Short and To The Point Returns
Because sometimes you have to force yourself to do the things that you love.
So, where did I go?
Well. I had twins. That's a lot of fucking work.
Like… so much. It's so much work. There are babies, but there are two of them.
And that's too many!
Too.
Many.
Babies.
There are more complicated reasons, but I'd be lying if I didn't list that one first. I have no memories of the summer of 2020 because I did not sleep enough for my brain to create memories. That's how much of a thing it is to have twins.
ALSO, THERE WAS A WHOLE OTHER TODDLER.
So, about those more complicated reasons. If you're so inclined, you will note that this thing went on hiatus on March 5, 2020, with (in my head) a plan to be back in a month or so.
And then the entire country simultaneously exploded and imploded, and it did not stop doing this until… TBD.
So, there is a pandemic and an incredible protest movement against racial injustice, and I can remember sitting and staring at my computer in April and being absolutely unable to organize a newsletter. I couldn’t process it all into anything coherent. I couldn't even think of what articles to include. I couldn't settle on the way to address the gigantic, earth-shattering news that was whacking us in the face every day. That's before I even considered including things about the coming presidential catastrophe nightmare (election). I just closed my laptop and never went back.
Obviously, it was not for lack of opinions about the subject. It was because I couldn't organize and share those opinions in a way that I was comfortable and happy with. I couldn't put them in a way that I felt was respectful towards the topics at hand and not subject to the unpredictable currents of immediate news. I started this newsletter hoping to share some longer-form pieces that were a bit outside of the news cycle, and suddenly that felt… inadequate? Insufficient? Disappointing? It just wasn't enough. I could not balance the importance of the moment with my general desire not to get too focused on it. I couldn't put out a newsletter that didn't focus on COVID, Black Lives Matter, and Election 2020. Still, I also didn't feel like I had a worthy contribution to make to those discussions in this context. People didn't need another outlet (however small and inconsequential) bombarding them with things they were living with at every moment of every day. I stared at the screen, and I just had nothing. Who needs a funny Wikipedia link in their inbox when the world is on fire? And yes, I was still scarred from running the Trump game last election so I wasn’t ready to tempt fate AGAIN.
I was, as mentioned above, very sleep-deprived.
I quit.
This is fine. It was a fine choice and remains the correct one. But, having done that, I have come to a newfound appreciation.
I had the option to quit because this is not my job. I didn't feel up to the moment, so I walked away and stayed quiet for 15 months. This was a good and healthy choice, and I'm glad I made it rather than pump out something that was either unsatisfying or unpleasant. I bring this up because, for so many people who exist in the world of takes and opinions and newsletters, they do not have the option of taking a pass and not commenting. Instead, they are obligated to comment. Most likely, they are required to offer a take that stems from their established perspective, however relevant and appropriate that may or may not be.
I try to think about this whenever I read something that feels wrong or rushed. Or when someone pumps out some garbage opinion piece, that is maybe half a thought. The internet's instinct is going to be to savage that person and, in many circles, call for their job or ask of their basic competence or intelligence. This phenomenon is neither right nor left-wing in nature, and no, I am absolutely not trying to talk about "cancel culture." I am just saying that I have a greater appreciation for the challenges and natural failures of being required to have an opinion in public all the goddamn time.
I think a lot about the concept of grace these days. I try hard to extend that grace and goodwill towards everyone because I believe we benefit from being that charitable with all those around us. This is not to say you have to turn the other cheek and/or take a pass on punching a nazi. It is to say that I try to remember and differentiate between someone being bad and someone being wrong in public. Those are different things, and they deserve to be treated differently. I had the option of skipping out on being wrong in public. I had the option of processing and many others do not. I try to extend that grace to those who do not get the chance. Even David Brooks. Sometimes.
So that's why it stopped.
It's back because my dad passed away this past month, and it was absolutely devastating. I have no interest in going through it all here, but it was bad. It remains so. He loved this silly newsletter. He enjoyed reading it.
I like to write when things are hard for me.
So here we are. Back again. Every two weeks (probably).
I'm ready to be wrong in public.
This Week in Our Dumb World
This Is Why We Lost
(Illustration by Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera)
I understand and appreciate the incredible complexity of Afghanistan. For similar reasons, I understand the people who felt deeply conflicted about our leaving that country this August. I can understand and accept the disagreement with both the choice to exit and the strategy by which we exited.
However, what I cannot abide is that persistent narrative that Biden bears any meaningful responsibility for the tragedies that have accompanied our full and final withdrawal.
We have utterly and completely failed in Afghanistan. If there was ever a goal, then we failed to achieve it for 20 years and, in all likelihood, only ever got further away from achieving it.
We made every wrong choice humanly possible for 20 years leading to horrific violence and a litany of war crimes and murder that would take a lifetime just to list. 20 years worth of administrative and military calamity created this moment and pretending otherwise is the height of absurdity. If you are one of the many who (rightly) is worried about the people we are leaving behind, then you need to point the finger at all those who failed for decades and not the people who decided that it is untenable to fund a military conflict that has no goals and no endgame. It is tragic, cruel, and unfair that we are leaving people behind to die and face terrible oppression, that is a fact. But we inflicted death and terrible oppression on people in equal measure with our presence and that too, is a fact. This article is the best one I have read that does the best job of grappling with that reality and stands in stark contrast to so much of coverage I have seen.
The passage below describes a series of horrific acts committed by our allies in Afghanistan. The general who ordered these atrocities got to write a New York Times op-ed about feeling betrayed by Biden.
We did everything wrong and we learned nothing. The least we can do is leave and stop making things worse.
But in 2019, as the U.S. was holding talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, the Afghan government and American forces moved jointly on Sangin one last time. That January, they launched perhaps the most devastating assault that the valley witnessed in the entire war. Shakira and other villagers fled for the desert, but not everyone could escape. Ahmed Noor Mohammad, who owned a pay-phone business, decided to wait to evacuate, because his twin sons were ill. His family went to bed to the sound of distant artillery. That night, an American bomb slammed into the room where the twin boys were sleeping, killing them. A second bomb hit an adjacent room, killing Mohammad’s father and many others, eight of them children.
The next day, at the funeral, another air strike killed six mourners. In a nearby village, a gunship struck down three children. The following day, four more children were shot dead. Elsewhere in Sangin, an air strike hit an Islamic school, killing a child. A week later, twelve guests at a wedding were killed in an air raid.
After the bombing, Mohammad’s brother travelled to Kandahar to report the massacres to the United Nations and to the Afghan government. When no justice was forthcoming, he joined the Taliban.
The next morning, villagers descended on the outpost, scavenging for something to sell. Abdul Rahman, a farmer, was rooting through the refuse with his young son when an Afghan Army gunship appeared on the horizon. It was flying so low, he recalled, that “even Kalashnikovs could fire on it.” But there were no Taliban around, only civilians. The gunship fired, and villagers began falling right and left. It then looped back, continuing to attack. “There were many bodies on the ground, bleeding and moaning,” another witness said. “Many small children.” According to villagers, at least fifty civilians were killed.
Later, I spoke on the phone with an Afghan Army helicopter pilot who had just relieved the one who attacked the outpost. He told me, “I asked the crew why they did this, and they said, ‘We knew they were civilians, but Camp Bastion’ ”—a former British base that had been handed over to the Afghans—“ ‘gave orders to kill them all.’ ” As we spoke, Afghan Army helicopters were firing upon the crowded central market in Gereshk, killing scores of civilians. An official with an international organization based in Helmand said, “When the government forces lose an area, they are taking revenge on the civilians.” The helicopter pilot acknowledged this, adding, “We are doing it on the order of Sami Sadat.”
The day before the massacre at the Yakh Chal outpost, CNN aired an interview with General Sadat. “Helmand is beautiful—if it’s peaceful, tourism can come,” he said. His soldiers had high morale, he explained, and were confident of defeating the Taliban. The anchor appeared relieved. “You seem very optimistic,” she said. “That’s reassuring to hear.”
Why Does She Sound Like That?
Ever since I read this article, I can’t stop thinking about the why behind the voice. Every time I hear it, I think about why it’s a woman and why it’s that voice. I love these kinds of essays because they take something that we know (Sexism often dominates the choice to use women’s voices and images) and unpacks it in a way that lets you see the specific threads and how those same threads gather in other places. I love the way this turns my attention to the things that would otherwise drift into the background.
May we have your attention please.’
Disembodied female-sounding voices echo out across cities and transitory spaces as an integral means of controlling movement. Often found in stations, shopping centres, supermarket checkouts, elevators, automated phone lines, GPS systems and the more interactive virtual assistants such as Siri, Cortana, or Alexa—an almost ubiquitous voice appears. It is a seemingly familiar, comfortable accent that speaks softly, guiding in the right direction, calling for attention and reminding us to be careful. The pitches fluctuate with some more human-sounding and others more robotic. Phonemes pieced together to sound out the right words but most commonly retaining a ‘she’ pronoun and clichéd ‘feminine’ qualities.
She is there to take care of us, to direct and gently usher us in the right direction. Her ‘well-spoken’, reassuring tone is embedded with a history of service workers and disembodied voices used in public and private spheres. It is intended to take on a specific gendered role; to politely and submissively assist.
On America And Football And America
I wouldn’t know where to begin describing this drifting meditation on football and America, but you should read it. You should absolutely read it.
The buffalo disappeared, so did the job of buffalo hunter, and so did Green Trice from wherever he was in the West. Despite living at the intersection of four of the most horrific charnel houses in American history — the slave trade, the Civil War, the American Indian wars, and the massive slaughter of buffalo herds — Trice decided to get an education.
Maybe he decided to do that because he was born of and lived in total horror and spent most of his life running from or toting a gun for someone else. It’s impossible to know what anyone in the present is thinking, really, but to imagine someone removed at a 150-year distance? That’s just speculative fiction at best. I imagine the life of someone like Green Trice as an unending silence of dust, heat, periodic violence, rains you could not escape, of bad food and horses and all the little horrendous details peppering your average scene from Blood Meridian.
He enrolled in the first grade in his 20s. He married a woman named Anna, and they had one child. They named him John and called him Jack. Before a game Jack Trice played against Minnesota, he wrote a pregame note to himself from his segregated hotel.
My thoughts just before the first real college game of my life: The honor of my race, family & self is at stake. Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will. My whole body and soul are to be thrown recklessly about the field tomorrow. Every time the ball is snapped, I will be trying to do more than my part. On all defensive plays I must break through the opponents' line and stop the play in their territory. Beware of mass interference. Fight low, with your eyes open and toward the play. Watch out for crossbucks and reverse end runs. Be on your toes every minute if you expect to make good. Jack
Jack, their only child, the son of a son of the worst of all possible American violences, would die playing American football. The note in his suit pocket was found while preparing him for his funeral at the age of 21 years old.
The Oral History of The Onion’s 9/11
I remember reading this online in my college library computer room. I had to use the computer room because we decided it was too much of a pain in the ass to get internet in our rental house. That is a sentence that makes me feel a million years old.
But I remember reading this in the college library and absolutely losing my shit. It remains some of the best, most necessary laughter ever. It was a delight to read about how it came about.
Loew: At some point we realized, “Oh my God, this is going to be the first print paper we’re going to drop on the streets of New York City!” So we had to make it about 9/11, because if we made it about Cheetos or some silly stuff, that would be offensive. But this was terrifying because we’re these kids from Wisconsin coming into New York City and we’re going to drop this silly comedy paper about this horrific tragedy. So we knew we had to get it right — it was like threading the eye of the needle.
Harrod:
We’d had almost a week to think about everything when we regathered on Monday. You could say there was the general feeling of, “Can we do this?” hanging over us as we filed in, but once we got started, we found the path through the woods.
I remember throwing out the first idea. Before I get to that though, I have to rewind a little back to Madison in 1999. When Columbine happened, Newsweek had a banner headline of the word, “WHY?” over a picture of grieving people and Todd had suggested back then that the next time there’s a huge tragedy, we should just publish the word “WHY?” over a picture of a chicken crossing a road. I reminded everyone of that — I wasn’t seriously suggesting the idea, but that helped to break the ice a bit.
Hanson:
We were very terrified about people being offended, which is very, very, very interesting and different about this issue because normally when a new issue came out, we had absolutely no concerns about whether we were going to offend people. In fact, if people were offended, we enjoyed that. If anything, we were proud when we offended people. But this time we weren’t feeling that way. That was an exception to the norm. Everything about this issue was really an exception to the norm, to be honest.
Krewson:
No one was sure what to do, and everyone was still in shock. We didn’t want to be jingoistic. It didn’t take too long — less than 24 hours — for people to say, “Oh, well, we’re going to war in Iraq.” And, I don’t know if anybody here is up on the spoilers, but we did that and, to this day, I’m not really fucking sure exactly why that was the case. We also didn’t want to do, “It’s the U.S.’s chickens coming home to roost.” That’s a bullshit line of thinking because if you say “we had it coming,” then you’re saying those people in the buildings had it coming.
It has to be stressed that we weren’t sure we could do it. I remember Joe Garden and I especially were like, “I don’t think we should do this. I don’t know if we should. I think we should maybe take another week and then start back in with a regular one.” But other people on staff were very adamant that we had to do a response to September 11th. I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do, but I’m really, really happy I was wrong because I’m proud of that issue. That issue ended up being a necessary piece of art made by some incredible people who really met the moment really well and I’m glad to have had a small part of it.
Goalball!
I don’t remember where I saw my first clip of Goalball, but I immediately became obsessed and watched hours and hours of it on YouTube. I have googled to find a goal ball league in Seattle. This is the coolest sport I’ve maybe ever seen. It’s outstanding to watch people hurl themselves around the floor of a volleyball court trying to listen for the ball. I love it.
Goalball is a team sport designed specifically for athletes with a vision impairment. Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it into the opponents' goal.[1] The ball is thrown by hand and never kicked. Using ear-hand coordination, originating as a rehabilitation exercise, the sport has no able-bodied equivalent. Able-bodied athletes are also blindfolded when playing this sport.
Played indoors, usually on a volleyball court, games consist of twelve-minute halves (formerly ten-minute halves) with three-minute half-time. Where there is a tie, golden goal overtime occurs to two three-minute periods (and a three-minute overtime half); if the tie persists, a paired shootout ('extra throws' and 'sudden death extra throws') decides winner. Teams alternate throwing or rolling the ball from one end of the playing area to the other, and players remain in the area of their own goal in both defence and attack. Players must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball. Eyeshades allow partially-sighted players to compete on an equal footing with blind players. Eyepatches may be worn under eyeshades to ensure complete coverage of the eye, and prevent any vision should the eyeshades become dislodged.