shout out to The Strand bookstore staffer who did this

Today in “Headlines That Sound Like 1830”:

Pages from Romeyn Beck Hough’s unique 14 volume work The American Woods (1888–1913), a collection in book-form of more than 1000 paper-thin wood samples representing more than 350 varieties of N.American tree. More samples from the work here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

I'd totally forgotten about Trump doxxing Graham in the '16 primaries

Just got a letter from the Washington Post that they got hacked last summer & "data that was affected by this incident included your name and SSN." The last piece I wrote there was in 2013. Wtf are they doing retaining this 12 years? There's NO reason to retain W-9 info for that long.

Weirdly fascinated by this 1988 FBI report on coin-push carnival games

Fascinating Smithsonian piece on the Philly inventor who - as her colony had no patent office - had to sail to London in 1712 to become the first American granted an English patent. Her hominy milling machine was patented in her husband’s name, because women still weren’t allowed to hold patents.

Might start signing all my emails like this

From the Domestic Policy Council, which has a defunct homepage (whitehouse.gov/dpc/) & hasn't updated its Government Manual page in 5 years. So who's on it? Well, of the 13 known members, it appears to include one (1) woman. Any people of color? Go on, guess. www.legistorm.com/organization...

We need fun national problems, like “Do we tax hot-air balloons as air transport or leisure?”

Great moments in U.S. History.

This is *absolutely* bananas; the wildest (not complimentary) thing you'll read about education today. And the names in the story (both real and fake) are amazing.

It blows my mind that e-book sales are actually declining, even though e-book readers are better, more varied, and more capable than ever. But not better than printed books, it seems! I can't think of any other medium where the latest way to consume it hasn't won.

Mel Brooks has been around for 40% of the US's existence.

NEW: @opb.org and ProPublica found that water from one of Oregon’s most iconic rivers, the Deschutes, is largely given away to wealthy landowners who are turning the high desert green with lush pastures and landscaping.

Yesterday Radio France debuted flute and harp compositions cowritten -- or written and then revised, really -- in 1778 by Mozart and his pupil Marie de Guînes. Previously unknown pieces, they were found in the pupil's old composition book this February. You can hear them here:

Our latest investigation: How giant trucks and SUVs are far deadlier for pedestrians. “Before the driver knows what’s happened, the pedestrian’s head is under the wheel.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I'd just like to point out that the next time someone asks what you can do with an English major, you can now answer: "Probably be the next Prime Minister."

Mark Singer's obit reminded me how in 1990 Spy magazine sent 58 prominent people $1.11 checks for an unexplained "overcharge... for services rendered." 26 signed it. Then Spy sent 64¢. Half signed that. Then they sent 13¢. Two cashed it: arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, & you can guess the other.

Algae are prolific producers of oxygen (and consumers of carbon dioxide), en masse producing a huge proportion of the oxygen we breathe, which means that the greening of the Reflecting Pool might be the most pro-climate thing Trump has ever done.

Another sad loss today: the longtime New Yorker writer Mark Singer. Here's his marvelous profile of Ricky Jay, from 1993. www.newyorker.com/magazine/199...

Yves Klein, 1959, “Untitled blue monochrome (IKB 82)”

Quite a scoop by the BBC on who torched Keir Starmer's house: "The handler EL, who directed Lavrynovych, offered Russian citizenship in return for other attacks... EL is a young Russian diplomat... close to the highest levels of power in Moscow. His name is Evgeny Lyukshin."

Just discovered our local Goodwill is selling a pair of burial plots, which seems like a step up from finding a waffle maker and a Kenwood stereo receiver with no power cord.

“Take it down! Take it down!”

Allegedly the banned-for-life list from the soon to shutter Parkview Tavern.

Well, this is wonderful. One of our local schools, Lincoln High, has an Oral History Club that interviews the elderly.

A fascinating BBC article on the oldest surviving animated feature. If you ever saw the "Shadow" segments on Bear in the Big Blue House, the stills from Reiniger's 1926 film are kind of a revelation.

"[From] 1972 until 2012, Becket performed en pointe... Sometimes only her cats watched. The theater existed to showcase her dancing, & [at] her final performance...people stood in the aisles to watch the 84-year-old in The Sitting Down Show, so named because she could no longer perform on her feet."

A retired colleague clearing her office just left me this great find from 1997. Portland State held a 24-hour marathon live reading of Moby Dick, & the readers included students, teachers, the owner of Powell’s, a US senator, Susan Stamberg, and -- pictured here -- Portland legend Darcelle XV.

Maybe worth pointing out that Mancow once blocked the Bay Bridge for an hour and was sentenced to… [squints]… $500 and 100 hours of community service

When I got a job at Elliott Bay Book Company in 2000, I created the store’s first-ever graphic novel section. During my 8 years there, Satrapi did more than any other cartoonist to get general audiences interested in the medium of comics. Persepolis was the invitation that the world needed.

There's a case for *limiting* debt by degree. That's not what they did. It's an attempt to hijack higher ed disguised as financial policy. And it's aimed at arts education or any field offering lateral movement - a change in the kind of work you can pursue - and not just "Will I make more money?" 🎁

One thing not noted in here is that the possibility a soundalike candidate was deliberately recruited to confuse voters isn't just notional. It's actually been done before. In 2024, not one, not two, but *three* Bob Fergusons ran for governor in Washington state. Gift article:

Portland and Oregon officials took a lot of heat from the feds for refusing to create designated protest and “free speech zones” outside the Portland ICE facility, and to instead continue to reinforce that all gathered there had a constitutional right to be there protesting their government.

From Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C., NDAs for government employees fly in the face of a basic notion that a government should be accountable to its people. These tricks don't serve the public interest, and further impede the work of the press. Accountability is impossible without transparency.

This was the Axios headline *two months* ago:

what’ve youse been getting up to in the movie theater bathroom

TIL in 1909 you could go to your corner candy store and buy licorice "Electric Light Wires." Also: licorice night sticks, licorice cigarettes, licorice pistols, and -- if you just didn't care -- a "Big Piece."

The president of Cornell hit two students with his car, lied about what happened, and got away with it. The story illustrates an under-reported crisis in higher education: administrators and the trustees they answer to are increasingly hostile to the idea of college itself. I wrote about it here:

A curious historical footnote on grade inflation: here’s a chart from Portland State’s 1973 yearbook tracking grade distributions from 1955 to 1971. The overall DFW rate doesn’t change too much, nor does overall ABC. But A grades double, and Cs drop by half.

Oregon OSHA opened an investigation into this Amazon death after @thewesternedge.bsky.social's original reporting.

Illuminated by gas lamp or limelight, The Attack of the Monster would’ve once filled a screen in a lecture hall or theater. Produced around 1855, at the dawn of the magic lantern’s Victorian heyday, by the Philadelphia photography studio W & F Langenheim publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

A timely study of opportunistic fascism: "Low performers could transfer into the secret police... [for] longer careers, higher salaries and better pensions... The worse an officer’s academic record had been at the military academy, the more likely he was to join Battalion 601." 🎁 link:

“Shouldn’t I write more copy for the back of the dust jacket?" "Nah, let's go to the pub."

"Traditionally, mummified bodies were buried with sepulchral texts like the “Book of the Dead” and "The Book of Breathing" .... These new packets contained a surprising mix of texts, including Greco-Egyptian magic, documentary records and even literary works like the “Iliad." Gift link:

As a librarian, archivist, and historian, this is utter nonsense. Most materials - text, images, and sound are not in digital format and most are not catalogued or described in detail. Archives especially do not work that way.

Canvas, the online learning platform used by 41% of US universities (including mine), and large numbers of K-12, has been hacked for ransom.

“When Montaclair defended himself, he said making up a worthless award is not in itself against the law.”