It's PSL Time

 
 

From WaPo (image above): Last month was Earth’s hottest month on record, but pumpkin-flavored coffee has arrived as if the air is crisp and leaves are on the ground. As summers grow longer because of climate change, and major companies release their pumpkin spice treats earlier and earlier, the two phenomena are moving further apart.

From AP News: In the year ending July 29, U.S. sales of pumpkin-flavored products reached $802.5 million, according to Nielsen. That’s up 42% from the same period in 2019. There are pumpkin spice Oreos, protein drinks, craft beers, cereals and even Spam. A search of “pumpkin spice” on Walmart’s website brings up more than 1,000 products. A thousand products that smell or taste like, well, pumpkin pie. It has also spawned a vocal group of detractors — and become an easy target for parodies. Comedian John Oliver once called pumpkin spice lattes “the coffee that tastes like a candle.” There’s a Facebook group called “I Hate Pumpkin Spice” and T-shirts with slogans like “Ain’t no pumpkin spice in my mug.”

For Your Enjoyment #48

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Smartwatches are the default wearable option these days, but why is it so hard to find simple yet affordable alternatives like the fitness bands of yesteryear?

– I miss basic fitness trackers (pictured above: my trusty Jawbone Up in 2013)

Whatever you believed about Albany, about America, about teenagers, racism, sexism, social media, punishment and the public discourse on each of these topics, the story of the Instagram account could be marshaled as evidence. It was the incident that explained everything and yet also the incident that couldn’t be explained.

– This longread about a racist Instagram account that devastated Albany High is heavy but worthwhile

From the moment he sauntered into the league, “The Answer,” as he was nicknamed, sparked nothing but stereotypical questions deep in my old-school, Oklahoma City–bred psyche. I misunderstood, misjudged, missed the point on Allen Iverson.

– DWade’s 2023 HOF speech seemed like as good a time as any to revisit this piece by Skip Bayless

I was punished when I cried, and my parents spun tales of my accomplishments until the tidal wave of my failures quotidian and spectacular overwhelmed their narrative. I have lived my life in fear of being found out: as Chinese, perhaps, but really as stupid and ugly and not good enough and incapable of ever being so. But here’s Quan, the same as he was when he was a kid, embodying all of the qualities that actually matter in the pursuit of a life well-lived: love for and faith in the people in your life who see you, and the candid recollection of the journey it took to get you to a place where you can finally see yourself. It’s not the awards that matter, it’s only this. I used to be embarrassed to be set against Quan in some way; now I can’t imagine a kinder comparison. I’m old, but I’m teachable. Maybe there’s hope for us, yet.

– “It Took Me Nearly 40 Years To Stop Resenting Ke Huy Quan” – Read this.

Rock historian Bruno MacDonald, writing for the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, summed up the record's genius thus: "An exorcism of childhood demons? A megalomaniac's masterpiece? A full hour of hard-rock humdingers? Siamese Dream is all this and more."

– Is Siamese Dream the greatest album of 1993? (Answer: To me? Yes.)

Out of all those great rock records that came out in the first five years of the 90s, not many sound better the further down the line you get from it in the way that Purple does. Some of those albums are brilliant precisely because they are wedded to that era, but something about Purple is better floating out of time. It could be the sheer sense of exuberance in the music. Or that feeling of a lyricist giving his words both an emotional depth and a swagger. Or maybe it’s just because the brilliance of this record at the time was tainted by so many being a bit snooty towards Stone Temple Pilots for reasons that seem quite ludicrous now. It was an era when the Authenticity Police were on patrol, and perhaps STP were pulled over for looking like they were having too much of a good time.

– Revisiting another 90s classic

Edward Blum has been working toward the end of race-based admissions in higher education for years. He first brought the issue of affirmative action before the Supreme Court in 2012, with Fisher v. University of Texas – a case he ended up losing. Since then, the 71-year-old legal activist has founded a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which just won at the Supreme Court against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, in a decision that effectively ended race-based affirmative action policies in American college admissions.

– The NYT interviews Edward Blum

Let’s face it, when you’re a college-educated 57-year-old slinging parcels for a living, something in your life has not gone according to plan. That said, my moments of chagrin are far outnumbered by the upsides of the job, which include windfall connections with grateful strangers. There’s a certain novelty, after decades at a legacy media company –Time Inc. – in playing for the team that’s winning big, that’s not considered a dinosaur, even if that team is paying me $17 an hour (plus OT!). It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III), to be a minority in my workplace, and in some of the neighborhoods where I deliver. As Amazon reaches maximum ubiquity in our lives (“Alexa, play Led Zeppelin”), as online shopping turns malls into mausoleums, it’s been illuminating to see exactly how a package makes the final leg of its journey.

– "I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon.”