SUMMER FRIDAYS DEP'T.: Sky variants
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 125
Previously, on INDIGNITY
THE WORST THING WE READ™
Tom Scocca
The first of the three bylines belonged to Benjamin Ryan, a freelancer for the Times science desk who does not usually cover politics or higher education, but who is a committed writer on the anti-trans-care beat and who has posted, in earnest, about the excesses of the "woke left." Ryan subscribes to Lasker's newsletter about racial superiority and inferiority—Lasker uses the pen name "Crémieux," apparently after a decree that promoted Jews to full citizenship in French colonial Algeria and left Muslims with second-class status—and has a history of friendly exchanges with him on social media.
The Times rushed to do the story, Semafor's Max Tani wrote, because "[i]t did not want to be scooped by the independent journalist Christopher Rufo" and others. Christopher Rufo is neither a journalist nor independent; he is a right-wing anti-integration political activist and operative who is quite open about using the mainstream press, and especially the Times, to advance his chosen attack lines. In calling him a journalist, Semafor was following the Times into the funhouse, in which ulterior motives vanish through a trapdoor and propaganda unwarps itself into straightforward news simply by being reflected off the gleaming objectivity of the newspaper of record.
POPULAR ASTRONOMY DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
ON THURSDAY, JULY 10, if you look to the eastern sky after sunset, you should be able to see the rising full moon. In American culture, which attaches great importance to the names of the full moons to mark the passage through each year, this moon is known as the Julius Caesar Moon. Here are the dates and names of the rest of the cycle of upcoming full moons, as they're traditionally known to the Americans:
OUTSIDE READINGS DEP'T.
Marisa Kabas continued her tour of the gutted federal government by reporting on how the depleted Federal Emergency Management Agency is—or isn't—responding to the deadly Texas flash flooding:
Rusty Foster wrote about fixing up his house and remembering the Stephen King novella "Apt Pupil" and watching the equivalents of King's fictional Nazi-enthusiast teenager tighten their control on the country:
SUMMER PRODUCE DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
I typed up this ranked list that was rattling around in my head, rather than writing an essay about some depressing current event, such as Elon Musk's chatbot going entirely Nazi. Musk kept trying to make a chatbot that wouldn't keep contradicting his worldview or saying he was misinformed, and it turns out that if you calibrate the chatbot controls to eliminate disagreement with Elon Musk, the text that comes out is explicit, Stormfront-level antisemitism and racism, with a side of fantasies about violence and sexual degradation. Albert Burneko wrote a good blog about it for Defector, and important figures in media and politics continued using X dot Com today even after the chatbot calibrated to flatter its owner's ideology had literally praised Hitler and called for killing the Jews. Instead of any more about that, here's the ranked list. [Fruits and Vegetables That Come in Variant Colors, Individually Ranked by Color Variants.]
COLUMN DEP'T.
JOE MACLEOD
I will assert to having a tissue-thin claim to Celebrity on account of being on a game show, three episodes, and also I have spent time talking to Famous people; for example, one time, under the auspices of Journalism, I interviewed famous actors Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill about a movie they were in together, and I think it went pretty well, so I might have a shot at getting on the Genealogy show, and it’s sad to say that it’s probably at least a Coin Toss that I have descendants who ruined lives because they thought they owned Human Beings, but I think my Family question is almost worse, considering?
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, July 10, 2025
★★★ The clouds let little patterns and slivers of muted blue show, but they held off the heat. It was good sitting weather out under it, with the air stirring too lightly to quite register as a breeze in any particular direction. The currents moved over the lower legs as if they were wading in the shallows. By imperceptible steps the spots got thinner until there were shadows to be seen and filtered but definite late sun was angling in. It seemed impossible for so much ambient humidity to feel inoffensive, but it did. Up over the Great Hill swifts fluttered and then stiffened their wings to trace sweeping curves against the pale sky, now blue enough for a contrail to look white against it.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
THE INDIGNITY MORNING Podcast is on vacation! Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEP'T.
The car show
More consciousness at Instagram.
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Encyclopedia of Cookery; 1001 Recipes, Menus & Rules for Modern, Scientific and Economic Cookery (Vol. 4), by Eugene Christian and Molly Griswold Christian, published by the Corrective Eating Society in 1920, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
SHRIMP SANDWICHES
Whole wheat bread
1 cup of shrimps
2 teaspoons lemon juice
6 or 8 ripe olives
Mayonnaise dressing
Lettuce hearts
Mince the shrimps, chop the olives, and mix all thoroughly with lemon juice and enough mayonnaise dressing to make a paste. Slice and butter the bread, then place on it the lettuce leaves, and on this spread the shrimp and olive mixture, then more lettuce leaves and the second slice of buttered bread. Press all firmly together and cut in half.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
Indignity is presented on Ghost. Indignity recommends Ghost for your Modern Publishing needs. Indignity gets a slice if you do this successfully!
