samantha irby is a legit genius, from her newsletter:
if this is where you expect me to tell y’all to read white fragility please immediately go throw your phone into the sea. what the fuck are you doing? a white lady wrote that fucking book! lmao read books by black people!!!!! anyway i mostly read fiction, and while i appreciate the many lists of scholarly books about history and violence that are populating our various newsfeeds, kirsten got a copy of stamped from the beginning the other day and…i’m not reading that??????? it’s like 900 pages long! i do not have a brain built for that much information! i just don’t. also, and i don’t have the words to properly articulate this so please forgive me: a list of educational books that feels like a social studies syllabus is great, please read them if that’s your thing, but i don’t ever want you to sleep on what can be gained from just reading black stories in general, especially when they highlight our joy and creativity. normalize reading contemporary black fiction! and poetry! and memoir! and essays!
OAT MILK. I had skipped the whole alternate milk thing. But I bought a jug during quarantine boredom and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make coffee and morning rituals that much smoother, creamier, more special. I’m sure it’s wildly unhealthy or is somehow wrecking the environment; please don’t tell me.
for some reason, it was a great day — was it eating candy mid-day? was it the combo of eating candy AND leaving briefly mid-day? was it adam liptak on the daily? we’ll never know. but that kind of buoyancy is rare these days. the first great thing:
I have a Carl Reiner story that I hold very dear to me. I figured I'd share it today, on the day of his passing, because I hope it will bring some other people some joy the way it does me.
Then came an accident in the San Francisco subway in which she plunged headfirst from her wheelchair onto the train tracks. It left her with a mild brain injury but led her to realize that she had more to be grateful for than sorry about, and she resolved to shape her own destiny.
later she has cancer and double mastectomy! and she keeps going! IT IS INSANE. and i just loved this line:
With her legs paralyzed, she found freedom rowing across oceans. “It’s hopeless, it’s majestic, it’s exhilarating,” she said.
just spent an hour looking at the instagrams of martha plimpton and ione skye — which was not technically bad, and honestly was cool to see similarly aged ladies not afraid to look like regular cool aging ladies — BUT first how did i even get there? and also let’s be honest, not a great use of an hour. this is why i quit instagram a 100 hears, i mean years, ago.
