D&F 2-21-21
It’s nearly the end of February, and it’s starting to get sunny again here in the Bay Area, while my home state of Texas is absolutely freezing, and running low on food and water. I hope that folks watching that absolute shitheel Ted Cruz flying away to vacation in Cancun remember this betrayal when it comes time to vote against him next time. Even AoC way up there in extremely Rotel voice “New York Citayyyy?!?” is doing a better job caring for Texans than our leadership. It’s frustrating.
If you want to jump away to read a very long piece on what’s next in climate change and climate policy, this piece is very informative, and sometimes even hopeful. The studying of climate and the planet that happens at the absolute southern bit of the planet is also fascinating to me from a climate and sometimes theatrical point of view, so of course I was fascinated to read about “winter-over syndrome” after watching the new Spanish series The Head. Hilariously in the opening of the show they watch The Thing while preparing to winter-over themselves. What a great movie.
Ah, cyclocross! These past few weeks I’ve watched a bunch of women’s races in Belgium that went from snowy and miserable to the final one on Saturday in a breezy 16C/60F. I have neither the bike-handling skills nor the guts to throw my bike into a cyclocross race, but it’s fascinating to see these amazing women just huck their bikes over sand, snow, mud, and dirt to seize victory. Unlike road racing, which is a generally peleton-based affair, cyclocross is a solo event that goes from fast to brutal in a few corners. Even if you don’t like bike stuff that much, these are fun, and short races that are worth checking-out. Next week? The UAE tour.
You can say I’ve rediscovered my love of cycling in a big way.
In other racing news, F1 is back in a few months, but the Netflix show Drive to Survive is back even sooner; covering the truncated and bizarre 2020 season that had the reigning champion Lewis Hamilton contracting COVID-19. Wild!
Moving on from cars and bikes and competitive pursuits, have you ever fallen down a hole and wanted to see more of the same cool stuff? You might enjoy Same Energy, which takes search terms or images and gives you more of the same. I’m pretty sure if this existed when I was a youth, I would’ve spent even more time on the internet than I did. I love these neat new experiments in image and other types of search, especially since it’s felt like we’ve been stuck with an ever-capitalized Google. Personally, I exclusively use DuckDuckGo and Ecosia now, and by and large I don’t feel much of a difference. Plus, I feel a little bit better about my web-usage.
Want a great album to listen to this week? Try Lande Hekt.
Links
- You probably know by now that I love Buttondown and dislike the conservative and neoliberal funzone of Substack, but if you want to try something different, Underline seems pretty neat too.
- While we’re on the topic of cool websites, you might remember my love of RSS as well as reading books. Well, this week, I saw Bookfeed, which marries two of my loves to ensure I always know when my favorite authors have something fresh on the shelves. Much like new albums, it can be hard to keep track of new novels, so this is awesome. I like to read everything from authors I enjoy and this will make sure I’m kept abreast of them.
- This… this is future clothes.
- This cat knows what’s up:
- Finally, Phoebe Bridgers was on SNL, and it was awesome:
Closing
I’m still anxious about COVID and I bet you are too, but there is some promising news in the case-number decrease as well as news that Pfizer’s vaccine could potentially move to a single-dose. I hope we see a lot more positive and good news in the coming year. I,for one, could use it.
Thanks for replying and saying hi to the various readers who’ve reached-out to chat and update me on your lives. It’s fun to know my friends and other folks are holding-up ok. I hope I get to have food or drinks with a bunch of you sooner than later. In the meantime, I’ll keep reading and writing, and I hope you do too! Stay safe, and keep on thriving, space cowgirls~