Pjwexler

Claude Monet, Effect of Sunlight on Waterloo Bridge, 1903

This is an essay I wrote about music and grief and sunsets and water and grief and brothers and grief. It’d mean a hell of a lot if you set aside a little time to read it.

The Consolations of Waterloo Sunsets
mcblogs.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacrevie...

Seconded!

Book bans get headlines, but the bigger threat to books is hiding in plain sight: A handful of companies control how ebooks reach readers, and they can cut off access with a click.

New from @mariabustillos.com in @columjournreview.bsky.social ⤵️

One can certainly read that chapter stand-alone.and the one after that which is how LBJ uses that situation to help climb the power.

For those who haven’t read him, Caro is pretty explicit that he is more interested in power than biography per se- even with his many words written on Moses and LBJ.

Caro is in the discussion for best non nonfiction writer in English living- despite the Coke Stevenson criticism.

If nothing else, his chapter ‘ the sad irons’ from the first volume of the LBJ series is so engaging.(on rural Texas women in the Hill Country before electricity arrived.

American Hindenburg In the early days of flight, airships were hailed as the future of war. Then disaster struck the USS Akron.

The worst air disaster you've never heard of.

Issue no. 166, American Hindenburg

magazine.atavist.com/2025/america...

See also the chapter’ The Sad Irons’ in Robert Caro’s ‘Path to Power’’- chapter based on his interviews w/rural Texas farm prior to electrification not even a century ago. (book is on President LBJ that chapter is ninety percent about them,the rest how easy to lose the ability to sell milk then

YouTube video by Jillian Edwards - Topic You've Got a Friend

A #BlueskyLullaby for tonight: A 2016 cover of James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend" by Jillian Edwards. See you around.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY-4...

Thanks for the tip!

Opinion | Today’s Misinformation Crisis Is the Modern Witch Hunt Julie Walsh writes how modern-day misinformation found on social media holds a stark parallel to 15th to 17th century witchcraft hysteria.

OPINION: " As demonologists repeated one another’s spurious claims, an echo chamber of “evidence” was born. The identity of the witch was thus formalized: dangerous and decisively female," Julia Walsh writes.

‘They control everything’: How the Dallas Stars monopolized Texas youth hockey Ice is power in the lucrative world of youth hockey. In North Texas, the Dallas Stars hold almost all of it.

It's been a while since I've read a story this long, this thoroughly reported, this blunt in laying out its allegations of wrongdoing.

My jaw was on the floor from start to finish.

@kennyjacoby.bsky.social on how the Dallas Stars "bullied a community on their path to profiting off a youth sport":

Incidentally, how cooked is Twitter?

The USA Today Sports account has nearly 280,000 followers and their video post on this story has all of 5 retweets.

That's actually relatively HIGH engagement for their posts.

Tons of their link posts have 0 or 1 retweets 🤯

And seem to cap out at ~2.8K views

It is 22 years ago today that my best friend, Nick Everton, died. He was 17 years old. Not much time to leave a mark on the world you would think.
But those of us who knew him came away irreversibly altered by even the short time we shared together....
🧵

Here's a fun story I never published.

The B1 bomber was designed to never need upgrades, which meant it didn't have power outlets for plug-in parts. But it was designed with an electric coil to boil water for noodles or coffee in-flight for its crew of four.

Which ends up powering GPS later.

Did the current administration’s attacks on NOAA already kneecap predictions? Or just a worry for more of same in future? Would it be irresponsible not to speculate?

This Day in Labor History: June 23, 1855. A 19 year old slave woman named Celia murdered her master rather than allow him to rape her. She then attempted to burn his body, nearly succeeding in erasing all traces of the crime. Let's talk about the sexual labor of slavery, a huge part of slavery.

Also- not really a celebrity encounter. I was mistaken for one, Paul Giammati, in concert bar venue. Said person was very disappointed and increasingly over the course of the evening that I denied being Paul Giammati, “you ARE Paul Giammati it’s a disgrace you (would deny being him)

Once sold a small popcorn and soda to Christopher Lloyd in movie theater for the late showing on July 4th. He was appearing in a local (live) theatre at the time. To share.

Not to get all edgy with our infrequent sports takes, but we can't help but feel that the fact that MLB has two teams playing in minor league parks because of owners who are bad at playing chicken for free shit is intimately related to Pete Rose being unbanned. -OS

See also (though rural) the chapter 'The Sad Irons' on the first volume of LBJ biography, which makes the lives of 1930s Texas Hill Country women vivid in a way I have not seen paralleled in any other piece of writing (and I do mean that chapter specifically--Caro's books are super long.

Brazil and not Asia but Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza's Brazilian detective novels set in Rio, on one 'Inspector Espinosa '

Not a novel, but Robert Caro is in the discussion for best non-fiction writer alive, and his sections on NYC and the lives of people there in the 'Power Broker' are engaging.

No matter how prepared you are you are not prepared.

A List of Things People Blamed on Short Skirts

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