This is how we do it

A jubilant mixtape + 9 other things worth sharing this week ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

DuckDuckGo removed trackers from Mailgun, and one other. More

A jubilant mixtape + 9 other things worth sharing this week

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This is how we do it

Nov 6

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Art for my November 2026 mixtape. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.

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Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

Molly Ivins called Texas “the laboratory for bad government,” and that’s been the case my entire adult life. I was a 17-year-old in Ohio during the 2000 election, and since I couldn’t vote, I went around waving a copy of Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush at my family members, warning them that the whole country could become Texas. (Whenever other Americans joke that they wish Texas would go ahead and secede, I reply, “But then you’d lose your early warning system!”) 19 summers ago, Meg and I moved to Austin so she could go to grad school. We stayed. She gave birth to a couple of native Texans during the Obama administration (I was able to become a full-time writer thanks to the Affordable Care Act), and since then we’ve been raising them in a sunny city full of friendly people and great food, all the while knowing that just five miles down the road, some of the most corrupt men in the world do their best to wreck the place. So you can imagine how it felt on Tuesday night, when a good number of those creeps were sent packing by our fellow Texans. The vibe around here is: jubilant.
Meanwhile, in Rome: Pope Leo met Bob Dylan.
A few summers ago, I started one of my mixtapes with a very specific, silly concept: a pair of elder millennial parents have a few drinks after dinner and start playing their kids the rap and hip-hop of their youth, but the songs get increasingly filthy and inappropriate, until the kids flee in terror and the parents are left grinding on each other in the kitchen:

It’s a raunchy batch of music, but also a jubilant one, and perfect, I think, for post-election partying. You can listen to the mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
It’s a good month to be a middle-aged gamer: Nintendo’s remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is out now, and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto VI comes out November 19th. (Shout-out to the nerds already bumping Justice’s “Flower in a Hurricane,” featuring Tame Impala, SZA, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.)
Japanese posters designed to scare crows away. (See also: Eyes of Sibiu.)

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“Do something weird.” Writer Lorrie Moore’s advice to the young. (See also: “Be the weird you wish to see.”)
“It’s become a habit of mine, before I make an entrance onstage every night, to say out loud but quietly, ‘I don't give a f—!’ And I go to work.” RIP actor Patrick Stewart, captain of the USS Enterprise.
RIP actor Tom Skeritt, captain of the USCSS Nostromo. (Walt Whitman: “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won…”)
I answered some student questions about my books, including 4 things I’d do if I were just starting out:
“I’m there to get out of my head, to learn things about myself that my brain can’t figure out on its own, to try to come to accept that there are things in my life that I’m not going to be able to think my way out of.” I wrote about art, therapy, and cognitive distortion pedals. (Included: a downloadable poster!)