So, first, of course it is a good thing to have a federal holiday commemorating the emanicipation of slaves, and I see it as part of rewriting the narrative of who the Civil War winners are, and whose experience gets attention and oxygen.

(Let the contrarian takes begin!)

I first heard of Juneteenth as an adult, when I moved to Texas in 2000. Somehow I got the impression that it was more than just a celebration of emancipation - that it's closely tied to the shameful three years that passed between the Emancipation Proclamation and the original June 19th, 1865 in Galveston. (To me, there should be anger tied up in that fact, but I've never actually heard of anger playing any role in the celebration.)

I am not sure whether I'm right about the three years being central to the idea of Juneteenth. But I am dead certain that any residual shame that white Texans ought to feel will be whitewashed away, in favor of NYT recipes and co-opting of traditions.

I guess that's the other thing that makes me nervous - anticipating the ways this could go sideways as white people scamper excitedly all over a black holiday and capitalism starts rubbing it's hands and dreaming of milquetoast marketing campaigns. I have to imagine that if I were black and had a life of traditions here, it might feel a bit sad and exasperating to watch it get watered down and mainstreamed.

I took the title from Minivet, on request for a thread on the latest judicial survival of the ACA. Here you go!

Nworbie writes: So, Flordelis is this Brazilian pentecostalist preacher and gospel singer risen up from the slums to fame and wealth with 56 children, a husband she famously loves, six churches, and a seat in congress.

The children are almost all adopted, many of them quite legally. None of them are her husband's. He is her manager, and eighteen years younger than she is -- in fact he might well have been adopted had they not struck up a rather different relationship. Hashtag blessed, it would appear -- but she things not quite blessed enough, because her husband just won't die and she has decided God is bored of him. But the children, at least, are utterly devoted to her, so when she announces God is tired of him, no one seems to bat an eyelid when she starts feeding him arsenic.

When that doesn't work, mysterious assailants shoot him 30 times, mostly in the balls just inside her yard after they have spent a romantic night on the beach. She makes a wonderful, tearful appearance at his funeral -- and as she drives away the police stop her car and pull out two of the sons in it to arrest him for his father's murder.

Six of them are now in jail, but she is immune for the moment, as elected Brazilian politicians have immunity from criminal prosecution.

"I couldn't believe it," she told me. "I was indicted without any evidence, just for messages on my cell phone." Now, on top of everything else, politicians were taking action against her. "They've asked for my impeachment," she complained. "But that's unconstitutional, because I did not break any parliamentary decorum.
"It's clear they want to arrest me at any cost. They want to make me the mastermind of this murder. That's why I'm asking for help outside Brazil--I'm begging for help." Flordelis crawled across her bed and handed me her phone. On the screen was an advertisement for "Deadly Recall," an American television show hosted by Pat Postiglione, a celebrity detective with a purportedly photographic memory. "This is who I want to help me," Flordelis said. "I found him on the Discovery Channel."

The whole story is a wonderful piece of journalism. I wish I had written it; I wish, rather, too, that anyone had ever invited me for an interview like this:

As we talked, Flordelis appeared in the doorway. A petite, dark-skinned woman, she wore a bold-patterned dress and a leather belt, and her hair swept down one shoulder in a ponytail. With a wide smile, she moved languidly from man to man, imparting kisses and coquettish looks. At her urging, we went from the crowded terrace and into her bedroom.
Flordelis had a king-size bed, with a white leatherette headboard and a scarlet spread embroidered with satin ribbons. She climbed on and propped herself up next to a large white Teddy bear, while her bodyguard sat protectively on a child's bed nearby ... everyone fell silent as she proceeded, for the next two and a half hours, to tell her life story.

Heebie's take: Flordelis is a delusional narcissist. Somehow the whole thing feels like a set design makeover away from happening in Texas, which gave me the uneasy feeling of camraderie with the people left to clean up this mess, ie those who interact with, repair, or clean up after all the members of the cult-family going forward.

Mossy Character writes: "threat multiplier"

Heebie's take: awful awful awful

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode 83.

We discovered that rental cars are currently extremely expensive, and we were told this is because the companies sold off their stock during Covid? This seems to substantiate that.

I've been listening to all this inflation-talk and assuming it was all intended as a critique of Biden's Covid package. How much of the inflation is because supply chains were so vastly disrupted? Can experts distinguish which portion of rising prices is due to supply limitations, and which is due to the stimulus? Are journalists assigning blame properly?

I downloaded an app in 2013 to record my weightlifting amounts. It worked fine as of a month ago, but now is dead, without any sort of "get your data! the end is nigh!" and I'm locked out of my data. (Browsing around, it looks like it died in 2018, and my most recent phone update is incompatible with the ancient version I was still using.)

Of all the records I keep, I care very little about my weightlifting amounts. I never made any progress whatsoever. It's more just startling to remember how fickle the developers of our lives-in-apps may be.

I think most of my important info is either backed up somewhere or in a famous enough app that they'd publicize it if they were changing hands. But if you'd asked me a month ago, I never would have remembered my weightlifting info, in scanning across my phone for vulnerable spots.