing about, though I’ve seen and been impressed by her photos.
• Literary Hub: Judith Butler: To Imagine a World After This, Democracy Needs the Humanities. This is going to take several more readings to really grok.
• Cup of Jo: 12 Questions for a Grief Therapist.
• AP: The Netherlands has a record crop of new millers to keep the windmill sails spinning. I’d never thought about how they keep the windmills working but of course windmills need maintenance and repair.
• The Conversation: Trans people affirmed their gender without medical help in medieval Europe − history shows how identity transcends medicine and law. As always, there are caveats with this kind of thing (modern definitions don’t have anything to do with how medieval people saw themselves), but what we now call social transitioning has been known for a long time.
• Vanity Fair: A Lovesick Aristocrat and the Royal Family’s Nazi-Connected Shames. Unity Mitford is the aristocrat. Edward VII, later the Duke of Windsor, is the royal shame.
• PEN America: Banned Books List 2025.
• Daring Fireball: Golfo del Gringo Loco. A good post on a stupid topic.
• jukeboxgraduate dot com: Learning Songwriting with Brian Eno. Wow, I would have loved to take that course. Too bad I have exactly zero ability to make music.

What I’ve been reading this week:

• The Guardian: Older fathers on having kids in their 60s and 70s: ‘My time with my son is more limited – and more precious’ This was fascinating to me because I was the product of a late-life second marriage for my father, who was 50 when I was born. (My mother was also on her second marriage and was considered a very old first-time mother at 33.)
• Rascal News: Red Hats, Red Blood: Roleplaying The January 6 Insurrection In A Brooklyn Warehouse. The author signed up to cover a wargame/tabletop roleplaying game of insurrectionists vs the authorities on January 6. The outcome is unsurprising yet disturbing, and read the whole thing to get to the real stinger in the tail. Also on the same subject: Why Does The January 6 Wargame Even Exist?
• Defector: The Judgment Of Magneto. A fascinating piece paralleling the evolution of Magneto with Israeli and Judeo-diaspora political thinking.
• Teen Vogue: What Really Happens to Your Used Clothing. Reading this will make you want to stop buying new clothes ever.
• El País: Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’. Also her recent interview with the Guardian: Judith Butler: ‘Swimming is the closest thing I have to a religion’
• Houston Chronicle: Valentine’s Day chocolates and wines getting more expensive to make, thanks to climate change.
• Glamour: Why Taylor Swift Getting Booed at the Super Bowl Was Even More Chilling Than You Think. It’s because MAGAts are freaking misogynists.
• English in Progress: 36 examples of anachronyms. “Anachronyms are words that are used ‘in an anachronistic way, by referring to something in a way that is appropriate only for a former or later time.'” A fascinating discussion of words that hits not just on the evolution of language but also on skeumorphism and gestures.
• Fritinancy: Word of the week: Aesthetic(s). This word (mis)usage makes me a little feral.
• Apartment Therapy: I Survived a Life-Changing Accident. It Transformed My Relationship with My Home (and Myself) I think about the kinds of small changes age and disability are forcing on our house quite a bit.
• Travel & Leisure: Selma Blair on Life With MS — and Why She Missed Travel Most of All. This was very reassuring to me as I consider international travel with my own chronic illness.
• AP: Almost 800 years of pomp and circumstance ensures the quality of Britain’s currency. It’s the medieval Trial of the Pyx. Click through for some cool pictures of the ceremony and the coins.
• Outside: My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword. A treasure brought to the US in 1945 goes home after a really interesting research trail leads to answers.
• Vogue: When Did Buying Concert Tickets Turn Into The Hunger Games? I seem to have better luck than a lot of people, but I’m not going to Taylor Swift or Beyoncé either.
• BBC: An 1840 selfie to 1960s advertising: Eight images that tell the story of America. Powerful.

Some things I found interesting recently:

• Diamonds in the Library: Why Instagram permanently suspended me and how I got my account back. This influencer paid for the verification protections that should keep Meta from shutting her down for impersonating someone (herself) but apparently mass reporting will override that protection. The kicker: she’s Jewish and reported some antisemitic accounts.
• The Guardian: Harrison Ford’s MCU debut can wait. I prefer his whisky ads. I’m going to have to go watch these whisky adverts.
• Fritinancy: Word of the week: Aquamation. This one caught my attention because of last year’s problems with “water cremation” (aquamation) and its legality and lack thereof in Texas.
• Astra Publishing House: Where to start reading the works of Tanith Lee. A lot of people have been recommending the Flat Earth series, which I loved, as an alternative to Sandman; I also love Cyrion, which is alt-history short swashbuckling/sword & sorcery tales in a post-Roman world.
• Reactor (formerly Tor): Everything You Need to Know About Fighting in a Ballgown. Given to me as an alternative to recommending something on Jill Bearup’s channel about fighting in a skirt, because apparently Bearup is a JKR-loving hater. How disappointing.
• Libromancy (the blog of a friend of mine): Giving up your newspaper subscription requires a paradigm shift. As she says, the solution is RSS and a lot of outlets.
• McSweeney’s: Here’s Why a Second Death Star Won’t Be That Bad. I missed this in November when it came out which is why I need to add McSweeney’s to my RSS feeds.

Some things I read and found interesting recently:

• ‘Take this as a warning’: AG Paxton to visit Tyler in ‘accountability’ tour : Collin County’s favorite son is out threatening people to make them vote for David Cook (R-Mansfield) for Speaker.
• The biggest cybersecurity and cyberattack stories of 2024 : While we were probably touched by more than one of them, number 8 was a direct pain in our butt when Spouse and I bought a new car. Coincidentally, Spouse and I both worked for CDK’s predecessor, the Dealer Services division of ADP, back around the turn of the century.
• Once dismissed as frivolous, ‘romancelandia’ is getting political : I expected this story to be about the troubles of the Romance Writers of America; it’s about romance writers and fans in the US opposing book bans and running for office.
• Federal courts won’t refer Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to attorney general over ethics : It’s not like a Trump Department of Justice would do anything about Thomas, but it’s disappointing anyway. See also The Reprobate Review: Announcing The Winners Of The 2024 Golden Duke Awards, where the Talking Points Memo judges awarded the Duke for best general interest scandal to John Roberts and the conservative justices.
• A Documentary About a Texas Death Row Inmate is Now an Oscar Contender : The documentary is about John Henry Ramirez, who was executed in 2022, but the story touches on a lot of other topics to do with Texas and our record in state-sanctioned killing.
• Related: Texas Has Dug a Deep Hole It Can’t Escape on a Particularly Thorny Issue : Quinn Yeargain on the Robert Roberson death penalty case and the surrounding politics in Slate.
• A Bit More on the Cybertruck Story : Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo confirms a thing we know is generally true, which is that domestic terrorists almost always have a history of abusing women before they move on to larger forms of terrorism.
• America’s Drunkest and Driest Counties : Dallas is about half a percent over the national average and Tarrant is about half a percent under.
• Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk : Glad to see this laid out by a retired senior officer in a way that the New York Times reader can understand, but also, really? Y’all needed someone to tell you this?
• TERFs, Trans Mascs, and Two Steve Feminism : Jude Doyle on both a recent social media fight I missed and larger topics around gender essentialism, trans men, and feminism. I can’t do Doyle’s arguments justice, so I suggest you read the whole thing.
• Faith on the Hill – The religious composition of the 119th Congress : 87% are Christian of one stripe or another. There are no open atheists in this particular foxhole, but there were one Humanist, three religiously-unaffiliated folks, and 21 who were classed as “don’t know/refused”. From Pew Research.