Emchap's Shit from the Internet 06/1/22 🍠

I feel bad to consistently be so grim in this newsletter, but you know, it continues to feel real grim to Be Around right now. The results of the defamation trial against Depp are grim; the fact that the Uvalde chief of police was just sworn into city council is grim, the fact that I spent most of last night in an emergency room hallway with my friend (everybody’s fine) five feet from the police office embedded in the ER while talking about medical bill worries with the RN is grim. Things do not appear to be looking up!

Small good things are happening, at least. The Russian restaurant I love has strawberry vodka on the menu now that the strawberries are in season, and I drank an obscene quantity of it this week, and that was nice. I bullied CenturyLink, a garbage company, into giving me a billing credit for leaving their phone line down for (at this point) two weeks, and that was not nice but it was vindicating. I bought a new microwave and it’s got a fun retro energy. And this week I’m counting those as wins.

Shit to read

• Chotiner interviews a Christianity Today senior editor about the wild sexual abuse problems in the southern baptist convention.

• I really loved this piece about how to put yourself online, none of which was a revelation but which was very calming.

• Specific to tech weirdos, but I enjoyed this piece about how high level IC devs establish a “not my job” boundary given that they don’t have authority to actually fix things a lot of the time.

• A great piece on caviar and suicide and the pursuit of perfect, awful things from Talia Lavin.

Shit to eat

1. Walk to the deli that is perched above the strawberry vodka recipe from the essay above.

2. Order one of each of the piroshki flavors on the assumption that they’re dough with stuff in and will probably be good.

3. Wait for 20 minutes while they are baked fresh for you, and drink coffee out of a tiny little french press that is very charming.

4. After 20 minutes, the piroshki will be presented to you. Every single one will be tremendous.

5. Return 3 days later, and repeat.

Shit to listen to

• This Normal Gossip episode about children and squirrels and soccer.

Shit to buy

• The aforementioned fancy retro microwave.