The Magpie #003: Kirbooty
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:
Have we thought enough about Kirby’s ass? Because if he’s got feet, he’s gotta have a butt somewhere.
(my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me for texting her this, but any time you get to pull out a Maui-from-Moana “you’re welcome” at your kid, you’re officially winning parenting.)
I’ve been wall to wall on deadlines—finishing a long Rogue Trooper story for 2000AD that’ll come out next year, then a Judge Anderson cosmic horror one-shot for their FCBD comic, so the reading/watching section of this newsletter is… light.
NEWS
The Japanese Jimi “Mundane Halloween” costumes are up at @dailyportalz but here is one for all of us Westerners:
8% of Washington Post subscribers cancelled their sub after the Post refused to endorse a candidate in the US election, and that’s before Jeff Bezos posted the most cringe op-ed known to man. (the TikTok version—from the Post’s official site-is better, as is the humor columnist’s excellent effort to step into the breach)
Speaking of Bezos, an anthropologist gets a job at an Amazon warehouse and documents the company’s union-busting tactics. Is this a good time to mention you can buy my and other people’s books at Bookshop dot org via my store?
“The Grate Cheese Robbery:” 22 tons of cheddar stolen
Trump’s “childhood friend” was a guy who he only met two weeks before the rally, and then there’s the 18kg of cocaine…
Crows can hold a grudge better than you.
New / lost Chopin waltz discovered!!!
FEATURES
The Pentagon asks, “do you want to play a game?”
Alan Moore on toxic fandom. (And one of my favourite critics, on his new book)
AI is making things up in hospital transcripts (bad!!!) and driving vulnerable young people to suicide (very bad!!!) and it also sucks at being a cop (nobody is surprised).
Sam Altman is also into crypto because of course he is. Do not let this man scan your eyeballs. (Meanwhile, Senegal’s Akon-sponsored cryptocurrency—now there’s a sentence—has fallen apart. It was called Akoin.)
Teaching the time value of money via Shohei Ohtani’s new baseball contract.
Cheerleading is horrifying, actually
SCIENCE & HISTORY
We’re still deep in the Applening (bags and bags of cooking apples to use up) so here is a gripping account of how to launch an apple, a brief history of apples’ current golden age, and the definitive (also brutal) apple ranking site. (If you enjoy this sort of stuff and have never read John McPhee’s Oranges, you should do that).
Fuck polls, I’m using the ancient Roman art of augury to determine which candidate is most likely to win next week.
Speaking of Romans, neat paper on why fascists love (their completely inaccurate view of) antiquity
Harnessing Iceland’s erupting volcanoes as power sources.
New prime number dropped!
New (and huge) Viking burial ground discovered!!!
ART & CULTURE
A short story for the spooky season by Magen Cubed
Another short story for the season, by Aimee Ogden
Grand Theft Hamlet, or, how to stage Shakespeare live in a video game.
Been listening to this Mikayla Geier bop for a minute:
While we’re on the dreamy pop tip, I also dig Radio Silent:
Remember I have a spotify playlist of all songs mentioned in The Magpie, even if it takes me a bit to update it.
Peace! See you next week.
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I found an advance reading copy of The Great When in a Little Free Library a couple months ago. And I was all, geez, another Other London book, I feel like i have read so damn many books about Other London already and do I really need another of those in my life? This one turned out to be a pretty interestingly slippery Other London.