The tortured newsletter writers department // What's good: Apr. 12, 2024
Moral failures, treason, and Dua Lipa.
Hello, good evening, happy Thursday. Listen, I don’t have a good excuse this time, it was a busy week. The plan will be to release “this week’s” newsletter today, and then “next week’s” newsletter long enough from now to be interesting but short enough that we haven’t just missed a week and can call it good. Okay? Okay. I also straight up did not do a ton of content farming this week, so mea culpa. Hope you still like it.
Anyway, the new Taylor Swift album comes out tonight, let’s all get excited.
The wrong side of history
What can you say, really? Famously, “cops arrest mass volumes of protesters” is not a thing that has gone over well for the cops and their co-conspirators:
Mayor Eric Adams, alongside top New York Police Department officials, announced during a press conference on Thursday afternoon that police had made more than 108 arrests during the sweep of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on South Lawn.
Captain Jaclyn Keane confirmed at the press conference that all 108 arrested were charged with trespassing, and two were additionally charged with obstruction of governmental administration. The arrests came shortly after University President Minouche Shafik announced the suspension of the protesting students and authorized the NYPD to enter campus and “remove these individuals” from South Lawn.
Solidarity to the students, both those who were present and those who showed up afterwards to carry on the cause.
Top-down disgrace
Samora Hicks’ heart pummeled against her chest as her plane from Baltimore prepared to land at Midway Airport last summer.
“Is this really happening?” Hicks asked herself repeatedly, unable to stop the tremors in her hands.
It was the first flight to Chicago Hicks could find on short notice. Hours earlier, she was awakened from her sleep with news she wasn’t prepared for: Her mother, a veteran Chicago Transit Authority employee, was dead.
The wrong kind of imagination
There is little that gets me back into my “angry atheist” phase quite like people who use religion - Christianity, specifically - as a cudgel against libraries:
METROPOLIS, Ill. — The pastor began his sermon with a warning.
Satan was winning territory across America, and now he was coming for their small town on the banks of the Ohio River in southern Illinois.
“Evil is moving and motivated,” Brian Anderson told his congregation at Eastland Life Church on the evening of Jan. 13. “And the church is asleep.”
Super heroes are supposed to inspire a better future. This guy would do well to read some comics.
Treason, or something like it
I mean really, come on:
LAS VEGAS — A conference for a far-right sheriffs group this week drew a parade of felons, disgraced politicians, election deniers, conspiracy theorists and, in the end, a few sheriffs.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA, met in Las Vegas’ Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel conference center to publicly counter reports of extremism within the group and set a course for the coming election — one that involves sheriffs’ investigating what they claim, despite a lack of evidence, is rampant voter fraud.
Niche pop culture content
Is my favorite kind of content:
Real Sex and the City fans know that over the course of six seasons, Carrie Bradshaw had impressively abysmal taste in men (Berger, Politician Pee Guy, the stoner dude who lived with his parents….the list goes on). But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and amidst all those duds, a few gems have stood out. Most notably, there’s Ben, Carrie’s bespectacled, shaggy-haired politics writer in the Season Two episode “Freak Show,” with whom she famously blows it after he catches her rummaging through his apartment on a hunt to find something “freakish” about him.
Dua Lipa forever
Hell yes hell yes hell yes:
The first time Dua Lipa went clubbing, she was just a wisp of a tween girl in Kosovo. The UK-born pop star realizes how absurd it sounds as she explains it. Seated in her home office in London, flanked by shelves teeming with books, she thumbs through her phone for a blurry image of a photo from that fateful night—as if to prove to the two of us that it did indeed happen. At the center of the photo is a young Lipa dressed in white crochet, smiling brightly next to her much taller cousin and an entourage of stylish women.
You deserve some good animal content
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1781135453942333902
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1781132642332651655
https://twitter.com/raccoonhourly/status/1781118044472741999
https://twitter.com/CATBRAINCELL/status/1781107323664277859
https://twitter.com/Thereisnocat_/status/1781085198982992112
https://twitter.com/NationalZoo/status/1781081680456868028
https://twitter.com/GoldretrieverUS/status/1781016687594365004
https://twitter.com/OregonZoo/status/1780999135480742136
https://twitter.com/RedPandaEveryHr/status/1780983809275474424
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1780963898629210367
Have a good week.
Addendums
Who Decides Which Chicago Sidewalks Get Repaired? Hyundai pauses X ads over pro-Nazi content on the platform. After 40 Years, 'The Wiz' Returns To Broadway With A Trailblazing Director. Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk. What If Your AI Girlfriend Hated You? Why Big Publications Like The New York Times Are Making Games (But Barely Covering Them). Make robots hairy.