The Magpie #001: Who let the crickets out?
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Magpie, a wire service for the weird compiled from the open tabs of writer Alex de Campi. Here’s what’s going on:
NEWS
Kids sic crickets on TERFs, which: 1) bravo, 2) made me think of this Stupendium song.
The first rule of crime school is DO NOT TELL PEOPLE YOU ARE DOING A CRIME. Magnificent beast, slain by utter numpty.
In the future, cop cars will set themselves on fire.
Lots of “uwu, toxic fandom” articles recently but this is the one worth reading. And here’s toxic fandom in action in K-pop (fans were sending this 21 year old kid funeral wreaths, goddamn.) You can also read my book PARASOCIAL, which sums it all up in a more fun and bloody way.
Shocking nobody,Truth Social is a hotbed of scams. This is a long tradition in conservative politics—I cannot emphasize enough how much you should read this history of right wing and fraud. Yes, it’s from 2012. Still true, tho.
Speaking of scams, his first mistake was trusting a man named Gator Greenwill. No, wait, his first mistake was being an absolute shitstain of a human being. Oh well!
FEATURES
The wiki for China’s Hello Street Cat stray cat observation app is too pure for this world, and also hilarious. Go to List of Cats and scroll down to Mr. Piss. All the cat writeups are gold—his just involves the shower variety.
A pair of great first-person accounts of surviving the hurricanes in Florida and North Carolina.
Sad but fascinating (and likely precedent-setting) legal attempt by golfer Jack Nicklaus to reclaim his own likeness and identity, and prevent AI versions of himself.
Ed Yong looks back on the pandemic and its one million points of psychic damage:
FD Signifier’s excellent, needle-drop heavy essay is a must watch for every white writer tempted to make their black hero character have a police or military background to subtly signify that they are “one of the good ones”:
ARTS & CULTURE
Took my kiddo to her first gig ever last week-Atarishii Gakko! at Terminal 5:
Before the gig, AG! screened the video for Shimi, their new collab with Japanese punk-metal band Maximum the Hormone. It fucking whipped:
I also really dig this MTH song (their collabs go so hard) and if you’ve not come across AG!, start here or maybe here.
I’ve also been getting into art-pop band Everything Everything recently. The entire Mountainhead album (dropped in March) is great, but this is my fave song:
Here’s a Spotify playlist for songs mentioned in this newsletter (and future ones), to perhaps save you some effort.
Do you want to hear Green Day songs on a GameBoy cartridge, a Big Mouth Billy Bass, or Teddy Ruxpin? Of course you do.
You’re goth, but are you skull toilet goth?
Movies—saw LOOK BACK and THE WILD ROBOT last week, can’t recommend both of them highly enough, see them immediately, stunning animation and story. Also saw Megalopolis which ISTG as soon as someone can send me a hi-res torrent of it I will do a remix/recut of it as a black and white movie. I can fix her
Books—still reading Emma Cline’s THE GUEST, a novel where I have to go quietly hyperventilate after every chapter because of how well it captures the anxiety and precariousness of being 22, female, and a disaster. Have bought Sebastian de Castell’s THE TRAITOR’S BLADE (on Chris Schweitzer’s recommendation via his delightful Swashtober illustrations) as a palate cleanser.
Nonfiction book du jour is Jon Grinspan’s uncomfortably apropos WIDE AWAKE.
SCIENCE & HISTORY
Tardigrades fucking rule:
So do comets, and one’s cruising past our planet this month.
TIL about Wales’ drag riots in the 1800s: when you really, really hate the government and you also really, really fancy wearing a dress and bonnet.
Speaking of bonnets: Cats in crocheted hats shed light on feline chronic pain.
Shakespeare’s original theatre, the Curtain, is being excavated, and it’s smaller and squarer than expected.
RECIPE
It’s apple season, and Dutch Baby is a super easy breakfast to make with them. (Don’t bother with the syrup part of the recipe, ain’t nobody got tome for that.) Throw in some blackcurrants too, while you’re at it.
BORING END STUFF
This newsletter will normally drop on Tuesdays, but there was a lot of setup nonsense that messed up my timeline. Design will get better as we go, but in the meantime perfect is the enemy of done. Also, I enabled comments—don’t make me regret it. I’d love to hear about cool stuff you recommend.
Consider forwarding this to a friend if you enjoyed it. Friendo, subscribe here:
Peace.
Alex
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