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.
An Opinionated History of Modern Rock
Hypothesis: while it is usually impossible to pick a precise genesis of any cultural movement, for the purposes of this exercise, R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe” gave birth to “modern rock,” and Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” killed it. I slid in some obvious precursors to R.E.M. and covered the dénouement and fallout from OK Computer as well.
This one has been kicking around my head for a while, inspired by tapes teenage me made off of Philly’s own WDRE (RIP), late nights staying up for 120 Minutes (their 1993 year end best of episode was a foundational text), countless mixtapes, mix CDs and playlists made and received over the years, and Matthew Perpetua’s exhaustive work cataloging and curating the last 40+ years of music (here’s a thread of his playlists I referred to heavily while creating this playlist.)
Listen on Apple Music, Spotify or Last.fm.
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?
Beaver Hall, Junior Year
Inspired by the announcement of REM’s “Up” reissue, I took a trip back to Fall ‘98, my first semester away at Penn State. Here’s the contemporaneous music that was spinning in my dorm room on the 4th floor of Beaver Hall.
Listen on Apple Music, Spotify or Last.fm.
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.
Strong Enough?
Pulling the thread that connects Sheryl Crow’s “Strong Enough” and boygenius’s “Not Strong Enough” in both directions.
Listen on Apple Music, Spotify or Last.fm.
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.
Here’s Representative Eric Morrison on his controversial vote on HS 1 for HB 121 (the Seaford LLC voting bill):
Governing is not easy, and things are not always as they appear on the surface. As happens time and again, we as Democrats had to do the responsible and right thing for Delawareans. We do not have the luxury, for example, of throwing temper tantrums like petulant children and walking out in the middle of session like every member of the Republican House Caucus did Wednesday evening, while Democrats stayed on the floor and performed the jobs we were elected to do. In this entire situation, we as Democrats took the high ground and did the right things for Delaware, and I am proud of it.
(More background here.)
My position remains that many of the surprising “yes” votes have previously earned our trust and should not be vilified on principle. Especially given that it was clear all parties knew the bill had not immediately future in the Senate.
As much as I would love to live in a world where all my favs could always vote on principle and tell the GOP to eat shit, we’re not there yet. We don’t have the numbers. If we can flip 2 more house seats, we theoretically have a supermajority that presents us from this kind of nonsense every late June.
Which is why I’m working with at least one candidate to flip a clearly dem-friendly district. And I’m willing to work with you, if you are running against a Republican in a flippable house district, I will do your logo & branding design pro bono.
Let’s stop complaining about governing process and Delaware Way bullshit. Let’s work together to make these goons officially irrelevant.
