Your Mid-Week Experiment
We get letters
Thanks to everyone who reached out after last weekend’s essay about how Save our Springs, the heroic group that saved Barton Springs from development in the ‘90s, has metastasized into a NIMBY force.
A, uh, bunch of you pointed out that Bill Bunch, while not directly responsible for the Save Zilker Park group, did show up to support them at the most recent Parks and Recreation Board meeting. As per usual, the meeting ran late into the night and well past Bunch’s endurance.
Another reader clued me into the surprising fact that Bunch apparently had little to do with what I think is SOS’s greatest legacy, which was the ‘90s truce with developers that resulted in the creation of the massive Barton Creek wilderness park, which he called, according to my reader, a “developer bailout.”
This reader was a witness to Bunch leaving the first meeting of the peace talks at a law firm between Real Estate Council of Austin and a coalition of environmentalists.
He came to the first peace talks meeting at Armbrust and Brown, but it made him physically ill to be around those evil doers, and he threw up in Armbrust reception area and left.
He never went to another meeting, and we’ve got a lot to get to, but first, if you like true-crime in the Southern tradition, pre-order my old friend Ken Poston’s book about his most famous case. If you want to get a sense of what a hoot both he and this story are, listen to this podcast.
Enough of the chit chat. Let’s get to it:
Oh my goodness, this article about why pink is not real, and the difference between sensation and perception. If you read one thing this week… (Psychology Today)
This is a helluva eulogy of Tina Turner, who I saw play in West Germany when I was 16 and she was 47 (New York Times)
Well, this is infuriating, especially given where I work. (ProPublica)
Let’s clear the palate with some math rock.
Remember when I linked to that blog about the woman who got into a car crash and had trouble getting a rental? Well, apparently that kicked off a wicked bout of PTSD. (Beth Broderick)
An angrier take on Zilker Park than mine (Rantz by Neenz)
TFW your friend wrote the definitive tick-tock about Ebola in the city where you now live (Bryan Burrough)
Few things I’ve enjoyed more than the Once Upon a Time… in Bennington College, but I’m open to the argument that it was unnecessarily invasive when it came to Donna Tartt’s sex life (New Republic)
A resource of public apologies categorized by sector; unbelievable resource (Public Apologies)
The social media age for news distribution is dying. This argues that we’re entering the homepage era, but I tend to believe that we’re in the in-box era (A Media Operator)
Whoever recommended this podcast about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter deserves a raise:
It’s not just your imagination, and it’s not just school shootings. A lot more kids than ever are being shot to death. (Axios)
She Said reminds me why I seldom like movies about journalism.
Not crazy about this one.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is how I have fun.
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. The New York Times bestseller is 44% off and the same price as a paperback now!