We’re not going to talk about it. There’s lots of places to talk about it! Instead, here we’re going to share strange playlists, delightful videos, soothing new hobby ideas, and engrossing things to read. Got something good? Drop us a line!
➽ How to have a medication abortion.
➽ How to start a church in America.
➽ The Anarchist’s Cookbook — for Kindle!
➽ “A guide to becoming an armed leftist in the United States ahead of the 2024 elections” from The Socialist Rifle Association.
➽ Outside Magazine’s Hunting for Beginners guide.
➽ “How to field dress a deer in under 30 seconds” training video.
➽ The American Knife and Tool Association’s guide to knife laws in all 50 states.
➽ Self-defense principles for all kinds of bodies.
➽ “16 Important Rules of Survival and Preparedness” by the Huey P. Newton Gun Club.
Be well!
“The world and the people who inhabit it are not the same. The world lies between people, and this in-between —much more than (as is often thought) men or even man — is today the object of the greatest concern and the most obvious upheaval in almost all the countries of the globe. Even where the world is still halfway in order, or is kept halfway in order, the public realm has lost the power of illumination which was originally part of its very nature. More and more people in the countries of the Western world, which since the decline of the ancient world has regarded freedom from politics as one of the basic freedoms, make use of this freedom and have retreaded from the world and their obligations within it. This withdrawal from the world need not harm an individual; he may even cultivate great talents to the point of genius and so by a detour be useful to the world again. But with each such retreat an almost demonstrable loss to the world takes place; what is lost is the specific and usually irreplaceable in-between which should have formed between this individual and his fellow men.” —Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times
In 1970, a whale beached in Oregon was blown up. With dynamite. This incident and its news report video is quite famous and you may think of it fondly. But you might not have know that, in late 2020 (perhaps you were busy at the time???), the video was remastered from the original by the Oregon Historical Society into glorious film definition. The report has a wonderful moral in conclusion about not making the same mistake twice.
Justin writes in: “Whenever I need a quick pick-me-up, I always return to this short compilation of Rihanna getting tricked by her friend Leandra into thinking she’s posing for pictures but actually it’s a video. There’s something reassuring about one of the coolest people alive getting (affectionately) clowned over and over again.”
You know what’s really hitting right now? MapCrunch. You hit “go” and it takes you anywhere in the world. So many places you could be! Definitely something to think about right now!
That’s Mariah in 1992.
And that’s Prince at the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
Have you watched Doctor Odyssey yet? Seems like a good night to catch up.
Noah tipped us off to the world of Aufguss — an Austrian spa ritual in which a “sauna master” (really!!) guides participants through a session, waving around a towel to properly disperse the heat. Sometimes there’s a theatrical component with costumes, storytelling, and dancing? There’s also a world championship competition (yes!!) that sounds kind of like a literally steamy Eurovision. Just look at how contented the sauna masters in this video series seem! That could be us.
My friend June Thunderstorm and I once spent half an hour sitting in a meadow by a mountain lake, watching an inchworm dangle from the top of a stalk of grass, twist about in every possible direction, and then leap to the next stalk and do the same thing. And so it proceeded, in a vast circle, with what must have been a vast expenditure of energy, for what seemed like absolutely no reason at all.
“All animals play,” June had once said to me. “Even ants.” She’d spent many years working as a professional gardener and had plenty of incidents like this to observe and ponder. “Look,” she said, with an air of modest triumph. “See what I mean?”
Most of us, hearing this story, would insist on proof. How do we know the worm was playing? Perhaps the invisible circles it traced in the air were really just a search for some unknown sort of prey. Or a mating ritual. Can we prove they weren’t? Even if the worm was playing, how do we know this form of play did not serve some ultimately practical purpose: exercise, or self-training for some possible future inchworm emergency?
This would be the reaction of most professional ethologists as well.
Generally speaking, an analysis of animal behavior is not considered scientific unless the animal is assumed, at least tacitly, to be operating according to the same means/end calculations that one would apply to economic transactions. Under this assumption, an expenditure of energy must be directed toward some goal, whether it be obtaining food, securing territory, achieving dominance, or maximizing reproductive success—unless one can absolutely prove that it isn’t, and absolute proof in such matters is, as one might imagine, very hard to come by.
I must emphasize here that it doesn’t really matter what sort of theory of animal motivation a scientist might entertain: what she believes an animal to be thinking, whether she thinks an animal can be said to be “thinking” anything at all. I’m not saying that ethologists actually believe that animals are simply rational calculating machines. I’m simply saying that ethologists have boxed themselves into a world where to be scientific means to offer an explanation of behavior in rational terms — which in turn means describing an animal as if it were a calculating economic actor trying to maximize some sort of self-interest — whatever their theory of animal psychology, or motivation, might be.
That’s why the existence of animal play is considered something of an intellectual scandal. It’s understudied, and those who do study it are seen as mildly eccentric. As with many vaguely threatening, speculative notions, difficult-to-satisfy criteria are introduced for proving animal play exists, and even when it is acknowledged, the research more often than not cannibalizes its own insights by trying to demonstrate that play must have some long-term survival or reproductive function.
Despite all this, those who do look into the matter are invariably forced to the conclusion that play does exist across the animal universe. And exists not just among such notoriously frivolous creatures as monkeys, dolphins, or puppies, but among such unlikely species as frogs, minnows, salamanders, fiddler crabs, and yes, even ants —which not only engage in frivolous activities as individuals, but also have been observed since the nineteenth century to arrange mock wars, apparently just for the fun of it.
Why do animals play? Well, why shouldn’t they? The real question is: Why does the existence of action carried out for the sheer pleasure of acting, the exertion of powers for the sheer pleasure of exerting them, strike us as mysterious? What does it tell us about ourselves that we instinctively assume that it is?
Excerpted from The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, by David Graeber; Edited and Introduced by Nika Dubrovsky; Foreword by Rebecca Solnit. To be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux November 12th 2024. Copyright © 2024 by the David Graeber Estate; Foreword copyright © 2024 by Rebecca Solnit; Introduction copyright © 2024 by Nika Dubrovsky. First published in The Baffler. All rights reserved.
“One place I find very soothing is The Quilt Index,” writes a reader named JustKat. “Whether or not you’re a crafter, the alphabetical (also soothing) pictorial list of quilt patterns is a treasure trove of imagination and artistry, told through a very specific historical lens. Clicking on each pattern takes you to a chronological (soothed again) list of notable examples (and often with more info about the individual creators, quilt materials, etc.). The implied histories are mind-boggling, in a good way, as opposed to the regular mental upheaval of being online. When I need a lovely rest for my mind, I try to go through at least one letter’s worth of patterns.”
This quilt is called “Celtic Wonders” and was made by Diane Jeffcott in Eugene, Oregon in 2011.
Perhaps your handwriting has also become a sick joke, a crampy little sketch of human language. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our reader Liz writes to say that she loves The Postman’s Knock for calligraphy lessons and supplies, but also, their experts are standing by to teach us how to write again.
Bea Arthur and Rock Hudson did this number from I Love My Wife on a variety show in 1980. (The Broadway musical, of course, is about two couples deciding to hook up together and exactly how they’ll do it.)
➽ The Metrograph is showing Silence of the Lambs at 6:30 p.m. and the second installment of Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy at 8:15 p.m.
➽ The Alamo in Brooklyn is showing Godzilla Minus One at 6:10 p.m.
➽ BAM is playing Je tu il elle at 7 p.m.
➽ The Roxy Cinema is playing 4:44 Last Day on Earth at 7 p.m.
➽ This Saveur recipe for eclairs claims it only takes two hours. I could do it in three.
➽ Nothing freaks me out more than having to make a layer cake! Even though Alison Roman wouldn’t want you to worry making this, you will. (You can also make her chocolate sheet cake, which is less stressful.) I also haven’t tried making her recent coconut cake recipe and maybe tonight is the night?
➽ One of the all-time baking bangers (look how dirty that cookbook page is!), the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Salted Caramel Apple Pie is where to shove the season’s dying apples. Or you can just pay $45.
➽ This Gourmet Traveller recipe for Flour and Stone’s Paris-Brest is pretty easy if you’re good with choux but then you have to make a hazelnut praline, which I find annoying. In a good way!
There are of course easier things to bake but not today.
This enormous three-notch Lodge stainless steel monster needed three days in the lye bath! Wow! I bet that feels amazing. Do me next, Cast Iron Chris!
There’s a million ways to learn how to draw. The best way is to draw a lot! But one resource that comes up a lot in places like the How to Draw Subreddit is Drawabox, an unreasonably chaotic website that has a strong theoretical underpinning to their teaching. Here’s their lesson zero, which talks about what to learn when learning to draw.
The tech union of the New York Times is still on strike, so we’re avoiding Wordle — and, in other Wordle alternatives, there’s the wildly difficult Birdle S. A., which quizes you on the habitat, diet, and name of various South African birds. I totally nailed the perching habit of my first bird! And then had never heard of any of them! Why are there so many birds! Delightfully frustrating, much more engrossing than basic Birdle. (There is also Birdle U.K.!) Thanks to Molly for the heads up.
Alex Lei found a YouTube channel called “Full Moon Matinee,” in which a host in full noir mode (he’s called The Detective) intros gorgeous full noir movies. This is a very good case of “dudes rock.” He has just shy of 14,000 subscribers; surely you’d like to join them?
Our pal Emily turned us on to The Amazing Digital Circus. “There are only three episodes. It’s on Netflix and on YouTube. It’s animated but not for kids (my nine-year-old watched it though, oops). It’s about a woman who puts on a VR headset and gets trapped in an insane circus world where an AI overlord sends her and other human-avatars on videogame-like adventures. It’s very dark and funny and engrossing and I wish there was more of it.” It’s not soothing but it is riveting!
Melding the best of ASMR, Antiques Roadshow, and all manner of English cozy moments, The Repair Shop is one of the most soothing and absorbing shows in human history. “There’s a team of amazing specialists who can repair ANYTHING, from an old jukebox to a 150-year-old watch to a 70-year-old teddy bear. Everything gets fixed, everyone is nice and the heirloom owners are overjoyed,” writes reader Liz. Also, the guys are hunky and people cry in the most restrained British way imaginable. Every cloud has its rain shower, however: “My brain smooths out thinking about it even though the host was just charged with coercive behavior (sigh).”
MyRetroTVs will serve you a channel, of sorts, based on decade and preferred content type, notes a reader named Sarah. Don’t stop paying attention, because there’s no pause button — TV the way the Lord intended it. Bill Cosby sure was famous in the 1990s.
Recently, writer Ottessa Moshfegh became an advice columnist. She did it the way so many others began in the business, by making up questions for herself to answer. The question she made up for herself was “How do you approach creating such complex and flawed characters?” but the question she really wanted to answer was “Must I be driven by intense overwhelming passion to write so that I write?” Her answer is yes:
The desire to write fiction is the desire to detach from one’s ego and get the fuck over oneself. To do that, it is essential to confess to one’s fears and self-doubts. (More on this next week.) If you want to write something, if you have the impulse to write something, even if you don’t know what, A LOT IS ON THE LINE. If you don’t write this thing, you’ll never get over it. You’ll never learn from it. You’ll just wallow in it. Or worse, you’ll deny it. And then you’ll explode.
This may not be true for you at all. But passion, or, at least, putting writing before all else, is how many others get it done. Certainly many writers endorse neglecting other aspects of their lives, such as spouses or children. “If you want to write, don’t have a backup plan,” says Jenny Offill. If you really wanted to be writing, the best thing to do about it is to go write now right now.
A quiet classic from Landa Conservatory.
It’s not disco. It’s not quiet storm. It’s yacht soul — and here’s more than 24 hours of it, thanks to this playlist created by a reader’s favorite coworker.
They’re always pitting successful hippos against each other but we won’t fall for that stale behavior. The Edinburgh Zoo today revealed footage of Haggis, the new and very endangered pygmy hippo calf.
What’s Moo Deng doing literally right now?
Nothing! As usual! We support it. Give yourself 30 seconds of the birdsongs that soothe Moo Deng into slumber, it’s worth it.
Update: The Edinburgh Zoo has made amends. :)
“The Mushroom Color Atlas is a resource and reference for everyone curious about mushrooms and the beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms. But it is also the start of a journey and a point of departure, introducing you to the kaleidoscopic fungi kingdom and our connection to it.” You could lose days in here.
A reader named Emma writes: “When I was in college, I began compiling a Youtube playlist of videos that I found comforting or funny or soothing to watch. Its original purpose was to calm me down if I got too high. It’s still kind of perfect to me — a really brain-shushing mix of animals, infomercial fails, NBA halftime performances, newscasters saying silly things, etc. I haven’t added to it in a long time but I still break the glass once or twice a year when I really need.” You don’t need to be too high to enjoy the infamous departure of Jonathan Sahanis from Celebrity Rehab.
You may have noticed that the New York Times Tech Guild is on strike today, so you may not be enjoying their fine products such as Cooking and Wordle. An alternative? Our reader Stacy recommends Worldle.