Laura Olin

Hello there,

I try not to talk directly about the current president of the U.S. all that much here. But I had the thought recently that he might end up becoming America’s foremost climate-action president because his idiotic and illegal war on Iran is leading millions of Americans to finally realize that clean energy is better, cheaper, and not as prone to supply shocks as fossil fuels. Thanks, Worst Person Alive!

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “When I searched my phone for texts I’d sent with ‘lol’ in them, there were thousands. Most of them were just ‘lol’ by itself, or ‘lol ok’, ‘lol no’ or ‘lol hahaha’, and very few of these messages had anything to do with laughter or jokes. ‘For like two years at uni I wrote one shite poem per week lol.’ ‘I’m genuinely so sorry lol I shouldn’t have said anything.’ ‘Lol I was mega lonely hahahaha.’ I realised that I had sent a lot of messages like these while actively crying.”

2. Some basic rules for AI-use etiquette.

3. This month’s Science (!!!!!) Corner: A new mouth-swab test will get us closer to eradicating TB; we finally have an effective treatment for sickle-cell anemia, thanks to gene therapy; scientists are using the blood of pediatricians to develop treatments for RSV because their antibodies are up to 25 times better at blocking RSV.

4. Ryan Coogler on how he thinks of his films like croissants: He bakes in intricate sets of layers for those who will appreciate them—but the thing will taste good whether you register the layers or not.

5. New Tana French (the third and final book in her Cal Hooper series); new Zach Galifianakis show that really could have been called “Among Many More Ferns.”

6. Show us your cats, a Minneapolis tradition. Can we get a Brooklyn version of this?

7. Six go-to phrases for disengaging from barn gossip (works for other kinds of gossip too).

8. What fighting cancer can teach us about fighting authoritarianism; I thought Amanda Peet’s essay about being diagnosed with breast cancer as both her parents were in hospice was incredibly good.

9. Looking forward to: this summer’s woke Supergirl, though they really have to stop imperiling that dog; an upcoming documentary about Mary Oliver.

10. Watch MTV.

11. An interview about mutual aid as organizing in a recent Illinois congressional primary. This follows, of course, a long tradition that includes the Black Panthers’ free breakfast and other community survival programs of the 1960s.

12. My household is really enjoying Shoresy, which is basically if the Paul Newman movie Slap Shot was Canadian and a lot dirtier. It’s largely directed by Jacob Tierney, the “Heated Rivalry” creator. No, Jared Keeso’s voice doesn’t actually sound like that. Find it on Hulu.

13. In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen
    years ago now, the L train came clanking by
    where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart
    on the yellow pillar you leaned on during a bleak day
    (brittle and no notes from anyone you crushed upon).
    Above ground, the spring was the saddest one
    (doing work, but also none). What were you wearing?
    Something hopeful to show the world you hoped?
    A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce
    churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept
    repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say
    this made you want to live? No hand to hold
    still there it was: someone giving someone comfort
    and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.
    
    —”While Everything Else Was Falling Apart,” Ada Limón

Bye,

Laura

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Hi hi,

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. Why is social change so hard? Part of it is system justification, or “people's inclinations to tell stories and believe things that justify the larger systems of which they are a part.”

2. List animals until failure; a collection of pulpits designed to look like fish.

3. One thing that really delighted me recently is a lady named Michelle who went on Jeopardy wearing a beautiful sweater that looked, somehow, familiar. She revealed during the interview segment of the show that she’d knitted it, and it may set off your recognition bells because it’s designed to mimic the colors and patterns of a pigeon. Now, she’s made the knitting pattern public and is doing a “pigeon sweater knit-a-long” that gets into techniques for beginning knitters. (It started on March 1 but you can obviously pick up the project at any time on your own schedule.)

4. The Dark Sky guys have a new weather app (h/t: Ezra).

5. A site that collects all the images Wikipedia uses across its language versions to illustrate concepts. This is weirdly affecting: the threads of universality yet cultural specificity of human experience, etc. etc. Here’s crying in every language, pottery in every language, novel in every language, death in every language, happiness in every language. Also: Riley, Indiana.

6. How far back in time can you understand English?

7. Bad Bunny 101.

8. I appreciated this Culture Study episode about being a “childless freak.” For those still in undecided land, The Cut also has a good and thoughtful series this week about deciding whether to have kids.

9. I am really enjoying the latest season of Shrinking. My household laughs out loud at this show often. Watching an episode feels like getting to hang out with all your favorite character actors in one place because that’s essentially what it is. Jessica Williams’ outfits are also so good.

10. In Sitka, because they are fond of them,
    People have named the seals. Every seal
    is named Earl because they are killed one
    after another by the orca, the killer
    whale; seal bodies tossed left and right
    into the air. “At least he didn’t get
    Earl,” someone says. And sure enough,
    after a time, that same friendly,
    bewhiskered face bobs to the surface.
    It’s Earl again. Well, how else are you
    to live except by denial, by some
    palatable fiction, some little song to
    sing while the inevitable, the black and
    white blindsiding fact, comes hurtling
    toward you out of the deep?
    
    —”Earl,” Louis Jenkins

Laters,

Laura

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Hello,

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once.” Adam Serwer on Minnesota.

2. Take an hour-long training on how to document and record ICE. Thinking about running for state and local office as a progressive someday? Sign up for Run for Something’s “Future candidates” four-week training program. Get trained to organize strikes and practice noncooperation.

3. Seeing similarities between Boston 1770 and Minneapolis 2026.

4. How to turn off only the cursed AI summary feature in Gmail.

5. The new era of desocialized media and the rise of slopaganda.

6. Draw a horse and watch it run.

7. A beautiful essay from Alexander Chee about Heated Rivalry = obviously it’s going in the newsletter.

8. Trak suits.

9. Poms!

10. Looking forward to: New Patrick Radden Keefe; new Emma Straub; new Robinne Lee; The Devil Wears Prada II, now with a trailer.

11. I do kind gestures. Remove my appendix.
    I put my ear to a flat shell and—nothing.
    I play the lottery ironically. Get married.
    Have a smear test. I put my ear to the beak
    of a dead bird—nothing. I grow wisdom
    teeth. Jog. I pick up a toddler’s telephone,
    Hello?—No answer. I change a light bulb
    on my own. Organize a large party. Hire
    a clown. Attend a four-day stonewalling
    course. Have a baby. Stop eating Coco Pops.
    I put my ear right up to the slack and gaping
    bonnet of a daffodil—. Get divorced. Floss.
    Describe a younger person’s music taste as
    “just noise.” Enjoy perusing a garden center.
    Sit in a pub without drinking. I stand at the
    lip of a pouting valley—SPEAK TO ME!
    My echo plagiarizes. I land a real love plus
    two real cats. I never meet the talking bird
    again. Or the yawning hole. The panther
    of purple wisps who prowls inside the air.
    I change nappies. Donate my eggs. Learn
    a profound lesson about sacrifice. Brunch.
    No singing floorboards. No vents leaking
    scentless instructions. My mission is over.
    The world has zipped up her second mouth.
    
    —”Sanity,” Caroline Bird

Byeeeeeeee,

Laura

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Hi hi,

For an indeterminate number of years I’ve wrapped up each year not with a “best of” list but a slightly different way of taking account: thinking about the art, ideas, and internet that stuck with me most from the previous 12 months. I call it my “most resonant” list. Here’s 2025.

1. I’m going to start immediately by cheating and invoking an idea I first came across before 2025, but thought about a lot this year: Andrew Garfield’s notion that grief is unexpressed love. One surprising thing for me about experiencing acute grief for the first time this year was a sense of gratitude—the extent of my devastation made clear to me that I loved my person even more than I’d previously comprehended, which was a lot. What luck, and what a privilege, to find someone to love that much for as long as I was able to love her.

2. I’d never read much historical romance before this year. What I’d encountered in the past wasn’t to my taste, or was frankly just bad. But in 2025 I learned of two authors, Meredith Duran and Lisa Kleypas, who write genuinely excellent books in this genre. Working my way through their oeuvres helped me through some rough patches in this difficult year. The titles and covers of their books are in a style specific to the genre that I personally find cringe-inducing (probably some internalized misogyny there), but in my opinion the actual substance of the books is great. If I worked in publishing I would commission a sharp illustrator like Olimpia Zagnoli to make new cover designs for both of these authors’ best books, reissue them with new titles, and watch the money roll in as a new demographic discovers excellently wrought historical romance. (I have clearly thought about this too much. Take this free idea, publishing people!) Start with Duran’s Duke of Shadows and Kleypas’ Ravenels series.

3. The two movies that stuck with me most were Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. I once heard Ryan Coogler respond to an overly-deep question about Black Panther by saying he was just trying to make a movie he’d want to see, and damn, he is so good at it. The best way I can explain Sentimental Value is that if you took 10 people to see it, each of them might feel it was written for them in one way or another.

4. I also really loved the James Gunn Superman this year, and its heart-piercing-in-these-times depiction of the most truly American superhero: the immigrant trying to do the right thing, starting with insisting that every life has value. A scene of Superman flying down to rescue a squirrel before it gets crushed is the skeleton key to that whole moral universe. The dog was also really good.

5. The book I read this year that stuck with me most was Daniel Mason’s North Woods, which follows the life of a house in western Massachusetts through a few centuries of existence. It’s a masterpiece of form and voice, and a reminder to consider the past lives you’re surrounded by every day—as well as the life of the land beneath your feet.

6. The internet that stuck with me most this year was the facilitation of in-person organizing against the fascist regime in America (which is maybe not fun but is the truth). I appreciated Indivisible, the Mamdani campaign (especially new tactics like the scavenger hunt, an experiment in the kinds of community-building we need), and lots of ingenious anti-ICE organizing across the country.

7. A slogan I thought about constantly: “Go Birds, fuck ICE, free Palestine.”

8. Two cultural properties that were surprise juggernaut hits made me feel optimistic about art, and the people making it, for the first time in a while. It’s a miracle that K-Pop Demon Hunters and Heated Rivalry ever got made—and got made with the specific, winning choices that no profit-minded industry executives could have thought to dictate in a million years. Here’s to everyone making the exact niche thing they want to exist, largely as they envisioned it existing, and seeing it touch tons of people. You are living the dream and we’re all better off for it.

9. Written in January, sums up this entire era.

10. The plum you’re going to eat next summer
    doesn't exist yet; its potential
    lives inside a tree you'll never see
    in an orchard you'll never see, will be touched
    by a certain number of water droplets
    before it reaches you, by certain angles
    of light, by a finite amount of bugs
    and dust motes and hands
    you'll never know. The plum you are
    going to eat next summer will gather
    sugar, gather mass, will harden
    at its center so it can soften toward
    your mouth. The plum
    you're going to eat next
    summer doesn't know
    you exist. The plum you are
    going to eat next summer
    is growing just for you.
    
    —Gayle Brandeis (via Poetry is Not a Luxury)

Happy new year,

Laura

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Hello,

As is my long custom, I’ll do one more newsletter at the turn of the year with a roundup of the things that stuck with me most from the previous 12 months (I call it my “most resonant” list). But for now here’s the last usual monthly edition of 2025.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. Following tradition, a short gift guide guide: Really excellent ones include those from Robin Sloan, Lottie and Doof, Helen Rosner, Vulture, the Strategist, Cup of Jo, and the New Yorker, geared specifically toward kids.

2. My general giving tips, some of which I’ve shared before, are: a. The best gift is thoughtfulness. Does your recipient have something that needs replacing that you can provide for them (with a gift receipt in case it’s not quite right?). Do they have a new hobby or interest you can support in some small way? Can you get a gift that would equate to time or an experience together? b. Museum gift shops are your friends. They’re curated by people with better taste than any of us will ever have, and you can feel positive about your gift-giving money supporting a nonprofit art institution. c. Just give teenagers money. d. If you don’t know what to get someone, send them fun food (e.g. babka from Breads bakery, which ships nationwide, or a chili crisp sampler). e. No one over 30 is going to be mad about receiving a pair of cozy slippers. f. You don’t actually have to give everyone presents. In my family of origin, we have an explicit “we’re getting presents for under-18s only” rule and it saves a lot of time, stress, and expenditure. Your sister still knows you love her. g. For little kids in your life, they can usually always use pajama sets in one size larger than they currently are; it’s also super encouraged to just ask their parents what they actually need. h. If you can substitute some material gifts for donations to causes in loved ones’ names, especially this year, all the better. Food banks, abortion funds, trail associations, animal rescue agencies?

3. I am enjoying Heated Rivalry on HBO Max and this perspective from its creator, Jacob Tierney, on the importance of making LGBTQ romances that are sex-positive and (spoiler) not ultimately tragic.

4. What is my cookie cutter?

5. How to turn off AI tools on various platforms.

6. A visual history of lunchboxes.

7. “Even at its most sorrowful, anti-authoritarian, and smart-alecky, Gunn’s work endorses a fundamentally promising vision of life. Gallows humor and a keen bullshit detector are necessary for survival, but reflexive nihilism and blind obedience are deeply uncool. The ultimate rebellion is optimism.” On James Gunn’s American project.

8. Don’t click on XKCD’s “15 Years” anniversary strip unless you’re prepared to feel some feelings.

9. “After consulting with friends a little more media-seasoned than I, and exchanging some emails with the reporter laying out what I was and wasn’t interested in speaking about, I agreed to an interview. I did this because, in ways you might think I’d have outgrown by now, I’m a fucking idiot.”

10. Useful in travel/weather season: National Airspace System Status.

11. It is December and we must be brave.

    The ambulance’s rose of light
    blooming against the window.
    Its single siren-cry: Help me.
    A silk-red shadow unbolting like water
    through the orchard of her thigh.

    The things I know aren’t easy:
    I’m the only Native American
    on the 8th floor of this hotel or any,
    looking out any window
    of a turn-of-the-century building
    in Manhattan.

    Manhattan is a Lenape word.
    Even a watch must be wound.
    How can a century or a heart turn
    if nobody asks, Where have all
    the natives gone?

    If you are where you are, then where
    are those who are not here? Not here.
    Which is why in this city I have
    many lovers. All my loves
    are reparations loves.

    What is loneliness if not unimaginable
    light and measured in lumens—
    an electric bill which must be paid,
    a taxi cab floating across three lanes
    with its lamp lit, gold in wanting.
    At 2 a.m. everyone in New York City
    is empty and asking for someone.
    
    —From “Manhattan is a Lenape Word,” Natalie Diaz

Later,

Laura

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Hi hi,

I’m going to be super honest: I can’t remember when I started counting editions of this newsletter. I think it may have been when I first started sending out stuff on TinyLetter (remember TinyLetter?) in the impossibly innocent era of 2013-2014ish. I know I kept counting through the weekly “Everything Changes” era and the Awl newsletter era (real ones know), then weekly lists, then monthly lists. Anyway, happy 200. Maybe, in another 10 years, this newsletter will hit 400 editions as it takes the form of a lightly scented mist in the breeze or an eight-note ringtone once we all go back to Nokias. We can only hope.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “Parties are a public service, you’re doing people a favor by throwing them. Someone might meet their new best friend or future lover at your gathering. In the short term, lovely people may feel less lonely, and that's thanks to you.”

2. “What I need you to know is they are coming. What I need you to know is you can stop them.”

3. Good books I’ve read recently: The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, even though I found the first third so frustrating it made me want to grind my teeth. (They’re making a series out of Margo, with Elle Fanning playing the lead.)

4. “Standing in front of all my stuff, it hit me that all of it used to be money, and all of that used to be time.”

5. How to feed groups, in one chart from Julia Turshen.

6. The USPS gift shop doesn’t have to go as hard as it does, and yet.

7. “The strategic power of being the right measure of annoying”: You can win bold climate laws in your state.

8. 88 artists look up at the sky at the same time and draw what they see.

9. The sun? So hot right now.

10. Fantasy subway map and an incredible database of romance books.

11. Allow me to remind you of Deb Perelman’s perfect (and, coincidentally, lactose-free!) apple cake recipe.

12. In those years, people will say, we lost track
    of the meaning of we, of you
    we found ourselves
    reduced to I
    and the whole thing became
    silly, ironic, terrible:
    we were trying to live a personal life
    and yes, that was the only life
    we could bear witness to

    But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
    into our personal weather
    They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
    along the shore, through the rags of fog
    where we stood, saying I

    —Adrienne Rich, "In Those Years"

TTFN,

Laura

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Hello there,

Boy, I don’t know.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “It was hard for painters to resist, even when they knew it would render their works mortal. To use verdigris was to accept that your lovingly rendered scene would one day sour. The bright cloaks would turn dark, the soft grass would fade, the foliage turn. But such is the nature of cloth and plants and paint. Such is the nature of beauty.” On verdigris in the Paris Review. I had forgotten that the Statue of Liberty was, upon installation, brown.

2. We don’t have to celebrate our failures or, worse still, confuse them with our successes. This is one valuable function of shame: it reminds us of who we want to be when we fall short, a goalpost that is necessarily anchored to the lofty height that our conduct fell beneath. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on why shame is essential.

3. What cis people can do in this moment.

4. Time travel via IKEA catalogues.

5. This month’s “Science, goddamn” round-up: Huntington’s disease treated successfully for the first time. There’s a new single-dose rabies vaccine that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. An over-the-counter nasal spray that cuts COVID cases by two-thirds. Science people, you are the coolest.

6. Tinter battles.

7. A look at David Lynch’s house, designed by successive generations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s family and currently for sale.

8. List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events.

9. New Robyn imminent. They’re making more Woke Superman, thank God. There are so many amazing-looking movies out this fall; I’m especially excited for the new “Knives Out,” the film adaptation of Hamnet, new PTA, and a new art heist movie because art heist movies are the best movies of all (how is Josh O’Connor in every movie being made though?).

10. New favorite blog: Craigslist Horses. “I track Craigslisthorses tag. If you're easily offended this blog isn't for you.”

11. I am so busy. I am practicing
    my new hobby of watching me
    become someone else. There is
    so much violence in reconstruction.
    Each minute is grisly, but I have
    to participate. I am building
    what I cannot break.

    —Jennifer Willoughby, from “The Sun Is Still A Part of Me”

Byeeee,

Laura

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Hi hi,

Damn, it’s a good time to be alive if you are in the market for an easy sense of purpose. Lots of evil to fight and lots of good to protect and it’s not even hard to look for it.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. My number one recommendation is to see the new (the “woke”) Superman, which is now on streaming. I had less than zero interest in seeing this movie until seeing. a few people I trust not just rave about it but characterize it as kind of weirdly important in this moment. They made Superman American again, and corny again, and they gave him a dog. It’s impossible not to root for him and his huge dumb heart and the spirit of freedom-fighting, self-making, and of strangers finding family that undergirds the entire enterprise and makes any version of Superman (or America) worth it in the first place. Another thing I appreciated: that Superman and Lois Lane were two beautiful people who actually made out with each other, a refutation of the old Marvel dynamic. I hope they make five more.

2. It has happened here.

3. How you can write at a time like this.

4. Last month I mentioned the existence of the then-upcoming world dog surfing championships (h/t: James) and I’m pleased to update you that there are now photos.

5. I appreciated a recent look at Zohran Mamdani’s video program, how he and his team built it, and why it is so good. I continue to think that every campaign person seeing its success and going “We need to do more short-form video!” is totally missing the point. From the piece: "It was never just about introducing New Yorkers to the person of Zohran Mamdani… It was also the agenda, and having those things become inseparable. As our videos were going viral, as people were starting to see him more and more on their phones or out in the streets, it wasn't just, There's Zohran, but, Oh yeah, there's Zohran! That's the freeze the rent, fast and free buses, universal child care guy.”

6. Re: the above, as my friend Brian used to say: Why offend them with style when you can offend them with substance?

7. Any sufficiently archaic technology is indistinguishable from magic. (via kottke)

8. “Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of most buildings in the five boroughs of New York City. In 2018, the NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitization and tagging of these photos. This website places them on a map.”

9. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowland's family home is on the market for the first time in 60 years.

10. Science remains undefeated, might have found a way to save the bees.

11. U2 singing “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” with a gospel choir.

12. A short history of the business card.

13. Star Wars/pro-democracy nerd interlude: For obvious reasons I found myself watching Nemik’s manifesto from Andor again recently (“Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. Even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward”) and found a comment on it that made me appreciate it even more: “The best thing about this monologue is how it adds new context to the original trilogy. Luke Skywalker didn't save the galaxy single-handedly, rather he was the straw that broke the camel's back. The Empire was straining under the weight of a galaxy wide rebellion by the time of a New Hope, which allowed the actions of a single individual to tip the scales. If it weren't for the cumulative actions of the rebellion then there would be no ‘chosen one.’“

14. Come over. The doors are open,
    my flat's a mess and
    so is my heart
    but the doors are always open.
    Come over. I will make soup,
    probably from frozen but
    the important thing is
    we will both eat.

    You don't have to be dying,
    but if you are,
    or feel like you are,
    or if living's been hard,
    call me, and I will show up.
    It doesn't have to be that bad,
    it doesn't have to be bad at all,
    but if it is, please call.

    Do you want me to do the groceries?
    Do you want me to mop the floors?
    Do you need to be held;
    you don't have to be dying to be held.
    If you want me to be there, I want to.

    I'm on the bathroom floor again,
    and breathing is hard,
    and eating's been hard, and sleeping,
    the world is a laden thing
    rolling around on my chest lately.
    Just being alive is heavy tonight,
    but we have enough dead friends.
    Come over.

    —"We Have Enough Friends," Lena Oleanderson

Later,

Laura

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Folks,

The number one thing that’s really sunk in for me over the last year is that unthinkable things can absolutely happen. In fact, they can happen with some frequency. Your best friend can die. Your country can re-elect a monster. People can burn down from the inside all the good that country ever did, just because they can. But in an era where the worst of the unthinkable is possible, maybe good things that are hard to imagine are possible too: Even, in an era of the unthinkable, more likely to happen than before. The week before the New York City mayoral primary, I sat on a friend’s couch in Crown Heights and we discussed, with dread, four likely years of Andrew Cuomo as our mayor. Voting for Mamdani or Lander or Myrie felt like a shot in the dark—like being stupid enough to believe a good thing could happen while still bracing to be played a fool. And then not only did Mamdani win, but he won decisively, in the first round of voting. Cuomo called him to concede that night. Of course, the forces of darkness (Cuomo, E. Adams, Sliwa) are still trying to do their thing. But to echo someone else who loved a great city: Maybe a shot in the dark is how the light gets in.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. "Maintaining a sense of humor and focusing on small wins are great ways to find encouragement to keep going. Another way is to refuse to believe the bad press about human beings. 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." Mariame Kaba: People are in motion everywhere.

2. I'm so excited to read my brilliant former Brooklyn Museum colleague Katie Yee's first novel, Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar. It's out next week. Katie, I moderately forgive you for never sending me an ARC despite multiple unsubtle hints.

3. The T-Rex world championship race and the world dog surfing championships.

4. Such a simple truth that so many people don’t understand: Trust is consistency built over time.

5. Japanese playgrounds at night.

6. A visual history of Mac control panels.

7. Siren: Jonathan Bailey Chicken Shop Date.

8. Tony Gilroy talks to Jon Stewart and Mike “Revolutions” Duncan about Andor. We recently finished season 2 and I continue to think it is not just a masterpiece but a work likely to inspire pro-democracy forces for years to come.

9. Michael B. Jordan x Thomas Crown Affair!! Devil Wears Prada 2!!! You’ll pry my enthusiasm for this IP from my wizened, basic hands.

10. Barbara Kingsolver’s garden and Cezanne’s last studio.

11. Flint finally replaced all its lead pipes.

12. Infinite sea shanty. You choose whether it includes tambourines.

13. A conversation between John Green and Chris Hayes about why everything is tuberculosis.

14. It was a picture I had after the war.
    A bombed English church. I was too young
    to know the word English or war,
    but I knew the picture.
    The ruined city still seemed noble.
    The cathedral with its roof blown off
    was not less godly. The church was the same
    plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
    of the holes God’s fist made in the walls.
    All our desire for love or children
    is treated like rags by the enemy.
    I knew so much and sang anyway.
    Like a bird who will sing until
    it is brought down. When they take
    away the trees, the child picks up a stick
    and says, this is a tree, this the house
    and the family. As we might. Through a door
    of what had been a house, into the field
    of rubble, walks a single lamb, tilting
    its head, curious, unafraid, hungry.

    —"The Lamb,” Linda Gregg

See you,

Laura

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Hi hi,

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. I wrote about the brilliant and irreplaceable Allison Rockey, our best friend, who died last month at the age of 43.

2. You may have heard me say before that America may be bad, but New York City is good. And you know what? We’d be even more good if we had a mayor who was not terrible. If you live in New York, please help! If you aren’t registered for the Democratic primary, do so by this Saturday. Then don’t rank Cuomo or Eric Adams. Tell a friend or neighbor to do the same. Truly, we deserve this one nice thing.

3. Further evidence for the above maxim: Chess: The Musical revival coming to Broadway this fall!!!!!!

4. A corollary to “America may be bad, but New York City is good”: Everything may be bad, but science is good.

5. How to protest safely. Also, if you take any advice for the coming months and years, let it be this.

6. 360-degree panorama from inside a dishwasher.

7. List of unexplained sounds.

8. Literature clock.

9. “Making a living as an actor or as a writer or a director—without the higher degree of empathy that you have, the more aware you are of behavior and all kinds of behavior, the better you’re going to be at your job. We feed our families by being in an empathy business. It’s just baked in. You’re trying to pretend to be other people. The whole job is to pretend to be other, and what is it like to look from this? People may be less successful over time at portraying Nazis as humans, and that may be good writing or bad writing, and there may be people that have an ax to grind. But in general, empathy is how I feed my family. And the more finely tuned that is, the better I am at my job. That is what actors do: I’m going on Broadway, I’m playing a villain for six months. I got to live in that. I’m playing the slave, I’m playing the fisherman, I’m playing the nurse, I’m the murderer—you have to get in there. You have to live lives through other people. I think that the simple act of that transformation and that process automatically gives you what I would describe as a more generous and progressive point of view. It just has to.” Tony “Andor” “Michael Clayton” “The Cutting Edge” Gilroy patiently explaining to Ross “The Worst” Douthat why art is so often—Douthat’s words—“left wing.”

10. Owls in towels.

11. “The importance of authenticity in friendships was illustrated for me recently at a party to kick off a literary festival. While holding a drink in one hand and a paper plate with hummus and pieces of pitta bread in the other, my friend Erin asked if I could hold her plate so she could dip the pitta bread in it. Is it weird that this request made me feel seen and understood in a beautiful and moving way? I knew that others at the party might perceive me as Curtis the writer, but Erin and I were close enough that she knew that at certain moments—in fact, at more moments than not in this life—my highest purpose was to be a hummus plate holder.”

12. “I've been feeling a particular kind of grief for a prior version of me who still believed if I was hard-working, creative, and resourceful, I would find a way to be financially successful and “stable” in the traditional sense, doing the thing I love. I thought I could still outrun it. But I am starting to accept that maybe I can’t, and that maybe a different source of security has to emerge in its place.”

13. Late in May as the light lengthens
    toward summer the young goldfinches
    flutter down through the day for the first time
    to find themselves among fallen petals
    cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
    of the garden beside the old house
    after a cold spring with no rain
    not a sound comes from the empty village
    as I stand eating the black cherries
    from the loaded branches above me
    saying to myself Remember this

    —"Black Cherries," W.S. Merwin

Do not the horses,

Laura

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Oh hello,

I can’t remember where I heard this tip, but I saw someone share recently that you can simply cut off the top of a bag of chips you’re well on the way to finishing so that your hand has less bag to travel through to access the last of the chips. I’ve done this ever since reading that advice and it’s great. We may live in hell but at least there’s chips, and chip tips?

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis. This is as true of climate chaos as anything else. We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.”

2. It becomes, in fact, great sport to find the spoons in the wood.

3. My household had a brief phase this spring where we watched all of the Bridget Jones movies in a row (it turns out there are four total; our overall ranking was 1, 4, 3, 2). I found the latest one, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, to be surprisingly affecting and something my thoughts keep turning to. It’s not really about Renee Zellweger and that boy from the second season of White Lotus. Not a spoiler because it's in the trailer: Mark Darcy has died (heroic human rights lawyer accident) and the movie is about how to find your way back to joy when you're left to keep living after someone you adore has died. Also: Hugh Grant is briefly in it, the fact of which I found touching in itself, and as usual he's one of the best things about it even with limited screen time (the glasses/hair combo alone).

4. You Forgot It In People covers album (including a Maggie Rogers/Sylvan Esso cover of "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl”).

5. The truth does not require your belief.

6. Erin Kissane of the COVID Tracking Project is among a team that will document how the administration is "breaking the government, and what that means for all of us."

7. Weilikia is a project to visualize block by block “the ecosystems, geologic foundations, and stewards of the land before New York.” Relatedly, this New York Hall of Science exhibit on NYC infrastructure looks amazing.

8. I believe this too: “In a world of AI slop, something hand-crafted and made with care stands out like a sore thumb. It’s like seeing a home-cooked meal on the McDonald’s menu. It might actually be easier to stand out in that world.”

9. Why rich people don't cover their windows.

10. Georgia O'Keefee's recipe cards.

11. I am not nearly friendly or charismatic enough to pull off Stoop Coffee, but maybe you are.

12. No shit? “Which types of people aren’t big fans of ‘impartial’ news? People who don’t have power.”

13. Looking forward to: Ryan Coogler's take on The X Files; Ayo Edibiri in a show about former child prodigies (with yet another man from White Lotus).

14. Some people collect dirt from significant places.
    Or spoonfuls of cloudy ocean inside jars.
    Like amateur naturalists, they keep
    these treasures permanently on a shelf.
    Of course an amateur is simply a person
    who loves, who brings love to bear
    on a particular subject.
    Returning from one trip I failed to bring back
    a jar of anything. I stood outside my house
    where white stitches of snow were dissolving
    into the ground beneath the evergreens.
    An unset moon floated over the trees.
    If I stand very still, I do no further harm.
    Lam a tiny theater of non-harming. My breath
    watches raptly. See how everything is still alive.

    —Orpheus in Spring, Jenny George

See you,

Laura

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Hi hi,

If you’re getting into composting, as is now mandatory in New York City, listen to me. This is important. You’re going to think you want the compost bin that you keep on your counter to be cute. Maybe a shiny stainless steel one, or another one with a tight-fitting lid and odor filters you change out every so often. NO. Listen to me. LISTEN. You actually want an incredibly aesthetically mid one that, crucially, you can open with just one hand. Picture this: you are baking and you’ve just cracked some eggs. You didn’t have the foresight to open the compost bin already because we’re all imperfect and no one can tell the future. Do you really want to put those eggshells with their residual goop down somewhere, rinse off and dry your hands of the goop, open your stupid fucking compost bin, pick up the goopy eggshells again and put them in the compost bin, then—I guess—wash and dry your hands again in order to get the compost bin closed without getting goop on the lid? Madness. NO. Listen. Get the dorky plastic bin you can open with just the joint of your index finger (we have this one) and just commit to regularly emptying it into your large outside bin (which you line and keep fastened shut). Just trust me on this.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “There are only three possible explanations as to why Americans voted for this man: they wanted what he promised; they didn’t believe what he promised; or they didn’t understand what he promised. Pick whichever rationale you want, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason was, it exposed half of the electorate—the 77 million people who voted for Trump—as either fundamentally unserious, decadent, or weak. And no empire can survive the degeneration of its people.”

2. One of the key ways I personally understand the new administration and recent American history these days is through the concept of “the criminal interview.” The basic premise: the interview is where a criminal decides whether you are safe to attack. "‘Can I get away with it?’ is a major motivation for what people decide to do—or not do. Hence, the interview. This is one interview you want to fail. If you fail, the assailant decides that he cannot successfully, or easily, attack you. Then if he is a criminal, he will proceed to seek easier prey.” This thread, which Jason Kottke amplified into my feed a few months ago, applies the criminal interview concept to the last 30 years or so of American life. The last two months have only borne out its premises further. To the extent possible, become unsafe to attack.

3. I think When We’re In Charge, from my friend Amanda “Run for Something” Litman, will be this spring’s must-read action and hope manifesto.

4. Do you think Walton Goggins would let us all move in with him?

5. Picture all of the big movie posters from the '80s. The ones with a mountainous collage of all the characters that tells you a tiny bit about each of them but not enough to spoil anything? And still persists today as a style for franchises like Star Wars? Here's the story of the guy who came up with them.

6. This piece on the age of the double sell-out reminded me of this classic from Dave Eggers: “You actually asked me the question: ‘Are you taking any steps to keep shit real?’ I want you always to look back on this time as being a time when those words came out of your mouth.”

7. Join a game of telephone. (via the delightful, sometimes overwhelming Web Curios)

8. “okay but if you ever see a male creative who had a string of great work and then everything else he did was dogshit, go to the ‘personal life’ part of his wikipedia and look at his relationships.”

9. New York City’s new Vignelli-inspired subway map and Rebecca Solnit’s “City of Women” map.

10. Mapping the disappeared.

11. Japanese tree jackets to keep damaging pests away.

12. Looking forward to: the new season of Hacks, which is back TODAY and apparently, thank God, very good; a new cookbook from Samin Nosrat; new Mission Impossible and Wes Anderson (what is it actually about? who cares?).

13. Holy father I can’t pretend
    I’m not afraid to see you again
    but I’ll say that when the time
    comes I believe my courage
    will expand like a sponge
    cowboy in water. My earth-
    father was far braver than me — 
    coming to America he knew
    no English save Rolling Stones
    lyrics and how to say thanks
    God. Will his goodness roll
    over to my tab and if yes, how
    soon? I’m sorry for neglecting
    your myriad signs, which seem
    obvious now as a hawk’s head
    on an empty plate. I keep waking
    up at the bottom of swimming
    pools, the water reflecting
    whatever I miss most: whiskey-
    glass, pill bottles, my mother’s
    oleander, which was sweet
    and evergreen but toxic in all
    its parts. I know it was silly
    to keep what I kept from you;
    you’ve always been so charmed
    by my weaknesses. I just figured
    you were becoming fed up with
    all your making, like a virtuoso
    trying not to smash apart her
    flute onstage. Plus, my sins
    were practically devotional:
    two peaches stolen from
    a bodega, which were so sweet
    I savored even the bits I flossed
    out my teeth. I know it’s
    no excuse, but even thinking
    about them now I’m drooling.
    Consider the night I spent reading
    another man’s lover the Dream
    Songs in bed — we made it to
    “a green living / drops
    limply” before we were
    tangled into each other, cat
    still sleeping at our feet. Allow
    me these treasures, Lord.
    Time will break what doesn’t
    bend — even time. Even you.
    
    —”Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats,” Kaveh Akbar

Bro doesn’t even know what the plan is,

Laura

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You know,

I don’t even know where to start when it comes to… everything so I’m not gonna. My advice on how to get involved from previous editions stands. Just start somewhere, and make it fun if you can.

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. A zine meant to be printed out and used as a template for making an activism or organizing plan, from the great Mariame Kaba.

2. “A memory law (transl. Erinnerungsgesetz in German, transl. loi mémorielle in French) is a legal provision governing the interpretation of historical events and showcases the legislator's or judicial preference for a certain narrative about the past. In the process, competing interpretations may be downplayed, sidelined, or even prohibited.”

3. What to do if you see someone fall out of their wheelchair, including some good general life advice generally: “Do what they ask, NOT what you think would be helpful.”

4. Garden snail eating Ritz cracker time lapse; William Wegman dog mosaics at 23rd St.

5. The BBC has an audio series called “Bells on Sunday” which collects recordings of different churchbell peals around England.

6. In the latest issue of New York, PAPER co-founder Kim Hastreiter does a show-and-tell of art and glorious stuff she’s collected over the years. In a similar vein, it was delightful recently to click through the auction lots of Iris Apfel’s estate sale.

7. I really enjoyed Black Doves (Netflix)—Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw calling people “darling,” two murderous girls with working-class accents, various glamorous shots of the South Bank River Walk—though I thought it pulled its punches in the last episode. Among other things it’s a beautiful story about sacrifices two friends make for each other without even being asked, without the other even knowing, because it’s part of their code. My beloved Reacher (Prime) is also back with season 3. Big man smash bad guys, happy sigh.

8. Baking endorsements: This olive oil cake and these brownies (you can easily make just a half batch).

9. If The Cutting Edge was also a seminal childhood cultural work for you (screenplay written by Tony “Andor” “Michael Clayton” Gilroy!), try The Favorites, which incorporates elements of TCE, Wuthering Heights, and the oral-history storytelling format of writers like Taylor Jenkins Reid.

10. Looking forward to: an Amy Sherald solo show at the Whitney; Andor season 2 (Disney+) which might fix us; new Patricia Lockwood; new Poker Face which, crucially, will feature new Natasha Lyonne outfits.

11. I put my hand on your hand. Mostly I meant to
    be good. It was the shaking sky and what I wanted
    to see below. It is always shaking where I am.
    What do you know from the shoulder up?
    I know you can only watch the plane
    until you can’t. Prominent cloud features are not far
    from my mind. It’s an attempt to protect
    both of our mind circumferences from being mistaken
    for a shark that stops swimming. And other forms
    of disaster. I apologize. I would do anything
    for a different look from you. Animals in the ocean
    make mistakes too, maybe. And our memories.
    I know memory is remarkable and unpredictable.
    And I am meaning to be better with what I know.
    I know now is not the time to take up flying.
    You say, I’m watching you. And I say, No, I’m watching you.
    I am the government on the moon and
    I mean to let you forgive me.
    
    —”How to Recognize When You Have Behaved Badly and Behave Better,” Emily Pettit

Catch you later,

Laura

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Well,

Here in America, we're unfortunately going through a coup right now where the worst people in the world are voiding the Constitution to dismantle the federal government and enrich themselves. Not great! I really wish we had been wrong about how much worse things could get with these people's return to power, but perhaps we didn’t doomsay enough. Anyway, the group I am most consistently impressed with that’s organizing action is Indivisible, which I have mentioned before. If there is something smart and strategic to be done, Indivisible is doing it. Generally, if you have Republican representatives, it's especially important you put pressure on them to not cede their power and stop some of this. (But Democrats need yelling at too.) They are already sweating.

1. This is the headline and piece I think will stick with me from this era the way “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people” will define 2017-2020: “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down—I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.”

2. “Being a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce… You have opportunity after opportunity to create something lovely for yourself or others. Every moment you choose to sit and think about horrors beyond your control, every time you make the choice to look for more and more details about just HOW bad... you are turning away from those opportunities.” This whole thread from Mishell Baker is worth your time.

3. Judith Butler: “If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic.”

4. Have some museum ASMR.

5. A house tour of Gloria Steinem's New York City apartment; a map of New York City bars with real jukeboxes.

6. Everyone's lonely but no one can hang out.

7. A nice thing: Bookshop has started selling ebooks, so you’re not locked in to purchasing from Amazon anymore.

8. A search tool that emphasizes text-heavy sites, like a portal into the old good internet.

9. I’m a bit late to Kaliane Bradley’s book “The Ministry of Time” but I loved, loved, loved it. It’s like history and scifi and a search for identity and romance and thriller all in one. If you hate it I don’t want to know. They’re making a BBC adaptation too!

10. Please do yourself a favor and watch Conclave, even if you don’t care about popes or organized religion (I don’t). Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci swishing around in robes making drama! Isabella Rossellini doing more with four minutes of screen time than most actors do with 40! Come on.

11. Looking forward to: Buffy reboot (imagine infinite exclamation points here); Ryan Coogler/Michael B. Jordan vampire movie!; Bowen Yang/Lily Gladstone gay wedding farce; new Knives Out.

12. Something
    comes into the world unwelcome
    calling disorder, disorder—

    If you hate me so much
    don’t bother to give me
    a name: do you need
    one more slur
    in your language, another
    way to blame
    one tribe for everything—

    as we both know,
    if you worship
    one god, you only need
    One enemy—

    I’m not the enemy.
    Only a ruse to ignore
    what you see happening
    right here in this bed,
    a little paradigm
    of failure. One of your precious flowers
    dies here almost every day
    and you can’t rest until
    you attack the cause, meaning
    whatever is left, whatever
    happens to be sturdier
    than your personal passion—

    It was not meant
    to last forever in the real world.
    But why admit that, when you can go on
    doing what you always do,
    mourning and laying blame,
    always the two together.

    I don’t need your praise
    to survive. I was here first,
    before you were here, before
    you ever planted a garden.
    And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
    are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

    I will constitute the field.
    
    —Witchgrass, Louise Glück

Bye,

Laura

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Happy new year,

As I've done for years, I'm ending the old year with a look back at the things that stuck with me from the past 12 months—the ideas, art, and yes, internet that kept coming back to mind. I call it my "most resonant" list because the things on it echo.

1. One of the low-key most comforting things I’ve heard since the election came from actor Jeff Bridges in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel: “We don’t know what’s going to happen, man.” If you think back to this time last year, there’s zero chance anyone could have predicted what happened in 2024. The same is true for 2025—in bad ways, yes, but also potentially in good ones. You can be sure of nothing other than that people confidently predicting the future are fools.

2. This quote from Greta Thunberg feels like a philosophy for the years ahead on so many issues: “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.” Cathedral thinking!!

3. One sentence from an interior design book stuck with me, from a designer advising people not to get rid of historical features in your home. “The one thing you can’t buy more of is time,” they said. Obviously applies to much more than design.

4. I was five years late to viewing Watchmen, the 2019 HBO limited series based on characters from the famous graphic novel, but I absolutely loved it. The small ways the world differs from ours, making it recognizable but fantastical; the performances; but foremost how weird it was. Especially as the series proceeds, one character repeatedly says "What the fuck?" with ever-increasing justification. And the series doesn’t feel the need to explain. Just like life, some things remain a mystery. Overall, it’s a meditation on love, race, policing, time, family, and what we owe each other. I’m still astounded it was allowed to exist. Make time for it if you haven't already.

5. My other favorite show this year was Apple’s “Shrinking.” Season 1 was good, but season 2 was fantastic. I can’t think of another show that made me laugh out loud as often. Jessica Williams, Michael Urie, Ted McGinley, and Lukita Maxwell in particular do incredible work.

6. Every time I read this 1941 essay from Dorothy Thompson—which made the rounds eight years ago and again at the end of this year—a new part stands out. “Who Goes Nazi?”

7. Songs I played on repeat: Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” Beyoncé’s “American Requiem,” Big Thief’s “Change.”

8. I’ve lived in New York for over 10 years but only this year got absorbed into learning more about its history, including through the Ric Burns documentary “New York” and Lucy Sante’s book “Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York.” Next up, I want to learn more about Jane Jacobs and read more of her work.

9. As I’ve mentioned before, BlueSky is my new gathering place of choice on the internet. You don’t actually have to stay on (what once was) Twitter. If you can, I also recommend trading Substack for an alternate service like Buttondown (which this newsletter runs on), Ghost, or Beehiiv. Sure, there are no ethical platforms under capitalism. But if your platform actively privileges and boosts Nazis, it’s time to find another one if you can.

10. It's Venice, late August, outside after lunch, and Hart
    Is stubbing his cigarette butt in a wine glass,
    The look on his face pre-moistened and antiseptic,
    A little like death or a smooth cloud.
    The watery light of his future still clings in the pergola.

    The subject of all poems is the clock,
    I think, those tiny, untouchable hands that fold across our chests
    Each night and unfold each morning, finger by finger
    Under the new weight of the sun.
    One day more is one day less.

    I've been writing this poem for weeks now
    With a pencil made of rain, smudging my face
    And my friend's face, making a language where nothing stays.
    The sunlight has no such desire.
    In the small pools of our words, its business is radiance.

    —Charles Wright, "Portrait of the Artist with Hart Crane"

See you,

Laura

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Heyo,

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. If you’re getting gifts for people this winter and have recipients who might appreciate something cause-driven, make a donation in their name (and then tell them!) to organizations that are shoring up democracy and human rights. Four I’d recommend are the National Network of Abortion Funds, Run For Something (which helps elect young people to local, state, and federal office to help dig us out of our gerontocracy), the Indivisible Movement of local organizing, or Trans Lifeline.

2. For gifts of the more “here’s an object” variety, as in years past, here’s my Guide to Gift Guides. Look to Lottie and Doof for a collection of eclectic beautiful things, Rachel Syme for little treats, Caroline Chambers for people who like cooking, Helen Rosner for always-legendary food-related suggestions, Robin Sloan for useful things and books, Sight Unseen for when you maybe have too much money to spend on gifts, and Cup of Jo for when you just need a firehose of ideas from people with good taste. Finally, there’s also a gift guide for sworn enemies.

3. “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do… Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.” Rebecca Solnit, essential.

4. “I realize now that if you can give a fuck then you must also be able to receive. And that’s the key. You cannot manufacture more fucks. You cannot grow them or graft them or transplant them. You absolutely cannot buy them, not from anywhere or anyone, not at any price. But you can receive them as a gift, you can accept them. And in that way your collection of fucks to give can be renewed.” Toward a unified theory of fucks.

5. A giant spreadsheet of all the books, luxuries, and tracks recommended over the years on BBC's Desert Island Discs. 

6. Thinkin’ bout the internet: Don’t call it a Substack (please!); for the love of god, make your own website; you don’t actually have to stay on Twitter (by me).

7. Pertaining to the above: One of the little things giving me some hope for ::gestures vaguely:: the future is BlueSky, which I’ve talked about before (here I am over there if you want to say hi). There’s been lots of movement toward BlueSky since the election, and people are discovering the old-internet joys of a platform that a) doesn’t viciously suppress links and b) shows you posts from people you follow in the order that they post those posts. Yay! Let’s bring back the open web.

8. Some BlueSky tools and fun things: a directory of “starter packs” of suggested accounts to follow, which are a defining feature of the service; powerful block lists (there’s a healthy culture of quick blocking on BlueSky that means you control your experience there—you’re not actually obligated to have a bad time on social media platforms); a tool to convert starter packs to lists (so you can check in every now and then versus committing to follows); make fun little bots; BlueSky profanity as it happens; “receipts” based on what you tend to skeet about.

9. Looking forward to: Casey Johnston’s book about lifting, which I am ordering a rare physical copy of (rather than an e-book) so my husband and I can share it; the new (last???) Cruise Impossible.

10. Indivisible’s (mentioned above) new practical guide to organizing in your local community.

11. It’s probably a good time to brush up on bystander intervention techniques.

12. A lovely profile of communal living situations that include communal cooking.

13. If you’re a person who drinks cocktails, consider Cynar-based cocktails for winter drinks. Try the Rancor’s Toothpick or the In Cold Blood. (Bonus: Cynar cocktails have metal names.)

14. Now I let it fall back
    in the grasses.
    I hear you. I know
    this life is hard now.
    I know your days are precious
    on this earth.
    But what are you trying
    to be free of?
    The living? The miraculous
    task of it?
    Love is for the ones who love the work.
    
    —Joseph Fasano, “For a student who used AI to write a paper”

Bye for now,

Laura

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Hi hi,

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. I’ve never thought of myself as a person who’s particularly into sci fi or fantasy. But on the worst days—and yesterday was one—I find myself thinking of the essential lessons of art in that genre. Maybe because a lot of it is about people in dire situations making stark moral choices for a larger good—and for various reasons World War II parables aren’t really going to do it anymore, at least in America. We saw Rogue One in the theater soon after Trump’s first election and I took some strength from the image of (vague spoilers) Felicity and Diego on the beach, sacrificing themselves to give everything thereafter a chance. I’ve been thinking of the Battlestar Galactica reboot of the W. Bush years, with the fighter pilots touching a portrait of a comrade on a fallen planet on their way out to battle; of Stellan Skarsgård’s speech and “one way out” in Andor, which you must watch; of Katniss touching three fingers to her lips in a salute special to her community, and a crowd of people she can’t even see saluting back; of the fundamental text that is “Why must we go on?” / “Because there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Is all this cringe? Undoubtedly; but I think we’ve entered a time that requires deep earnestness. (I hope to come back to this paragraph in four years and feel I was being overly dramatic about how bad things might get but I suspect I will not.)

2. A to-do list for the next two months.

3. Advice from Rachel Maddow: “Join something.”

4. Quilt index. Mushroom color atlas. (Both via NY Magazine)

5. Channel-surf the past.

6. Moira Donegan tells the story of the Jane Collective on You’re Wrong About. Something I found notable: most of the volunteers only did it for a little while, then passed the baton. You don’t have to devote your entire life to a cause to make a difference.

7. A newly digitized social directory for the Black community in New York that was published from 1933 to 1943–an incredible time capsule.

8. This is such a cool story of how researchers stumbled on a lost Mayan city in the Mexican jungle essentially via lasers and page 16 of a Google search.

9. If you could use some absorbing reading, I enjoyed Liz Moore’s “The God of the Woods” lately and am reading the latest installment of Louise Penny’s cozy mystery series partially set in cozy Québécois bistros.

10. I saw this advice somewhere that I plan to take—maybe you want to too: “Stop consuming, start creating.”

11. HEY
    
    C’MON
    COME OUT
    
    WHEREVER YOU ARE
    
    WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
    AT THIS TREE
    
    AIN’ EVEN BEEN
    PLANTED
    YET
    
    —”Calling on All Silent Minorities,” June Jordan

See you later,

Laura

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Hello there,

For the Americans among us: my organizer programming means I physically can’t stop myself from reminding you that voter registration deadlines are coming up, including a few on Monday. My bold opinion: American fascism is worth avoiding. TYSM!

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fresh Air, on sitting on a beach in Dakar where tourists frolicked in the same place slave ships once launched: “It felt like I was at a funeral, and everyone else was at a wedding.” His unwavering, clear-sighted description of apartheid in Palestine is like finding a cask of water in a media landscape parched of morality.

2. I am really enjoying Sally Rooney’s newest novel, Intermezzo, about two brothers in Dublin. It is so poetic and lyrical and pleasant. Everyone is handsome and someone is always taking a clear damp glass down from a shelf. Here’s a good recent interview with her.

3. A history of fashion on the internet.

4. Have you heard of wind phones? It turns out there is a This American Life about them, of course. (Via Val Monroe)

5. Look at a Hiroshige print for 10 full minutes, countdown timer included.

6. “We have learned that there is an audience that is happy to pay for fearless journalism and fun blogs that are written by real human journalists who prioritize the interests of their readers, not search algorithms and AI bots. And we have learned that a small team can hold companies that are worth trillions of dollars to account if the investigations are good enough.” 404 Media on their first year.

7. Relax with George Clooney at the end of a movie.

8. Movie recommendation: “Rebel Ridge.” It’s about race, policing, civil asset forfeiture, addiction, systems that try to crush good people, and people who refuse either to be crushed or to turn into the worst version of themselves. Once you’ve watched, here’s a good piece on the director explaining the ending.

9. Jason Schwartzman’s "Things I can’t live without” column for the Strategist is an instant classic. He is a Wes Anderson character in real life, too.

10. in the dream of foxes
    there is a field
    and a procession of women
    clean as good children
    no hollow in the world
    surrounded by dogs
    no fur clumped bloody
    on the ground
    only a lovely time
    of honest women stepping
    without fear or guilt or shame
    safe through the generous fields.
    
    — Lucille Clifton, “A Dream of Foxes”

Bye,

Laura

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Hiiiii,

Happy almost-fall. Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. “So,​ your life. There it is before you—possibly a road, a ribbon, a dotted line, a map—let’s say you’re 25, then you make some decisions, do things, have setbacks, have triumphs, become someone, a bus driver, a professor of Indo-European linguistics, a pirate, a cosmetologist, years pass, maybe in a family maybe not, maybe happy maybe not, then one day you wake up and you’re seventy. Looking ahead you see a black doorway. You begin to notice the black doorway is always there, at the edge, whether you look at it or not. Most moments contain it, most moments have a sort of sediment of black doorway at the bottom of the glass. You wonder if other people are seeing it too. You ask them. They say no. You ask why. No one can tell you.” Anne Carson on Parkinson’s, and everything.

2. Official stick reviews (via Recomendo) and Your Name in Landsat.

3. Another way to get into the discussion we all had in eighth grade: Is my blue your blue?

4. I wouldn't call myself a huge TV Person, but recently while my spouse was out of town I remembered that HGTV exists and it was all over for me. I can recommend: Fixer Upper: The Lakehouse (sadly unrelated to the Reeves/Bullock film classic). It was my first exposure to the home-renovation juggernaut that is Chip and Joanna Gaines, and at just a few episodes it’s not a huge commitment if you want to dip your toe in. Some football players show up for some reason? Second, For the Love of Kitchens (a Gaines-land production that they don’t appear in), which is essentially a beautifully shot infomercial for a small UK-based kitchen and furniture company called deVOL. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a blend of a design and renovation show with some lovely interludes on craft and design that reminded me of forever-fave Repair Shop. The main characters are one of the founders and the creative director, who are also life partners, and a man called Robin who can make anything with a lathe. I’m currently preparing a PhD dissertation on the contrasting relationship styles between Fixer Upper’s Chip and Joanna and Kitchens’ Paul and Helen. Let me know if you want to discuss.

5. Related: Want home decor in the shape of tomatoes? Great news.

6. “The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.” (Of course I was going to link to Ted Chiang's evisceration of AI. Have you met me/this newsletter?)

7. Installing poetry in national parks.

8. TV recommendation: Monsieur Spade on Netflix. A grizzled Clive Owen is the Dashiell Hammett investigator, now retired and living in southern France, who gets pulled in for One Last Job.

9. New York things: summaries of city meetings (an actually non-evil use of AI?), a history book recommendation, and art critic Jerry Saltz’s map of downtown galleries (the last from Choire Sicha’s great newsletter, Dinner Party).

10. Imagine waiting 15 years for Oasis to reform only to lose out on
    tickets to Chloe, 21 from Stockport who just wants to hear
    Wonderwall live. Imagine your jealous fury, normal comforts
    turned to ash, all pleasure drained dry, tastes bitter, colours dull
    with injustice etc., tears welling up in your eyes as you sit at the
    bus stop waiting for the bus to take you home from the venue
    box office which you have, in tradition's name, lined up outside
    of instead of just buying the tickets on your phone. At least you
    have looked your foe (Chloe, 21 from Stockport) in the eye.
    Now imagine you have the chance to win the ticket back.
    Imagine you both lined up on two sides of a vast battlefield.
    You: shoulder to shoulder with others just like you, ready to
    fight and die in a final battle for what matters. Chloe, 21 from
    Stockport: also shoulder to shoulder with people like her,
    although those poeple are younger and treating the whole thing
    like a bit of a joke. You scowl fiercely at them, and they scowl
    back, but not as fiercely and with an ironic detachment which is
    so annoying. With ragged voices they sing Wonderwall. You
    and your side are also singing an Oasis song, but one that Chloe,
    21 from Stockport, has never heard, or heard infrequently, or
    skipped over in favour of Wonderwall. Or just enjoyed less than
    Wonderwall. Or enjoyed more than Wonderwall but still made
    the decision to sing Wonderwall as the anthem of cultural
    consensus. You are ready to fight, and to die, if that is how God
    has ordained it, in this final battle. If that is how God has
    ordained you pursue a ticket to Oasis, having waited 15 years for
    them to reform. If Chloe, 21 from Stockport wants to hear
    Wonderwall live, if she wants to take your ticket to Oasis after
    15 years in the wilderness, she will have to plunge the sword into
    your heart herself, if she thinks she can. Today is gonna be the
    day that they're gonna throw it back to you.

    —Max Lavergne, "Chloe, 21 from Stockport"

See you,

Laura

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Hello there,

Following last month’s “Science, fuck yeah!” sentiments, medicine now has apparently figured out a cause of lupus and maybe how to reverse it. With all this and developments on the national political stage—what is this strange and unfamiliar feeling I’m having? Oh, it’s hope.

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. “None of us knows if we can do this. And we are about to do it anyway. And the combination of those truths helped me, in those vertiginous few minutes, to not feel panic but excitement. I felt excited about the future for the first time in years.“ Traister on Harris.

2. Jeopardy stamps.

3. “We can remind ourselves that a more just society is possible, if only because a few of the necessary conditions have at various moments actually existed upon this Earth, and in the not-so-distant past. With this in mind, I have begun thinking of the circumstances of my youth not as a fairytale or as an impossible fantasy, but as a real-life thing that did happen and might happen again.” Zadie Smith on the end of 14 years of Tory rule.

4. Looking forward to: Gladiator II, Lady in the Lake, and yes, a reported Top Gun 3.

5. “This is what I infer when I see someone who is comfortable in their unique strangeness, too. There probably exists someone who enabled that evolution of personality. A parent, a friend group, a spouse. It is rare for people to come into themselves if no one is excited and curious about their core, their potential. We need someone who gives us space to unfold.”

6. 25 Songs About Horses Ranked By How Much I Think You Should Play Them For Your Horse; Rating the Birds in My Backyard by Tendency Toward Violence.

7. Beautiful London Underground posters from 1925 by illustrator Kathleen Stenning. I’d love to buy this whole series as prints.

8. dELiA*s decor for 2024 girls.

9. What beats rock?

10. Do whales have a concept of death sad. Baking
    with applesauce sad. How many towns in Massachusetts.
    How many towns in California, Vermont, Rhode
    Island—sad. Hip flexor pain sad. Rotator cuff pain.
    How many towns in MA. Difference between a city
    and a town. Define druthers sad. Define bourgeois
    sad. SI joint pain sad. Define nugatory. Do bats
    have a concept of death. Do whales sleep sad.
    Whale vocabulary. Bat vocabulary. Bat words.
    Bat sleep. Motel 6 San Diego North bed bugs.
    La Quinta Inn San Diego bed bugs.
    Old man skull long hair wig. Synonyms pang.
    Synonyms anxiety. Garlic sweats. Signs
    of the flu. Stardew Valley fan art sad. Banged
    my knee whole leg hurts. Synonyms haunted.
    Synonyms meaningful. Body changes after 30 sad.
    Get rid of hiccups. Word for divine loneliness.
    What is grace. Crispy home fries fast sad. Time
    immemorial sad. Fluffy Chihuahuas. First
    person or first-person. Nutmeg secrets. Nutmeg jam.
    Where am I. What is the address of where I am
    now. Zoodles too watery sad. What does a portal
    sound like. Do rivers get deeper over time.
    How to be happy sad. What do I need sad.
    Do rivers get deeper over time. How many
    towns in New England sad. Do rivers change
    size, change course over time. Do rivers
    deepen, will I deepen, how much can I know,
    how much knowledge can I hold, can I hold it
    while running, flowing, while getting carried
    away, am I getting carried away, do rivers
    get deeper over time, wider, faster, define
    shore, define caulk and float, can I cross,
    will I make it, can I carry myself away—

    —"Search History Sad," Caylin Capra-Thomas

Bye,

Laura

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Hi hi,

Science is absolutely knocking me out lately. Did you hear they’ve made it possible to prevent HIV with a twice-yearly shot? I have such a core memory of sitting in one of the small auditoriums of my high school in the ‘90s—on risers that were carpeted, for some reason—listening to guest speakers with HIV or AIDS and thinking, this person is inescapably going to die soon. It was a death sentence for so, so long. And now it’s absolutely not. Also: a new blood test is 100% accurate at predicting breast cancer’s return before a full relapse, making more treatment options available. And there’s that breakthrough new cystic fibrosis treatment I’ve mentioned in this newsletter before. Science! Hot damn.

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. Season three of Hacks was maybe my favorite yet. Hannah Einbinder in particular does next-level work. Only complaint: Could use more Megan Stalter (as could most things).

2. “I always wanted to tell you to quit your job. Negotiate for the salary you deserve. Stand up for yourself. Challenge authority. Tell your rude co-worker to shut up. Report your boss to everyone and anyone who will listen. Consult a lawyer. Did I mention quit your job? Go back to graduate school. Leave some deodorant and mouthwash on your smelly co-worker’s desk. Send that angry email to your undermining colleague. Call out your boss when he makes a wildly inappropriate comment. No, your boss should not force you to work out of her kitchen. Mind your own business about your colleague’s weird hobby. Mind your own business, in general. Blow the damn whistle on your employer’s cutting corners and putting people’s lives in danger. Tell the irresponsible dog owner to learn how to properly care for the dog. No, you don’t owe your employer anything beyond doing your job well in exchange for compensation.” Roxane Gay signs off as Work Friend.

3. Hydrant Directory: The color of a fire hydrant tells you something about how much water can traverse it.

4. I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again.

5. A reflection on what Martin Luther King, Jr. actually did: Not just speeches and marches and seats on the bus. “He ended the terror of living as a Black person, especially in the South.”

6. We’re getting a Practical Magic sequel (infinite exclamation points). Do Center Stage next.

7. “For me, ‘Man or Bear’ is not hypothetical. I’m literally a woman who left mankind behind to live in nature with bears. This is my actual life.”

8. Speaking of: there’s a new Julia Phillips novel (she’s the author of the excellent Disappearing Earth, about two sisters who vanish on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula); The Bear is back TODAY.

9. New favorite drink: The L&T from David Lebovitz’s Drinking French. Here’s how to make one serving:
   
   1 ½ ounces (45 ml) Lillet blanc
   3 ounces (90 ml) cold tonic water
   Half an orange wheel or a slice of cucumber, for garnish
   
   Pour the Lillet and tonic water into a large goblet or tumbler. Add a handful of ice cubes and stir briefly. Garnish with the orange wheel half. (My extra suggestion: use a blood orange wheel to make it feel extra fancy.)

10. My work piles up,
    I falter with disease.
    Time rushes toward me—
    it has no brakes. Still,
    the radishes are good this year.
    Run them through butter,
    add a little salt.
    
    —Jim Harrison, “Zona”

See you,

Laura

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Hello there,

One of the voices I’ve most appreciated over the past few months is Mariame Kaba’s. She’s a longtime organizer, educator, and librarian/archivist who worked in Chicago for a long time and is now in New York, spending a lot of time on countering the prison industrial causes but also many other causes. I mostly follow her on BlueSky, but she’s also got a newsletter and has written many essays and books. I wouldn’t say I agree with her on everything, but she’s dropped some wisdom that constantly runs through my head these days: “Keep it moving.” (Don’t spend time trying to convince people who won’t be convinced, and who can count it as success to distract you from doing your real work.) “Most people aren’t brave.” (Sad, true, and makes you treasure the rare, courageous people all the more.) I also appreciate that she regularly lifts up non-electoral ways to make life better for other people. Defending libraries. Getting on school boards. Donating to abortion funds. The opportunities are there, and you don’t even have to look that hard.

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. "They have not always been right; even when right, their prescriptions for the problems they’ve identified and their means of directing attention to them have not always been prudent. But time and time and time again, the student left in America has squarely faced and expressed truths our politicians and all the eminent and eloquent voices of moderation in the press, in all of their supposed wisdom and good sense, have been unable or unwilling to see.”

2. Through children I am adjacent to I recently mainlined several episodes of a mid-2010s BBC show called Sarah and Duck. It’s a simple premise: It’s about a little girl who has a pet duck (guess what his name is). They go on little UK adventures: Riding a bus to somewhere. Encountering a woman who wears a scarf all the time who they call, right to her face, Scarf Lady. Playing with a friend down the street who casually has a pet flamingo. Chatting with an anthropomorphized rainbow and moon (the rainbow has a cloud mustache, of course). The opposite of this is another show I encountered involving an obnoxious French bunny called Simon who constantly has to learn lessons about how to be a marginally OK person (bunny) because it’s seriously not obvious to him from the outset. God, I hate that fucking bunny. Sarah and Duck: something to consider when you’ve run out of Bluey.

3. The end of this Q&A with Ethan Hawke: “You get to decide if art has value. Then you just put yourself at it.”

4. Moira Donegan on feminism: It’s “something the world has abandoned, grown bored with, moved on from. It is also something the world clearly needs.”

5. Alexander Chee on how to get more interiority into your writing.

6. These are rich and wondrous times in which to be a hater. Also: Here’s how to remove dumb AI stuff from your Google searches.

7. Hear the song written on a sinner’s butt in Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

8. From Erica Cerulo, who never wanted to be a parent but loves being a “lady down the street”: “My long game is not to be friends with kids but to be friends with adults who were once kids.”

9. Looking forward to: New Knives Out. New The Bear. New Sally Rooney.

10. We love what we have, no matter how little,
    because if we don't, everything will be gone. If we don't,
    we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us.
    
    What's here is something that we are still
    building. It's something we cannot yet see,
    because we are part
    of it.
    
    Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we,
    we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce
    wind, the trees that will give shade
    to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

    —We Love What We Have, Mosab Abu Toha

Byeeee,

Laura

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Hi hi,

Something I’ve realized recently about myself is that I have musicals running through my head at least 60 percent of the time. I don’t even really like musicals. I thought the new Merrily We Roll Along revival was… fine. But during a formative period of my life, from seventh grade to junior year or so, I listened to them constantly, culminating in the year I was 17 and listened to the Rent soundtrack multiple times a week. Now, I will be wandering around the house doing something and become aware I’m internally reciting a snippet of Will You Light My Candle, or the Story of Chess from Chess, or, good lord, part of the song late in Miss Saigon where the new wife meets Kim. Les Mis makes appearances too. I haven’t consciously listened to any of these songs or soundtracks in years, if not decades. None of this is a problem or anything, just… what? Does anyone else have this low-grade theatre kid energy lurking inside them? Report back.

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. Joan Baez: “I realized that the music needed my time and attention if it was going to be any good. Learning to live with the state of the world’s a daily practice. Everything we do, we do against the backdrop of global warming and fascism. I never dreamed I’d live in a world this chaotic and discouraging, and I’m overwhelmed but I’m also a great believer in denial—I think that’s where you have to be in order to create, or have fun or dance—providing that we set aside a certain amount of time to come out of denial and actually do something to help.”

2. The quote above is from a really excellent (and huge) package from the New York Times Style Magazine (gift link) for which they talked to artists at all stages of their career about how to get started in creative fields, and how to keep going.

3. A real source of unexpected joy and inspiration over the last couple of weeks is that The Onion was bought by people who really love The Onion and want to help keep it doing what it does best, versus a group of private equity chodes named Peter. Ben Collins, the new CEO, tells the story (it started on BlueSky—has the juice!) and additionally shared: “This is more doable than you'd think, and it doesn't have to be a media thing. Save your defunct bowling league, run for one of New Hampshire's 900 State House seats, revive a dogshit museum. Be open about what you don't know and call friends who do. It's fun, it's good for you, and it's the future.” Hell yeah.

4. As an experiment, I did a vacation recently where I went somewhere warm with bodies of water and did basically nothing but read books by those bodies of water the whole time. I know many people had figured out this kind of vacation long ago, but it was my first time, and I can report that it ruled. Try it if you haven’t. Maybe you don’t like reading and it’s an all-video-games vacation. You do you.

5. Books I read (on that trip and otherwise lately) that I’ve enjoyed: Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You, Jo Baker’s Longbourn (telling the story of the servants who care for the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice), Tara French’s The Hunter, Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake.

6. Net neutrality is back! That’s nice.

7. Mushroom risotto with peas (gift link) went over super well in our house, is easy, and uses lots of freezer and pantry ingredients.

8. I am really enjoying the supergrouping of Jason “Blogfather” Kottke (sorry) and Edith “Drawing Links” Zimmerman, two longtime Newsletter Faves, who are now working together regularly on kottke.org. They’ve also brought back comments! This whole time, did we have to raze the old world in order for the new one to be born?

9. If you’re in New York and you like absurdist humor, please go see Oh, Mary at the Lyceum.

10. The woven designs of Paris sidewalk bistro chairs and public transit upholstery patterns.

11. Chicken pics. Weed strain name generator.

12. New geriatric millennial trend just dropped: gardening with native plants.

13. “Do you publicly explain why you avoid someone at a party? Do you feel compelled to justify it to the world every time you don’t answer a phone call? Of course not. The same logic should apply to our online interactions.”

14. He stole forsythia.

    He lived for love.

    He never got caught.

    Jim Moore, Epitaph

See ya,

Laura

Hello there,

I meant to send an edition of this newsletter in February but my day job had a period of being extremely wild and I did not get around to sending it after all. Things are better now. We're here together. I hope you're doing well. If you don't want to get these emails anymore, hit unsubscribe in the footer. If you want to forward this to a friend, do that after you're done reading; maybe they'll join us. That would be nice.

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. Fun, possibly spurious concepts: the trust thermocline, the purpose of a system is what it does, the pizza meter.

2. A link to the full screenplay of Celine Song's Past Lives, maybe my favorite movie from last year.

3. I knew this, but did I know this?

4. A fascinating article about a miraculous new treatment for cystic fibrosis that means many people with CF can expect to live as long as people without it. How do you go about living when you've only ever experienced knowing you were dying?

5. It’s March 13, 1989, and you are attending a meeting of ACT UP New York, the passionate group taking direct confrontational action to fight the AIDS crisis.

6. Root map.

7. Good recent reads on divorcing, or not divorcing: Emily Gould's "Should I leave my husband" and Lyz Lenz's "This American Ex-Wife" (great title, too).

8. Things that don't work.

9. I've recently really enjoyed the series Mr and Mrs Smith on Prime, with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine (who should both be in everything) as strangers who are paired up as husband and wife when they take on assignments for a shady international spy agency. As a friend put it: each of the eight episodes is a perfect standalone movie. I'm also struck by how good the real estate in this show is, and the clothes: everything looks incredibly tasteful and gorgeous. I think that is part of the point of the show: These people are probably incredibly morally compromised, but look how beautiful they are and everything around them is; isn't it worth it? Probably not. But look at this villa on Lake Como that was a location on the show (and is available for rent if you have 900 euros a night).

10. Become a Library Defender.

11. Something I try to keep in mind as a manager: You're always carrying a cannon.

12. Ann Friedman's moving, funny, thought-provoking essay series on unexpectedly becoming a parent.

13. A zine about perimenopause.

14. Looking forward to: new Vampire Weekend; new Sally Rooney; Rusty Foster's new newsletter project Today on Trail; a new movie with Ryan Gosling in silly action mode (see also: The Nice Guys); the film adaptation of beloved, spicy, well-written wine mom novel The Idea of You (you can be a wine mom without being a mom); Dev Patel's directorial debut, which just looks baller.

15. Fish doorbell.

16. Here we are at last, meeting face-to-face like two
    heroes of opposing armies, looking each other in
    the eye, poised to shake hands. Do you trust me?
    Do I trust you? No, trust died last century, along
    with truth, so we'll have to think of something else
    to shake on. Not to our health. Our health is bad
    and only getting worse. Not to our wealth, because
    no amount of riches could heal our poverty. Not to
    you and yours. Not to me and mine, because yours
    and mine, every last one, perished in the wars, and
    without yours there is no you, and without mine
    there is no me. Just two bodies standing face-to-
    face, two envelopes of flesh with nothing folded
    inside. How did we survive? And better yet, how
    did we emerge heroic after all that carnage, all that
    betrayal and heartbreak? Loss for every meal, loss
    before bedtime and on rising. That's why we're
    empty, because emptiness made us, made these
    bodies in which we stand, high on the hilltop,
    under a pallid moon, with the fields of bones
    surrounding us like a fresh snowfall, except that
    the heat here is insufferable. Last winter was years
    ago, before the battles broke out, remember? Here,
    let's shake on that. To winter. To cold. To snow,
    real snow.

    —Here We Are, Lauren K. Watel

Later,

Laura

Hey there,

Every year I put together a list of the things that stuck with me most from those 12 months. I think of it as the ideas, art, and snippets of conversation that were most resonant.

Here's what I gathered from 2023:

• Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland. This is a PBS documentary series in which people on both sides of The Troubles are interviewed about what life was like back then, in a time of seemingly-intractable conflict, and how things eventually changed. I've been thinking about it even more since October 7.

• How to define a genocide. "The only word that means anything to me at such a moment is the word: No." "When we can’t make people feel better, we can still make a difference by making them feel seen."

• As the world continues to be a lot, I've continued to take comfort in rom-com novels. A few I particularly liked in 2023 were Emily Henry's Happy Place, Annabel Monaghan's Nora Goes Off Script, and Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy.

• The best movie I saw, which I think about a lot, is Past Lives. The most fun I had at the movie theater was Fast X; Jason Momoa should get some sort of award for gleefulness in movie villainry. I also got properly into the Mission Impossible movies this year and can only say: Tom Cruise, you magnificent bastard. Oppenheimer was fine.

• Nothing will ever replace what Twitter once was, but for me BlueSky has checked a lot of similar boxes in terms of shooting the shit, progressive organizing, media criticism, and dumb jokes. I'm on there as my name, so basic. I have a few extra invites; reply if you want one and I'll distribute, first come first served.

• If Books Could Kill became my new favorite podcast. I realized recently that it, and the rest of the Michael Hobbes extended universe (You're Wrong About, Maintenance Phase), are basically the only podcasts I listen to anymore. Putting in the work to root out facts and heeding lived experiences, as a journalist? Actually, sadly groundbreaking.

• This is the year I discovered the game-changer that is shelf-stable gnocchi. Made this recently and it was easy, fast, and great. Modernity has its plus sides.

• This year I went from AI-questioning to an unapologetic hater. My strong belief is that people who work in AI have never tried to produce creative work themselves, and also have no idea what makes humans tick. Oops! Margaret Atwood: "The clockwork bird can sing, but only the song with which it has been programmed. It can't improvise. It can't riff. It can't surprise. And it is in surprise that much of the delight of art resides: Otherwise, boredom sets in quickly. Only the living bird can sing a song that is ever renewed, and therefore always delightful."

• "How do I make room for myself to be more creative? How do you be creative at all? What does creativity even look like when your whole job is already to tell stories and make jokes and be silly? How do you do anything with a goal entirely separate from the life you’ve chosen to live?" Kelsey McKinney on learning to play piano when there is no recital.

• Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has not been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to quiet us.

  —"Fear," Lydia Davis

See ya soon,

Laura

Hi,

There are a lot of horrors in the world right now. Take a break from them for a few minutes if it's helpful to you.

Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. Step into a museum of internet artifacts.

2. One of the most fun movies I've seen recently is one I'd completely missed from 2016 called The Nice Guys. It stars Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, and a young actress called Angourie Rice and it's mystery, grief, and hijinks in 1970s LA. Watch and be delighted.

3. Every recipe I've made from Molly Baz's first cookbook has been tasty as hell, and I'm looking forward to working my way through her new one, More is More. Please be warned that the typography in this book is horrifying. Also anticipating Erin French's follow-up to one of my favorite cookbooks, The Lost Kitchen, and Sohla El-Waylly's Start Here.

4. Explore Tokyo through its train lines.

5. New book genre classification: No plot, just vibes.

6. Cozy as hell and easy to make: Smitten Kitchen's chicken with buttered onions.

7. Romance novel covers, visualized.

8. A state-to-state guide to every State Supreme Court.

9. I've recently had a run of watching film and TV about partnerships—romantic, work, and those that are both. I thought Ethan Hawke's documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's relationship and their collaborative careers, The Last Movie Stars, was nuanced and thoughtfully done. It's largely based on transcriptions of interviews, so Hawke got his famous friends to narrate excerpts for the documentary. George Clooney is Paul; Laura Linney is Joanne; Sam Rockwell and Zoe Kazan make appearances as supporting characters. On Netflix, a four-part documentary of the Beckham relationship doesn't get as deep into how their relationship actually works but is a sweet depiction of how one deeply strange young person tried to have a family after becoming astronomically famous by the accident of being both super-handsome and incredibly driven to succeed.

10. In fictional partnerships, I am enjoying the AppleTV adaptation of the wildly popular novel (which I thought was interestingly executed in parts but mostly just fine) Lessons in Chemistry, in part because Brie Larson is so perfectly cast as the main character and Lewis Pullman pulls off his could-be-boring role of "shockingly equity-minded 1950s white man" with such charisma. If there is any sense in this world, young Pullman will go from here to revive his father's tradition of leading successful mid-budget romantic comedies. We deserve this.

11. Looking forward to: Longtime Newsletter Fave Cord Jefferson's first directorial debut (!), American Fiction, which also has so many Newsletter Fave actors in it—Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae, and more.

12. "The internet promised, among other things, absolute audience surveillance, full measurability, and perfect knowledge of who was watching what, when, and for how long. What it delivered, instead, was metric tons of metric bullshit."

13. "Watterson has said, of the illustrations in 'Calvin and Hobbes,' 'One of the jokes I really like is that the fantasies are drawn more realistically than reality, since that says a lot about what’s going on in Calvin’s head.' Only one reality in 'Calvin and Hobbes' is drawn with a level of detail comparable to the scenes of Calvin’s imagination: the natural world. The woods, the streams, the snowy hills the friends career off—the natural world is a space as enchanted and real as Hobbes himself."

14. Phoebe Bridgers and Olivia Rodrigo in conversation; an incredible Yeah Yeah Yeahs sweater (discovered via the wardrobe of Noel on Bake-off, which thankfully is good again).

15. You want to know how I spend my time?
    I walk the front lawn, pretending
    to be weeding. You ought to know
    I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling
    clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
    I'm looking for courage, for some evidence
    my life will change, though
    it takes forever, checking
    each clump for the symbolic
    leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already
    the leaves turning, always the sick trees
    going first, the dying turning
    brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform
    their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?
    As empty now as at the first note.
    Or was the point always
    to continue without a sign?
    
    —Louise Glück, Matins

Bye,

Laura

Hi,

I've bought a Massimo Vignelli Stendig calendar every year for something like the last 15 years. So devoted am I that I even lugged one as a carry-on, in its tri-cornered packing tube, when I moved to London in 2010 because I couldn't imagine not having some giant Helvetica on my wall. This last month, something happened with the calendar that's never happened before: In the beginning of September, I tore off the page for August (always ceremonial, satisfying; a tangible turning over of a new time leaf). And behind the old August there was... another August. I stared at it, aghast: had I imagined tearing off the original August? No, it was there on the floor. And yet there was another August before me. It was a tiny, haunting sampling of a Groundhog Day loop. I tore off August number 2 and then proceeded over the next four weeks to get COVID and make a couple of decisions that proved to be terrible. If I ever get a repeat month on the calendar again I'll flee to a cabin in the woods. I hope your late summer/early fall have gone better. Get your free COVID tests.

Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. Just as birds aren't real and water is propaganda, blurbs are a lie.

2. "It doesn’t sound revolutionary to suggest that the key to maintaining your friendships through the hurricane of early parenthood is simply to do the hard slog of communicating and committing, but it actually is." Relatedly: Advice from Anne Helen Petersen on how to kid-proof your friendship.

3. This series of observations from Jo Livingstone also really resonated with me, about "all of society reorganizing around heteronormative family units suddenly one day when you're 35... it's like invisible magnets move everybody around and life snaps back into what you grew up with." I know some communities avoid this and I envy them.

4. "In practical terms, 'content creator' neatly accomplishes two things at once: It lets people who make garbage think they’re making art, and tells people who make art that they’re making garbage." See also: Richard Linklater on this dynamic in the film industry.

5. Medieval beast generator.

6. Anger rather than fear or hope is, by far, the most powerful emotion for spurring action on climate change.

7. Fall things: The original plum torte is a classic for a reason; new favorite cocktail.

8. I like the idea of organizing your life even after you become an adult in terms of semesters.

9. Where have all the cool small cars gone?

10. Neko Case on aging.

11. A tour of Jennifer Egan's library.

12. It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid
of books, getting ready to retire,
to move some place smaller, more
manageable. We’re living in reverse,
age-proofing the new house, nothing
on the floors to trip over, no hindrances
to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,
a small table for two. Our world is
shrinking, our closets mostly empty,
gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,
the bells and whistles. Now, when
someone comes to visit and admires
our complete works of Shakespeare,
the hawk feather in the open dictionary,
the iron angel on a shelf, we say
take them. This is the most important
time of all, the age of divestment,
knowing what we leave behind is
like the fragrance of blossoming trees
that grows stronger after
you’ve passed them, breathing
them in for a moment before
breathing them out. An ordinary
Tuesday when one of you says
I dare you, and the other one
just laughs.
—Dorianne Laux, "I Dare You"

Bye,

Laura

Hi,

I intended to send out this newsletter last week, but then two things happened: Our internet went out for two days, and I finally got COVID (heard of it?). I took it as a sign that delay was okay. I hope you're staying healthy in this strange late-summer surge we're having. Pandemics: I'm over them. Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. "I think writer's block is an umbrella term for a series of very different pains. There's the biggest one, the writer's block that comes from a fear of imperfection, which can be combatted by a writer carefully training herself to let her work be messy and impermanent...Then there's the writer's block that comes from being impatient with your work and not allowing it the time it needs to develop; if you long so much for publication and external ratification, your work can sense it and it will turn catlike and perverse and desert you. And there's the Writer's Block that's actually the canary toppling over in the coalmine, the way that your work is telling you that you're going down the wrong path and you need to reconsider some larger issues." Lauren Groff on writer's block.

2. I'm getting significantly less junk mail since I followed some instructions I linked in a past newsletter (and here's the link again). None of this is sponsored, I just want all of us to get less (bad) mail.

3. Can we talk about the Diamond Kosher rebranding?

4. Japanese bathhouses and the last internet cafes.

5. With climate change escalating, where's a safe and stable place to live? Wherever you can join, or build, a strong community, says Bill McKibben. I also enjoyed his recent conversation with Chris Hayes.

6. When is dinner, state by state.

7. Oh no: I found French Zillow.

8. Knuckle tattoo generator; Werner Herzog recites AI poetry.

9. Stuff I've cooked lately and appreciated: Deb Perelman's corn butter farro and rigatoni with eggplant puree, meatballs with peaches, basil and lime; gnocchi with tomato and red onion; tomato tonnato; everything I've made from Molly Baz's "Cook This Book;" coffee in a Moka pot.

10. Following on the above: Did we all know about pre-packaged, shelf-stable gnocchi? This stuff is great. It's basically pasta but even less effort, and it's potatoes so it goes with everything, and you can have a weekday dinner done in like 20 minutes.

11. List of aesthetics.

12. I didn't love the film adaptation of Red White & Royal Blue but I did love this tweet and this article about it and this question: "Why are we spending time on these tedious hunks when the most suspenseful thing about the movie is how President Uma Thurman will pronounce any given word?" Sometimes art that doesn't really work can be more fun than art that does (and I loved RW&RB the book).

13. Feeling weird about: Soon outliving Elvis.

14. Looking forward to: Zadie Smith's new novel; the forthcoming movie Bottoms, ft. the internet's girlfriend Ayo Edebiri; Stephen Fry hosting the British Jeopardy; more of this season's already-intriguing Only Murders in the Building ft. Paul Rudd.

15. Wet things smell stronger,
    and I suppose his main regret is that
    he can sniff just one at a time.
    In a frenzy of delight
    he runs way up the sandy road—
    scored by freshets after five days
    of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf.

    When I whistle he halts abruptly
    and steps in a circle,
    swings his extravagant tail.
    The he rolls and rubs his muzzle
    in a particular place, while the drizzle
    falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
    and Goldenrod bend low.

    The top of the logging road stands open
    and light. Another day, before
    hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
    leaving word first at home.
    The footing is ambiguous.

    Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
    panting, and looks up with what amounts
    to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
    nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

    A sound commences in my left ear
    like the sound of the sea in a shell;
    a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
    Time to head home. I wait
    until we’re nearly out to the main road
    to put him back on the leash, and he
    —the designated optimist—
    imagines to the end that he is free.

    —"After an illness, walking the dog," by Jane Kenyon

Bye,

Laura

Hi,

I hope you are staying cool, and ~staying cool~. Here in New York it has been dog-in-fountain season, relentlessly, for weeks. In other hometown news: at my day job, we are hiring a digital project manager. Is it you or someone you know? Come thru.

1. I recently came across this Leslie Steinberg quote from "Stone Butch Blues" for the first time via the writer Alexander Chee: “I’m not saying we’ll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure. Take a chance... You’re already wondering if the world could change. Try imagining a world worth living in, and then ask yourself if that isn’t worth fighting for.” In progressive spaces it feels lately as though we've lost the ability to paint a picture of that world worth living in, with all the doom bearing down on us. But it's essential: "Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure."

2. Vote in the Tiny Awards for great little web projects.

3. Labyrinth locator and Subwaydle.

4. Young people have no idea what we used to do after work.

5. "I’d love to work with European filmmakers. I wish I spoke another language. I learned French really badly. I want you to write a piece about me quitting the business and moving to France to act. Here, they’d be like, Who cares? She left us long ago. I’m being stupid now. See? Then I’m going to see this in print and I’m going to regret it. But I won’t. Because I don’t read my press."

6. Pasta font.

7. The job decision matrix.

8. Like every self-respecting Xennial who still thinks fondly of the Counting Crows, has been to therapy, and owns far too many cookbooks, I loved the second season of The Bear. Like all my favorite art, it captures the human condition by being both hopeful and devastating at the same time: What if people can really change, but some of them can't do it fast enough to save themselves? What if we gave people chances when they deserve them, and even when they don't?

9. An in-depth investigation of Carmy's cookbook shelves.

10. "I think more people should be willing to make drastic life changes in pursuit of a good friend group." Also: How to live near your friends.

11. If you're a person who enjoys alcoholic drinks and strawberries are still available where you are, I recommend Deb Perelman's "The Red and the Black."

12. The real estate listing for Stephen Sondheim's Turtle Bay townhouse.

13. What to do with climate emotions.

14. 100 really good bird photos.

15. When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks
    shouting your name then realizing it wasn't
    you but some alarmed pretender, I went on
    running, shouting now into the sky,
    continuing your fame and luster. Since I've
    been incinerated, I've oft returned to this thought,
    that all things loved are pursued and never caught,
    even as you slept beside me you were flying off.
    At least what's never had can't be lost, the sieve
    of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone,
    wedding ring, a single repeated dream,
    a lullaby in every elegy, descriptions
    of the sea written in the desert, your broken
    umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.

    —Ash Ode, Dean Young

Bye,

Laura

Hi,

Have you seen Blade Runner 2049? It's been coming up this week because of the air quality in the northeast, but it's also just an incredible and surprisingly hopeful movie. I must also point out here that I did the math based on Harrison Ford's casting in the original and Rick Deckard is an Elder Millennial. Rick Deckard also grew up with slap bracelets, Oregon Trail, and Captain Planet. With that said:

1. "This is the fundamental power of fiction: to take you beyond your own life—beyond this world, even—and take your imagination somewhere entirely new. After the movie is over, you can relate it back to fucking Donald Trump or whatever all you like. But art is under no obligation to imitate life, and shouldn’t. Bruce Wayne shouldn’t be a charmless downer. Willy Wonka doesn't need an origin story. Old Disney cartoons don't need to be remade into dour 'live-action' ATMs. Movies can be fanciful, silly, surreal, and at a complete remove from you and your problems. They should be free to be themselves."

2. Related to above: How the employee-owned Defector became "the last good website"—one of a few, anyway.

3. Just buy the printer everyone has; it's fine.

4. Catharine MacKinnon: "Discrimination against trans people is discrimination on the basis of sex, that is gender, the social meaning of sex. It does not, contrary to anti-trans self-identified feminists, endanger women or feminism."

5. Also: Susan Sontag on why androgyny is the future.

6. How to get no (junk) mail.

7. Air traffic control radio and an elevator to space.

8. "My parents are dead; what now?"

9. This article is a little weirdly infomercial-y to the degree that I wonder if we'll find out someday that this doctor is like sponsored by the Koch brothers. But it's also fascinating that some people thought to be catatonic for years or decades due to schizophrenia are actually suffering from autoimmune disorders that attack their brain—and a few of them have, after targeted treatment, woken up.

10. The next time you go to the beach, there may be a whale under your feet.

11. Photos of David Bowie traveling by train across the Soviet Union, 1973.

12. Where you can see the Great Wave today, and the Great Wave in paper clips.

13. The sun had just gone out
    and I was walking three miles to get home.
    I wanted to die.
    I couldn't think of words and I had no future
    and I was coming down hard on everything.
    My walk was terrible.
    I didn't seem to have a heart at all
    and my whole past seemed filled up.
    So I started answering all the questions
    regardless of consequence:
    Yes I hate dark. No I love light. Yes I won't speak.
    No I will write. Yes I will breed. No I won't love.
    Yes I will bless. No I won't close. Yes I won't give.
    Love is on the other side of the lake.
    It is painful because the dark makes you hear
    the water more. I accept all that.
    And that we are not allowed romance but only its distance.
    Having finished with it all, now I am not listening.
    I wait for the silence to resume.

    —New York Address, Linda Gregg

Bye,

Laura