Your Mid-Week Experiment

In which I have a Tony Orlando and Dawn song stuck in my head

Thanks to everyone for sticking with my second-straight essay on Russian history. It was all leading somewhere, so kudos to those of you who stuck around to the very end. I promise, this weekend I’ll write about something light, like racism or zoning.

Let’s get to it.

Paul Alvarado @Robogeek

“Teaching history is difficult when the present political landscape shifts… It wouldn’t be quite right to say that Trumpism has shoved the Overton Window to the right as much as the TX Rep. Party has recently gone to JCPenney for a new pair of crazy pants.” Well worth a read: https://t.co/XnnQ0l9VNG

Jason Stanford @JasStanford

I’ve never believed that those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. History doesn’t care if we remember it. It’s in the struggle to control the present, though, that we condemn the past to endless revisions. https://t.co/i5DWKHqvHv

“Dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of people died by leaping from a burning building, and we have somehow taken it upon ourselves to deem their deaths unworthy of witness—because we have somehow deemed the act of witness, in this one regard, unworthy of us.” (Tom Junod)

“The fact that Zuck and Trump think killing CDA230 is a great idea should at least give its progressive opponents a moment’s pause.” (Cory Doctorow)

Smart take on CNN —>“The point is that tacking to the middle in order to regain an authority that was largely the product of an expired era in media is a flawed strategy—and that constraining one’s reporters and analysts in response to bad-faith criticisms will ultimately make your network beholden to the biases of people who don’t actually value your work and will always just find some other dumb reason to hate you.” (Justin Peters)

Just discovered Ambar Lucid, a Latina singer from New Jersey. I dig this one, “A letter to my younger self.”

This was one of the best things I’ve ever made, and it took 15 minutes. (The New York Times)

A fella could get elected president with this platform. (Scott Galloway)

A Spanish-language version of “Unskinny Bop”? Thanks, Moderatto.

Finally catching up with season 3 of Atlanta, which is deeply and winningly weird.

I didn’t understand Cobra Kai, the Netflix reboot, until S said it was a telenovela. Now I love it.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is a funny, slight bop on feminism.

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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!