Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

Black History Month, Now with History

So you want to know more about black history but you don’t know where to start? You could do a lot worse than this Google Drive filled with many black figures and events. Now you don’t have to both a POC to explain things to you!

This Drive is jam packed with really great resources, images, information, studies, and first hand sources that even I learned stuff by poking around it. While I doubt it’s useful to link to the average person (who won’t even read through a wikipedia page) if you end up talking to someone who genuinely wants a follow up on a topic this is a nice and concise directory of information.

>Number Two<

The Almost People

I don’t know if I like or hate this article.

I want to have really cool and deep thoughts about it but every time I read it I change my opinion on our increasingly fractured worlds (especially online but reality is susceptible to this too) being invaded by the non-human (algorithms).

Either way this article is worth a read and it’s worth the hours of walking around in a daze thinking about how everyone lives in a fractured reality that may or may not be populated by real people and real beliefs if it’s not populated by real people, how would you ever know?

(Try not to think about how people are all actors in some way because everything we do is performative so how are we even better than algorithms when we’re just the flesh and blood version of attempting to game the system because you will probably have to sit down at that point and wonder if anything that has ever happened is really real which is the beauty of Dick’s work anyway.)*

*I don’t quite agree with myself here but I think about it sometimes.

>Number Three<

Makeup, Ancient China Style

There is very little that needs translation about this video. It’s just an amazingly interesting look at how makeup was made in China pre-modern times. Like any good cooking video it’s expertly cut and simply interesting to watch. The lipstick is the most interesting to me but it kind of makes me want to read up on the history of makeup in different regions since her application of each type of makeup is a little unexpected to me.

>Number Four<

The Sun

I don’t have a lot to say about this one but sometimes I just find a poem and I want to share it. This is a poem I would like to share. I’ve read it six times in the past week and it just makes me feel a lot of things. I hope it makes you feel things too.

>Number Five<

Animorphs deserves a reboot

There’s a lot to say about YA media, especially in terms of television shows and movies but back in the dark ages of the late 90’s Animorphs was a TV show that aired on Nickelodeon without the budget, care, or ability to do so and this article makes a great argument for the resurrection of the books in the form of a show. This was one of my favorite series growing up so I’m a bit biased but also Animorphs does what all truly great YA books do: it takes complex and distressing real life topics and distills them down to a level children can take in. It never flinches from the reality of how dark and awful the world can be and (not to get into too many spoilers) it doesn’t wrap everything up at the end with a nice bow. Honestly in a world where we just got a tepid adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events it feels like it might be a dark wish to want a TV show of this popular YA series but I’ll take my chances if it means exposing to kids to really amazing books.

Whew, I feel like I kept it extra brief this month but sometimes that’s all there is folks so hope to see you next month with more cool things to share!