No-Buy Friday is mushy bullshit:

Let's start with the murky origin story of this particular boycott. When the mainstream media trotted out to cover it, they all found the same "founder" to interview: John Schwartz, also known as "J" or "Jai," the self-identified founder of The People's Union USA.

Schwartz says he was moved to launch the People's Union because he "always knew something wasn't right" about...something? "The system wasn't built for people like me, or for most people at all," he says. Sure, that resonates--just like that Hims and Hers Superbowl commercial tried to resonate by telling us "the system was built to keep us sick and stuck." Gesturing at "this broken system" -- is it healthcare? is it diet culture? is it capitalism?-- is exactly what your favorite shirtless TikTok bro does before he starts to sell you his supplement line. It's the "diets don't work" of social justice rhetoric.

I mean, the boycott probably isn't making anything worse. But it's definitely not well-organized activism with a clear goal in mind.

There's probably a broader point about how activism has become diffuse and accessible for anyone with the luck to grab the crest of people's attention in the moment. So the gate-keepers have less power, but the people who luck into power aren't necessarily skilled in ways that allow them to do jack shit with it. Kind of parallel to the media, I suppose, because they both require the attention of the masses in order to be successful.

People's attention has really become the weirdest, scarcest currency.

Recently, I had reason to tell Ace about the Tralfamadorians and what happened when they read the story of Jesus in the bible. (Ie, they learned the lesson, "If you are going to kill someone, you need to make very sure that they aren't well-connected first.") Definitely a book that made a big impression on me.

...

Mostly unrelated, the old WTF thread fell off the page, so this can be a new one, unless you want to talk about the Tralfamadorians.

First off, it's hard to post in the era of Trump. The guard rails are off and everything is at top volume. (To mix metaphors.)

Anyway: I've been saving this article, Instinctive sleeping and resting postures: an anthropological and zoological approach to treatment of low back and joint pain, because it's so adorable how science used to be conducted in maybe the 1950s-60s.

But now I see that this article is from the year of our lord 2000, and I'm so confused. Somehow, that's gotta be the date that it was uploaded online and not the actual publication date? But I can find no information to support that?

I saved this a week or two ago, so it's not super recent, but the effects of DOGE on the national parks is so goddamn depressing. This looks at Yosemite.

NickS writes: Both genuinely affecting:

So here are a couple of true USAID stories -- one political, one personal.

The political one first. I worked for years in the small former Soviet republic of Moldova.

Moldova happened to be one of the few parts of the old USSR suitable for producing wine. The other was Georgia, in the Caucasus.

The Soviets, in their central planning way, decided that both Moldova and Georgia would produce wine -- but Georgia would produce the good stuff, intended for export and for consumption by Soviet elites. Moldova would produce cheap sweet reds, which is what most Russians think wine is.

Heebie's take: It's a really good, quick post - go read it.

I keep reading how destroying USAID is the one thing the American public is totally on board with, and that is just so goddamn depressing. It speaks to how long ago we lost the messaging war and the war for people's attention.

Per request!