We get letters
You have many thoughts about being so depressed. Everything OK?
Read: They buried the lede in the news about the DEA’s opioid database, so many untested rape kits inadvertently created a good dataset that taught us something horrifying about rape, a brilliant new Dan Zak piece about a climate prophet rivaled only slightly by a Chris Richards concert review that focused on one song Bill Callahan didn’t play. Plus the latest from Mars, which, if you’re new here, we’re up on Mars around these parts.
Watch: A roomful of awful crap Netflix and HBO, and a pony in the form of a wonderful commercial from China Airlines. Really.
Listen: The first Raconteurs album in 11 years isn’t cool now, but it’s good.
But first: Got a ton of responses to Sunday’s newsletter about Lear’s Fool:
From my new favorite friend, S.B., evidence of good taste and right-thinking:
Okay, again, dazzled by Stanford X and your thoughts on Lear's fool. As a chronic Eeyore it confirms my basically belief: I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG.
From new subscriber, and the best story-teller I’ve ever known, K.P.:
Fuck! This is good stuff.
From OG subscriber D.G.:
In keeping with my theme of life lessons from pop culture, this clip from the comedy Road Trip spoke to me the first time I saw it like someone out there finally understood me...and was what I kept thinking of when I read your primary thesis this week: https://youtu.be/VTpttu6sqjw?t=466
Also, remember, for all the bad that's out there, there are 7.5B+ people in the world. Today, 90% of them will have a totally normal day where their interactions with other people are innocuous at worst and friendly at best. That's the reality and it's not a delusion one. The math, the stats, the facts, all back that. We're working on margins over here and the margins are pretty damn good on the positive side of the scale. You want the bad stuff to stick out because that means that it's still abnormal.
From A.T., who offers an alternate take I’m almost smart enough to understand:
I agree but disagree. The notion of significance or importance and its relationship to our happiness and/or depression exist only as far as how we actually define "importance". It isn't so much that we come to understand and accept how unimportant/insignificant we are but more importantly that we properly define it. In other words, my life/existence has importance relative the concentric circles that define my relationships. The importance/signficance of my actions, inactions and perhaps just "being" has a direct correlation to all of my relationships and their place in my concentric circles. The reverb at the center is far different than it is to those toward the outer boundaries. Sometimes, depending on the social platform you happen to live in, the reverb can be significantly amplified and travel further and louder.
This is why it irks me when people say "I am not a role model." The fact is, everyone is. Our human reverb makes it an inescapable reality and we have no choice in the matter. Our only choice is what "kind" of role model we choose to be, a good one or a bad one.
It is when we properly assign value that we start figuring out how to be content, happy, sad, grieve, and suck the marrow out of life.
From J.S., who inferred what I tried to explicate:
Interesting take about depression today. There is a fair amount of that in my family, unfortunately.
Still... I think it is pretty much undeniable that minorities, women, LGBTQ are far better off today than they were 40 years ago, which I would argue also makes things better for white males, even if some want to complain (being held accountable actually makes you a better person - better father, better husband, better citizen).
Therefore, is it possible that self-delusion makes you think you can make a difference, which is a prerequisite to actually making a difference, and people ARE making a difference...which means that self-delusion is more accurate than “the truth”?
And finally, from Uncle Ron:
I especially loved “What I’m reading” but it needs a more explosive headline.
The recommendations are great and I watched all the videos, including Cock Robin, which I had never heard of (nor the others).
I think you should have led with them. Or maybe better, do a quick witty summary of the newsletter items. Vanity Fair's The Hive comes to mind. The long article almost stopped me. Not because it's not good, but because it doesn’t fit the way I consume email newsletters. If you tease it and give me an idea of what it’s about, I would be more likely to read it. I find that I have to be told in broad strokes what it is I’m about to read.
My 2 cents.
What I’m reading is explosive!
Actually, this is pretty explosive. A judge ordered the release of a DEA database that tracks every opioid ever made and shipped in the United States. This was the seventh paragraph:
The drug companies, along with the DEA and the Justice Department, have fought furiously against the public release of the database, the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Order System, known as ARCOS. The companies argued that the release of the “transactional data” could give competitors an unfair advantage in the marketplace. The Justice Department argued that the release of the information could compromise ongoing DEA investigations.
In other words, the DEA has been trying to conceal this database because they knew all along exactly where these drugs were flowing. It would not have taken Elliott Ness to uncover where the pill mills were. They just had to look at their own database.
Also in the explosive category: I did not know but am not surprised that “in 49 out of every 50 rape cases, the alleged assailant goes free.” But most of the other things we are learning about rape are surprising, such as the fact that serial rapists are much more common than previously believed. They commit on average 20 percent of all sexual assaults, and there is no bright line between acquaintance rapists and stranger rapists.
There is a very good and scary reason not to flush your meth down the toilet.
George Takei has some words for those who don’t think the migrant camps are concentration camps, and he put it in a book.
This is the smartest take on “forced busing,” AKA school desegregation, that I have read.
Speaking of taxation without representation, Americans reject DC statehood by a better than two-to-one margin.
Less than half of Republicans support the decision to cast a black actress in The Little Mermaid after seeing a picture of her, and less than half of all adults in the U.S. like the idea of having racial and ethnic minorities replace traditionally white characters.
What jumps out at me from Bruce Mehlman’s latest deck is that the gender gap is now 21 points (up from 11 percent in 2016) and there’s been a 20-point swing toward the Democrats among college-educated white people since 2016. Also, turnout is going to be HUGE.
The more sexist the Democrat, the more likely they are to support men in the primary, but this doesn’t mean they’ll have an advantage in the general election. If you want to know about the swing voters for 2020, read this.
A plurality of independents supports the ICE raids.
This seems like a smart way to meet diversity goals.
This seems like a smart way to make college affordable for the lower middle-class.
Soraya Nadia McDonald checks in with an insightful analysis of HBO’s Euphoria, the show about the Age of Anxiety that’s occasioning so much hand-wringing.
It seems insane to me that we have refugees living in churches in the United States to hide them from ICE.
Here’s a thoughtful analysis of why it’s hard for news organizations to call the President a racist. Meanwhile, half of all black people in the U.S. think it unlikely that they will ever have equal rights.
I forgot that Mike Pence was in danger of losing his re-election campaign in Indiana when Donald Trump put him on the national ticket.
Divorce is contagious, but only unhappy couples are vulnerable, according to a study conducted at Duh University.
Did you know that the R in RNA came from Mars? That, and the fact that we just discovered a bunch of methane on Mars are raising the possibility that life originated there and not here on Earth. Meanwhile, silica aerogel might be the secret of making Mars habitable again. (Why am I so interested in Mars? If you’re new to my, uh, orbit, read this.)
A study of penguin poop reveals that they are not stressed out by humans.
Does Twitter need a pause button?
This is cool: The Hong Kong protestors used AirDrop to get past China’s firewall.
This has never happened before: Hispanic homeownership in the U.S. is up, but black homeownership has never been lower.
Meanwhile, they have confirmed a case of Ebola in Goma, a city in the Congo with more than 2 million people.
OK, news nerds, listen up: Put links at the end of the articles and not in the middle; people are more likely to subscribe if they know what they’re getting rather than if they’re told what they’d be missing out on; just talking about fake news makes people distrust all news; if you want clicks, go negative, but if you want reactions and engagement go positive; the most cynical you are about fake news, the less likely you are to spot it, which shows how smart you are; if there’s one thing that unites this world, it’s online harassment of women journalists.
Let’s leave on a Dan Zak piece about a Christian climate change prophet that features one of the best top paragraphs I’ve read in a long, long time.
What I’m watching
I’m over Euphoria. I did not love Berlin, I Love You. I could not turn off American Honey fast enough. Perfection wasn’t. And Crashing tested my limits as a completist, even for the incomparablePhoebe Waller-Bridge.
But I love this new ad from China Airlines.
What I’m listening to
A little while back I posted a Bill Callahan video and noted how strange it was for the notoriously moody singer to write songs from a happy place. Well, Chris Richards went to a recent concert and wrote about a song he didn’t even play. Worth your time.
Meanwhile, the Raconteurs are no longer Pitchfork’s darling, but whenever songs from their new album Help Us Stranger come on my ears perk up and I start bobbing my head. I know it’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it.
What do you think of today's email? I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback. I might even put ‘em in the newsletter if I don’t steal it outright.
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