Reading
Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while Tran was on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, Chronicles of a Catsitter documents the most memorable days on the job.
Roosevelt Island is the kind of place a man would take you on a Hinge date. Sandwiched between Queens and Manhattan in the East River, it is a little inconvenient to get to, a little bald-faced in its efforts to be distinctive, and, dare I say, a little bland. A poll of my born-and-raised New York friends reveals that most have never set foot on the island, and if they have, it was only once.

Okay, so let’s start with the good part: the opening scene is perfect. Dad’s head is right above baby Liam’s head; they’re both perfectly centered, and they’re both looking directly at Grandma and Grandpa. It’s a clear and ideal way for us to meet these characters.
After that, though, it all got pretty confusing.
If I had to pinpoint where things went off the rails, it would be when Liam took the phone. At first, it seemed like Dad was very determined to make Liam give the phone back to him, so I figured we were in for a nice old-fashioned chase scene followed by a return to more logical camera shots. But then, after a few seconds, Dad just, like, gave up. And it didn’t seem like he had given up only on getting the phone back. It seemed like he had completely given up on getting Liam to ever listen to anything he had to say about anything. It felt existentially sad and made for a very jarring juxtaposition from the beginning of the call, when they were just talking to Grandma and Grandpa about Liam’s swimming lesson.
- by Aeon Video
My generation has not aged well.
The post Donald Trump and His Boomer Base appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Shayla Love
“From the river to the sea,” says an ad for Springer’s classifieds site in Israel, which lists homes for sale in Jewish-only West Bank settlements.
The post German Media Giant Axel Springer Makes Money on Israel’s Illegal Settlements appeared first on The Intercept.
What’s in your basement? Mine is full of things I’ve mostly forgotten about — tools I bought for projects I never completed, long abandoned sports equipment, furniture I planned on refinishing ages ago, and unused cans of paint I thought I wanted when someone was giving them away. We’ve owned this house for nearly 12 years, since just weeks before our son was born. In all that time, I’ve regularly gone down there to do the laundry and store my things (which never seem to stop accumulating). And somehow, it went from being empty when we bought it to chock-a-block full today in a way that would make Marie Kondo’s perfect hair stand straight up. One day recently, I noticed... Read more
Source: Cleaning Out the Basement of My Life appeared first on TomDispatch.com.