November 19, 2024

The Magpie #006: Bees are comrades

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:

Small victories: last week the dog rescue I volunteer for found a (great!) home for the longest-staying dog in the NYC public shelter system: Zeusy Roll, who’d been at the Brooklyn (now Queens) shelter for over a year. Here he is, sleeping on a bed:

Nearly every shelter in the US and UK is overwhelmed right now, and shelters and rescues need donations, volunteers, adopters, foster parents (and fospice, folks willing to take in elderly pets for their final months/years). If you can do any of those things (and there’s a lot of volunteer skills homebound people can offer!), get in touch with a local rescue. If you are in the NY/NJ/CT area, our rescue also needs all of the above!

SHORT STUFF:

Bees are comrades.

Really cool review of Charles Burns’ latest graphic novel

A mummified sabertooth tiger kitten has been found!

If you’re British and have never once walked past a birdfeeder and said, “cor, look at the tits on that,” are you in fact truly British? Anyway I’ll always link to stories about great tits.

50 year old man tries to track down his birth mother… only to find out she’s the owner of the bakery he goes to twice a week

If you somehow haven’t yet heard Maōri parliament members’ haka while they shut down a bill that infringed on their treaty rights, you should rectify that immediately. Truly epic.

World’s largest coral colony, so big it can be seen from space! Don’t fuck it up, humans

LONG READS:

In preparation for the (oddly compelling) Wicked movie, here’s a link to the PDF of the book it was based on. You can skip directly to the ritual public sex/tiger-involved orgy section by searching for “erect tiger.”

“I don’t think there’s a trend towards actual conservatism in the Valley — there’s a trend towards monopoly and corruption, and that’s led a bunch of VCs directly to Trump.” Verge editor Nilay Patel is not complying in advance.

There are already a ton of issues around the corrupt process of Western adoption of Korean children, and now once again pre-2000 US adoptees (who don’t automatically have citizenship) may be at risk of deportation. It went extremely badly last time.

A few basic tips from Teen Vogue on things to do before January 20 for US-based marginalized people.

Malcolm X’s family finally bringing suit against the FBI and government for the whole assassinating him thing

48 hours in coach on the Chicago to Miami railroad. (Europeans/Asians: USA is very bad at trains)

The Liz Truss debacle, or, how not to let power go to your head.

Lovely BW/DR critical essay on The Thin Blue Line.

MUSIC:

Folks were posting non-English language bangers this week, and so am I:

And this is in english but the beat reminds me a lot of “Zenit”:

RECIPE:

My favorite cake recipe: thai tea cake with whipped coconut frosting.

I’m also super keen to try this easy Australian lemon myrtle cake recipe. (USAians, you can get lemon myrtle on Amazon.)

Until next week!

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