European nations were at war for a thousand years, culminating in two of the bloodiest wars ever fought. But those nations have been at peace for 80 years. This is a magnificent achievement. The Trump administration thinks it’s “pathetic."

Make Person-To-Person Email a Thing Again

Inspired by Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr, I’m trying to Make Person-to-Person Email a Thing again. If your message does not require immediate attention, don’t send a text message, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, or other direct-message. Just send an email. That way, the recipient reads and responds to it it at their leisure.

Things you should send in email:

  • “Happy birthday!”
  • “Here is a funny meme.”
  • “Let’s get together in a couple of weeks.”

Things that are OK to send in text message:

  • “I’m running 15 minutes late - sorry!”
  • “You’re on fire. Literally. You might want to look into that.”
  • “There is pie.”

Cory wrote about this on his blog recently, but I can’t find the link.

I’m having a lot of difficulty focusing on work today. Fortunately, my work requires me to operate a computer that is connected to the whole Internet oh shit I’m fucked.

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog: The Canada geese are back hanging around at the park. The goslings are not far behind!

Two Canada geese relaxing on a patch of green grass near a tree.

"But her emails!" is back in the news again

When Clinton used her email for official business, it was completely normal behavior, even at her level of government. Small professional services businesses (like the Clinton Foundation) ran their own email servers, and people used their personal email for work.

It was utterly innocent behavior that the Republicans just pretended was shady. Republicans like to do that.

We’re seeing the same strategy today with transphobia and hysteria over immigration and migrants. Trans people, immigrants and migrants threaten no one, but Republicans are just making shit up and getting their supporters worked up over nothing. Jumping at shadows — but there aren’t even any shadows. It’s jumping at nothing.

71-year-old Donald Gorske has eaten two McDonald’s Big Macs every day since 1972. That’s 35,000 Big Macs. He’s saved the receipts and cartons, stacked in his basement.

I still sometimes think about something John Gruber said on Daring Fireball when Gorske was in the news for eating his 25,000th Big Mac in 2011:

My first thought when I heard about him was that he must be either an idiot or an asshole. But now I think not. I think maybe he’s a lucky man — someone who found the perfect food to suit his taste, an obsessive who never tires of it, and it happens to be cheap and readily available almost everywhere in the world.

The life and death of artist Thomas Kinkade

“Painter of Light” Thomas Kinkade, who died from an overdose of alcohol and Valium 13 years ago, is the subject of a new documentary, “Art for Everybody,” by Miranda Yousef.

Kinkade’s fans adore him, made him a ubiquitous cultural icon and built him a financial empire. But he was an alcoholic, accused of multiple instances of sexua harassment, and lost a $3 million court case for defrauding gallery owners, writes Veronica Esposito at The Guardian

“One of my guiding lights is that you have to love your subject,” Yousef told Esposito. “You can see in the film if a film-maker is contemptuous of the subject, and that gets in the way of telling a good and true story.”

Kinkade’s story engages questions about “what is art and who gets to decide, the politicization of taste, and the cost of turning yourself into a brand,” Esposito writes.

Arguably Kinkade’s most prescient stroke was how he turned himself into a brand, obtaining a kind of quasi-influencer status years before there were social media networks capable of delivering fame and fortune. He reached his ubiquity the old fashioned way, through brick-and-mortar stores, a PBS TV show à la Bob Ross, endless merchandising opportunities, and an unbelievable hustle ethic. He even trademarked the “Painter of Light” moniker for himself. (Yousef does point out that the British Romantic artist JMW Turner beat him to that nickname by a good 150 years.)

“Derby Dugan’s Depression Funnies” by Tom De Haven is one of my all-time favorite novels. I recommended it highly to a friend yesterday. That caused me this morning to revisit this review of the novel that I wrote for reactormag.com way back in 2010.

Two years after the review was published — 13 years ago — someone left a question in the comments, and no one answered that question, so I answered now.

It’s always a kick for me to get a response like that to some ancient comment, years later; hopefully “sarahp,” who left that question in the far-away year of 2013, will feel the same way.

Ami Angelwings:: “The original Dear Abby was a badass, esp for her time, she was a champion for queer acceptance in her column and was very big on telling parents to listen and accept their children instead of punishing and fighting with them. But also this response is a banger. Top 10 advice columnist responses of all time.”

Walking Tashkent (Uzbekistan) — I love Chris Arnade’s travelogues, served with political philosophy, discussion of why we don’t build things in American anymore and outstanding photography of ordinary street scenes,

More US states are reporting measles cases as deadly anti-vax lies spread

Melody Schreiber / The Guardian: Measles deaths include a 6-year-old girl, whose parents appeared on a video spreading deadly anti-vaccine lies soon after her death. They appeared in a video with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organiation previously headed by RFK Jr.

“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” said the girl’s mother, referring to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. “The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it,” she said of her four other children.

“It’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be,” the father said through a translator. Both parents fought back tears throughout the interview.

“The measles wasn’t that bad” — but all four of their kids got it and one died. Heartbreaking.

Every time I empty my computer bag to search for something small I feel like a cartoon character pulling out progressively more ridiculous objects: a horseshoe, concertina, capuchin monkey riding a unicycle.

The Underlying Problem (Hamilton Nolan) — “This is happening because some people are too rich.”

The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.

And it’s not just Musk:

We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions.

How did Snow White become the year’s most cursed movie? (Adrian Horton / The Guardian) — The anti-woke brigades are triggered that Disney cast an American actor of Colombian descent as Snow White. Pro-Palestinian advocates hate the casting of Gal Godot. Peter Dinklage hates the whole seven-dwarfs thing. And more.

I remember seeing the 1937 movie when I was a little kid, more than 55 years ago, and even then it seemed corny and old-fashioned.

I wanted to hate the 2025 update but the trailer looks pretty good.

Every read-it-later app I see plus my RSS reader is adding AI summarization features. I don’t need an app to read for me; I have been reading since I was six years old.

El Cajon nurse can’t shake COVID-19’s unrelenting grip: ‘I have lost relationships’

Nicole Baca, a 40-year-old registered nurse in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, talks with the Union-Tribune’s Paul Sisson about her struggle with Long Covid. Her symptoms closely resemble people close to me:

Today, she’s grateful if she can take a walk at Ocean Beach with her husband, an act that requires meticulous pre-planning to avoid the racing pulse that can make her dangerously dizzy.

“Once, I had an episode where I almost passed out in a neighbor’s driveway,” she said. “I bent down to pick something up that was on the ground, and everything started to turn white.”

…

This never-ending fight started in June of 2020 when she found herself becoming strangely confused during a shift in a COVID-19 unit at the San Diego hospital where she worked. These were the days when health care workers were isolating themselves from their families, often staying in hotel rooms when off duty.

“My last day at work, I caught myself forgetting what I was doing, and I felt like I was on cold medicine, but I wasn’t,” she said. “I developed shortness of breath, a fever, fatigue, extreme bone pain, cough, diarrhea and dizziness.

“I was stumbling into the walls of my hotel room. Weirdly enough, I never lost my sense of taste or smell like most people did at the time.”

Most see such symptoms gradually resolve. For Baca, they worsened, permanently causing her body to overreact to small changes in elevation. Just standing up sends her pulse racing, the heart monitor in her Apple Watch warning of a dangerously erratic heartbeat. Such cardiac overcorrection causes her blood pressure to drop, increasing the chances that she will faint.

I am embarking on my fourth business trip in the past year after a four year hiatus. I feel I have regained the art of rapid packing — but maybe I should wait on saying that until I get to the hotel and find out that I’ve only packed right shoes.

We watched another episode of “The Rockford Files” last night. I am continually amazed at how well that show holds up 50 years later.

I want Rockford’s car. Of course I do. But I also want all of his sports jackets.

When watching early 70s mysteries, part of the treat is seeing the lineup of guest stars who would become big stars later in the decade, as well as formerly big stars at the end of their careers. Last night’s episode featured Suzanne Somers as a wealthy expatriate. This was only a year after she played the blonde in the T-Bird in American Graffiti, and she still doesn’t have a speaking role here. Jill Clayburgh plays a bubbly hippie artist’s model.

Jamelle Bouie: The Founders Were Afraid for the Country, Too (NYT) — Bouie quotes Franklin, Hamilton, Washington and Madison on their fears of despotism and and hopes for the enduring freedom of their new country. He ends on a note of cautious optimism:

We have a would-be despot in the White House. But even with a rotting Constitution on the verge of crisis, this is still a Republic, and the people are still sovereign. The task, then, is to make this clear to those in power who would like to pretend otherwise.

Hamilton Nolan: Seeing Things For What They Are — The US political models that have been useful for the past 40 years have fundamentally changed. Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C., is hopelessly mired in the past.

Extreme things—things that sit completely outside of the mental framework that too many of our political leaders are still using to govern their decisions—are happening now. And they are going to happen more. And they are going to get more extreme. This does not mean that we are in a hopeless situation. It does, however, mean that we must adjust our interpretation of the world, or be left behind.

Not just political leaders. Every American needs to realize that the rules we operated under until 2024 are obsolete, and we need to reconcile with the new order.

New 'Starship Troopers' Movie in the Works from 'District 9' Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp

Borys Kyt at The Hollywood Reporter:

Blomkamp’s take is not a remake of the Verhoeven movie, and sources say the goal is to go back to the source material.

Not my favorite Heinlein. I guess I’ll see if if it looks good.

I’d love to see a movie or prestige miniseries of my favorite Heinlein: “Citizen of the Galaxy," “Starman Jones," “The Star Beast,” “Double Star” and “Methuselah’s Children.” “Orphans of the Sky” wasn’t a great book but it could be a great movie or series.

You want to bring back American ingenuity again? Make education and healthcare accessible to everyone. Make “right to repair” codified in the Constitution. Make Net Neutrality the law of the land. A person’s chance of surviving and having a roof over their head shouldn’t depend on “generational wealth”. Once those things happen, American ingenuity will return in full force again. It’s not Canada, Mexico, or Europe’s fault we’re here. It’s our own fault. But we can still do better.

— Scott Williams
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online

It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot (David Brooks / NYT) — The world now sees the US as a dangerous rogue superpower, Brooks notes. “I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist,” he says. But Brooks ends his column on a hopeful note; when Trump and his movement inevitably self-destruct, that will be “an opportunity and rebirth.”

You Are Not Free to Move About the Country (Lisa Schmeiser / So What? Who Cares?) — Southwest Airlines' announcement to start charging for luggage points to more significant issues in the U.S. Lisa quotes NYT reporter Nelson D. Schwartz, who coined the name “Velvet Rope Economy;” for everything from getting coffee to going to Disneyland, the top 10% get to pay to cut the line ahead of the rest of us.

In my lunchtime web wanderings, I stumbled across this 1900 historical image from the town square in Newton, New Jersey.

I know that area very well—I lived a two-minute walk from that very spot for four years in the late 1980s, and worked as a reporter at the New Jersey Herald, whose offices were behind the courthouse.

Nearly 90 years later, the view from that spot was the same as in this photo, and I’m told it looked the same six years ago, too.

I got a follow request from a woman on Mastodon who wants me to be her sugar baby. I’m up for that.

The missus and I watched another episode of “Columbo” last night. The guest stars were Eddie Albert as a heroic Marines general who murders a fellow officer to cover up embezzlement, and Suzanne Pleshette as the sad, ditzy woman who witnesses the crime. I was unable to suspend disbelief — every second they were onscreen I thought, “That’s the guy from Green Acres and Bob Newhart’s wife.”

Also, Suzanne Pleshette’s character seemed sexist in a low-key ambient 1971 sort of way. She lives alone with her mother; they are both sad and the mother is bitter. It seemed to be the assumption that two women over 30 living alone without men would lead of course lead empty and sad lives. I am possibly overthinking this.

We’re slowly watching a few 1970s crime shows that were massive hits in the day, including “Columbo,” “The Rockford FIles,” “McMillan & Wife” and “McCloud.” Of them, my favorite by far is Rockford. I want to be Jim Rockford when I grow up and live in a trailer on the beach and go fishing off the pier with my father, whom I call “Rocky.”

"Fascism always fails. It is destructive and it is awful and not everyone lives to see the other side, but it always, always fails."

A brief history of George Dale, who fought a quixotic battle against the Ku Klux Klan in Muncie, Indiana in the 1920s — and won.

The Klan had millions of members and controlled whole states in the 1920s, spewing racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and other hatred. But decent, courageous Americans like Dale pushed back.

What Felt Impossible Became Possible dansinker.com/posts/202…

The More You Have, the Less You Fight.

Institutions — businesses, the Democratic Party, the courts and universities — won’t oppose Trump because they have too much to lose.

Grassroots movements made up of regular people are where the resistance has to happen…. If you and I sit around waiting for all of those Respectable Institutions to take the lead, we will be spending the next few years doing nothing except being crestfallen by the inaction from above. I guess we might as well get to it, then. Don’t be sad you’re not rich. Be happy that you’re free."

www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-mor…

Apple Readies Dramatic Design Overhauls for iOS 19, iPadOS 19, macOS 16. By Mark Gurman. bloomberg.com. I don’t want to learn to use my phone and computer again.

Musk’s Empire Is Looking Even More Shaky: He’s sabotaging his own business by insulting and alienating customers, even as competitors catch up with his companies' leads. “… if you don’t like Musk … get ready to enjoy a rich harvest of schadenfreude.” ianwelsh.net

I have a reminder to prepare for a meeting to prepare for another meeting to prepare for a project. I have reached a kind of corporate nirvana here.

How It Actually Feels To Live With Face Blindness

Daisy Jones at British Vogue:

“Oh my God, heyyy”

Four words I dread hearing, delivered this time at a train station. I spin around. There’s a girl in front of me: similar age, dark hair, face that could be described as “vaguely familiar”. Or maybe she just looks like someone I should be friends with.

“How are you doing?” She says that last part as if she’s dying to know.

“Oh heyyy,” I respond in the same tone. “Yeah, great thanks, you?”

“Really well. I just got the keys to my new art studio, so that’s quite exciting.” I make a mental note of “art studio”. She makes art. My first contextual clue.

“It’s so important to have your own space,” I reply. “I would actually love to have my own office one day.” If I keep talking, I think, she’ll never know. She’ll never know that I have no idea who she is.

I have encounters just like this on a regular basis. Last week I was at a professional conference and had several encounters like this every day. Fortunately, people at conferences wear name-badges.

Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina on the measles outbreak and how RFK and other authorities are spreading dangerous misinformation. Also: Hantavirus, Medicaid popularity and opiod and HPV deaths decline. yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

In ‘Dark Winds,’ things are about to get even darker: Zahn McClarnon, who stars as Joe Leaphorn, on the new season. nytimes.com

The Digital Packrat Manifesto. “DRM and big tech’s war on ownership has led me to make my own media libraries, and you should too.” — Janus Rose. 404media.co

The War on Memory: Learning from the Jewish Labor Bund — Molly Crabapple. The Bund was a Jewish anti-Zionist political organization that flourished in Poland between WWI and WWII. thefunambulist.net

“The critics panned [Mickey] Spillane, but he didn’t care. He said, ‘Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.’ He said he never had a character who drank cognac or had a mustache, because he didn’t know how to spell those words.” — Garrison Keillor [writersalmanac.publicradio.org]

James Davis Nicoll reviews “Galactic Empires,” a two-volume 1976 science fiction anthology of stories about (you guessed it) galactic empires, edited by Brian Aldiss. I loved those books. [jamesdavisnicoll.com]

Patti Davis, on her father, Ronald Reagan: My Father Spoke to Me Only Once About Why He Led This Nation

Davis writes about a conversation with Reagan in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House the night of his 1981 inauguration. According to Davis, Reagan told her:

“I really believe I can make this world a safer, more peaceful place. That’s why I ran for president.” When he left and the stillness of Lincoln’s bedroom folded around me, with all of its history and stories, I was struck by the fact that he spoke about the world, not just America.

I’ve thought about that night a lot lately, as America becomes more isolated, as we back away from allies and tensions grow. I’ve thought also about the lessons my father imparted to me as a child. He taught me at an early age about the Holocaust and that no country is immune to horrors like that. He told me that America’s democracy, while strong, is also fragile and to remain strong, we had to recognize that. He believed our democracy was a “grand experiment” and as such, it should be treated carefully.

A Haunting Coda: The 7 Days Gene Hackman’s Wife Could No Longer Care for Him: The exact details may never be known, but Mr. Hackman, 95 with advanced Alzheimer’s, was alone for about a week after his wife and sole caregiver died. [nytimes.com]

These expert tips on how to care for a loved one with dementia assume a level of financial and social resources that many caregivers just won’t have: Set up a caregiving team of at least five friends and family. Hire a geriatric social worker or nurse. Etc. [nytimes.com]

About 60 trans athletes play organized sports in the US. Sixty. Politicians and influencers trying to stir up outrage about this are distracting you while they steal from you.

The view from my hotel window, in one of the most ancient and beautiful cities in the world.

A view from above shows a curving road beside industrial and commercial buildings, with a cloudy sky and open landscape in the background.

Barcelona really is all that — truly ancient and beautiful. However, my neighborhood does not partake of that legacy. It’s fine, though. Comfortable and reasonably close to Mobile World Congress.

The great thing about AirTags as you get instant reassurance when you get off the plane that your luggage is in the same airport that you are. The frustrating thing is you can see that your luggage is 3/10 of a mile away from you and hasn’t moved in a long time.

JFK airport is a shitshow, particularly if you are unused to flying through it and trying to make a connection from one side of the airport to the other. But the random people who work there that I asked for guidance were extremely helpful – and I’m not kidding about that.

Quest Bars are an exceptionally great travel snack to pack in your go bag. They’re satisfying when you don’t have time to get real food; they’re just tasty enough to enjoy while eating them, but not tasty enough that you’re ever tempted to eat them recreationally.

I got this recommendation years ago from a podcaster named CGP Grey on the Cortex podcast. 100% correct, extremely useful.

RIP Joseph Wambaugh, 88, ex-cop and writer, who wrote brilliant police procedurals and true crime, including "The Onion Field."

I loved his books. His cops were sometimes heroic, sometimes bad and dirty, sometimes both at once. He wrote lovingly about them and about cold-blooded murderers.

He had a remarkable life, continuing to work as a policeman years after his writing career took off, quitting only when he became too famous for police work.

Robert D. McFadden at the NY Times::

“I’m very interested in the concept of the sociopath, very interested, because my conscience has bothered me all my life,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1989. “Talk about regrets – I have about 20 every day. I was educated in Catholic schools, and they did that to me. So I have to cope with a conscience all the time. And I’m interested in a creature who has none of that.”

I’m at the airport at the gate waiting for a flight out. There’s a guy here sitting in a chair literally playing the trombone. I’m pretty sure he’s a passenger — I don’t think he works for the airline as an onboard trombonist.

At least it’s not a tuba.

How could they have named the company “Anker” when “Wanker” was right there?