Hi Everyone!
Diarrhea outbreak. Smoke filling our lungs. It's a thousand degrees, Trump giving a primetime address; the stations won’t even air. What even is this fucking timeline?
It is mid-July, and frankly, come September, we are all going to need to be TAPPED THE FUCK IN to midterms. This election cycle is a legit existential threat to democracy, and I plan on being locked in. But at 41 and perimenopausal AF, I cannot be locked in all the time. So I’m going to enjoy these final 6 weeks of summer and get all my ducks in a row to be ready to fight.
After like 7 years I finally figured out how to add wifi to my HVAC this week (sensibo for minisplits, fwiw) and hosted people for lazy dinners and generally tried to get some rest as next week is the third and final week of testing for my esophagus problems.
This weekend, my plans are to work in the garden, to take a long walk on the Potomac River with my blue and our dogs, and to enjoy some lazy time grilling in the dusk with fireflies and indigo girls.
P.s. The book giveaway is at the TOP and OPEN TO FREE SUBSCRIBERS because it’s friend-of-the-stack Jo Piazza’s launch week!
Every week I give away a book (usually only to paid subscribers, but this week for everyone!) (US only). This week I have a copy of Jo Piazza’s The Parisian Heist. From the author of The Sicilian Inheritance and tradwife thriller Everyone is Lying to You, this a dual timeline mystery about Emma, a struggling American artist cleaning houses for the Paris elite who gets pulled into an art dealing dynasty’s secrets and a daring heist inside the Musee d’Orsay, and Jo van Gogh, the young widow who inherited hundreds of Vincent’s “worthless” paintings and made the world see his genius. Art world intrigue, family secrets, and two women who refuse to be written out of history.
let’s make it the book of the summer!!!
→ COMMENT HEIST down below for a chance to win.
Public Money Is Fueling an Explosion of Private Schools. (ProPublica) After five years of new voucher style programs, more than 9,600 private schools are now listed across just 13 states, and most of those states have chosen not to track who runs them, what they teach, or how their students perform. ProPublica found a Florida school founded by a teacher who lost her license over sexual abuse of a minor, another run by a woman banned from education in Ohio, and states like Iowa where public funds now subsidize 99% of private school students.
Congress Finally Takes On Child Marriage. (The 19th) About 300,000 minors, most of them girls, were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2018, and the practice is still legal in two-thirds of states. A bill filed this week would close the immigration loopholes that let adults bring child brides into the country and give states a model statute plus incentivize them with additional grant money if they ban the practice.
Why Trump Is Coming for Birth Control. (Abortion, Every Day) Jessica Valenti lays out how the administration is targeting contraception instead: Title X rewritten to promote “natural family planning,” teen pregnancy prevention money redirected into period tracking classes, multiple federal agencies classifying IUDs and the Pill as “abortifacient birth control,” and a new federal office backing pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions on “moral” grounds.
Trump Shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, Again. (The Washington Post) Orders signed Monday cut Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.87 million acres to about 181,500 and Bears Ears from 1.36 million to about 121,100, deeper cuts than the 2017 reductions that Biden reversed. Both monuments sit on significant deposits of coal, uranium, oil and gas, and the tribal coalitions that fought for these protections say they were never consulted.
Democrats Have a Real Shot at Flipping State Legislatures. (Stateline) Since Trump’s term began, Democrats have flipped a dozen state legislative seats in special elections, overperforming 2024 margins by a median of 10.4 points, while Republicans have not flipped a single Democratic seat. Analysts are watching ten Republican held chambers this November, and in states like North Carolina and Iowa, breaking even one supermajority changes what a governor can do. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee calls 2026 “a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
So, does recycling actually work? A political and data scientist digs into the evidence: aluminum and steel are genuinely worth recycling, paper depends, plastic is a mess, and the biggest wins still come from reducing and reusing in the first place. Her bottom line is freeing: keep doing the easy good thing, and put your real energy into pushing for the structural stuff. Read more here. (The Preamble)
Birding is officially cool now. The Atlantic follows a team of twentysomethings through the World Series of Birding and explains why millennials and Gen Z are flocking to the hobby: the free Merlin app made it learnable overnight, it works like real world Pokemon Go, and it reliably delivers calm, community and a little awe on an ordinary walk. Download Merlin and go. Read more here. (The Atlantic)
These nuns had room in their convent, so they took in college students. At the University of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx, the Sisters of Charity turned the first floor of their residence into Dax House, where women facing homelessness pay $250 a month for a private room, a permanent address and a case manager, year round, school breaks included. Nearly one in seven college students experiences homelessness. Read it here.
D&D players are rolling for democracy. Hundreds of fans packed a Hollywood theater to watch six LA city council candidates play Dungeons & Dragons against corporate villains and an evil dragon, raising $30,000, and it’s part of a wider movement of tabletop gamers who have raised millions for immigrant defense, trans rights and mutual aid. Read it here.
The city that chose beauty over billboards. A decade ago Grenoble, France became the first city in Europe to ban billboards in public spaces, dismantling 326 of them and planting trees where many once stood. Ten years on, ads are gone from 90% of the city, political support is so broad it’s a non-subject, and Lyon, Montpellier and even Paris are following. Read it here.
There is raspberry sugar floating in space. Astronomers detected erythrulose, a sugar found in raspberries, in a cloud of dust and gas near the center of the Milky Way. It’s the first true sugar ever found in interstellar space, and it means ingredients for life can form out there before stars and planets even exist. Look at this.
The Accidental Cartel Queen. (The Cut) How a suburban South Carolina mom working at a seafood restaurant became a key cog in the largest narcotics conspiracy investigation in state history, a drug network run from inside state prisons in partnership with Mexican cartels, and ended up a fugitive in Mexico. Documentary filmmaker Julia Lindau spent years reporting this, and it reads like a thriller. [PAYWALLED]
Reading a 3,000-Year-Old Poem to a 3-Year-Old Boy. (The Atlantic) With Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey adaptation in theaters this week, a father writes about reading the actual Homer, all 549 pages of it, to his toddler at bedtime. It’s funny about the logistics (some scenes get skipped) and quietly moving about why we hand the oldest stories to the newest people.
It has been SO FUCKING HOT in DC I cannot wear pants. And I always even wear shorts under dresses so I’m not kidding.
My number one outfit on repeat is the PACT cotton dress which is a light tent and the wireless bra that actually has wide enough straps it can be worn under strappy dresses.
Dorsey has a new enamel necklace that I’m ordering. And it’s making me contemplate if i need a trip to the south of france.
If you are wearing a padded bra in 100+ degrees, let the nips fly and get yerself into my favorite brasiere on planet earth. A soft, breezy hug for your titties. My one and only, my beloved, my holy grail.
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