Your Mid-Week Experiment

Greetings from exile in Guadalajara

Spending the week in Guadalajara with S and friend and longtime reader A.T., so I’ll keep this one brief, as I recently encountered the following warning against profundities.

Getting a lot of reaction about last weekend’s essay about how The 1836 Project is essentially confirming the thesis of Forget the Alamo, which The 1836 Project was created, in part, to refute.

gayle brennan spencer @postcardsatx

At least the State Board of Education sent this back to the committee for more consideration: "...a recommendation to swap out references to 'slavery' in Texas’s second-grade state curriculum and textbooks to 'involuntary relocation.'” via @JasStanford

jasonstanford.substack.comThe 1836 Project is WokeDon’t worry, it probably won’t last.

But enough about that. Let’s get to it:

Should I try this recipe for Hawaiian macaroni salad? Hit me up in the replies.

“WTF happened to the news?” (Paul O’Brien)

And now Baltimore has a newspaper war! Funny how they wrote this without ever mentioning The Texas Tribune. h/t SCG (The New York Times)

“No, you dillweeds. Childbirth is the bloody, violent, life-threatening procedure.” (Monica Hesse)

“Everything in the world feels more real and more terrifying. I feel like there is a crack in me now, where everything can get in.” (Alexandra Petri)

“The thing is, the internet and its successors like the metaverse were always meant to be ours, originally designed as a public trust. The public paid for it to be created too. Those savvy entrepreneurs simply hijacked it, took it for a spin and gave us very little in return — some email, texting, a swipe-left dating service, a whole lot of loony tweeting — compared with what they made off with. Which is to say: All the money. All the control. All the power.” (Kara Swisher)

“The one thing I’m thinking now is that speed is our big enemy. Social media has created an opportunity for speed and a superficial approach that is really damaging. ... The tone and speed of our communications is damaging the social contract.” (George Saunders)

Paul Wiggins 💉 💉 💉🍺 @paulwiggins

'We’ll be lucky if they don’t end up calling slaves “unpaid interns,” or as Fox & Friends Brian Kilmeade did in his childish Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers: The Texas Victory That Changed American History, “servants.” '

Jason Stanford @JasStanford

The 1836 Project was promoted to promote a patriotic eduction of Texas history by printing brochures to be given out at the DMV. I got a draft copy of the brochure, and you're not going to believe what it says. https://t.co/LyrfaUy6oj

“That rare circumstance arrived Tuesday: A young civilian, previously unknown to most Americans, told Congress what she saw and heard while in the innermost sanctum of government at a crucial moment in history.” (Dan Zak)

Welcome back, Dave Weigel. (Washington Post)

Says S, I Want You Back “was a good old time.”

---

Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds over 2020-21 and have kept it off since then. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.

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 some

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. Out in paperback now!