The world is on fire, so I watch people wash antique wedding dresses
The Supreme Court ruled what? We're bombing who? How many people lost their lives in a preventable disaster?
If the news is bad enough, I shrink back from the screen, hissing like Nosferatu greeting the morning sun, until the feeling passes. Once or twice, I've thrown my phone onto a chair as I cross myself.
I know people who go on news breaks, switching off their notifications and avoiding checking their usual media sources. As a journalist, I don't have that luxury. But I have found a way I can numb my brain without entirely shutting it off after a long day.
Lately, I've been anesthetizing myself with gorgeously ambient, happily low-stakes viewing. These terms are not meant to dismiss television shows like 'The Gilded Age' or 'And Just Like That…' These all just happen to be series where there's a lot of vibe, and nothing too terrible feels like it's going to happen. I'll be emotionally involved, but just barely.
Among the biggest plotlines I've retained from the HBO Julien Fellows-helmed series 'The Gilded Age' are: will this rich girl marry a duke, and will people come to her mother's ball. It's not that I wasn't invested in these stories, it's just that the world wasn't going to end if either of these things didn't happen.
And after HBO rebooted 'Sex and the City' with some major plot developments in the first season of 'And Just Like That…,' that series settled into a predictable groove of chic interiors populated by people wearing pretty clothes paired with the occasionally snappy dialogue over a meal. After 40 minutes spent with these people and their minor social dilemmas, my mind gets a nice little reset. I don't have to think too hard — just enough to vaguely follow what they all wore to the dinner party — so my brain doesn't atrophy.
Often, while watching one of the aforementioned shows, I'll also scroll through Instagram reels of people doing very specialized productive things. This list includes refinishing badly painted antiques, conditioning old leather accessories, polishing silver and pressure washing just about any surface. There's a weird brain chemical boost of satisfaction from seeing people complete these tasks. Good for them!
I'm currently taking refuge in watching people soaking and deep cleaning yellowed, antique wedding dresses. These videos are perfect — the goal is simply to restore the dresses to as close to white as possible. The time lapse shows the water go from clear, to dingy yellow, to brown. Once the dresses are dried, ironed and finally, modeled, I've seen a very condensed little three act play with a happy ending.
In other low-stress viewing news, when I found out there's going to be another 'Downton Abbey' movie coming to theaters this fall, I smiled knowing I'd get to watch some very pleasant, low-stakes drama on the big screen. These films are so chill, it's like taking half a Xanax. Apparently, the big dilemma in this third film in the series is, 'Will Lady Mary be accepted in high society in 1930s London as a divorcee?'
Oh, how delightfully not-anxiety inducing. I can't wait.
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San Francisco Chronicle
12-07-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
The world is on fire, so I watch people wash antique wedding dresses
I have this weird, newly developed reaction to the news alerts on my phone. I blanche and recoil physically when I hear the pling of one of the apps. Then I slowly approach the device, hesitating as I dare to see, to quote Dorothy Parker, 'What fresh hell is this?' The Supreme Court ruled what? We're bombing who? How many people lost their lives in a preventable disaster? If the news is bad enough, I shrink back from the screen, hissing like Nosferatu greeting the morning sun, until the feeling passes. Once or twice, I've thrown my phone onto a chair as I cross myself. I know people who go on news breaks, switching off their notifications and avoiding checking their usual media sources. As a journalist, I don't have that luxury. But I have found a way I can numb my brain without entirely shutting it off after a long day. Lately, I've been anesthetizing myself with gorgeously ambient, happily low-stakes viewing. These terms are not meant to dismiss television shows like 'The Gilded Age' or 'And Just Like That…' These all just happen to be series where there's a lot of vibe, and nothing too terrible feels like it's going to happen. I'll be emotionally involved, but just barely. Among the biggest plotlines I've retained from the HBO Julien Fellows-helmed series 'The Gilded Age' are: will this rich girl marry a duke, and will people come to her mother's ball. It's not that I wasn't invested in these stories, it's just that the world wasn't going to end if either of these things didn't happen. And after HBO rebooted 'Sex and the City' with some major plot developments in the first season of 'And Just Like That…,' that series settled into a predictable groove of chic interiors populated by people wearing pretty clothes paired with the occasionally snappy dialogue over a meal. After 40 minutes spent with these people and their minor social dilemmas, my mind gets a nice little reset. I don't have to think too hard — just enough to vaguely follow what they all wore to the dinner party — so my brain doesn't atrophy. Often, while watching one of the aforementioned shows, I'll also scroll through Instagram reels of people doing very specialized productive things. This list includes refinishing badly painted antiques, conditioning old leather accessories, polishing silver and pressure washing just about any surface. There's a weird brain chemical boost of satisfaction from seeing people complete these tasks. Good for them! I'm currently taking refuge in watching people soaking and deep cleaning yellowed, antique wedding dresses. These videos are perfect — the goal is simply to restore the dresses to as close to white as possible. The time lapse shows the water go from clear, to dingy yellow, to brown. Once the dresses are dried, ironed and finally, modeled, I've seen a very condensed little three act play with a happy ending. In other low-stress viewing news, when I found out there's going to be another 'Downton Abbey' movie coming to theaters this fall, I smiled knowing I'd get to watch some very pleasant, low-stakes drama on the big screen. These films are so chill, it's like taking half a Xanax. Apparently, the big dilemma in this third film in the series is, 'Will Lady Mary be accepted in high society in 1930s London as a divorcee?' Oh, how delightfully not-anxiety inducing. I can't wait.
Boston Globe
03-07-2025
- Boston Globe
It's time to retire the term ‘tomboy'
Advertisement This hits home for me. As someone who grew up preferring jeans instead of dresses, playing ball instead of jumping rope, and toy cars instead of baby dolls, I was often called a tomboy. For Christmas, I wanted the Hot Wheels race track my male cousin received, not the As cute as calling me a tomboy may have seemed to some, it was also an unwanted designation that put me outside of what was deemed 'normal' behavior for a girl, which, at times, felt alienating. I didn't like 'boy' things and I didn't want to be a boy. I was a girl who simply liked what I liked and did what came naturally. Advertisement But I was too young to understand that girls like me challenged the rigid order of femininity by which we were expected to abide. Those Suzy Homemaker ovens and vacuum cleaners and those blue-eyed dolls in strollers weren't really toys; they were training tools for future wives and mothers. But being called a tomboy — a term I didn't like but I used because I sometimes felt compelled to explain myself — became a kind of scarlet T that marked certain girls as different, and not in ways that others would necessarily appreciate or allow. Of course, boys who liked 'girl' things had it even worse. Tomboys could be an amusing anomaly. But boys branded as 'sissies' were berated and beaten up for failing to fall within the narrow boundaries of budding masculinity. A boy who hated sports was a social outcast; a girl who liked sports and was good at them might be invited to play on a boys' team. (My mother, who dressed me in little white gloves and hair ribbons and put me in ballet school at age 5, perhaps to femme me up, also bought me my first baseball mitt, a MacGregor glove with the great Henry Aaron's name imprinted on the palm, when the boys in my junior high school asked me to play on their softball team. I still have it.) Then and now, restrictive gender labels ostracize kids who only want to express who they are. In particular, being stamped as a tomboy or sissy was perceived as a predictor of sexual or gender identity, which didn't always apply. But there was still a sometimes subtle, sometimes fervent need to eradicate such tendencies as quickly as possible. Advertisement Society runs into trouble — and eventually runs over people's rights — when it draws arbitrary lines about who we are and then gets twisted when people inevitably cross those lines. Gender is a construct, as are gender roles. 'Boy things' and 'girl things' are nonexistent. What you like and enjoy — who you are — is no one else's business. With unscripted lives, the tomboys and sissies were gender warriors. Gender has been fashioned into a minefield that even the conservative-led Supreme Court has inserted itself into as the Trump administration continues its ruthless attacks against the transgender community. While sissy is largely seen as pejorative, tomboy remains an unwanted artifact from another time. It needs to go, and it should take with it every rote description and archaic idea about women that builds walls and shames them for being who they are meant to be. This is an excerpt from , a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham. . Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
Buzz Feed
28-06-2025
- Buzz Feed
Terrible, Disturbing, And Creepy Things I Learned This Month
Are you into dark, creepy, and unsettling stories? Subscribe to the That Got Dark newsletter to get your weekly dopamine fix of the macabre! It's a scary good time you won't want to miss. A hot-air balloon carrying 21 people crashed near Praia Grande, Brazil, on June 21, 2025, after catching fire mid-air just minutes into the flight. The pilot attempted an emergency descent and told passengers to jump; 13 survived with injuries, but 8 died — some from burns, others from the fall. Authorities believe a backup burner may have ignited accidentally, possibly worsened by strong winds. This is Brazil's deadliest balloon crash on record, prompting national mourning and an ongoing investigation. You can see footage of the disaster here. Recently, actor Mariska Hargitay revealed (in her new HBO documentary My Mom Jayne) that she was accidentally left behind at the scene of the 1967 car crash that famously killed her mother, Jayne Mansfield, when she was just 3 years old. After her siblings were pulled to safety, the rescuers did not realize Mariska was trapped inside the car until her brother, Zoltan, asked after her. The rescuers returned to the crash and found little Mariska trapped under the passenger seat, having suffered a head injury. Although Mariska says she has no memory of the crash, she still has a scar on her head from the tragic event. On June 12, 2025, an Air India Flight carrying 242 people — 230 passengers and 12 crew members — crashed into a medical college hostel shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. At least 270 people were killed (including those on the flight and on the ground), making it one of India's worst aviation disasters in history. Investigations suggest a possible dual-engine failure was the cause. Miraculously, though, there was actually one survivor... ...Viswashkumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of the Air India crash, had been seated in seat 11A, an emergency exit seat. The part of the plane where he was sitting had landed near the ground (and was not crushed against the building). Ramesh told reporters that after the crash, he saw an opening and was able to unbuckle himself and get out before being engulfed in fire. Ramesh sustained burn injuries on his left hand, but was able to actually walk away from the crash, in shock, before he was assisted by locals and taken to a hospital. Ramesh's brother, who had also been on the flight but in a different row, sadly, was one of the many other passengers who died. On August 11, 2018, at 3:28 a.m., the Pueblo Police Department in Colorado received a spooky "abandoned 911" call traced to a funeral home and cemetery. When dispatchers returned the call, the line was answered but remained silent, emitting only static. Officers were dispatched to the location, finding the funeral home locked and dark, with no signs of activity. Authorities speculated that the incident was likely due to a technical issue with the phone line, though the unusual circumstances led to some local intrigue and speculation about paranormal activity. In February 2022, a woman in Green Bay, Wisconsin named Taylor Schabusiness gruesomely murdered, dismembered, and sexually abused the corpse of her lover, Shad Thyrion. Taylor had strangled Shad to death during a meth-fueled tryst in the basement of Shad's mother's home. Later, Shad's mother would find his severed head in a bucket in the basement. Taylor told investigators that she had "severed his head and penis with kitchen knives." During her hearing in 2023, Taylor actually attacked her attorney. And, in 2025, she attacked her second attorney during a preliminary hearing on charges of assault against a sergeant at her correctional institution. Taylor was convicted and sentenced to life without parole for the 2022 murder of Shad Thyrion. On July 6, 1978, a deadly fire broke out on a sleeping-car train near Taunton, England, after a bag of linens was placed against a heater. Twelve passengers died — mostly from carbon monoxide poisoning while they slept — and several others were injured. Rescue efforts were hindered by locked doors and sealed windows. The tragedy led to major safety reforms on British trains, including fire-resistant materials, emergency exits, and improved fire detection systems. The mysterious disappearance of Tammy Lynn Leppert, an 18-year-old model and actor, with roles in films like Scarface (1983), who vanished on July 6, 1983, after being dropped off at a parking lot in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Before going missing, Leppert had displayed signs of intense paranoia, claiming she had witnessed something disturbing at a party. Despite numerous theories — including foul play and possible links to serial killers — no trace of her has ever been found. Her case remains one of Florida's most mysterious unsolved disappearances. On July 6, 1944, a fire broke out during a Ringling Bros. circus performance in Hartford, Connecticut, killing at least 167 people and injuring over 700 — most of them women and children. The blaze spread rapidly because the big top tent was waterproofed with a flammable mix of paraffin and gasoline. Panic and blocked exits made the tragedy even worse. The disaster led to major fire safety reforms and remains one of the deadliest events in circus history in the US. In April 2019, a five-year-old, Landen Hoffmann, was thrown from a third-floor balcony at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The perpetrator, Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, told police he was "looking for someone to kill" due to anger over rejection by women. Landen suffered severe injuries, including skull and facial fractures, broken arms and legs, and brain damage. He underwent over a dozen surgeries and spent four months in intensive care. His recovery took more than three years. In a more positive conclusion to the story, Landen is now reportedly healthy and happy, with no memory of the incident. A 14-year-old boy from Greenville, South Carolina, Will Hand, died suddenly from a rare bacterial infection called meningococcal septicemia on June 8, 2025. The infection, caused by the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis, entered his bloodstream and led to a rapid decline. Will died just a few days after symptoms appeared. Speaking with Fox Carolina, Prisma Health Pediatric Infectious Disease Dr. Anna-Kathryn Burch said, "This illness is spread through saliva and respiratory secretions. It can spread when people come into close contact with an infectious person or share items." Recently, Erick Escamilla, a 27-year-old transient man, was arrested for the April 2025 murder of an older man in the Valley Village neighborhood of Los Angeles. Escamilla allegedly broke into an apartment through a skylight and murdered the 53-year-old resident with a screwdriver during a burglary, before fleeing the scene. In a shocking twist, Escamilla was subsequently tied to and charged with the 2022 killing of an 81-year‑old woman in Woodland Hills, where she was stabbed during a home invasion and her home was set on fire, as well as with the attempted murder of a man stabbed during a home invasion in San Fernando that same year. A 19-year-old in Arizona, Renna O'Rourke, died on June 1, 2025, after attempting a TikTok challenge called 'dusting' (or 'chroming'). The challenge involves sniffing computer duster spray to get high. O'Rourke suffered cardiac arrest and spent four days in the ICU. She was eventually pronounced brain dead due to 'sudden sniffing death syndrome." In August 2004, a 12-year-old Boy Scout named Garrett Bardsley disappeared while walking just a short distance — roughly 150 to 250 feet — near Cuberant Lake in Utah. Garrett had been on an early morning fishing trip with his father when his feet and clothes got wet. He headed back alone to their campsite to change, but he never showed up. His father noticed him missing roughly 15–20 minutes later and then immediately raised the alarm. Despite extensive searches with hundreds of volunteers, no trace of Garrett was ever found. His disappearance remains a mystery, though most believe it was likely an accident. In his memory, his family founded the Garrett Bardsley Foundation to support search and rescue efforts and humanitarian causes. On Easter Sunday, 2015, a woman named Victoria Cilliers went for a routine skydive at Netheravon Airfield in England. Horrifyingly, both her main and reserve parachutes failed to deploy, causing her to fall roughly 4,000 feet. Remarkably, she actually survived the fall, though she sustained serious injuries. Investigations later revealed that her husband, Emile, had tampered with both parachutes, deliberately causing the malfunctions. In a wild twist, it was discovered that this parachuting incident was actually the second attempt on her life within a week. Earlier, Emile had intentionally caused a gas leak at their home by loosening a gas valve fitting in a kitchen cupboard. Emile Cilliers was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted murder. In May 2018, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 18 years. On June 4, 2025, a 15-year-old boy tragically died after being pinned between two vehicles in the parking lot of a prestigious private school, Campbell Hall, in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. The incident occurred during school pickup time when a Rivian SUV rear-ended another SUV, striking the boy who was walking between the vehicles. He was transported to a local hospital where he later died from his injuries. Five others, including another teen and three adults, sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The Los Angeles Police Department has determined the incident to be an accident, and no citations will be issued. In May 2025, a 13‑year‑old girl in Russia, Anastasia Ryzhenko, was fatally injured during a PE class when a classmate, unsupervised at the time, threw a javelin that struck her directly in the eye. The young girl fell into a coma and died four days later, just shy of her 14th birthday. A criminal investigation is underway focusing on apparent negligence by the coach and lack of proper safety procedures. Finally, in 2017, a woman, only known as Yueyue, in China died after her husband "forced" her to have four abortions in a year because he wanted a son. Despite already having a daughter, he demanded gender-specific ultrasounds and pressured her to terminate each pregnancy when the fetus showed as female. This practice is illegal in China, but apparently, unlicensed practitioners often provide such services. The repeated procedures, of course, seriously harmed her health and left her bedridden. Her husband filed for divorce, and she used the settlement money to seek medical treatment in Shanghai, where she later died. Are you obsessed with reading content like this? Subscribe to the That Got Dark newsletter to get a weekly post just like this delivered directly to your inbox. It's a scary good time you won't want to miss.
