you think i came here to make friends?
yeah I totally did : )
I am in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it was illegal to be annoying until 2014. I’ve been watching a lot of Jeopardy and drinking a lot of IPAs and hitting the good spots — the Bitter End Coffeehouse (it’s open 24 hours) and Schuler Books (my longtime bookstore which got 500k TikTok followers all of a sudden). I’m getting so much sleep on my 20-year-old twin mattress. I’m fondly running my old neighborhood routes. I’m making use of my license to be legally annoying, and I’m making my dad spend hours explaining European history to me (I didn’t learn much of it in school). If you ask me a question about the Norman Conquest or the queer king of Prussia Frederick the Great or other things like that, I’d be like “blah blah blah” giving you the exact right answer. I’m living and learning. And when my parents’ friends ask what I plan to do with my career, I say (wisely, with a smile) “I don’t know.” I do know that I’ll spend a few months in LA this winter, but before that, I’ll be “in conversation” with Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) on 9/26 in Ann Arbor for the What if? 2 book tour (tix here) and I have Depths of Wikipedia shows in NYC 10/10 and 10/11 and San Francisco 10/14. I am very excited!
More things:
Lately I’ve been really into ʷʳᶦᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᶦⁿ ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳᶦᵖᵗ ˢᵒ ᶦᵗ ˡᵒᵒᵏˢ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᶦ'ᵐ ʷʰᶦˢᵖᵉʳᶦⁿᵍ!
I started “Depths of Internet Archive” on Twitter and have been spending a lot of time on archive.org, particularly in collections of digitized VHS tapes. So many of them would be so cool to project on the wall at a party: the introduction to Windows 95 with Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry, Sex and Dating (1997), How to Spot Counterfeit Beanie Babies (1998), Surfing for Seniors (1997), Payton Manning’s Nutrition Odessey (2000), Now You’re Talking! A Drug Free Family (1991), and so so so many more. You can do the 1993 Abs of Steel at a slumber party! Also, this 30-second Internet Explorer 1995 ad goes unbelievably hard.
Joe Pera Talks With You, the only show (for adults) where nothing bad every happens, was canceled and I am bummed. Its 11-minute episodes had titles like “Joe Pera Shows You His Second Fridge,” “Joe Pera Helps You Write,” and “Joe Pera Talks to You About the Rat Wars of Alberta, Canada, 1950-Present Day.” I liked this obituary-type article in The Ringer. I think I’m gonna fill the void by watching Bluey even though it was made for 7 year olds.
I keep coming back to this New Yorker article about lives not lived: “We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space”
1997 quizzes: if you like the Rice Purity Test, you’ll like this metasite with TONS of purity tests. The Internet Archive has also preserved a very extensive 1997 “Nerdiness Test”. It takes a while (maybe like 10 or 15 min) but could be fun to do with a friend.
Things I’ve written lately that might be work reading: the website horg.com where people meticulously taxonomize plastic bread tags (it’s so wholesome!!!!!), the “it ain’t much but it’s honest work” guy, and those “fish fear me” hats
In 2015, the blog Strong Language covered preferred curse words by US region, which is based on geo-coded tweets that were analyzed Jack Grieve. The coasts love “fuck”; the South doesn’t say “asshole” but definitely says “pussy” and “bitch” and “shit” and “hell.”
I stumbled upon linguist John M. Lawler's incredible personal web page (now I'm in a linguistics rabbit hole (really sad he retired before I got to umich (would have loved to take one of his classes (anyway, the site introduced me to the following mind-blowing paragraph)))).
The Rumpelstiltskin Principle: knowing the name of something (or someone) gives you power over it (or them).
Even more things: the winner of the $1.34B Mega Millions jackpot still hasn't claimed their prize after nearly a month. Alaska has nine genders. The Rock loved his marketing meeting so much that he posted about it on his Instagram grid five times. In 2013, the New Yorker reviewed Edward Snowden’s (hot) gf’s (now wife!) blog. There Are Holes on the Ocean Floor. Scientists Don’t Know Why. Cool article about political ads on those annoying gas station TVs. The University of Michigan’s alumni newspaper published an article “Neuroscience grad plumbs Wikipedia’s looniest realms” which includes the nearly perfect line “[she] has ‘very, very low anxiety,’ about what the future holds, though cancel culture troubles her” which is somewhat true (I guess?) and also hilarious. This tweet from @chunkbardey made me so glad I’m done with school. LinkedIn post generator. This free shuttle will take you to a taping of Maury in Stamford, CT.
ᵒᵏᵃʸ ᴵ'ᵐ ᵍᵉᵗᵗᶦⁿᵍ ˢˡᵉᵉᵖʸ ᵃⁿᵈ ᴵ ⁿᵉᵉᵈ ᵗᵒ ʷʳᵃᵖ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵘᵖ. I love you and I love to hear from you!!! Respond or comment with your favorite rabbit holes and maybe I’ll put them in the next newsletter. You may also tell me what you’ve been up to lately, or how what you’re excited about, or what you plan to do with your one wild and precious Labor Day weekend
ᵗᶦˡ ⁿᵉˣᵗ ᵗᶦᵐᵉ
Annie
I was wondering -- it's what I do most often -- if the dash isn't another punctuational stop, so I checked Fowler and learned that my copy of Fowler is in need of repair. That's another matter; the point of this reply is that Fowler's article on STOPS is a hoot. Turns out the dash is a form of parenthesis (with its own fine entry in Fowler) and not a stop. Who knew?
I'll be stuck in Lawler's gluetrap for at least a few days.
Thank you for another reason not to mow the weeds.
Meow.
Hey there! Great stuff :) you have a “typo” (“paste’o”? I wonder if there’s a term for it) on the e-mail an the link for “lives not lived” goes to the windows 1.0 video ;) Keep up the good work!