The Magpie #017: Gulf of Your Momma
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:
Hello from whatever the USA is right now. A kleptocracy bound and determined to Thelma & Louise the national economy off the nearest cliff is what it looks like today, but who knows what it will be like tomorrow.
The other big deal in the US this week was our football championship, where the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 and then 14,000 people livestreamed the Philly police scanner to listen to the city celebrate. (If you’re wondering, the difference between Philly sports fans and Boston sports fans is Boston fans only start fights they think they can win.)
Kendrick Lamar did the half-time show which everyone thought was amazing, unless you were a guy who looked like this:
…or you were Drake.
This meant a whole lot of people had to explain to their relatives the Kendrick/Drake beef (shoutout to Josh Johnson, see below), and/or had to explain to their co-workers the next day about why the halftime show was way more than a diss track.
One thing to keep in mind when discussing anything like Kendrick, or Serena Williams getting in trouble for doing a specifically Black happy little dance (crip-walk) in 2012 when she won a gold medal is kind of brilliantly encompassed in this wonderful essay on Sly Lives!, in terms of the pressure of being famous and marginalized.
Stuart Hall and his pioneering analysis of media codes, great essay on how media studies actually works:
David Johansen aka Buster Poindexter aka the New York Doll is in bad physical shape and could use our help.
RFK Jr is also in bad physical shape and has terrible lifting form. Oh and somehow he has $1.2 million in credit card debt, which… how?!
The DOGE kids are crypto grifters because of course they are.
I never get tired of reading about billionaires’ bunkers. This one has an AI medical suite, which should very quickly manage to do what the proletariat hasn’t.
Speaking of AI, the BBC did a big study of how AI assisted searches represent its news articles and the answer, shocking nobody, is: very very badly. In related news, the Google Gemini ad played during the Superbowl contained AI-hallucinated false information that was busted by (wait for it) diligent cheese nerds.
In more zero-surprise news, META staff torrented 82TB worth of books to train their LLM. Honestly can’t imagine how big their porn folder is. Anyway, whichever META intern did all that torrenting, you have a beautiful and popular future in the army.
To celebrate Black History Month, cartoon supervillains Andreesen Horowitz hire subway murderer Daniel Penny to analyze investments in its aerospace and defense fund, which of course is a logical use of -checks notes- Penny’s architecture studies. Anyway:
I learned things:
Earth’s core is “doing something,” scientists say. Asteroid nearly 2x as likely to hit Earth after new scans, scientists say. Honestly we deserve it? Chinese researchers propose gravitational wave observatory to look for cracks in Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Important anglerfish news!!! Look at my ugly boi, I love his face so much
Department of You Played Yourself: judge tries to duck out of jury duty by claiming everyone who comes to court is guilty, is then fired from job. Actor suing Disney after being fired from 911 during the pandemic for claiming that his religion (the Universal Congregation of Deez Nuts, uh, I mean Wisdom) didn’t allow him to ingest foreign substances like vaccines forced to disclose his steroid, synthetic testosterone, and viagra use.
Finally, a deep dive into the trashy upper middle class white people drama at Disney’s Club 33, because Karen is a Disney Princess too. You have to love an article that casually tosses out asides like “According to Club 33 administrator Bonnye Lear, who died in 2024 after being thrown from a golf cart racing through Critter Country…”
Bootlicker of the week is Georgia representative Buddy Carter:
Followed closely behind by Google who really did cave and change the name of the Gulf of Mexico on all its maps to Gulf of America.
Increasingly everything is summed up by this t-shirt:
I am old enough to remember the AIDS crisis and the community around it and I highly recommend this lovely interview about cooking, food, love, and caring for AIDS patients
Kevin Costner’s white elephant western Horizon is good, apparently? I trust Bilge as a reviewer. Also from another critic (and massive DS9 fan) I trust: even Michelle Yeoh can’t save the new Star Trek movie.
We’re massive Persona fans in this house so I enjoyed this deep dive on Metaphor: ReFantazio and themes of creating a better world.
Connecticut man caught driving 130mph justifies it by saying he was rushing home to see his cat. Relatable, but still, take this man’s license away.
For academics, students, and researchers, a commonsense guide on surviving and supporting each other during these times, especially as academic precarity had already made so many university jobs incredibly stressful.
The ecosystem has rights, according to landmark Ecuador court ruling.
WIKIPEDIA PAGE OF THE WEEK: The Tunguska Event, aka the Earth’s last big meteor hit.
RECIPE: This veggie bake is fast, delicious, and great as a main course over couscous or a side.
MUSIC: IT’S EUROTRASH TIME!!!
It’s impossible to be sad while listening to that dumb-ass song, I love it so much
Also may I offer you… some more electronica:
That’s it for this week. Be well, and be kind to each other.
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