"I guess I just like liking things"
I can't tell if Verna's reviews are serious, but they go on for so long that they are either real or made by someone so brilliantly committed to the bit that I actually have to respect them either way. She ends every single paragraph with LOL and I have never wanted to be someone's friend so badly.
Truthfully, it pisses me right off that we genuinely do not talk about Helen Keller's work beyond like some surface-level discussion of her disability without ever looking at the actual points she made in her work. so here is one of my favorites of her political works.
Mr. Macy may be an enthusiastic Marxist propagandist, though I am sorry to say he has not shown much enthusiasm in propagating his Marxism through my fingers. Mrs. Macy is not a Marxist, nor a socialist. Therefore what the Common Cause says about her is not true. The editor must have invented that, made it out of whole cloth, and if that is the way his mind works, it is no wonder that he is opposed to socialism. He has not sufficient sense of fact to be a socialist or anything else intellectually worthwhile.
As much as I enjoy the memes about this piece, I think we've lost sight of two things: 1) That is one of many gut-wrenching lines in this essay that will forever alter how you see other people, and 2) It was originally about a reply a dude got to his goat-related mass email.
Needless to say, this makes us embarrassed and angry and damn our betrayers as vicious two-faced hypocrites. Which, in fact, we all are. We all make fun of one another behind one another’s backs, even the people we love. Of course we do — they’re ridiculous. Anyone worth knowing is inevitably also going to be exasperating: making the same obvious mistakes over and over, dating imbeciles, endlessly relapsing into their dumb addictions and self-defeating habits, blind to their own hilarious flaws and blatant contradictions and fiercely devoted to whatever keeps them miserable. (And those few people about whom there is nothing ridiculous are by far the most preposterous of all.)
America's Suburbs Are Breeding Grounds for Fascism
I will absolutely need a new section eventually that is entirely resources on cities and urban planning but this is a really good piece on suburbanism as an ideology and exactly how much influence it has on our lives.
it may be that suburbanism itself, as an ideology, breeds reactionary thinking and turns Americans into people constantly scared of a Big Bad Other. The suburban doctrine dictates that public space be limited, and conflict-free where it exists; that private space serve only as a place of commodity exchange; that surveillance, hyper-individualism, and constant vigilance are good and normal and keep people safe. It is an ideology that extends beyond the suburbs; it infects everything. .
I have not actually gotten around to reading this entire thing considering it is literally over a thousand pages, but it is truly a wealth of information!
Just a wiki page on an interesting historical figure we don't talk about!
Such a beautifully written piece that says so much about life and love and passion and it means a lot to me!
Thank you to Apple for this seminal trans text, its great.
A history of the telephone! We love infastructure :)
Thank you to Jude for this contribution!
I love an article that asks a question you think can't possibly be that complex and then proves you wrong with each passing word.
This is really and truly one of the most beautifully narrated thing I have ever read and I absolutely believe it should be required reading for every AMerican. A bit dated at this point but it almost makes it more timeless.