The Bluestocking, vol XXIX: Clothes pins, comets and cyberstalkers
Evening,
Hope you had a good week - still doesn't feel like spring yet, does it? I achieved a long-held dream yesterday by dressing up in a stupid costume and wildly overacting while explaining the EU. Watch the full clip here.
Can you believe there are still THREE MONTHS of EU tussling to go before we get to vote? Roll on June 24.
Helen
The Clothespin Strategy
No, this is what one might call a unicameral breakdown: one, and only one, of our major parties has been going crazy for twenty years and is now having a full-fledged gibbering, I’m-The-Emperor-of-Antarctica breakdown. It is hard not to feel just a touch of schadenfreude about this. The Republicans have served up eight years of hatred and nihilism—and now they are surprised to find they have inherited hatred and nihilism as they actually appear in the real world, not neatly blown-dry and smirking but red and orange and heaving, cursing and swearing and contemptuous.
Republicans four years ago saw Trump offering the raw sewage of racism called “birtherism” and they giggled timidly and thought that, if diluted sufficiently with moderating water, it would somehow become potable. The chance to drive out Trump for good was Mitt Romney’s when, at no cost to him—and with the additional certainty of getting a disproportionate share of approval for minimal political courage—he could have rejected Trump’s support, instead of going to his hotel in Las Vegas to thank him for his endorsement. That tiny price proved too much to pay. And now they are surprised?
Adam Gopnik on the moderate Republican's dilemma: would you back a Democrat to stop Trump?
I've Had A Cyberstalker Since I Was 12
Danny (not his real name) has stalked and harassed me, online and off, for almost 15 years — more than half my life at this point. He has used a variety of methods to do so — phone, text, email, Facebook and other social media — updating his tactics with every advance in technology. In the last three years he has also sent dozens, possibly hundreds, of defamatory letters, emails, Facebook and Twitter messages about me to my family, friends, employers, friends’ employers, professional organizations and political offices, including the State Attorney General of New York. (I know because he sent me copies of the letters.)
I recently read an interesting thesis that falling crime figures were actually about crime moving online, where it is harder to detect and prosecute. I think that's certainly supportable in the case of anti-social behaviour: you don't need a stamp to send a poison pen letter any more. And as this horrifying story shows, the police are often unwilling or unable to help.
Monica's Apartment in Friends, Rendered on the Unreal Engine
Who knew the view from the kitchen window was so good?
Quick links: An old but good profile of Mark Rylance, who doesn't believe Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Growing up with Frank Miller's work, and realising its limitations. Visiting James Baldwin's house in St Paul de Vence, France. How Google is trying to build the perfect team. Amazing graphics of the number of male actors who have never been directed by a woman. (Brad Pitt has, once. By his wife. Last year. That's it.)
What’s the point of a reviewer in an age when everyone reviews? You NEED to watch this woman icing cookies; her control with the piping bag is EXQUISITE. Gorgeous illustrations of comets, from medieval times to the Victorian era.
Quote of the week: "We must be well aware that the Internet is arguably – at least in American and much of the Anglophone west — dominated by a a mucky sphere saturated with subjectivities flowing amidst and rubbing up against each other, all stark naked.... Perhaps using tools like the selfie in ways that refuse, refute, and redirect, saying “NOPE” to dominant ideologies, and “bye” to a basic-bitch politic of visibility."
(from this baffling New Inquiry piece on selfie feminism)
Podlets: After my shoutout last week for podcast recommendations, Nick in Masham endorses Slate's Gabfest (politics and culture), You Must Remember This (history) and Josie Long's Book Shambles; Richard recommends Oh No Ross And Carrie, for its skeptical content. Thanks both! And here are Tech Insider's picks.
Gif of the week: HOW ARE THE TINY LADIES SO STRONG?
(Taken from the Awl's newsletter, Everything Changes, which is consistently surprising)