Andrew Varnon

In 1920s US under Prohibition, there was a similar phenomenon. When bars turned into speakeasies, flaunting the law became cool. And that had real consequences. #BeerBaseballAndTheBible

The math depends on a multiplier of complicity from people who are intimidated/motivated by this show of force.

I’m in 🇨🇦 right now. I don’t think “abandon us” is the right framing. I’d ask Canada to hold us responsible to be the best parts of the partner we used to be. But, we 🇺🇸s don’t have a great reputation for paying attention.

Iago, for instance.

I made a whole playlist based on a conversation I had with my daughter about the Chappel Roan song, “The Giver,” and I put “Best Guess” on it.

“Indoctrination”? We Call It “Education.” It’s not “divisive” to teach about division. It’s divisive to bury it.

Slavery and racism were much more than mere “deviations.” Most of the Founders owned enslaved people. Many white Americans, including the president, think we should restore memorials to men who committed treason during the Civil War. trib.al/DQLVydb

I think it’s partly because I identify with the “Big Sur” guy — do we even learn his name? — & his insecurity/virtue that he is willing to wait for her & she dumps him for it. The show is so tied to the humor of Christy as a relateable fuckup that it can’t let her actually be with a guy like this.

Here’s another opportunity to see the influence and priorities of legacy media ownership by how - or if - it covers a story.

What are the odds this will be a #FrontPage story in any major paper?

Tune in tomorrow when we will post front pages in a thread.

bsky.app/profile/hami...

Well, if Nancy Mace says it…

Zohran is right. Abbott is wrong.

Harland Bartholomew: Destroyer of the Urban Fabric of St. Louis - NextSTL Many people know of Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who changed the city’s landscape by razing historic neighborhoods and constructing urban highways and large monolithic apartment buildin...

Counterpoint: Harland Bartholomew. nextstl.com/2021/04/harl...

Man in ball cap sitting in chair on rocky beach at Little Red Bay, with Sunset Island in the distance.

Self portrait with journal and lake.

“Too much book learning and a narrative arc whose murky charm is all backstory.”

Right, but how do you know which is which?

How to Save Canada — magazine article

Main Street in Wiarton.

We walked around Wiarton yesterday. I saw this article, “How to Save Canada”🇨🇦 in The Walrus. thewalrus.ca

“Books and dreams were what I lived in and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like bees about the grass,” wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning of her childhood at Hope End. www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elizab...

A mermaid made of shells, glass shards & other beach flotsam, mounted on driftwood.

The Driftwood Mermaid 🧜‍♀️— an assemblage of found objects from the beach at the cottage on Lake Huron, where we’re staying. #VernacularArt

We loved Doc Martin!

Knife, showing a woman serving in tennis

Knife, reading Egalite

I heard Genie Bouchard retired from #tennis. 🇨🇦🎾 I modeled the etching on my knife after a photo of her serving.

I can't say I do this every day, but I do know the feeling of accomplishment when I do.

I like my guy McGovern, and I don't have a problem with Markey on policy, but I think the age issue is real. The Dems should be moving younger talent up, if they can.

I'm looking forward to my time on the shore of Lake Huron.

"Running Government Like a Business" should be an idea that has been revealed for the smokescreen for autocracy that it is.

“No Kings” is a useful slogan, because it taps into a historical American impulse, but also, it points out where we have gone wrong as a society. Empire and comfort have become more important to us than courage and freedom.

I agree!

"Big News" is a convenient foe. But we have made decisions that made "Big News" possible. The harder work is not railing against big news, but undoing some of those decisions.

I'm not here to excuse any particular mistake of mainstream journalism. I used to work as a full-time journalist for an honest-to-goodness small newspaper that is still improbably hanging on by its fingernails in #GreenfieldMA, namely @greenfieldrecorder.bsky.social. The ecosystem is drying up.

I wouldn't follow you as far as "completely," but on that particular quote, it looks pretty good.

I worked for a daily small-town newspaper. We referred to it as "eat your peas" journalism, based on the "Four Freedoms" type of Norman Rockwell conception of America: the New England Town Meeting as incarnation of democracy.

The phenomenon of Trump is that for various reasons, he seems especially well-placed to take advantage of the weaknesses of American mainstream society. Media failure is one of those weaknesses. But the blame isn't on working journalists, it's on a society that doesn't support journalism.