The Magpie #008: Seasonal interactive disorder
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:
Ugh. UGH. Sorry this is so late. My day job’s been on a rampage for the last two weeks and I spend my days scrambling to keep up and then I cook dinner and go to sleep. Exciting life, innit.
I had such plans! A fun holiday shopping guide for books and other gifts by individual creators! Instead, have some tabs.
Accidentally stumbled on this six-minute delight of an animated short while looking up the trailer to FLOW (2024) (indie animated movie about a cat that opens in US theaters this weekend).
You too can take the test that RFK Jr is using to vet new Department of Health hires! (This is really it, trust me.) Look, it’s a standardized test that you want to fail (holler at the former gifted kids who all just perked up in interest).
Great Matt Zoller Seitz interview this week with Willem Dafoe, very thoughtful and real on acting and life in the arts.
A brief history of lesbian pulp fiction in the 50s and 60s.
How one little solder can make a cheap microphone sound like a Neumann U 87/ super high end mic. (For the podcasters in your life.)
Anyone who’s been around fandom for a long time (hollaback to Final Fantasy House) knows that with small, insular subcultures come big creeps. After all, some people choose fandom to get away from being bullied for their interests… but some people choose fandom so they finally get to be the bully. They’re drawn to emulate their tormentors rather than reject them, because they perceive the bullies as the top of the social pyramid. But Kermit clout for pussy? REALLY?!
The weirdest roadside attraction in each U.S. state.
Not all heroes wear capes, margartaville edition: Sarah Jeong drunk-liveskeets the attempted enactment of martial law in South Korea; here’s an explainer on the larger political situation there.
Notre-Dame reopens after its 2019 fire; here’s a lovely meditation on the larger issues around the cycle of death and reconstruction for expensive public monuments like these.
Charles “Entertainment” Cheese and his fun-time band take their last bow. I blame Scott Cawthon.
It’s kind of logical that in this era of spon-con and influencers, the big deal in travel guides is now somewhat sub-rosa google docs.
“Indeed the striking thing about almost all of the top Nazis is that they were mediocrities and failures, who took advantage of the special circumstances in which they found themselves to wreak revenge on a world that had judged them to be what they in fact were.” Brief and to the point.
Sam Altman (“the PT Barnum of the AI industry”) says there’s no risk of accidentally creating Skynet. I mean, first they’d have to create an AI model that can accurately answer questions like “how many rs are in strawberry,” but still, I remain not assured.
A Black farmer purchases the North Carolina plantation where his ancestors were enslaved. Lovely story about a fourth-generation farmer healing land and community.
Last surviving Buffalo Soldier dies at 103. The past is not the past, it’s barely even yesterday.
Peter Bogdanovich had his ups and downs as a director, but he was one of Hollywood’s consummate armchair storytellers. Here, he and Sergio Leone fail to play nicely with each other.
The experience of being unhoused / homeless in America, a short memoir.
Magpies’ intelligence is based on the size of their social group, not on their genetics.
Is this TCJ dive into the original Flash Gordon strips mostly an excuse to gawk at Alex Raymond artwork? Well, yeah.
Atlantic article: “Food deserts only exist because—“ Me: Is it because of Reagan? Atlantic article: “Well, yeah.”
I am low-key obsessed with this gif of a spitting cucumber.
Dear America: journalists working under fascist and totalitarian regimes share their advice for staying alive/free in an adverse political environment.
Texas Observer doxxes four of the biggest Nazi accounts on X. Hopefully this will cause consequences in their lived.
MUSIC
Chants and chant-like things.
RECIPE
I made lemon myrtle cake for breakfast this morning and not only does it make the kitchen smell divine, it’s also delicious:
Americans, you can buy ground lemon myrtle on Amazon. I baked this in a loaf tin as a quick bread (1 hour at 350), and I didn’t have self-rising flour so just used normal and added 2 teaspoons of baking powder.
We’re a big “not too sweet” house and I used unsweetened dried coconut and didn’t make the syrup. I liked it that way but kiddo put honey on hers. Anyway, would def make again.
I’m also super into baked acorn squash, the Easy Mode of the squash family, which my mother used to make when I was growing up but I haven’t tried to cook until now. Kiddo loved it and I did too, so we’ve added it to the veggie rotation. Takes about 1h15 to cook so best for those nights when you can plan ahead a bit.
Until… uh, until Tuesday. Be well.
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