Heh. (h/t Laughing Squid)

I’m an optimist for the most part, not a doom-and-gloomer, but I also read history for fun. Hard to ignore the parallels between 1929 and 2026. (Heather Cox Richardson’s 250 to 250.)

Quote: “Dishearteningly, but perhaps inevitably, [the priest] began to speak of the Great Replacement Theory. ‘There are places where the marriage and birth rates are so low that even the secular media, of all people, are beginning to talk about it.’ The clear takeaway was that I should sneak out to the bathroom and become impregnated without further delay; only then could he be at ease.”
Do yourself a favor, read the whole piece. (LRB)

“Some clever Democratic politician is going to say, at some point, look at Australia. They’re getting free electricity.”
Dana sez, Wouldn’t have to be that clever. Sigh.
(Bill McKibben on Ezra Klein, NYT)

FF 30-some minutes in to see the baby wolves. When one of them howls–omg, the cutest thing ever! (National Park Service, best thing we’ve ever done as a nation)

Quote for our 250th anniversary

 The country did not fail even when it split in two and buried more than 750,000 of its people. It did not fail in the bread lines of the Depression, in the existential war against fascism that followed or in the smoke of burning cities in the 1960s. The country did not fail during the Cold War, when a rival nation vowed to bury us. Each time the Republic proved more durable than its mourners predicted, not because of any magic in the system, but because enough people decided the alternative was unacceptable and went to work. Democracy is not a sheltered structure we live inside. It is a habit we must practice — or lose. —NYT Editorial Board

Outro…

Chatter Lagniappe Sunday 250 to 250 Bill McKibben Great Crash of 1929 HCR LRB NatGeo NPS Patricia Lockwood Paul Krugman Punch Brothers