Tuck Woodstock

airplanes are full of mysteries

Added 2025-07-06 22:46:30 +0000 UTC

Hey friends,

Hope you’re all hanging in there. I started writing this on a plane on Friday, but I really just wanted to talk about the man next to me on the plane, so I had to save it. But now that it’s just us…. have you noticed an increase in people (esp. middle-seat people) raw-dogging long flights? Like, no book, no laptop, no headphones, no phone games, just six hours alone in their powerful brain!! I’ve seen it several times and I cannot possibly imagine what is going on in there. (I’m realizing this is specific to airlines without the little TV screens, which might just be Alaska Airlines at this point? So keep that in mind.)

Anyway, this guy next to me was mostly raw-dogging the flight, but sometimes he would pull out his phone, open a graphing calculator app, and look at functions? And then close it again? A couple times he punched random-seeming numbers into the calculator? Once he wrote a secret on a napkin in pen and then folded it and put it away? WHAT WAS GOING ON THERE? Life is a beautiful mystery.

No podcast announcements because people are not answering my emails :))))) but more soon, surely! In the meantime, I’ve got a whole pile of Links & Stuff this week due to reading so many newsletters on the plane, so let’s get to it.

ICE:

"[The judge] told people appearing before her that there was simply nothing she could do to stop the ICE agents in neck gaiters and face masks that were lined up outside in the hallway from grabbing them when they stepped out of her courtroom” (Hell Gate)
My friend Celeste wrote a beautiful piece about deportation that combines personal experience with a tangible list of action items
This Defector piece about ICE, the LA Dodgers, and the team's Latine fan base is really worthwhile even if you don’t care about baseball I think??
Activists are divided over whether targeting an ICE holding center is the best way to support immigrants
Curious about adopting a day labor corner? Here’s the full NDLON toolkit!

Queer stuff:

Thank u Jaya for this absolutely gorgeous interview about what makes “queer food” queer
Xtra on how UK lesbians are resisting transphobia
Wild choice to publish this in the New York Times of all places but… (gift link)
This piece by Gillian Branstetter includes statistics that are soooo interesting to me! Basically, trans people are twice as likely as cis queers to say that they feel very connected to the LGBTQ community, and more than twice as likely to have mostly LGBTQ friends. Sad for the cis :( but great for us :)

More politics-y stuff:

Mariame Kaba on not giving up :) :)
Leah Sottile on the life and death of that weird conservative troll billboard on I-5!!!!
Latinx Files outlined how that big evil bill will impact Latines, and I found it very useful in a broader context as well. (There are also other interesting stories at the bottom, due to it being a newsletter with its own links & stuff.)
Hell Gate interviewed Brad Lander and also documented all the weird street interactions Brad had during the interview and honestly, love this one.

Misc hater stuff??:

This year, I learned that the best way to avoid firework noise is to be actively on a flight on the evening of July 4. Cannot recommend enough if your plans magically allow this and you also correctly hate fireworks!!!!
A friend of the show sent me this company because it fits in very well with our Gender Ordeal show, and I still cannot believe it’s real??? Why would you name a company this??? I’m not mad it’s just absolutely wild.

Tuck’s Creature Corner:

- Whales are doing group skincare :) :) :) :)

One more thing: I recently learned that you can buy gift subscriptions to our patreon for a recipient of your choice, OR a “community” subscription for a trans stranger who can’t afford one. No pressure ever, but if that interests you, here’s the link!

That’s it for this week. Here’s your Weekly Rhubarb feat. Puffin! They are sisters!!!!!!!!!!