Batteries, Parody Videos, Sermons and Sengis

A mishmash to start your week

Good Morning:

A Project Battery update:

• Total contributions so far: $46,578.24

• Number of individual contributions so far: 288

• Median contribution: $95.82

• Largest individual contribution: $3,500

• Total funds wired to the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina: $30,000 (I will send more as soon as additional funds clear into my bank account; Venmo limits weekly cash transfers out of the system, so some of the funds are stuck in my Venmo account.)

• Total funds received by Nastya: $10,000 (Wiring money to Kyiv takes anywhere from a few seconds to a few days. We are expecting another $10,000 to arrive on Jan. 22, $5,000 more to arrive on Jan. 23, and $5,000 more to arrive on Jan. 26.)

• Batteries purchased for families: 7

• Batteries delivered to families: 5

• Batteries purchased for institutions: 1

We will keep this up as long as money keeps coming in:

And for those who still want to contribute, here are my PayPal and Venmo QR codes:

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher and I celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day by sharing our favorite MLK speeches and sermons. Then Holly showed off her latest parody video:

Here’s the parody video:

And here’s Holly’s post about it:

ICE ICE Bootlicks

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A staircase update: the staircase is gone!

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Operation Brahms

Brahms’s Opus 27 is a weird little piece, a haunting setting of Psalm 13 for women’s chorus and pipe organ. It is a bit incongruous, coming hard on the heels of the piano quartets, which it sounds absolutely nothing like. With its ethereal choral singing, it vaguely foreshadows the famous Brahms Requiem, Op. 45. It is very pretty:

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the sengi, seen here being admired by a zookeeper.

@hertfordshirezooThis animal is so special…🥺 Fun fact, the sengi have long legs relative to their size, which are used to move from one place to another, similar to a rabbit! 🤯 #sengi #animals #cute #zookeeper #rare

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In honor of today’s Beast, take a moment to appreciate the excellence of the word “proboscis.”

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Tell Me Something Interesting

I—EJ Wittes—want to draw everyone’s attention to this week’s episode of This American Life:

This American Life is always, of course, estimable, but this episode is something special.