My sweeties! I am taking today off of work to cook, read, bake, hike in the woods, eat, contemplate existence, vacuum my floor, maybe get some yoga in, go get ice cream (have you tried the Ben and Jerry’s Netflix and Chill’d? It’s so good that whoever came up with it should be indicted for war crimes against my waistline.) I hope you have a restful weekend, and that you’re taking care of yourself.

Guy D. Middleton, Do civilisations collapse? (Aeon) - GOD, I love history-based longform writing that situates current cultural commentary within a cautionary tale reminder that LOL humans always mess everything up and then construct flimsy narratives around it to make us feel like there’s some semblance of agency in this mortal coil when really we’re all just clusters of atoms doing our very best to live one more day and WAIT, WHERE ARE YOU GOING, COME BACK.

Susan B. Glasser, History According to Trump: The President and the 1917 Pandemic That Wasn’t (The New Yorker) - Y’all don’t need me to shout any more about how bass ackwards the current occupant of the Oval Office is about history, whether it be willful ignorance or malicious manipulation or some coke-fueled hex misapplied at Studio 54 in the 70s that has really done blown up in our faces. But hot damn, this piece on historical revisionism in 2020 takes me back to arguing in junior year precept - which is Peak Amy and I aspire to it every day,

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, What Happened to Val Kilmer? He’s Just Starting to Figure It Out. (The New York Times) - Who is Val Kilmer’s publicist right now? Because they are very damned good at their job, and I want to shake their hand.

Zeynep Tufekci, Jeremy Howard and Trisha Greenhalgh, The Real Reason to Wear a Mask (The Atlantic) - Read this, and then send this to anyone who is griping about wearing a mask outside, in case they need SCIENCE to explain how the mere act of everyone wearing a cloth mask could nearly eliminate the spread of COVID-19. And when you send these people this article, can you also remind them that my grandmother and her twin sister were evacuated to the Wales countryside as teens during the Blitz in London as a precautionary measure to save lives during WWII and all we are being asked to do is WEAR A DAMNED MASK AND STAY HOME AS MUCH AS WE CAN. 

Marissa Martinelli, The Creator of the Male Scent Catalogue on the Difficulty of Describing “Essence of Man” (Slate) - To the individual who sent this in, but who shall remain nameless to protect the “innocent”: I still haven’t stopped laughing at this interview. This is gold, GOLD I TELL YOU. Thank you for sharing, so that I may get it stuck in all of your heads. 

You’re all great. Be kind to each other. And be kind to yourselves, ok?

xoxo Amy