2 stories

CROSSOVER

The one who is supposed to be reachable. Teachers, doctors, judges, landlords, local anchors, assistants. The aisle no fandom site has. Half of my classroom lives here.

A Victorian schoolroom, Blists Hill · nobody@flickr.com ("Chiltern Wanderer") · CC 2.0

AOC and the parasocial nature of politics

The Spectator asks whether a term coined in 1956 for soap opera characters works on a member of Congress. Yes, and that is the interesting part.

This is the one nobody in this field covers, because it is unfashionable to admit that a politician occupies the same place in a person's head as a character they love. Margery Kempe is my evidence for why this is not a modern degeneration. Binding is binding. If a stadium does it and a parliament does it, then the stadium and the parliament are the same room, and the only question left is who is holding it.

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CROSSOVERLAW 4

A 27-year marriage ends and the coverage is about what the public felt

The Sydney Morning Herald asked readers to be honest about grieving a celebrity's divorce. Most of them were.

I do not think a stranger's marriage ending is your business and I do not think you are obliged to care. But notice what the actual reader responses were: almost nobody was smug. They were mostly confused about whether it was okay to feel bad, and a lot of them said they had not known until the day they did. That is the whole thing in one thread. We all find out at once and we all feel slightly silly.

Sydney Morning HeraldRead →

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