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Bookmarked Fluxblog 455: good night to the Pitchfork era by .
Media corporations are not our friends. They don’t care about writers, they don’t care about audiences, and they don’t care about subject matter. Working for them is like surfing – you can ride a wave for a while but it will eventually crash. Major media corporations like Condé Nast and the New York Times are attractive to writers because they seem like firm institutions that are less likely to collapse, but that’s just an illusion.
Bookmarked Delaware lawmakers are headed back to Dover. Here’s what they’re focusing on in 2024 by .
Senate Republicans argue that Delaware’s bail reform bill passed in 2018 has “resulted in high recidivism” – a criticism that Republicans across the country have used in recent years as states moved away from cash bail.
However, the data doesn’t back up that claim. In fact, the “return to prison” rate has declined 60% since 2019, according to data from the state Department of Justice.
Do you see how easy this is? You don’t simply have to parrot things that are inaccurate, just because an elected official says them. Thank you, Amanda.
This is what disability advocates have said all along, not that it usually sinks in: The able and the disabled aren’t two different kinds of people but the same people at different times.
Unraveling My Medical Mystery by Tom Scocca
Happy Delaware Day!
I’m celebrating by looking at the Delaware state flag and asking “is this the banner we want to represent our state’s values?”
Read it in The Delaware Call.
The Mountain Goats last night at The Queen in Wilmington.
Great energy, great show, great setlist, including the first time I’ve ever seen an act come out for another encore after the house lights went up.
Delaware earns a C- on Common Cause’s Community Redistricting Report Card
Perhaps the perfect encapsulation of Delaware Way politics: Delaware Democrats, who held the Governorship and both houses of the General Assembly, ran an “inadequately transparent” process in which “incumbent protection appeared to trump protecting communities of interest or consideration of public testimony” and still managed to gift Republicans a district (the new RD 4, which moved from Wilmington to Sussex County).
How can we take pride in and venerate the supposedly good things Americans in history did but ignore and dismiss the bad things? How can we pick and choose our moral inheritance at will? How does the need for us to downplay slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow continue to be such a strong political force? And whose interests does this down-playing serve in 2023?
Folks, it seems like there’s a pending announcement of new music from Charles Bissell of The Wrens coming next week. This is not a drill. Prepare accordingly.
Lucky enough to have seen Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service last night at the Mann. My son’s first concert (he’s a huge Postal Service fan). I think we both made a bunch of core memories; I know I did.
Sunny Day Real Estate last night in Baltimore.
Still can’t believe how tight these guys sound and how well Jeremy’s voice holds up.
Three candidates have announced their 2024 candidacy for Delaware’s lone U.S. House seat. How did they use branding to differentiate themselves in an already crowded field?
In the next installment of “The Politics of Design,” I critiqued all three for the Delaware Call.
Made the Roy Choi salsa verde tonight and, folks? It’s good.
Admittedly fudged the recipe a bit based on what was on hand but it’s a hell of a starting place.
Allstate is still using “security questions I can probably find the answers to if you’ve filled out your Facebook profile even a little bit” in 2023. Woof.
I’m in the Delaware Call today!
The Politics of Design will be a lighthearted series of critiques focusing on the branding of state and local politicians.
First up: the logo for Delaware gubernatorial hopeful Matt Meyer.
Finished reading: Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride 📚
I absolutely tore through this book. Partially out of personal interest in McBride’s story, as she is my state senator and has a really good change to be the first out transgender member of the US House of Representatives, but mostly because she’s an engaging storyteller with an incredible story to tell.
This is pretty clearly a political memoir, one written to give background as the candidate ascends in the public sphere. McBride is pretty transparent about her ambitions, but manages to be ambitious in a way that never feels transactional to me. She deftly is able to zoom out from a personal story to illustrate a policy point or value statement in a way that makes the connections obvious, and offers some insight into how she will govern that have since been demonstrated in her tenure in the state senate.
Her “why” is incredibly clear, and I am hopeful she will be able to bring an undiluted version of it back to Washington.
Before calling for a vote, Cooke spent ~10 mins doing what I can only describe as scolding everyone in the room who had the temerity to suggest the bill wasn’t good enough. Wish we could give specifics but his scolding blew out the mic; all we know for sure is that he was Big Mad.
The 80% off all ebooks sale at Verso Books ends this Wednesday. (Looks like most of their paper books are also 20-30% off, too.)
You know your boy copped:
- Revolutionary Mathematics – Justin Joque
- Hegemony Now – Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams
- Prisoners of the American Dream – Mike Davis
- If They Come in the Morning – Angela Y. Davis
- Radical Technologies – Adam Greenfield
- Keystroke Capitalism – Aaron Sahr
