Cruel Compendium #77 🥊
Intrusive thoughts, fighting the founding fathers, and raw-dogging flights
🎧 New episode alert! 🎧
Listen now to Writing Into the Gush with Madeleine Dore on the Cruel Summer Book Club podcast.
Author of the wonderful On Things newsletter and podcast host Madeleine Dore takes us through the 10 years of her career that led her to write her first book, I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: On Letting Go of Productivity Guilt.
Tune in to hear us talk about:
✨ The tensions between productivity and creativity
✨ How Dore wrote a whole book in four months
✨ The importance of accepting and nurturing your own creative process
✨ Dore’s creative evolution as she made her own newsletter and podcast, A social life, with friends
✨ How personal projects can open important doors — even when they sometimes feel like a slog
✨ Recommended reads like The Artist’s Way, Four Thousand Weeks, and Women Who Run with the Wolves
Dore’s best creative advice? “Just take the next step, and make it a very small step.”
This newsletter is a day late, but exactly on time.
Be sure to click “View entire message” at the end of this email so you can read the whole post in your browser. On to the links!
Why are men raw-dogging flights? By Liz Plank
What are men up to? Some of them are challenging themselves to take long flights with absolutely zero distractions — no phone, tablet, headphones, books, sometimes not even food, water, or using the bathroom. NIGHTMARE. But I adored this QA with a man who tried it.
We all need to read Project 2025, the far-right’s “presidential transition project” if Trump wins, for ourselves.
Here’s GLAAD’s breakdown on the project:
Among policies areas in Project 2025 are:
Eliminating LGBTQ rights
Eradicating federal funding for DEI programs
Purging the government of apolitical civil servants
Eliminating the checks and balances built into three branches of government in favor of expanded control by the executive branch
Ending reproductive freedom and replacing the Department of Health and Human Services with the “Department of Life”
Replacing the Department of Homeland Security with a 100,000-worker-strong immigration department, militarization of the border and an end to refugee programs
Fundamentally altering American diplomacy in favor of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ agendas and abandoning international organizations and traditional diplomatic and security alliances
It’s also worth your time to read Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s full dissent to the court’s decision to grant sprawling presidential immunity.
The coming election will affect the makeup of the Supreme Court for decades to come.
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law.
…This majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the Presidency and for our democracy… With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”
A morning reminder that we face the election of our lives by Bill McKibben
An environmental activist reminds us why America’s 2024 election matters for our planet.
Even in our deeply divided political culture 54% want that quick transition, which by our current standards is a vast majority. (And steadily growing, as flooding becomes a regular occurrence near the oceans). But we don’t get to directly vote on whether we make this change or not; perhaps some day we’ll have a strong climate action plan, but for 2024 the best we can do is elect a president, and then pressure them all we can. That’s a slender thread, but it’s the one we’ve got.
My pep talk for when everything sucks by Emily Amick
Amick’s main points:
Change is very possible.
The past does not dictate the future.
We hold the power.
Books lately
Book 21
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
This is one of my top two reads this year so far. This book grips you from start to finish. Single mom Frida has a “Very Bad Day” when she leaves her 18-month-old daughter alone for two-and-a-half hours. A neighbor calls CPS, and suddenly any future Frida has that might include her child hangs in the balance. I don’t want to give too much away, but the cruelty Frida and the other mothers she is eventually forced to go to the school for good mothers with is wrenching, and reflects many of the struggles mothers, especially those who are women of color, experience today. There’s also a sci-fi twist that scrambles the mind.
Book 22
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu studied at Yale together, but after graduation, Liu’s literary career takes off while Hayward’s seems dead in the water. One night at Liu’s apartment, Liu chokes to death in front of Hayward, and when Hayward finally leaves, she takes Liu’s latest completed manuscript with her. Soon, she publishes the book under her own name, but suspicions about the book’s authorship begin to arise. The book explores the cruelty of loneliness, cancel culture, and the grandeur of white delusion, plus it gives an interesting peek into the inner workings and politics of the literary scene.
Bits and bobs about freelance writing.
It’s bleak out there right now for freelancers. Sending a knowing hug to all of you who need it today. We got this and we will figure it out.
For the Lite + Brite newsletter, I shared some of my top summer fun tips in Austin, including howling at the full moon at Barton Springs, doing the pool-burger-nightcap trifecta at Deep Eddy, and diving into the Fern Gully of Texas (Blue Hole). Check out all my picks in their giant July edition of fun, off-the-wall things to do in Austin.
For Tribeza: I wrote about Zilker Theater Productions’ 65th anniversary and this summer’s free production of Legally Blonde: The Musical. My first print story for this publication!
My first byline for CultureMap Austin: Austin murder-for-hire unfolds in Texas Monthly’s new true crime podcast
Join Camp NaNoWriMo, a sprint to write 50,000 words, this month and get going on your novel!
Paramount wiped out years of content on MTV News and other websites. Today’s reminder: always archive your work as soon as it’s published.
Causes I care about and actions for change.
Austinites: You can get a free test strip to check for spiked drinks at 60+ bars.
Texans: The Dallas Gaza 5K is coming up on September 28 to raise funds for the UNRWA to employ mental health counselors in Gaza. Sign up, or donate to those who do.
My friend Stella Gold is helping raise money to assist a displaced Palestinian family in Egypt. The family matriarch needs expensive emergency dental care. You can send any donations on Venmo/Cashapp to @stellagoldxo.
Both the UK and France voted down the far right this week. Let’s do the US next: Make sure you’re registered to vote.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserListen to Democracy Now! for more on the progressive wins in the UK and France:
Use Operation Olive Branch’s spreadsheet or the Gaza Family Funds directory to donate to help evacuate a Palestinian family to safety. Over 800 families are desperate for help.
Visit ceasefiretoday.com for helpful links to email/call your Congress members, sign petitions, find a protest near you, and more.
💪🏼 I remembered MyBodyGallery this week — it’s a gallery of self-submitted photos of women that can help you realistically see what your body type looks like. Could be helpful for those dealing with dysmorphia, or just people sick of seeing surgery- and digitally-altered bodies online constantly.
👎🏼 Speaking of body image and health, I enjoyed learning more about why the BMI is flawed (and based on outdated science focused on white men) from Life Kit and Maintenance Phase.
🎆 Drugged up 4th of July dog is killlllllling me.
🧠 Talking to that one friend with internet brain rot. (These folks are some of my favorite musician-creators who make hilarious content to promo their art.)
📚 The bookshelf skirt — perfect for girls who want more than this provincial life!
🤳 What you clicked on most in the last Compendium: At 17, She Fell in Love With a 47-Year-Old. Now She Questions the Story.
Support for the week ahead from your higher self.
How can I best focus on sowing new seeds for the rest of the year?
Queen of Pentacles
Hearth, Nurturing, Earth Mother
No matter where you go, you are always at home with you. Focus on making your own home, heart, and mind safe, welcoming, and comforting first. Invest in yourself. Those outside of your home will be naturally drawn to your grounded center, and you’ll see the big and small changes you make within reflected back to you.
We’re in a New Moon in Cancer at the midway point of the year. Are you ready to try one more time?
Ok MyBodyGallery is such a brilliant idea!