The Magpie #004: Well, shit
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
I’m not talking about it.
Fancy revisiting one of the greatest prank wars of all time? For it to make sense, you have to understand that 90% of koalas have chlamydia.
Folks in Europe started wondering why their Netflix royalty checks were late… turns out the answer is fraud
Adorable story of Tony Hawk tracking down a cool gal from North Carolina after falling in love with a photo of her skateboarding in the rain… in 1979
Horrific stories coming out of Saudi Arabia over tens of thousands of dead laborers… and multiple times that number simply missing. (Which, you know, resonates oddly with a lot of the less well thought through parts of Megalopolis: ah, slum clearance is a bummer, we’ll let a crashing satellite do that for us. Hiring workers is a bummer, the magic building goo builds by itself! Now THERE’s a horror concept, what if the magic building goo decides we suck and should all die? Anyway, I digress—more could have been done with a Robert Moses-Citizen Kane analogy that was… not, in that film)
They caught the cheese thief, but the cheddar’s still missing—headed for Russia or the Middle East, is the best guess.
Detecting fraud/fakery in ancient Iranian swords… and illegal Egyptian artefact sales (on eBay! C’mon, be professional about your crime. Have standards)
FEATURES
What looking at the earth from space does to people: the overview effect.
Great interview with Shinichiro Watanabe on his new anime, Lazarus.
A true story of aliens, ghosts, and childhood.
How to leave your dream job.
Why everyone in Hollywood feels stuck.
Fascinating podcast series on fraud in a ranching family. Gogol’s Dead Souls, cattle edition.
Deep dive into the history, meaning, and purposes of orcs (aka the “other”) in fantasy literature. One of the favorite things I’ve read this year.
Dismantling food safety regulation in favor of profit is bad.
ARTS & CULTURE
This week I’ve burned through both Sebastian de Castell’s TRAITOR’S BLADE and Georgette Heyer’s THE MASQUERADERS and I can’t recommend both enough. Pure escapist thrills/fun in both instances.
The soundtrack to The Great Ace Attorney is really wonderful:
Also into Nightmares on Wax right now. Next week I’ll talk to you about Doom Jazz but I thought that was too on the nose for this week:
RECIPE
Nigella Lawson has a lot of great recipes that are easy to make and create leftovers for days. This chicken with 40 cloves of garlic recipe was the first one I made of hers. It’s so good.
Until next week…
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