Petition to rename this newsletter to “How has Justin Baldoni shot his career in the dick this week”

Like, girl, I have burned bridges. Sometimes while still standing on them. But this guy? Now going for gold in the DARVO Olympics by announcing to the whole world he thinks the parody oafish manbun-sporting “feminist” idiot Nicepool in the Deadpool & Wolverine film is based on him by trying to drag notoriously petty and grudge-holding studio Disney into his lawsuit. Shutting up was always an option!!!

(nb I did not see Deadpool & Wolverine, I find Ryan Reynolds a generally exhausting film presence)

It’s been a bad week for dudes whose brand was Big Feminist Ally (But Make It Skeevy): the Neil Gaiman exposé finally came out, and it’s worse than anyone imagined. Here’s a non-paywalled copy that allegedly has some extra Scientology content that got pulled from the main article soon after publication. This was one of about four investigations into Gaiman by major papers over the summer (Rolling Stone, Washington Post, and… uh… one other) and a lot of us knew it was coming because the investigative journalists were calling around looking for leads and introductions. I’m glad Lila got out first—she seemed the most thorough and nuanced.

At the same time, the older issue of Gaiman heavily basing Sandman off the work of (female) fantasy author Tanith Lee without ever crediting her has arisen again (Lee had several times said she felt ripped off by Gaiman and avoided him at conventions and panels):

Speaking of “been caught stealing,” this piece on famous literary frauds and forgeries is a goddamn delight.

In longest “oh, bro…” ever, UK man (or maybe his ex) threw hard drive in the trash 12 years ago that had £425m in Bitcoin in it. It’s somewhere in the city dump and he wants it back. “Lol,” said city officials, “lmao.”

What else… in something literally everybody saw coming, Diamond Comic Distribution has gone bankrupt. In news that literally everybody Black Anerican already knew, DoJ finds that the Tulsa Race Riots were an organized mass killing. In news to me, a year late, general awful human Peter Thiel is gay and his lovers tend to have the post-relationship life expectancy of Boeing whistleblowers.

Vintage clothing/high fashion fans rejoice, there is a new Kerry Taylor Auctions catalog of early Martin Margiela work.

If you play Balatro, you need to check out the (new and improveddd) Jimbo’s Big Naturals mod which gives nearly every card boobs but in a way that ends up fun and surreal/charming rather than skeevy (the banana is my fave).

Italian libertarian (of course) fraudster famous for carbon offset credit scams escapes justice by living in international waters on a barge; you’ll never guess what happened next.

New Folding Ideas!!!!

I really, really want to see The Brutalist because everything about this interview is incredibly compelling and I also appreciate a film that has real opinions about architecture (unlike Megalopolis). Also: the real story of Bauhaus architects vs Nazis.

PUBLIC! DOMAIN! IMAGE! ARCHIVE!

I’m vaguely keeping track of the new rash of anti-tourism efforts, from Amsterdam’s attempt to deter British yobs to Tokyo restaurants pretending to be closed (unless you can read Japanese). Of course a big spike in cabbage prices (and an accompanying rise in cabbage??? thefts???) might cause them to lure tourists back in to help pay for that newly-expensive tonkatsu…

Will I ever get tired of reading about the sad, empty end of the Metaverse? All signs point to “hell no.” (PS hit “show reader” to get around the annoying and persistent subscription popup).

Chicago is the deadliest city for migratory birds (they fly into glass skyscrapers) but a dotted window film has reduced bird casualties by 95% at big glass box McCormack Place.

CSFB is extending the Electronic Funds Transfer Act to cover in-game virtual currencies like Robux, which means Roblox will become legally responsible for resolving customer losses due to scams on the platform. Look, as a parent I need to tell you this one simple hack: don’t use Apple Pay or store cards on gaming platforms, if your kid wants gatcha money they need to come negotiate for it.

Truly horrifying article about the boom in candy-flavored nitrous oxide in smoke shops especially in Georgia (a state where all forms of marijuana are still illegal). Nitrous oxide is very VERY bad for you, the high is literally brain cells dying, this particular drug is, in fact, bad.

New photos of Mercury just dropped, space nerds!!!

Horrifying week for Los Angeles that saw entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes and tens of thousands left homeless. Here are the houses that didn’t burn.

This week’s Wikipedia page of interest: Gate deities of the Egyptian Underworld.

Currently reading: I loved Chandrasekera’s Saint of Bright Doors—it grabs you from the first paragraph, and has such a fantastic end—but I tapped out about 16% into Rakesfall, his second, which was interesting but I was on an airplane and exhausted and it was not the right kind of book for that situation. I’ll get back to it, but for the time being I switched over to Shellabarger’s Prince of Foxes, a historical adventure story set in Renaissance Italy. I’m tearing through it, great fun and appropriate to my low level of travelling brain.

Recipe of the week: If you think making yeast bread is hard/intimidating, this recipe for no-knead peasant bread is easy and delicious. I’ve been making it for eight years—it’s the first yeast bread I ever made, and I also made it last week because it’s that great.

Music: New from clipping. (my friend Danny is super into them and their music veers from a kind of doom-glitch electronica to this) and old from LCMDF.

Man, once again I was going to put so much more in this newsletter but I ran out of space. Until next week, and here is where I wrote most of this newsletter: