… I don’t agree with them about everything, but they’re fun to listen to and they’ve got a pretty way of saying what they’re saying:
Author: dave-o
Re-watched WAKING LIFE last night
This movie was a Big Deal to us back when it came out in 2001, but it hasn’t necessarily aged well (“Oh, look, another annoying young white man talking,” my wife opined near the end).
That said, I was struck, over and over again, by how hopefully the movie is about now.
Even in its cynical moments, it’s hopeful about us—the humans of the future—in a way that feels like something midway between “charmingly quaint” and “astoundingly, nearly nauseously, naive.”
I want to be like the people in this film. I want to see us the way they were certain we’d be. I want to be as confident as they were that we’d at least be trying to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday.
Today is Summer Solstice. Quite literally, it gets darker from here.
Let’s try and be the people we always assumed we were, dee down inside.
If you want to understand the last three years in American politics, read Stephen King’s 1985 novella “The Mist”
This is, by no means, any sort of endorsement of any of the film/TV/radio-drama adaptations of this work—all of which either entirely miss what gives this story its lasting power, or convert a fundamentally profound work about kitchen-table American politics (i.e., the only kind that actually matters) to a moderately stupid and lazily nihilistic creature features.
Read the novella (which is also the first story in Skeleton Crew—a whole book of classic King shorts that costs just a couple buck more than the standalone novella—and is bootlegged here). Ignore the monsters and the titular mist; watch the people. And never lose sight of the final word in the story.
Listen to (or Read) My Story “Whatever Comes After Calcutta” on @PseudoPod
The Pseudopod team always does great work, but I’m especially thrilled with what the reader—Rish Outfield—has done here; the story has lots of voices, and he captures them all. Such a treat. (For those less inclined to audio drama and more to old-fashioned reading, they have the full text of the story posted, too.)
PseudoPod 649: “Whatever Comes After Calcutta”
And here’s a YouTube video of the audio, if that’s your jam:
Enjoy!
Are you a grown-up American? Do you vote? Then plz take three minutes to get yr head around “marginal tax brackets”🇺🇸🌟
About half of all Americans fundamentally misunderstand how U.S. “tax brackets” work. (Ironically, those in the traditionally “fiscally conservative” party are significantly more likely to fundamental misunderstand our tax system.) As a result, many, many, many Americans argue and vote against both public interest and their own interest, with the sole beneficiaries being the extremely rich (both human and corporate).
Now’s the time to get your head straight. The Twitter thread embedded below lays it out nicely, as does this article from the Washington Post (which takes just three minutes to read, and even explains why we use this somewhat counter-intuitive and often confusing tax bracket scheme).
This is your Civics homework for today. It’s pretty easy. I’m sure you’ll get a gold star!🌟
Post WWII, the tax rate peaked at 94% on annual income over $200,000 ($3mil in 2018 dollars). In the decades following, it dropped to a marginal tax rate of 70% of all income over 200k/annually (again, 2-3mil in today’s dollars, depending on year).
— Dianna E. Anderson 🏳️🌈 (@diannaeanderson) January 5, 2019
so, so, sooooothing 🎄
I understand that this is a stressful time of year for many of you. Get a sweet, milky coffee, sit in a comfy chair, and just watch this over, and over, and over again. You will feel better.
This is easily the best Christmas movie David Lynch never made
The Truth About Skateboarding Videos
Xappy Xanukah! ♪♫♪♬
I’m a Jew—born and raised—but I come from a “mixed” family (they say “interfaith” now). My dad is a Jew, but my mom was raised Christian. Both my maternal grandparents—with whom I spent a lot of time growing up—were practicing Christians. Far from shockingly, my own marriage is mixed (my wife was raised Catholic, our kids are Jews who end up participating in a lot of Xtian traditions). Interfaith families are really common now, but were much less so when I was young.
As you’re likely aware, back when I was a kid there weren’t a lot of Xanukah songs for us Jewish kids. There weren’t many songs for Jewish kids, but there were some; there were absolutely zero songs for mixed half-a-Jews with an Xmas tree and a Xanukiah and a cat that managed to catch fire in the Xanukah candles every year and Xtian grandparents who came to town on Xmas Eve specifically to partake in the Jewish tradition of Xmas Chinese food.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re sort of a nation that always wants everyone to be one thing or another thing—black or white, nerd or jock, Jew or Gentile, girl or boy—and doesn’t have much patience for things that are mixed and ambiguous and a lil-o’-both. I was in my 20s, and in a Women’s Studies class, before I learned what the hell “intersectionality” was, and my identity began to make any sense to me.
This year—for the third year running—my local Jewish Community Center is collecting donations of Christmas presents, to be given to the Syrian refugees relocated here.
On the one hand, that sounds almost too perfectly absurd: Jews giving Muslims Christmas presents. On the other, it feels like basically the most perfect possible introduction to America.🕎🎄☪🇺🇸
Anyway, there weren’t many mixed kids like me when I was growing up—and there weren’t any songs or holiday specials or children’s books that reflected what I saw and felt and loved about wintertime.
So these are my songs, for all the little intersectional mixed kids out there, who don’t have any holiday songs to sing.
Enjoy!