> 197: I knew so much and sang anyway
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:
"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.
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.
The T-Rex world championship race and the world dog surfing championships.
Such a simple truth that so many people don’t understand: Trust is consistency built over time.
A visual history of Mac control panels.
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.
Michael B. Jordan x Thomas Crown Affair!! Devil Wears Prada 2!!! You’ll pry my enthusiasm for this IP from my wizened, basic hands.
Infinite sea shanty. You choose whether it includes tambourines.
A conversation between John Green and Chris Hayes about why everything is tuberculosis.
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
Laura
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