For the Weekend Warriors, Weirdos & Whackjobs - Issue #119
We regret to inform you this is another email
We almost hit our capacity this week, which is one of the best “problems” to have. We’re ready to put our feet up, crack our knuckles, backs and whatever else, and ingest some sweet sweet content.
Before that, we wrote.
This week, everyone received How Women Put the Mysteries in Unsolved Mysteries from Justin. Before the internet could serve you stories in seconds, there were women sitting in rooms full of newspapers, scanning for the strange and unsettling. This piece from Justin digs into the analog intelligence pipeline behind Unsolved Mysteries, from clipping bureaus to cold calls to early OSINT techniques.
In paid inboxes, Pick up the Phone from Kennedy. This piece dismantles the myth that investigative work is powered by obscure tools or some technical magic. Instead, most breakthroughs come from human conversation, the patience to listen, the courage to ask, and the simple, often avoided act of picking up the phone.
What Kennedy Recommends
I wouldn’t dream of it, but the truth is, I was tempted to recommend Love is Blind because that’s what I’ve watched this week. I won’t adopt shame for it. When you have a heavy week, sometimes, you need to turn your brain all the way off. And strangers yip yapping about how their favourite colours and songs might bond them for life? Doesn’t ask much of the ol’ mental chamber.
But I wouldn't do that to you.
Instead, a movie I watched this week.
Sorry, Baby
This movie won’t be for everyone, but hear me out.
In my professional world, I interact with sexual violence as it’s coming into the court system to be litigated. In my personal world, I deal with sexual violence as a woman. Neither is more admirable than the other. For women who choose healing through reporting and for women who don’t, there is only this: you survived it, and that belongs to you alone.
Sorry, Baby is the story of Agnes, a 20-something who is raped by her trusted college professor and has to learn to live with it as life goes on for everyone else. The film lingers inside the mundane. Rooms that remain exactly as they were, conversations that ignore the truth, days that proceed with quiet indifference. It captures the unsettling reality that the world doesn’t stop to mark the moments that alter us so profoundly.
If you’ve ever chosen to live in spite of a horrifying thing that asked you not to, you’ll find yourself here.
And if you haven’t, perhaps you could spend a few moments here anyway.
Ok, let’s circle back in seven days.
Take care until then.
Love,
Your Bullshit Hunting Crew