I hope you laughed at that — happy Friday, gang! Fun fact: Arlo Guthrie and I share a birthday, which is coming up this Monday. Fingers crossed we get some good news?

Until then…

• I almost don’t care if it’s sort of a conspiracy theory at this point, I’m fascinated by this proposition that Amelia Earhart survived and wound up in the Marshall Islands.
• You know how much I love nonfiction comics (in addition to all the other kinds); recently we’ve had two exploring a subject close and dear to my heart. At CityLab, Ariel Aberg-Riger (whose work I’ve loved before) has written and illustrated a gorgeous, poignant piece about Mr. Rogers and what makes Americans hunger for his kind of neighborhood. Meanwhile, at Longreads, Candace Rose Rardon is a world traveler, but she’s found meaning in one global commonality: “Home Is a Cup of Tea.”
• For Kajal, Nadya Agrawal pushes on a trope we’ve seen in multiple acclaimed “South Asian man is just a normal American guy” films and TV shows: “Why Don’t Brown Women Deserve Love Onscreen?” Responding on Twitter to a related essay from BuzzFeed (“Why Are Brown Men So Infatuated With White Women Onscreen?“), S.I. Rosenbaum digs into something that both essays miss: “When the author says ‘quirky,’ he means ‘Jewish.’” For more on Jews, particularly American Ashkenazi Jews, and whiteness, see Tumblr use Salt Dragon, writing on Jay-Z’s not-really philosemitic lyrics and what many urban Jews became after World War II.
  • I posted this over a holiday weekend, so if you missed it, I wrote up how Jewishness and Israelis don’t fit into a POC/white, colonist/indigenous binary and how otherwise committed anti-racist activists can entirely miss clear signals of antisemitism.
• If you want a really sad, troubling story of a progressive, feminist, sex-positive activist gone “red-pilled,” read Katelyn Burns’ “The Strange, Sad Case of Laci Green” for the Establishment.
• On July 3, I saw the Yankees play the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, my first professional baseball game in about eight or nine years. I found it hilarious and delightful, but truth be told, I only have one true love when it comes to baseball. Someone once said that as The Shawshank Redemption is to men, A League of Their Own is for women. It’s simply perfect on every level, and given that I saw it at 7, it’s incredibly formative for me. Katie Baker, writing for the Ringer, shows why it’s still the greatest sports movie of all time.

Stay brave, friends.

Image credit: National Baseball Hall of Fame; click that link, it’s a great article too. See also: this great art from Project Wisconsin, just because it’s great.