friday five: april 10th, 2020 🍹

t h o u g h t s & m u s i n g s

hey all you cool cats and kittens,

it’s been another week of recurring existential dread, but glad we have this to keep connected. any feedback from last week? is replying all a good form of discussion, or is it annoying to get so many emails? should we start a slack channel or something so we have the freedom to start individual discussion threads without notifying everyone for everything? or is that just another thing to keep track of. let me know.

five things i loved this week:

  • star wars, episode I: the phantom menace (kevin has finally convinced me to watch all of the movies in the correct order, and i like them! this was my favorite so far, despite the gungan nonsense...the podracing competition and the obi-wan/qui-gon/darth maul lightsaber fight were actually riveting, and i’m impressed that natalie portman and ewan mcgregor were hot then and are still hot now. but i noticed that the way they talk about the force sounds a lot like shintoism, so i literally just googled “shintoism and jediism” and apparently i’m not the only one that noticed)

  • tiny life hack: use instant ramen packs (minus the flavor packet) as a quick and perfectly-textured stir fry base (i like this one), and then use the flavor packet to jazz up plain microwave popcorn

  • this creamy cajun pasta i found on reddit, of all places...you probably have to make a special trip to the grocery store for the sausage and the heavy cream, but it is worth it i promise!

  • playing scattergories with my family over facetime...this used to be one of my favorite party games and it’s very easy to play virtually unlike some other games, because everyone sees the same screen and all you need is your phone or a sheet of paper

five things i read this week:

  • 24 hours in a pandemic nation, the new york times (simple, very human portraits of ordinary people around the country that have haunted me since)

  • this is not the apocalypse you were looking for, wired (this piece perfectly captures the surrealism of the pandemic, and why it feels “so silly, so sweet, and so sad,” and it’s stayed with me this entire week; it actually inspired me to finish a piece i’ve tried to write a coupld of times but could never finish. qotd: “it’s the end of the world as we know it, and everything does feel fine—not fine like chill, but fine like china, like glass, like thread. everything feels so fine, and so fragile, and so shockingly worth saving.”)

  • should black people wear sunscreen?, the new york times (i think about this a lot, because i personally think everyone should wear sunscreen, but it reminds me of this tweet i saw recently defending black anti-vaxxers—but not defending the anti-vaxx movement itself, an important distinction—and how much of the advice dispensed in the medical community is not meant for black people, because the system simply is not built for them and often actively excludes or dismisses them...it makes it much more difficult to judge)

  • starbucks, a reconsideration, vox (i loved this; i think even non-coffee drinkers can relate to this because starbucks above all things means knowing exactly what to expect. also a great point about specialty coffeeshops being the new indication of gentrification vs. starbucks, which we now regard as public resources)

  • cooking, cleaning, and sewing are the new ‘wellness’, medium (this was written before the pandemic, but it’s something i’ve noticed for a while and something the atlantic staff writer amanda mull has also written about, but it’s interesting that she ties it specifically to this abstract but salient concept of “wellness,” and especially seeing how people are modeling it in real life during this stressful time)