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The Crane Wife
"Surely, I will cancel this trip, I thought, as I shopped for nylon hiking pants that zipped off at the knee. Surely, a person who calls off a wedding is meant to be sitting sadly at home, reflecting on the enormity of what has transpired and not doing whatever it is I am about to be doing that requires a pair of plastic clogs with drainage holes."
50 Must-Read Fantasy Books by Women
This is not about your comfort
Dear Disgruntled White Plantation Visitors, Sit Down. "The Old South may be your American Downton Abbey but it is our American Horror Story, even under the best circumstances it represents the extraction of labor, talent and life we can never get back. When I do this work, it drains me, but I do it because I want my Ancestors to know not only are they not forgotten but I am here to testify that I am their wildest dreams manifest." Michael W. Twitty discusses his work honoring his ancestors. [more inside]
Autistics Speak: Nothing About Us, Without Us
Many Autistic adults say childhood ABA training (Applied Behavioral Analysis) is abusive and left them traumatized. ABA was developed by Ivar Lovaas, who contributed to the creation of conversion therapy, and is derived from the same principles. The goal, as Lovass said, is to make the Autistic child look "normal". Learning to behave as most children do will theoretically help allistic (non-autistic) children feel more comfortable with (and less likely to bully) the Autistic child. No mention is made of the fact that when an Autistic person is forced to behave 'normally', they experience ongoing, intense discomfort, and often pain. [more inside]
What ARE birds? We just don't know
“All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over.”
The Mystery of the Channeled Scablands. In the middle of eastern Washington stands what was once the largest waterfall in the world. It is three miles wide and 400 feet high—ten times the size of Niagara Falls. Today there is not so much as a trickle running over the cataract’s lip. What could have caused this landscape? It was a question hotly debated for several decades, and the answer was as surprising and dramatic as Dry Falls itself. So was the source of that answer: a high school science teacher named Harley Bretz.
Impeach the MF
The House Judiciary Committee is officially opening an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. The House judiciary committee wrote an article in the Atlantic to explain they are now moving forward on an official impeachment inquiry Why we’re moving forward on impeachment [more inside]
Do More Than Vote
Shit’s Totally Fucked: A Mutual Aid Explainer (7:45) How to help in the current crisis beyond voting or calling your representatives via community bail funds, immigration support networks, labor donation, and more.
"We Should Stop Using Republican Talking Points"
Elizabeth Warren is Surging. This One Big Question Looms over Her. (Aaron Blake, WaPo) For as long as she’s been talked about as a presidential hopeful, one potential problem has loomed over her like Joe Btfsplk’s perpetual rain cloud: electability. Surging in Polls, Warren Has Clear Path to Nomination (Ed Kilgore, New York) If she gets that one-on-one competition with Biden, the question may be whether Democratic voters want her to be president enough to take a bit of a risk. Warren probably has a plan to make that happen. [more inside]
Mueller Under Oath
On Wednesday, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller will testify before Congress about his Report On the Investigation Into Russian Interference In the 2016 Presidential Election (EPUB) (PDF vol. I, vol. II). U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler believes there is “substantial evidence” that President Donald Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and he plans to ask Mueller to present those facts at the hearing. After Mueller requested guidance, Trump's DOJ instructed him not to answer a wide variety of questions in a letter sent Monday. The DOJ also signaled they don’t intend to place lawyers in the room during his testimony, instead relying on Mueller to self-police his remarks, confident that he still wishes to let "the office’s written work speak for itself". [more inside]
August 5th, 2019: The Day of the Feral Hogs
So, here's what happened: A guy on Twitter tried to make the argument that he needed an assault rifle in order to stave off the "30-50 feral hogs" that allegedly swarm his yard within 3-5 minutes every time his kids play outside. The idea that this man was fighting off upwards of 50 hogs every time his kids went outdoors sent Twitter into a meme frenzy, and just about everyone had a Feral Hog Tweet™.
The El Paso Shooting and the Gamification of Terror
Earlier today, a 21 year-old white male Trump supporter attacked an El Paso Walmart with an automatic rifle, killing at least 20 and injuring over two dozen in the deadliest shooting of 2019. According to a manifesto posted on the notorious imageboard 8chan, he committed these atrocities in “response to [the] Hispanic invasion of Texas”. If this manifesto is authentic, it not only echoes the anti-immigrant "invasion" rhetoric of Donald Trump, but it also would be the third mass shooting announced in advance on 8chan in less than five months. As 8chan's /pol board continues to radicalize mass shooters, investigative journalism website bell¿ngcat examines the El Paso shooting and the gamification of terror. [more inside]
Coming clean about Medieval bathing practices
Brexit: ScottishIndependenceFilter
There are 80 days until Brexit. It seems increasingly likely that the UK will 'crash out' without a deal, with extremely serious and damaging consequences. Increasingly, it appears that one of these could well be the end of the UK itself... [more inside]
All my life Ive felt like an alien
21 Comics About ADHD By A 29-Year-Old Artist That Only Got The Right Diagnosis A Year Ago, featuring the work of Pina, an artist from Germany who makes comics about her life as an smart, quiet, introverted woman with Attention Deficit Disorder.
Reader, She Married Him *
In 2011, a 19-year-old college student named Zach Wahls delivered an impassioned defense of marriage equality in front of the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls's speech, which cited his experience growing up as the son of a lesbian couple, went viral and caught the eye of then-23-year-old Chloe Angyal, who wrote for the irreverent feminist blog Feministing. Her post about Wahls's video was entitled Marry Me, Zach Wahls. Wahls declined the proposal but agreed to meet for an interview the next time he was in New York, after which he and Angyal stayed in touch. This week, after a multi-year, largely-long-distance relationship, the couple announced their engagement. [more inside]
Tokyo subway’s humble duct-tape typographer
Sixty-five year old Sato san wears a crisp canary yellow uniform, reflective vest and polished white helmet. His job is to guide rush hour commuters through confusing and hazardous construction areas. When Sato san realised he needed more than his megaphone to perform this duty, he took it upon himself to make some temporary signage. With a few rolls of duct tape and a craft knife, he has elevated the humble worksite sign to an art form. (previously)
The Perils of Professional Dress
What women’s workwear standards reveal about our attitudes toward class, gender, and body type. Part of The Walrus' Beauty Conversation Series: [more inside]
🕺🏽💃🏽 🎬 🎧
"I have no friends so I like to take famous dance scenes from movies and put songs that are the same tempo on top of them" — a thread — featuring Love Actually vs Billie Eilish, Napoleon Dynamite vs Cher, The Breakfast Club vs Shakin' Stevens, Titanic vs Arctic Monkeys, Mean Girls vs That's So Raven, Mr. Bean vs Ariana Grande, Ferris Bueller's Day Off vs Boney M. and lots more!
Trade War II—"Trade wars are good, and easy to win"
China is letting the yuan weaken and boycotting U.S. crops in retaliation to the Trump administration's latest round of tariffs (despite its July statement that it would not respond with competitive currency devaluation to Trump's tweets about its monetary policy). In consequence, the Dow has tumbled nearly 770 points at close today, and overnight trading in stock futures indicates the Dow is now set to fall 630 points on Tuesday, as markets are bracing for a surge in volatility. A Cowen FG analyst describes China’s central bank's decision to let the yuan fall to a more-than-10-year low against the dollar, "on a scale of 1-10, it’s an 11". Morgan Stanley predicts that if the situation escalates, a global economic recession will come in the next nine months. [more inside]