Easy Like Sunday Morning #2

(Editor’s Note: While we’re technically still off until Tuesday, September 7th, here’s the 2nd pilot of a different kind of newsletter from the Factual Dispatch or Afternoon Tea. Here is poetry, music videos, art, and long-form writing to be consumed from your chaise lounge. Hopefully while being fanned and fed grapes.)

Words: Edgar Albert Guest, Tiffany Roxanne Barrett, Molly Moore, Andrea Gibson

Visual: Michal Pelka, John Atkinson Grimshaw

Sonic: Elohim, Boyce Avenue

Republicans Finally Caught the Car (Model Citizen) & How to Give Yourself an Abortion (Jewish Currents) The GOP has been smart enough to use the pursuit of a full abortion ban as a carrot, fundraising & organizing off of it for decades. This might not be the absolute Super Bowl win that they’re thinking it is.

The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism (Boston Review) Is America’s unique blend of racism & authoritarianism its own type of Fascism? A troubling long read look.

Vaccines are highly unlikely to cause side effects long after getting the shot (National Geographic) Vaccines, when side effects occur from them, cause side effects in weeks, maybe months. Never years, so if we were all going to get Quirks or mutant powers or 5G connectivity from the vaccines, it would have already happened.

Why Facebook Won’t Stop Pushing Propaganda (Mother Jones) As Upton Sinclair said, It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

I know I can be cold, but you always know how make fire with nothing but snow.

~Molly Moore, on "Swallow My Pride" by Boehm

We, the Media, Supported This Nightmarish Twenty-Year Play and Tonight, On Closing Night, We’re It’s Number One Critic (McSweeney’s) McSweeney’s, The Onion, and Reductress are the Triforce of Satire.

The Most Popular Posts on Facebook Are Plagiarized (The Verge) This will probably turn into an entire Dispatch, as the problem is endemic to all platforms at this point. Twitter & Tumblr posts pepper IG & TikTok, YouTube has huge meme pages devoted to doing nothing but posting yesterday’s tweets and last week’s TikToks with jump cuts and affiliate links. Constantly being reimported and rediscovered by influencers and the youths (Editor’s Note: did you say youts?). Content multiverse variant theory.

Mother’s Milk: Slavery, Wet-Nursing, and Black and White Women in the Antebellum South (Journal of Southern History) Saw this tweet, which knocked us into the shadow realm to do research to understand the Fractal Correctness of Tiffany Roxanne Barrett’s words.

I have no mind’s eye: let me try to describe it for you (Psyche) & You are a network (Aeon) Here at Factual Dispatch, we get feedback from many different kinds of people. We cannot stress more highly, that the faster you detach from rigid concepts about what the organic mech suit being piloted by three pounds of electrified bacon that has the consistency of tapioca pudding, the faster you’ll adapt to this era.

Nesher* (JewishFiction.net) A haunting, meditative, somber, piece on slow disintegration, the elements associated with decay, and some very powerful conversations not had. We need to read it again with Tribe friends to fully appreciate what Sara McKinney is doing here, a wonderful piece for anyone dealing with loss, slow or fast.

Why Some of China’s Most Ardent Nationalists Are Fangirls (The Diplomat) Wild story that explains and bewilders in equal parts. Also feels semi-related to how the Bene Gesserit were invented by Frank Herbert for his novel.

Thanks for trying this on for size! See you again real soon, who knew rest could actually be rejuvenating.

Yours,