Interesting Times No. 17
Boris; Antarctica; haunted dolls; hun culture; fossils; forgiveness; gullibility; Hew Locke; Gucci for pets; plant horror; the art/baby problem; The Weather Underground; rich hippies
Hello, welcome!
Here’s the latest installment of the internet, new and old, high and low. I hope you find something to enjoy.
JOURNALISM
‘Lessons learned as a nanny for biodynamic chocolatiers: They still owe me $60’.
‘Let Them Eat Cake.’ On ‘Conservatism in the age of Boris Johnson.’ And hot off the press: ‘Boris Johnson trips over his own lies. [H]e broke the law and “presided over a culture of casual law-breaking”, in the words of an earlier resigner, the former minister and one-time ally Jesse Norman, even in the very building where those laws were drawn up, seeing himself as “free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else”, to quote the Eton housemaster who had spotted that same trait in Johnson 40 years earlier.’
Ukraine: ‘To cope with the constant worry, Ms. Koutseridi, 34, burrowed deeper into her side gigs as a baker, cook and historian of Ukrainian food. About five years ago, she began baking the breads she was homesick for and posting photos of them on Instagram. She joined thriving online sourdough communities, honed her skills, and started a weekend business selling breads, cheesecakes and naturally leavened Ukrainian babka. But at the start of the war, she turned her focus to Mariupol, collecting all kinds of recipes from scattered family members on Telegram, Skype and WhatsApp.
“I had this urge to record,” she said. “It suddenly seemed like it was all going to disappear so fast.”’
‘The great church property flip: Florida pastors seek salvation in real estate.’
Incredibly surprised it’s taken this long: ‘Gucci’s Newest Collection Is for Luxury-Loving Canines and Felines.’
Fascinating; also bewildering; also ridiculous; also sad (might try it though, such is the level of housing desperation here in NZ): ‘Can unblocking your chakras get you a house? Maybe!’
‘With self-portrait Evil is Banal, [artist] Dumas interrogated her own duplicity as a white girl brought up in South Africa under apartheid. […] Later, the scarred face in The White Disease (1985) would provide an even bleaker evocation of the moral decay of the apartheid regime and its disfiguring of her homeland: Marlene Dumas - Exposing the evil in the ordinary.’
‘The doll’s hooded blue eyes and pursed lips are framed by the jagged bangs of a white-blond pageboy haircut. The eBay listing warns, “Haunted Doll Dakota Spirit Child *Very Active* *Experienced Only*.’ eBay’s Haunted Dolls.
‘Buff Boys of America.’ On Muscular Christianity.
Bloomin love me some hun life ! ! Always cheering. ‘Grab your leopard print, neck a prosecco, take a holibob! How ‘hun culture’ conquered the world. […] Rather than using memes that feel malicious, or rely on twisted black humour, in a world on fire, a hun meme is playful, riffing on the yassification of the everyday (celebrating a pack of prosecco-flavoured Pasta’n’Sauce, for example), or showcasing a niche celebrity doing something instantly relatable.’
‘A Disney addict’s quest to discover why he loves the parks so much.’
‘“Originalism has been the reigning constitutional theory of legal conservatives since the election of Ronald Reagan,” a contributor to the National Review wrote recently, with glowing approval. The theory, which views jurisprudence as frozen in time, flatly rejects the idea of the Constitution as a living and evolving document and instead demands that we interpret its provisions exactly as the framers intended. […] In its recent gun control decision, just like in its recent abortion decision, the Supreme Court’s majority showed just how intellectually fragile the originalist project really is.’
‘It’s tricky to make historical comparisons about mental phenomena – feelings, emotions – that seem to recur across very different periods and cultures, even when the exact same words are apparently used to describe them. But the underlying logic of brain-rot, a messy mutual entanglement between brain and culture, endures. In particular, the idea that lower, popular forms of culture might dangerously intermingle with the physical structures of the brain is remarkably persistent. The fear that trashy media will rot your brain goes way back.’
Jia Tolentino on Roe v Wade.
On ‘Gullibility in the golden age of scams: [G]ullibility is treated as syndrome rather than symptom. But this is a category error. In focusing on the scammers, and in believing their marks to have erred, we separate those who are gullible from those who supposedly are not, and we do what Americans do best: project the demands of a vulnerable age onto its casualties.
BOOKS
‘Plant horror is interested in the uncanny nature of plants—creeping, hungry, silently expressive, and both alive and not quite so—and in the possibility that human hubris has blinded us to their potential threat. It also asks: What do plants want? Pernicious Plants of Literature.’
RECOMMENDATIONS: ‘In celebration of [Faber Publishing’s] ninetieth anniversary, staff members have been given the tricky task of selecting their three favourite Faber books.’ And Staff Picks of 2022 from NPR.
‘The Difficult Art of Bargaining’, a short story by Anthony Lapwood.
‘Here’s a question: what links literary luminaries Colm Tóibín, Edmund White, Tessa Hadley, Sarah Hall, Patrick Gale, Elizabeth Day, Joan Bakewell and actor Gabriel Byrne? The answer is that they have all, alongside several others, written glowing blurbs about The Promise, a novel by South African novelist Damon Galgut. White calls it the most important book of the past decade. Hall, similarly breathless, praises its ‘extraordinary skill, truthfulness and sensitivity’. The platitudes occupy two full pages on the inside cover. Mike Jakeman runs a stunning, vital and urgent [ha!] piece into blurbing.’
‘Pirates, pigs and sex work: the extraordinary life of a bookseller at the end of the world.’
‘The End of the Art-Baby Problem: In the lives of women from Alice Neel to Ursula Le Guin, motherhood was entwined with a quest to make art.’
PODCASTS
‘Gary Matthews was into conspiracy theories - until he caught Covid and died. What role did falsehoods play in his death? BBC disinformation reporter Marianna Spring investigates.’ This is really well done, I think - sensitive, questioning, and respectful.
‘Mother Country Radicals, about the radical leftist organization The Weather Underground, is hosted by playwright Zayd Ayers Dohrn, son of Weather Underground leaders Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.
Fifty years after the Weather Underground’s bombing of the Pentagon, Mother Country Radicals is a highly personal, politically charged account of a counterculture group of young activists in pursuit of radical change through any means necessary.’
Thanks for reading - see you next time,
Ellie
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