hi 💛

summer is in full swing in nyc, and every day i walk down the streets and wonder what it would be like if the living was easy.

don’t get me wrong, the living is wonderful - the sun being up from before i wake to after i leave the office fills me with a sense of buoyancy, and the water-gushing fire hydrants fill the streets with people and chaos. but…easy?

i’ve long-assumed that the summer did use to be easy - that the summer temps used to be significantly cooler than they are today. that’s part of it: temperatures in New York have risen 2.5°F over the last century, and the actual impact feels much worse due to the additional heat waste from ACs and the amplification from all the concrete.

but summertime was written in 1934, and Billie Holiday released her version 2 years later, just 2 months after a devastating heat wave…so perhaps the ease it refers to has never been about comfort.

i’m never not thinking about Tim Wu’s 2018 opinion piece “The Tyranny of Convenience”, and something about the inconvenience of the summer feels like it opens up more possibility - if doing anything at all is difficult, then the level of difficulty stops being a barrier. lately I’ve been chewing on Kyla Scanlon’s “The Most Valuable Commodity in the World is Friction”, and it feels like the mess and the sweat and the heat of summer strips away the pretense of a frictionless existence.

🌞 speaking of the sun:

• the New Yorker’s “4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun is Having a Moment” is filled to the brim with stats and stories from the solar revolution, and written with such hope it made me tear up

  • let me know if you need a pdf

• on a different note, tumblr user greyt-expectations has put together a map with a sun god for every timezone, for all your worship needs

bouncing around in the pinball machine that is my mind

articles

• i’ve thought about Scott Alexander’s theory of misophonia every time I’ve found myself frustrated about something in the past 4 months.

• Andrea Long Chu’s book reviews (e.g. “The Romance of Being Unreadable”) are acerbic and thought-provoking. i enjoyed S. C. Cornell’s attempt to reflect the same kind of lens back on her.

  • disable JS to read the first link, use a private browser for the New Yorker

• i’ve shared articles from Clara’s substack before - in “the suggested utopia of the natural world” she’s analyzing class in a collection of short stories by Ivan Turgenev, writing about its impact on society and what she thinks it tells us about Turgenev’s beliefs.

  • this one is for paid subscribers, and worth a free trial, or i can send you a pdf

• perhaps the most intellectually-demanding essay in this newsletter (and definitely the hardest to write a description of), Tanner Greer’s “American Nightmares: Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Dark Visions of the Future” is a fascinating comparison of 2 different foreign observers of American culture, 150 years apart.

  • what does it discuss? America’s stumble towards soft authoritarianism - transforming from Tocqueville's nation of self-reliant citizens into Huning’s society of isolated techno-subjects, considering alongside it China’s own stumbling, contradictory relationship with technology and governance

  

TV

these 2 shows made me cry:

• The Pitt - the kind of show many people find stressful (a la The Bear), but is also a beautiful and carefully made piece of art

  • i can’t find the original interview i read, but this story gets at part of what feels so special about it

• Social Studies - this documentary series follows LA students returning to high school post-covid (2021-2022). the kids agreed to screen record their phones, in addition to having film crews around at home, school, parties, etc

books

• The Overstory - a beautiful fiction book that asks how our relationship with the natural world changes our relationship to ourselves and others

  • described by my friend Matt as “trying too hard to be a masterpiece”, i still think it’ll probably be the best book I read all year

• The Tainted Cup - Sherlock Holmes if it was set in a world where technological advancements come from deadly alchemical experiments on the blood and bones of ocean monsters

videos

• Jason Swet’s "The Anti-Playbook For Engaging with Cult Followings” about how Jon Bellion is crafting relationships with his audience

• Eugene Healey’s takes on culture and branding, e.g. this video about 80s excess: dark mode, post-shame, and nostalgia

art

• Ada Limon’s
  "Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds" is a gorgeous poem I’ve been ruminating on

• Cal Stewart’s wide format photos are beautiful in his review of the X-Pan here

  

music

• i’m late for Pride Month, but this silly tumblr-post- turned-song from an HR training module is a bop

• Beche gifted the world with TWO beautiful singles - Quarter Life and Laymen

• Bandits on the Run released my favorite song about rain: Tiny Boy

• Daisy Grenade is here to ensure we have bops for the summer with Don’t Sweat It

• Sorry Darling’s cover of Passionate Kisses also feels like it’s in the running for song of the summer

  

upcoming plans

are you in NYC? let’s hang out :)

my summer bucket list

• ⚾️ catch a baseball game (since we last talked I’ve been to 2 (two) baseball games, but both in the spring)

• 🏖️ go to the beach (shocking that I haven’t done this yet)

• 🪁 fly a kite (shout out to Cayla for making this dream of mine come true, it cured something in me)

• 🏊‍♀️ swim in an NYC pool (i did this yesterday! let’s go lap swimming at Kosciuszko Pool in the mornings)

• 📷 check out the NYC photo stroll (every other sunday)

• 🌳 count some trees (every 10 years the NYC parks department runs a census of the over 1 MILLION trees in their purview) - info here, let’s measure some trees together!

other events you’ll catch me at

• 7/23: Bandits on the Run (feat. Dan on drums!) @ Wave Hill (in the Bronx) tix

• 7/25: Abolish Everything live taping (7pm) tix

• 7/27: Peter Doyle's Incredible Head (8pm) tix

• 7/30: Nicole Rodger, Alex Harwood, God Grief @ Cassette tix

  

where does the time go?

• my biggest project this year: i put up some live music photos as part of a group show!

  • check it out at this site i vibe-coded to go with it (because it’s interesting to keep tabs on these tools)

• when i’m on a walk-and-talk phone call, i’m playing Treehopper, a game built on the NYC tree census data

• we signed up for a CSA, and i’m enjoying the added pressure to cook more

  • do you need something to do with cabbage? i recommend this recipe

• i’ve rediscovered the joy of chess - playing a well-matched game with a good friend on a sunny friday afternoon in a local cafe? simply unparalleled

• PSA: we learned that a lot of vintage glassware designs use lead paint - we bought a testing spray, and ¾ of ours didn’t make the cut 🥲

• i visited my 49th and 50th US states! West Virginia took the final spot, although Dan and i still need to visit Nevada together for our map

  

happy mid-year,

how are you doing? what lightbeams are bouncing around inside your skull?

much love,

beth