Lew Perin @wrenpile@mastodon.social

This smart article about immigration politics in Europe and the USA

https://nyti.ms/2lK6hBm?smid=nytcore-ios-share

has an idea why xenophobes may be insatiable:

«But because public demand for harsh immigration policies is often driven by a broad range of social changes and issues, and not just migrants, whatever policies end up being enacted can never quite satisfy those who had demanded them.»

Today in #NYC has been the first day this year hot enough to remind me of the General Sternwood scene in _The Big Sleep_: https://youtu.be/pPQOTvkFA1o

Tomorrow will be worse.

On this stinky hot day in Brooklyn, we sat in breezy shade and — once! — heard the call of a song sparrow: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Song_Sparrow/sounds

Mastodon will have truly arrived once there’s a widely used derogatory term for it on Twitter.

Tired: subpoena
Wired: subtoot

On the Chinese bus from DC to NYC, as we passed by Baltimore I noticed a freight car stopped at a rail siding. In red Fraktur letters that took up the whole long surface of the car, it said 𝖀𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖊𝖘𝖘 𝕳𝖚𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖘.

Tree growing out of disused Chinatown chimney as seen from the Manhattan Bridge

#nyc

Our policy is to keep head over heels during business hours.

Presumably their bylaws ban both pigeon jokes and viola jokes.

Viola Pigeon Club, Stilwell Ave., #Brooklyn

Th New Museum in Manhattan has elevators named after donors.

I still haven’t seen a restroom named after a benefactor in a public institution.

There will come a time when the New Museum can no longer be considered new. Then, perhaps sooner, the whole joint will presumably be renamed for some rich person.

#art #money

Thomas Bayrle, Stalin portrait composed of hundreds of red Stalin mustaches, New Museum, Manhattan

#art #nyc

Thomas Bayrle, iPhone Pietà, tapestry composed of hundreds of images of iPhones, New Museum, Manhattan

#art #nyc

Obama, now a private citizen, wrote to the dying LGBT rights pioneer Dick Leitsch.

“Thank you for your decades of work to help drive our nation forward on the path toward L.G.B.T. equality,” he wrote. “Our journey as a nation depends, as it always has, on the collective and persistent efforts of people like you.”

https://nyti.ms/2IkvXNB?smid=nytcore-ios-share

The USA has fallen far in a short time.

Walking in Manhattan, there’s so much happening on the sidewalk that I rarely look up.

The day before yesterday, I did look up on Lexington between 64th and 65th, and in a second storey window saw … Enki version 3?

Kirstjen Nielsen getting heckled in a Mexican restaurant made me think of a related topic.

The Trumpies will need a more attractive format for air quality reports. How about:

🌶 bland like Obama
🌶 🌶 kinda spicy
🌶🌶🌶MASA
🌶🌶🌶🌶extra Trumpy
🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶gas mask time

Of course, if I were a young woman with trim haunches, I’d probably be wearing tights in the hot sun.

It’s summer on the calendar and for real in NYC, so it’s time for my annual song of thanksgiving that I’m not a fat guy wearing a suit and tie in the hot sun.

Don’t worry, I won’t inflict it on you…