“The future of the Department of Education — and of the students with disabilities who depend on it — will likely hinge […] on the world views of two billionaires who abhor what they perceive as weakness and waste.”
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NBA star Victor Wembanyama brought a book with him to the All-Star Game and said that he reads before every game. My new favorite player! 📗❤️
The Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is at an all-time high right now, besting even the economic uncertainty at the start of the pandemic (May 2020).
“We, the opposition, are the majority. Take heart,” says Hamilton Nolan. “How do regimes manage to impose minority rule on enormous populations? By getting the majority to give up. Don’t do that.”
Amid shortages of air traffic controllers & fatal aircraft events, the Trump administration has purged several hundred FAA employees. Casual detail: the firing email came from a Microsoft email address, not a .gov one. (But her emails, etc.)
Elon Musk’s attack on key US government systems and agencies continues with the IRS: “US tax agency has received request for access to classified system containing personal financial records of US taxpayers”. Everyone’s tax records, nbd.
From Heather Cox Richardson, an overview of what the Trump administration is doing in terms of foreign policy. Their war on liberalism in the US is being matched by a war against liberal democracies.
The Evolution of Electronic Music (1929-2019). Interesting that it took so long for electronic music to creep into pop music and now you can barely find any music that doesn’t have electronic music in it.
Cool thing that I did not notice about The Wild Robot: at first the robot was computer-generated but gets more and more hand-painted throughout the film. “She literally begins to fuse with the island as she adapts and becomes a resident.”
New Evidence Suggests Humans Developed Written Language To Avoid Breaking Up In Person. “Early Mesopotamians created the first cuneiform tablets in 3200 BCE because they couldn’t bear the idea of looking their partner in the eye…”
My Recent Media Diet, the Endless January Edition
Hey look at this, a media diet post that’s not months and months since the last one! Phew, it’s a been a long-ass six weeks since the beginning of the year, hasn’t it? Here’s a list of what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and experiencing to help get me through the days.
Nosferatu (2024). Not usually a fan of horror movies, but I liked this a lot. Great acting and cinematography. (A-)
Shōgun by James Clavell. This took a bit to get fully into, but I was riveted for the last 600-800 pages, even though I knew what was going to happen from having seen the TV show. So much more delicious detail in the book though. A great reading experience. (A)
September 5. Loved this. Solid journalism thriller in the vein of Spotlight, The Post, and All the President’s Men. (A)
Silo (season two). In agreement with many other viewers that the middle of the season was not all that compelling, but the final two episodes were great. (B+)
Not Like Us. For whatever reason, I ignored the Drake/Kendrick feud, so I got to this late but wow. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, run for your life…” (A)
Arca Tulum. Eating at this sort of restaurant should yield exclamations like “I’ve never tasted anything quite like this”. I thought this at least three times at Arca. But also: a pile of rocks is not the ideal plate for messy food. (A-)
Aldo’s. This is a Mexican gelato chain and they had a Biscoff-flavored gelato that was so good that I went back for it three more times. (A)
Antojitos La Chiapaneca. This is the only restaurant I ate at twice in Tulum — their al pastor tacos are so good. (A)
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A quick read but very relevant to what’s happening in the world right now. In keeping with the theme, I left the book at my hotel for someone else to read. (B+)
Janet Planet. A little too contemplative for me. (B)
Abruzzo. Mario Carbone created the menu for this Italian place at the Newark Airport. I had the penne vodka and I think it was the best thing I have ever eaten at an airport? Is it insane that I kinda want to plan a trip with an EWR connection so that I can have it again? P.S. the Tripadvisor reviewers haaaated this place. (A)
Reservation Dogs (season three). I reviewed Res Dogs in the last media diet post (“I enjoyed the first season more than the subsequent two”) but I’d like another crack at it. The last three episodes of the show were fantastic, especially the hospital breakout and Elora meeting her dad. (A+)
Flow. Reminded me strongly of Studio Ghibli’s films, but this wonderful animated movie is also uniquely its own thing. (A+)
The Bends. My usual Radiohead fare tends towards Kid A and In Rainbows, but I’ve been listening to The Bends a lot lately and appreciating the less polished rockiness of it. (A-)
Wool. Since the book (more or less) covers the events of the first two seasons of the TV series, I read half of it after season one and the other half after the latest season. And…I think the TV series is much better? (B-)
Thelma. A gem of a film, like Mission Impossible crossed with About Schmidt (or maybe The Bucket List). June Squibb is *fantastic* in the lead role. (A)
The Great British Bake Off (2024). Overall I enjoyed this season — they recruited a selection of talented bakers and the changes they’ve made (e.g. getting away from stunt bakes). But I found the semifinal and final difficult to watch because one of the contestants forgot he was supposed to be entertaining on television and totally lost his composure. (B+)
GNX. I also reviewed this in the last media diet post but I’ve continued to listen and I think GNX may have moved past DAMN. as my favorite Kendrick album? (A+)
Hundreds of Beavers. Super fun and inventive…this is like an animated movie with video game elements made with live-action actors. If you’re the sort of person who loves movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you’ll probably love this movie. (B+)
Orbital by Samantha Harvey. A reviewer complained that the final third of the book took on the style of a writing exercise and I agree. (B)
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I must have watched this 50 times on VHS as a teenager — I can still recite every line. (A)
Alligator Bites Never Heal. Love this album. (A)
The Penguin. Colin Farrell is unrecognizable (and great) as Oz, and Cristin Milioti is a chillingly fantastic Sofia Falcone. The first few episodes were really strong but I felt it slipped a bit as the season went on. (A-)
I’m also in progress on Severance season two and Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time — but more on those next time.
Past installments of my media diet are available here. What good things have you watched, read, or listened to lately?
How Trying Became Cool Again
Nathan Zed argues that a lack of effort and vulnerability has made art, media, design, music, and architecture boring — that everything has the “soulless, monotonous no-personality vibe”. But artists like Tyler, the Creator; Chappell Roan; Doechii; and Kendrick Lamar are making trying cool again.
It has become uncool to just try. Like, just to put in some effort. Don’t do too much, okay, it’s embarrassing — just be nonchalant, be cool, be effortless. This has made everything boring! Everyone is too scared to try because that would be vulnerable. I feel like only now are we seeing a shift back to people putting in effort and being rewarded for it.
Ken Burns’ Criterion Closet Picks include Seven Samurai, a Fellini box set, and Wim Wenders’ Pina.
Thought-provoking musings on AI from Robin Sloan. “The language model reads Everything, and leaves Everything untouched — yet suddenly this new thing exists, with strange and formidable powers. Is that okay?”
The Crazy Thing About Babies
man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it’s teaching them how language works, and beyond that it’s really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it’s them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.
Girls Who Code’s “Five by Five” strategic plan is “reaching 5 million girls, women, and nonbinary individuals by 2030” with their programs designed to educate girls, women, and NB folks for careers in technology.
I love this week-by-week map of Gina Trapani’s life. “This is a map of my life, where each week I’ve been alive is a little box. Tap a box to see what I was doing where that week.”
Allegra Goodman writes about the “life-saving power” of listening to audiobooks (Austen, Caro, Dumas, Voltaire) with her son. “We spent hundreds of hours together and had a respite from each other too.” I *love* listening to audiobooks w/ my kids.
Wes Anderson’s next movie is called The Phoenician Scheme, an “espionage comedy-drama thriller” that will be released in US theaters in May 2025. Stars Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, ScarJo, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, etc.
Kevin Kelly’s 50 Years of Travel Tips
Kevin Kelly is the biggest traveller I know and he recently shared some of the advice he’s learned over his 50+ years on the road. Here are a few of my favorites:
If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance.
Crash a wedding. You are not a nuisance; you are the celebrity guest!
When visiting a foreign city for the first time, take a street food tour.
Co-sign on the food tour. I’ve been doing this for the past few years and it’s such a good way to orient yourself in a new place.
The most significant criteria to use when selecting travel companions is: do they complain or not, even when complaints are justified? No complaining! Complaints are for the debriefing afterwards when travel is over.
Sketchy travel plans and travel to sketchy places are ok. Take a chance. If things fall apart, your vacation has just turned into an adventure. Perfection is for watches. Trips should be imperfect. There are no stories if nothing goes amiss.
It is always colder at night than you think it should be, especially in the tropics. Pack a layer no matter what.
I packed a warm layer for my recent trip to Mexico and was shocked that I didn’t need it for the whole 10 days I was there.
The hard-to-accept truth is that it is far better to spend more time in a few places than a little time in a bunch of places.
To book a train anywhere in the world outside your home country, your first stop should be The Man in Seat 61, a sprawling website which will conveniently help you book the train you want.
If you are starting out and have seen little of the world, you can double the time you spend traveling by heading to the places it is cheapest to travel. If you stay at the budget end, you can travel twice as long for half price.
When asking someone for a restaurant recommendation, don’t ask them where is a good place you should eat; ask them where they eat. Where did they eat the last time they ate out?
Kelly also breaks travel down into two modes: retreat or engage, which reminds me of this recent interview with Rick Steves.
Deadline: “Starz has acquired the rights to Miranda July’s buzzy novel All Fours to develop as a TV series.” I wonder if July herself will be starring…
From Nolan RoYAlty (cReAtor of oNE Million chEckBOXES), A globAL CAPS LOCK. “whenever AnYONE running the CLIENt Presses caPs LOck, it PRESSEs for everyone ELsE.” (i wrote tHIS POST WItH IT.)
Jerry Lawson was one of Silicon Valley’s first Black engineers and is known as “the father of the game cartridge”.
An Update
Hey, everyone. This week has been a little wonky/distracted for me — I was tending to a sick kid for a couple of days and am trying not to get sick myself, so I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked here at KDO reporting on the coup and what we can do about it. As I said in this comment on the wild skating post, this feels like a new job to me and this week I was barely hanging on. I’m hoping to have a cleaner slate next week for getting a better handle on things.
That said, I am sensing that we could use a bit of a break from the Ń̵̥̆̐̕͝͝E̶̗̹̩̩̞̽̓̉͂̿͂̽̚͝W̸̯̠̬̝̗̖͇̅͒̀̕͠S̴̛̩̆̒̅̀̎̓͘. Or at least I do — it’s Friday and I feel like sharing some art, good news, and foolishness. Foolishness Friday or some such. Anyway, I’ll be back on Monday (or maybe over the weekend) with, uh, that other stuff. ✌️
How to stop Trump’s power grab. “Trump isn’t inevitable. Here’s a plan to keep democracy intact.”
The Venn Diagram of Trump’s Authoritarian Actions
Professor Christina Pagel of University College London has mapped the actions of the Trump administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram (above) with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”:
- Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
- Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
- Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
- Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
- Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization
This diagram is available as a PDF and the information is also contained in this categorized table. Links and commentary from Pagel can be found on Bluesky as well.
Also very helpful is this list of authoritarian actions that the Trump administration has taken, each with a link to the relevant news story. I will be referring back to this list often in the coming weeks.
Really interesting essay about organizing: How Much Discomfort Is the Whole World Worth? “If we cannot organize beyond the bounds of our comfort zones, we will never build movements large enough to combat the forces that would destroy us.”
“Fuck the Middle Ground”
Jessica Valenti on why there’s no room for compromise or middle ground on abortion rights.
Anyone still holding out hope for a ‘compromise’ on abortion rights needs to give it up. Right now.
Over the past few days, a Louisiana mother was arrested for getting abortion pills for her teenager, abortion reports became public records in Indiana, and Arkansas advanced a bill mandating an anti-abortion propaganda video be shown in public school classrooms.
Also in the last week, the new Trump administration erased information on reproductive health and privacy rights from government websites, Missouri Republicans moved to overturn a pro-choice amendment that voters approved in November, Idaho legislators proposed a bill that could punish abortion patients with the death penalty, and South Carolina lawmakers pushed legislation that wouldn’t just ban pro-choice websites—it would make it a felony to even talk about abortion with a pregnant person.
In the short amount of time Donald Trump has been in office, anti-abortion extremists have been told they can attack clinics without fear of arrest, and the Republican party who once claimed they’d never punish women for abortion now say bills to prosecute patients as murderers “inspire healthy dialogue.”
Do these sound like people interested in ‘compromise’? We’re watching conservatives dismantle democracy and force women back into the home — killing quite a few of us along the way. In what universe is the appropriate response finding common ground?
You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.
This is a paywalled article but it includes the entire text — “It’s past time to act like it.” is the last line of the piece.
See also Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway and A.R. Moxon’s essay that reminds us the center between fascism and democracy is fascism. (thx, meg)
House GOP has reintroduced the SAVE Act, which would require voters to show a passport or birth cert. when voting as proof of citizenship. But 140M Americans don’t have a passport and 69M women don’t have a birth cert. matching their current last name.
Elie Mystal on Elon Musk’s vision of neo-apartheid. “First and most important, apartheid is a business plan. It’s a system designed to exploit cheap Black labor, without ever letting Black people reap the financial and social gains of hard work.”
Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream is a forthcoming book that’s “an exposé of private equity’s devastating impact on American lives, communities, and the economy”.
Is This the End of the American Constitution?
Jamelle Bouie has started posting video essays on his YouTube channel about the current US political crisis. His latest one is an adaptation of his NY Times piece, There Is No Going Back.
Now, even if Musk had been elected to office, this would still be one of the worst abuses of power in American history. That is unquestionable. No one in the executive branch has the legal authority to unilaterally cancel congressional appropriations. No one has the legal authority to turn the Treasury payment system into a means of political retribution. No one has the authority to summarily dismiss civil servants without cause. No one has the authority to take down and scrub Americans’ data unilaterally. And no private citizen has the authority to access some of the most sensitive data the government collects on private citizens for their own unknown and probably nefarious purposes.
Bouie has also regularly been posting videos to his Instagram (bio: “National program director of the CHUM Group”) and TikTok.
On a scale of +10 (full democracy) to -10 (full autocracy), the US now scores a 0, its lowest score since the Civil War. “The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy.”
RFK Jr. confirmed as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. There has been a lot of horrible news over the past month but this one is making me feel ill. I’m gonna log off for awhile.
Heather Cox Richardson on the history of the liberal consensus, from Lincoln to Eisenhower, and how the country has been turning back toward “the idea of a small government that serves the needs of a few wealthy people”.
What can I do to fight this coup? “We will succeed because millions of people do a couple things well, not because one person does a million things.”
Do Not Obey In Advance
Speaking of Timothy Snyder, Literary Hub published the first chapter (the one on not obeying in advance) of his 2017 book On Tyranny. It begins:
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not at first have the direct means of influencing citizens one way or another. After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed.
It’s also worth reading the original list posted by Snyder in November 2016 that became the basis of On Tyranny: Fighting Authoritarianism: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century.
10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.
You’re Allowed to Feel like Garbage. “If you are a remotely informed left-leaning person in America right now, why wouldn’t you be experiencing depression and anxiety?”
Trump’s Obsession With Immigration Is Really an Obsession With Segregation. His policies are a continuation of the 1790 Naturalization Act (only landowning white men were citizens), the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, etc.
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba “is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe”.
“We Are Hurtling Towards Having a Russian-Type Regime”
Writing from Ukraine on his way to the front in the country’s war with Russia, Timothy Snyder muses about the differences in life & freedom on the Ukrainian & Russian sides of the war’s front line.
Yet, on this, the Ukrainian side of the line, people lead completely different lives than under Russian occupation or in Russia. Ukrainians say what they want, including about the war and about politics. Journalists cover the war and write about politics. There is fear, although less than you might think; but it is fear of bombs and missiles and violence from Russia, not of denunciations or oppression or of one’s own government. I have the strange feeling, this week in Kyiv, that Ukrainians are living freer lives now than Americans. At a book store where I was talking to a Ukrainian philosopher about freedom, a young woman put her hand on my arm and said “sorry about the U.S.”
Snyder then goes on to wonder if the United States is now headed towards a similar line:
I have in mind something deeper: the transformation of our public and private lives. As in Russia, we have let local newspapers and local media die. As in Russia, their place was taken by a few commercial operations. As in Russia, the media are owned by oligarchs, who then become close to government or submit to it (not all of the media in America, of course, are submitting, but far too many are). As in Russia, our daily lives are flooded by such a rushing river of contradictory lies that we have trouble knowing where we are, let alone what we should do. As in Russia, a president supported by oligarchs and their media power is trying to humiliate the other branches of government. The executive is seeking to marginalize the legislature — forever — by ruling without passing laws. The executive is seeking to marginalize the judiciary — forever — by ignoring court rulings. Those things, of course, have already happened in Russia.
This passage made my stomach drop:
As I close my tablet and go to sleep, I am safer than every single one of you reading this in the United States, and indeed safer than I would be in the United States. My train will stop in five hours. But America will keep hurtling.
It’s a great, provocative piece; read the whole thing.
Jamelle Bouie: Trump’s War on DEI Is Really a War on Civil Rights. “His attack on DEI isn’t about increasing merit or fighting wrongful discrimination; it is about reimposing hierarchies of race & gender (among other categories) onto American society.”
Tressie McMillan Cottom’s latest is not easily summarized, but is well-worth a read: Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work.
The Trump administration barred an AP reporter from an event because the AP won’t refer to the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”. Something something free speech something something protects but does not bind, etc. etc. lolololsob
Security expert Bruce Schneier & digital ethicist Davi Ottenheimer: “The U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history.” And: “This is beyond politics — this is a matter of national security.”
Josh Marshall: “This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government.” And: “I genuinely don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Elon Musk is functionally in charge of the US government.”
Law professors are a staid bunch. But: “We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now. There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
Pitching a Big Tent in an Emergency
On her newly launched site, Meditations in an Emergency, Rebecca Solnit talks about the importance of coming together with “people who are not exactly like each of us individually” in times of crisis.
In this emergency, I think it likely that we are going to need to pitch a very big tent and invite everyone in who doesn’t want to live in a dictatorship, who wants the rule of law, the checks and balances, the Constitution to still be in effect, everyone’s human and civil rights protected, who wants to protect the vulnerable.
I also appreciated her speaking up about a dynamic I’ve witnessed on social media a lot:
I want to take an unscenic detour to talk about what I’ve noticed on social media lately, and doing so is a reminder that being on social media is forever derided and dismissed, but it’s where a lot of us connect with each other, gather (reliable or corrupt) information, connect, and express ourselves. I’ve often found it useful as a sort of laboratory for opinion. And what I’ve seen lately — and really all along — is a focus on morality and taste rather than strategy and possibility.
She continued:
It was a snarky week on social media. Someone I otherwise respect re-posted a guy proposing that all Tesla vehicles should be vandalized (though obviously many people bought them well before this crisis, even before Musk went so far into right-wing rage, racism, and conspiracy theory, and many bought them out of concern for the climate). People lashed out at those who didn’t vote for Harris, and apparently some people were sneering at those impacted in a measles outbreak in Texas, though this meant kids suffering the consequences for their parents’ anti-vaccination ideology. Going after each other is not going after the Trump Administration; fighting each other produces division when we need unity or at least a broad coalition. I’m not arguing here for having nothing but lofty thoughts; I have plenty of not very nice thoughts, but I try to save them for conversations in private and statements about actual enemies.
In these comments, people weren’t looking for strategy or possibility or the building of coalitions and the reaching out to new potential allies. They were looking for people to scorn.
Like Solnit, I just don’t find it helpful to wage rhetorical war on potential allies — although it may be understandable, give how scared and helpless people feel.
A federal judge has ordered the HHS, CDC, and FDA to restore their websites and datasets to how they were on Jan 30th by 11:59pm tonight. Resistance is not futile, but we’ll see how much Trump wants to push/piss off the judiciary.
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