The Magpie #007: Posting Through It
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:
A day late and a dollar short, welcome to the holidays. Day job’s been crazy and I’m just coming up for air today.
This feels like the week, too, that BlueSky hit some sort of critical mass—which is both good and bad. I had a fellow comics creator/enjoyer email me the other day asking how I dealt with regularly being targeted by Comicsgate and—the honest answer is, most of the time I simply don’t notice.
I’m going to say something obvious here: not everyone is going to like my books. That’s fine. And people who were never going to buy my books in the first place yelling at me or my publishers about how they’re never going to buy my books? They just don’t matter. So I don’t spend any of the precious time I have on this earth bothering with them.
This is at the front of my mind this week especially because there’s so much talk online now about how terrible everything is going to be. And I have no doubt it will be. But again: nothing is gained by tying yourself into knots over things you cannot change.
Instead, if you’re feeling afraid and frustrated and powerless, find something you CAN change. It might be small and local, but it matters. Sign up for that volunteering thing you’ve been meaning to do. Get the EMT training you’ve been thinking about. Make angry art. And don’t forget to do things that improve YOU as well as the world. Make a list in Notes of three or four little things that low-key bug you right now (the clothes pile in the bedroom; that squeaky door; the fact you haven’t stretched regularly since 2021) and… do something about them over the coming weeks.
When you find yourself doomscrolling or being annoyed at the internet, leave the app, set your phone timer for 15 minutes, and tackle one of your tasks. (Setting a timer helps! Trust me. It makes scary open-ended tasks into manageable, short duration tasks. Also remember:
You don’t have to fix things completely! You just have to spend 10-15 minutes making them a little better/more manageable.
That’s enough moralizing, eh? Here, have something cute:
Oh wait: I’m actually a liar. Kiddo is away this week so I am making terrible food choices and catching up on a backlog of pitches I owe people, and I just sent off a Big Two graphic novel pitch to the one Big Two editor I know/like/trust. In part, I’m doing this because landing the book would make my haters really, really mad. ✌🏼 I never said I was a nice girl
UGH ALEX SHUT UP AND POST SOME LINKS
My friend @nataliaantonova.bsky.social was an investigative journalist at Bellingcat and other places and she used to have geolocation games on Twitter which pretty conclusively proved you can track anyone down anywhere via their social media photo backgrounds. Which is why this (deep breath) Milwaukee Brewers front-office gal turned failed international assassin turned fugitive’s choice to post through it while hiding out in Armenia was… I guess not all that surprising given her general lack of criminal skills? And yet.(Warning: Daily Mail link)
Bookmarking this radio chat on the Hanoverian Succession for Reasons.
Amazon Influencer (yes, that’s a thing) copycat-fight lawsuit because both are into that uber-basic “everything is white and beige” look. We used to make things in this country.
DRAKE: Kendrick you hurt me I’m going to sue you
KENDRICK: Oh word, is this because I called you a pedophile?
DRAKE: nervous cough no it’s because your song was way more popular than mine, you must have cheated
Anyway: cry, baby, cry
New Kendrick video…
…and its main visual influence:
More court cases! The 1880s ¡escandalo! which gave us the origin of the phrase “what the butler saw”
And not a court case yet, but give me paleontologist beef over any other sort of beef—there’s a fight over whose evidence of the dinosaur-ending asteroid hit is better.
There’s a Harry Potter baking show hosted by supporting actors from the movies and honestly, it’s just sad
Interesting financial crime deep dive on the circumstances and legal loopholes that’s caused London’d Oxford Street to become a bargain-basement candy store hell
Meanwhile, in New York City, a short history of Greenwich Village’s bohemian reputation, which was due to the presence of the Manhattan Women’s Court there
Bored? Frustrated? Annoyed? KEDI (amazing and heartwarming documentary about the cats of Istanbul) is free to watch on Youtube. So is HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS, a bizarre Guy Maddin-meets-the Farrelly Brothers absurdist comedy. Meanwhile, Satoshi Kon’s masterpiece TOKYO GODFATHERS, the best and gayest Christmas movie of all time, is free on Amazon Prime. (Also free on Youtube: the Maysles’ SALESMAN documentary, about a Bible salesman in 1969).
Dutch police find garden gnome made out of MDMA during a bust. It had started dancing along to the police sirens.
The literary chattering classes have all been a-twit this week over a truly mock-worthy Vanity Fair profile of Cormac McCarthy’s teenage mistress, Augusta Britt. Then its writer spoke and friend, I screeched so much during this interview I accidentally accessed AOL on dialup. But wait, there’s more! The great thing about letting some Bennington grad you found on Substack (I wish I was making this up) write your big interview is he does zero fact-checking and has no journalism skills! So you can lie about 1) your meet-cute, which you steal from a scene in Californication and 2) your age during that meet-cute, which was firmly established as 14 by a well-documented 1974 letter from one of McCarthy’s friends.
Bookmarking this piece on chemical warfare during WWI.
Old article on addiction and video games, in light of the following horrific graphic of Elongated Muskrat’s posting habits that was printed in The Economist:
First in a series of a historian’s in-depth explainer of the Roman Empire.
I leave you with this week’s recipe, which is the chocolate cake I’m making for kiddo when she comes back from her trip.
Be well.
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