The Magpie #005: Boredom is the Dream Bird
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:
This is not the dream bird. This is the swear bird:
I have found social media overwhelming lately—too many jeremiads for the apocalypse, increasingly humorless scolds, and demands that I do more things if I want the world to survive. Reader, I am already full up with things.
Well, fine. I have been doing things, but those things are “plant some bulbs,” “build a flat-pack china cabinet,” and “help find a home for the dog that’s been in the NYC shelter system the longest” (Zeusy, who will leave the shelter on Friday with the rescue I volunteer for, en route to a great home a couple miles from me.)
I would suggest if you’re also buckling under the weight of the allostatic load that you instead: choose boredom.
Read stories where very little happens—autobio comics are wonderful for this. I picked Keiler Roberts’ The Joy of Quitting (left) off my bedside table last Wednesday and reading it was the best I felt in days. I also am a big fan of another D&Q autobio, Uncomfortably Happily, about a Seoul comics duo who move to a small house halfway up a mountain.
Watch movies where very little happens: The Straight Story, My Dinner With Andre, Local Hero, Bull Durham, Tokyo Story, The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain, The Station Agent, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Or, y’know, a movie that has nothing to do with right now (Master & Commander).
Now back to our regularly-scheduled links:
SHORT STUFF
USAians: You, uh, may want to check the CDC adult immunization schedule and get caught up before Jan 20. FYI the shingles vacc will lay you out for DAYS. (It’s still better than getting shingles.)
Turn your cellphone into a kazoo with this one neat trick
::slams fist on table:: ANGLERFISH SEX! Look I unironically love anglerfish, how can you not adore them, they are my precious ugly babies
It snowed in Saudi Arabia, but I’m sure everything’s fine. (The hole in the ozone layer IS fine, actually, it shrank a lot in 2024. Great job, humans!)
Tech’s small nuclear reactor boom is mostly vaporware.
Temple of Satan is a growth religion in Chile. Look at least they’re not saying they’re fucking jedis or “believers in biological gender” on the census (don’t look up the latter, it’s TERF bullshit and will only make you mad). Speak of the devil, if you missed the article about Sammy Davis Jr’s flirtation with Satanism, it’s great.
X is losing users hand over fist. (1/3 of UK users, gone!) Womp, womp.
First known Black person to vote in England was a pub owner in 1749. (The first election in England was in 1695, IIRC, so we may yet see earlier voters.)
LONG READS
The best article on the rats of New York City you’ll ever read, and it’s from 1944. (Wilson, this one’s for you)
Why is the medical residency system such a cripplingly exhausting nightmare of a process for young doctors? guitar riff ::Eric Clapton voice:: COCAINE!
Wired’s guide to protecting yourself from government surveillance is not paywalled and I hate that it’s necessary but here you go.
Jaya Saxena is a great writer and her piece on trying to replicate a 1982-era Martha Stewart dinner party manages also to be about so many other things: who we are, how we relate to each other, and what is expected of us as women—then and now.
Two pieces on horror this week. The chattering classes went all in on this rather drama-llama review of Terrifier 3 but I have to admit my reaction to it was more that Captain America meme: “so you saw your first grindhouse film.” Can’t wait for the man’s views on how Nekromantik is really about fucking the rotting corpse of the American meritocratic dream. I far preferred this piece on film horror as catharsis. (Yes I was that mom who explained to her kid that Momo—the new Slenderman-was a conscious expression of inchoate, existential fears that couldn’t otherwise be grappled with and processed).
Historic grindhouse: did you know that the Old English manuscript containing Beowulf also contained a version of Judith & Holofernes?
TIL that Harvard has a full undergraduate intro to computer science course on Youtube. First lesson here.
ARTS & CULTURE
One of my fave instagram channels (along with the Jackson’s Art Supplies channel’s excellent pigment history lessons) was this painter Riley Sheehey’s, who painted over the face of a playing card every week. The resulting deck is now available for preorder. (But yeah, I highly recommend those two channels if you just want to get lost for a bit).
Haymarket Books is offering 10 free ebooks on… getting free. Come for the Angela Davis…
Speaking of books, I write them, maybe you might enjoy reading one?
Today’s theme is devil music, for a certain swingy, dirty bar piano kind of devil:
Remember I have a Spotify playlist of all songs mentioned here.
RECIPE
This ma po chili mac is easy, makes tons of leftovers, and works just as well with gochujiang sauce (if you dig it, it’s worth getting the sichuan peppercorns eventually though.)
Until next week!
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