Welcome back, everyone!
We’re having a string of warmer weather in New England and it’s really harshing my fall vibes.
I also keep seeing photos or reels of people I know receiving “boo baskets.” Is anyone else familiar? It’s like an Easter basket, but for Halloween. And I kind of love it? I floated the idea by my partner and I was surprised that they wanted to exchange some. Their reasoning is that we’ve been so busy with house and moving stuff that fun stuff has been put on the back burner. We have a plan to run amok in Home Goods and Target this week and hope to try to keep our purchases as secret as possible.
Have you ever done a boo basket?
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If you haven’t seen McSweeny’s “I’m an Undecided Hobbit, Torn between a Dark Lord Who Promises an Age of Chaos and an Elf Queen Whom I Just Wish I Knew More About,” I highly recommend it.
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Relevant to Sarah’s AI post from earlier this week, Vox has an article on how AI is ruining even more things!
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Selfishly, I want to promote a Kickstarter for a new visual novel called Mirage Noir that launched this week. Steam has a demo for this up right now that I played over the weekend. It’s a super beefy demo with several hours worth of content and has some really fun deduction mini games. Would love to see this game succeed and I recommend giving the demo a try if you like visual novels.
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If you want to bask in public library coolness, please enjoy Law & Order: Special Collections Unit from the Columbus Library on Instagram.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
“The Indicator” podcast on NPR is in the middle of its “Love Week” series, focused on the business/economic aspects of the romance industry. The first three episodes have focused on the rise of TV rom-coms, the romance novel industry, and “Dollar Princesses” (the true story behind a popular historical romance trope of British aristocracy marrying American heiresses). Series link: https://www.npr.org/love
possible ageism by Hallmark in movie casting:
https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/hallmark-holly-robinson-peete-lacey-chabert-leading-ladies-aging-out-lawsuit-1236188881/
My neighborhood pals participated in Boo baskets in the early days, but after some moved away, it died out around the time it became a nationally commercial thing.
It was fun at the time, except for the people who would ignore the Boo on the door–signaling having been booed, so don’t leave a basket–and leave a basket anyway.
When you make the basket, make sure you either make Boo signs or buy them for the recipients. They go in the basket with the goodies.