The Klan of the 1920s wasn't just a racist organization, they expanded their hate to include Jews and Catholics and immigrants (which back then were largely one and the same, as many Jews and Catholics had recently immigrated to America from Eastern Europe, Germany, Italy, and Ireland). Expanding their hateful scope brought them huge success. The Klan of the 1920s had millions of members, a women's auxiliary, and a Junior Klan for kids. They were also politically powerful, the driving force behind the Immigration Act of 1924, which would pass 10 days later and create the US Border Patrol.

So the Klan gathering in South Bend—billed as a "May festival, celebration, and parade"—was different. Sure there would be a barbeque and a parade, but this was a show of force too. In many ways this "Konklave," as their gatherings were known, was the culmination of the Klan's anti-Catholic bigotry. They boasted that 50,000 Klansmen, women, and children would descend on the town to take part in what was expected to be a weekend-long celebration. DC Stephenson, the grand dragon of the Indiana region, and HW Evans, the imperial wizard of the national Klan, were on hand to speak. This was a big deal. This was a chance for the Klan, at the very height of their political power, to show the Catholics of Notre Dame where they stood.

Except.

Except that on this day, students from Notre Dame—back then still a men's school—were waiting.

When the first trains arrived, students beat the Klansmen so savagely that they retreated back onto their train cars.

I had no idea there was such a straight line from the politics of the KKK to the foundation of the U.S. Border Patrol.

“Sometimes — or a lot of times,” I hedged, “when people think about environment and climate news, they think about doom and gloom. What, if anything, makes you feel optimistic these days?”

There was a long pause. An almost uncomfortable stretch of silence. Finally, Amy spoke.

“I will be totally honest and say, I think there is something about that question — nothing personal — but this is a question that we’re asking ourselves over and over again in a world that I think deserves a little bit of pushback.”

I still have the recording from that interview. The moment when Amy said “nothing personal,” I can hear myself murmur and gulp. I gulped! I remember feeling nervous to hear her answer. I was surprised she was going off-script, and unsure where we were headed next.

“I think optimism and hope are important things to have,” she conceded. “But I also worry about that frame, because I think that there’s a way that we — especially people who are living in relative comfort and relatively privileged societies — focus a lot on how bad the news makes us feel, and how we need something good to make us feel better.”

At this point, I’d stopped typing. I trusted the recording and just listened to Amy’s words.

“It’s a totally valid question — but I also feel like I’m getting asked it so many times,” she continued. “I think we need to be focused much more on what we are going to do. What are we doing? Let the doing — the action, and the solutions-building — be the thing that brings us hope. You get optimistic by doing the work.”

There’s considerable correlation quality between optimism and hard work.

This article explains how database indexing works in a way that feels hyper-targeted toward me: using a database filled with Pokémon.

Tracking every single song I listen to seems to be a habit I built a long time ago and can't seem to shake.¹ My tracking tool of choice continues to be last.fm.

I recently stumbled across this site that downloads your entire history of tracks and presents the data with some seriously fun charts and graphs.

You can look at mine if you aren't a last.fm user yourself. I could stare at the race chart all day.

And tonight, the category is: covers that go hard.

These madlads are back in the kitchen throwing down hard to perhaps my favorite System song.

How dare they. How dare they.

My daughter is gonna go nuts for that alto sax solo.

Of course that song won a Grammy this year.

From that first strum in Tema de Guile, I was hooked.

Edit:

I woke up this morning and the algorithm delivered me more SFII content, this time in the form of Japanese jazz fusion.

I have loved listening to Giant Steps since college, but never knew why so many musically-literate people love this album. I just liked it because it sounds good.

This is the first video that explained the circle of fifths in a way that made me want to learn more about music theory.

I was totally sobbing by the end of this beautifully illustrated version of Danny Fenster, an American journalist who was arrested for months in Myanmar for the crime of... uh, journalism.

One of the big things I took away from his story was how he trained himself to embrace boredom. I really should try to get into meditation.

Is there anything more punk than spending your snowy Sunday listening to The Rezillos, piling up a mountain of snow, and digging a big hole into it, just because it's fun and makes you happy?

Yeah, I'm really proud of this igloo, we kicked butt on it.

Next time, we'll make the roof higher and the room bigger to accommodate two adults and two kids.

This is a great list, saving this for later.

Another item I’d add to it is this aspect ratio calculator. I’ve used it for years to help me figure out dimensions for cropping photos for use with social media.

Come to think of it… these one-off generators are incredibly trivial for coding agents to whip together. I should host a bunch of my own. 🧐

Curation was once something we did for ourselves, a ritual that shaped our taste and gave us joy. I worry that in our rush toward convenience, algorithms, and now AI agents, we’re letting go of that agency piece by piece. Maybe what we need isn’t smarter technology to choose for us, but the space and intention to start curating again — for ourselves, on our own terms.

I’ve been aggressively curating my digital gardens lately.

I used to hit “shuffle all” on my music library and cringe at roughly half of the songs.

Lately, there’ve been consecutive days of listening on shuffle where I don’t skip a single song. And often, I pull up my phone to see who the artist is.

The more I curate, the happier I am.

Cull, weed, curate, clean... all synonyms for the same thing. Do the work, reap the benefits.