I was thinking of doing a top picks of 2025 thing but I don't really watch movies that are less than 40 years old, feel like it would be weird to say my own book is my pick of the year but also weird not to, and my video game of the year Dread Delusion actually came out in 2024 as it turns out

The one exception I can think of is like half of the people in Tyler Childers songs seem to be some kind of archaeologist

if you haven't been laid low by a beautiful woman then spent your last dime on misery and beer, I.don't.wanna.hear.it.

Country music started being unlistenable when they stopped writing songs about being a bartender, gas station attendant, janitor etc. I don't want to hear a country song about a big party on a boat I want to hear about being a substitute teacher

On this day 114 years ago - 29 December 1911 -, the Bogd Khaan declared the independence of Mongolia in Urga (now Ulaanbaatar). 3 days before the proclamation of the Republic of China, it was the first new state to emerge from the collapsing Daicing 大清 Empire. /

The 1911 Dec 29 must be seen as the formal end of the Manchu DaiQing Empire. From this greeting by Prime Minister of Mongolia Zandanshatar Gombojav we also see how Norwegian traveller Oscar Mamen's archives documenting the period, have quickly become part of modern Mongolian nation building project.

Having found out the hard way I can tell you that unfortunately there is only one way to find out: the hard way

Hard to imagine anyone in 2025 still taking moral guidance from Jon Stewart but yeah when that first big covid wave hit NYC a bunch of rich people like him flooded into rural Southern Appalachia, overtaxed the hell out of our hospitals, and then afterwards acted like covid's "not even that bad"

Modern day version of the Orville Hicks Mountain Dew story

child on the bus excited as HELL when he saw a Raising Cane's and demanded of his father if they could go, and the flat cap'd dad intoned "who's cain and what do you wanna raise him for"

Hillbilly Elegy solidified a racial archetype in the Hillbilly - theorized as a depraved white who lost the mandate of whiteness through our cultural devolution. They have now introduced Heritage American as the logical corollary - "good" whites who are the true and pure inheritors of the country

Adding to "I'm just an old chunk of coal (but I'll be a diamond one day)", here's another of baby's music picks: youtu.be/KLJA-srM_yM?...

I feel a deep thrum that tells me this is in Govi-Altai province

As long as we are talking about Dean Martin in addition to being Italian he's also Appalachian (Steubenville, OH)

Nothing fills me with more Christmas spirit than that clip of the guy from Red State Update telling Pinhead from Hellraiser he looks like "Cracker Barrel Game"

I feel like it is kind of going unsaid that the people losing their jobs because a student said they didn't praise the Bible enough or whatever are all contingent - VAPs, lectures, instructor, graduate teaching assistants

Looks like somebody did get me your book for Christmas @songsforhorses.com \o/ Merry Christmas.

ty for reminding me it's time to hit the @dollarcountry.org bummer christmas mix

Unrionically enjoy the Merry Christmas Lil Mama albums and feel like there should be more regional dance themed contemporary holiday music

Googling "Bone Thugs Christmas album" and crossing my fingers

Hillbilly Elegy 2, ladies and gentlemen

Much of 20th century country music is preoccupied with the question "what if Christmas was sad?"

LRT: youtu.be/Pjqszdpy3BY?...

I just want everyone to look at this majestic Bactrian Camel 🐫

The second colleges go on break the "where are the student protests now??" people come back out of the woodwork. Buddy it's Christmas Eve, the college towns are empty

Really can't stop watching this

Does anyone know who the editor for the 33 1/3 Global Series is? I want to try to pitch them on starting a North Asia or Eurasia series

This is a crazy watch honestly. They pair this narrator who is very authoritatively not saying the name of the region correctly with what comes off to me as a frenetic, frenzied pace of delivering Look How Poor These People Are punchlines. A wild ride

Googling "Waxahatchee Christmas album when"

Hey tis the season once again, for Mongolian Jingle Bells from the Altai Band youtu.be/qJkiYNeDsw4?...

wendell berry QUESTIONNAIRE

I do this guy's voice when I'm reading my kid Aesop fables

Another year spent searching for the notebook that will solve all my problems. Next year I will find it

everyone please share your favorite railroad livestream cams. great time of year to just leave some snow-covered railcam on in the background of the living room tv

Packing away the lecture material for another year lol

Does anyone know who the editor for the 33 1/3 Global Series is? I want to try to pitch them on starting a North Asia or Eurasia series

At 7 this morning I stopped at a blinking yellow light to let the guy already at the intersection go and not only did he lay on the horn and refuse to go, he then tailgated me back into my driveway. Y'all it's Christmas can you please calm down

When someone asks me why I didn't use AI in my work:

How am I just now hearing about this youtu.be/p6DxeQc1D9A?...

I like hearing the old ladies speak in dialect so thick it doesn't sound like English anymore. It makes me feel like the world isn't ending, of a moment

This is a crazy watch honestly. They pair this narrator who is very authoritatively not saying the name of the region correctly with what comes off to me as a frenetic, frenzied pace of delivering Look How Poor These People Are punchlines. A wild ride

I'd happily record one myself for my own ethnography if I didn't think people would be put off hearing about Mongolian traditional music in a weird rural southern Appalachian accent for 200 pages

They should do audiobook versions of ethnographies I think

I'm reminded of Nick Estes' big public claim that Russia couldn't be a settler colony because there are no Indigenous people in Siberia, or (he added) if there were any, their land wouldn't be with stealing anyway, probably the most irrational take I've seen be taken seriously by Western leftists

"Imagine how surprised Russia’s indigenous peoples must be to read that the Global South has decided to show solidarity with Vladimir Putin’s Russia rather than with them"

Makes a great gift for the old man or odd child in your kin group

Set up the placard in my office

It went from 55 and raining last night to 20 and covered in ice this morning so my thoughts of course turn to The Bull of Winter and his Icy Horns