Georeactor Blog

American Lore: Articles of Confederation

One of the topics which I've had on my video ideas list for a while has been the early Supreme Court, or (working title) "Before Marbury met Madison". My old channel had some videos about the Supreme Court, though they were never very popular. The idea shifted when I was researching the battles around Chicago reversing the river to dump sewage on St Louis (Missouri v. Illinois, 1900), where I was surprised to see a justice citing the Articles of Confederation.

As we observe the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we get a few folk histories of the founding, with old documents and quotes floating around often without separating out the Declaration, Constitution, and the 'second founding' of Lincoln and Reconstruction. It's reminded me how little I know of the 13 years between the Declaration and the ratification of the Constitution. It was a little embarrassing that the founders' first pass was a libertarian committee that they soon wanted to escape. But it was a real thing and allowed a new crop of founders to take part in the Constitutional Convention (example: in 1776 Madison was 25 years old and participating in the Virginia constitutional convention, not in Philadelphia).

I found that a few presidents who have mentioned the Articles of Confederation over the years. Notably Garfield said at his inauguration:

It is now three days more than a hundred years since the adoption of the first written constitution of the United States - the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union

The Supreme Court has made many references back to the Articles. These often fall into two contradictory framings:

• we know _ is true of the Constitution and government, because it was this way even back in the Articles of Confederation
• yes the federal government can do _ ; this was why we got rid of the Articles of the Confederation

Plus occasionally mentioned when the Supreme Court is called in for its explicit constitutional duties on resolving disputes between states (as was allotted in the Articles), or 'Indian law' cases.

What I didn't expect was:

• In fugitive slave cases and Dred Scott, everyone is talking about the Articles of Confederation, saying one of the main reasons that the Articles failed and were replaced by the Constitution was the inability of southern states and federal government to guarantee interstate commerce (of human beings).
• In the 2022-23 term, five conservative justices referenced the Articles of Confederation in their opinions. The exception was Amy Coney Barrett. When I went looking for her thoughts on the Articles, I found a straightforward history in her 2025 memoir Listening to the Law.
• In the audio recording era of the Supreme Court there have been a few lawyers throwing out references, but the only instances that I found of justices engaging with the Articles of Confederation on tape are Jackson in oral arguments of Haaland v. Brackeen (on Indian law), and Roberts reading his opinion in Moore v. Harper (on redistricting). Both 2022–23 term cases! Who was clerking that year??
• There are modern amicus briefs which mention the Articles, but there are a many amicus briefs these days... I don't know how to decide when these are interesting or notable mentions.

Disasters

Not long after a video appeared of a China-Nepal border crossing overwhelmed by a landslide / flash flood, mappers cleared the area on OSM and tagged any buildings as destroyed.
This included destruction in Syapru Besi, a trekking embarking village where I stayed in 2014, which had also been affected by the 2015 earthquake.

A forest fire caused evacuations in and around the state park where I hiked in Spokane in May 2025: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/01/fast-moving-fire-breaks-out-in-airway-heights-area/

Media

Murder 101, show on Amazon Prime following students doing true crime as a class project - cheesy in some ways, but they do a good job. Though this does follow my Unresolved Crime Podcast theorem, which is that if they actually solved a murder or found Bigfoot, you would not be hearing about it a year later when they finished making the series.

Two months after her album, Olivia Rodrigo unexpectedly released a track "Serena Joy" about The Handmaid's Tale? Insert your own takeaways on Gen Z.

The Dark Matter TV series is starting Season 2.

Virtually every comment on this post about Coyote vs. Acme claims to have worked on the movie. Truth or karma mining? https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/1vp4tul/how_did_they_achieve_the_2d_animation_look_for/

I watched The Last House (often confused with The End of Oak Street) after Netflix's marketing push and speculated grant of additional CGI. The premise is that the whole world has been supernaturally sealed in their homes, seen through the eyes of a nuclear family on one street. This movie should be taught in schools, because halfway through viewers have suspended disbelief and accepted the premise, but the end's explanation and resolution are lacking.

I watch some episodes of a Star Trek podcast (mix of rewatchers and first-timers) and the crew recently covered Pluribus. They are quick to say that the character Koumba Diabaté is a rapist, because he has the hivemind fulfill his fantasies. Yet in the world of the show he's something of a realist and actually receptive to the main character Carol's complaints, not as demonized.
The same issues of consent are present in Carol's relationship, which the hosts considered but didn't give that same label. There are a few things going on: Diabaté is going on a hedonistic spree while the hivemind has picked one partner for Carol. But I think a sociologist could dig deeper into viewers' opinions on Diabaté and Carol from a race, gender, and sexuality perspective.
Meanwhile I thought for sure that Diabaté would try to pull something (Carol being one of the few non-hivemind woman on Earth), but he's been more of a philosophical foil / wish fulfillment fable.

Another Pluribus note: I was watching part of The Martian for the space food video on my channel, and they never mention a family on Earth while he's presumed dead and then in constant peril. This is probably more of an Andy Weir thing (see: Project Hail Mary), but Carol is also uninterested in speaking to her living family members or probing their memories through the hivemind.

I had a #ShowerThought about how the US is more Protestant, but you will often see media with angels, devils, and similar elements involving the Pope. I have a few theories about this:

• Protestant characters are going to be figures in their town with more grounded problems (Mel Gibson in Signs). ChatGPT reminded me that the exception is apocalyptic media such as Left Behind.
• Dan Brown books and real world news lay a foundation for stories where the Catholic church is 'up to something' on a deep historical or spiritual timeline.
• Viewers generally know rules for the Pope - they should be an old guy who takes faith seriously, talks peace with world leaders in the Vatican, holds the job until death, and then is replaced by a vote of cardinals. For example, the title The Young Pope was instantly meme-able. Other churches don't have the same cultural cachet - it was a bit of a shock when the Book of Mormon musical mentioned that their president "speaks directly to God".
• In media such as The Exorcist, we know that the Catholic church believes in demons, but also are reluctant to assume everything is spiritual warfare. In other denominations we aren't clear how often the local minister has a demon problem.

Previous reads

Over two years after Foxtrot / Dom's abruptly closed in Chicago, one local spot became a regional bank branch. I was noticing their signs and a ramp that they'd installed, when someone stepped up to use the ATM. Their doors opened the next day.

The Malaysia subreddit discussed a TikTok about "Malay words that Chinese use but Malay don't use". I learned a few things from the video plus comments. The second-person pronoun "Anda" was invented in the 1950s to break formality levels. It's sometimes attributed to a journalist or Indonesian Air Force officer, and transferred to Malaysian Malay in the 70s.

I'm not a fan of "Woke 1" discourse. Everyone has a hot take on it, but I don't see agreement on a time period, or what was characteristic of it. For example, is it shorthand for the first Trump term? Are we using it to say MeToo and BLM were hashtag activism which failed to deliver, or that the movement went too far over nothing? Presumably we are talking about it because we are in the beginning, middle, or end of Woke 2?

Many hot takes were flying after changes at Google DeepMind, making people think AlphaFold was dead or abandoned. But Demis Hassabis's move includes "leaning into" his role at Isomorphic Labs, the commercial / pharma spinoff of AlphaFold? So I think it is the same level of inside baseball as Hassabis moving from CEO to Chair of DeepMind.

I caught up with a December article in the New Yorker examining Oliver Sacks as a sympathetic character who fabricated much of his popular stories about patients. His book "Awakenings" and the later movie adaptation serve as an example. When people discover the movie, there's an incredulity - is this a true story, isn't the most amazing thing ever, why haven't I heard of this, why aren't doctors still doing this? The explanation is that it went significantly differently from how Sacks described, so it only exists in this bubble. What the writer of this article does masterfully, is note the overlap of the hospital experiments with the summer of Stonewall, and pulling literary references from Sacks's journals before they were supposedly voiced by his patients.

The East Village neighborhood subreddit took a little under two weeks to alert Apple Maps to a route change near Tompkins Square Park: https://www.reddit.com/r/eastvillage/comments/1vcxwn2/help_us_fix_apple_maps_in_our_neighborhood/

This was always going to be a weird year for the TenYearsAgo subreddit, but people are posting day-to-day updates from the Mueller investigation timeline. This has allowed various factions to vent their current political anger or relitigate 'Russiagate' with information which appeared much too late for mainstream news. IMO there are two key moments from this - the meeting with Russians at Trump Tower, and the Jeff Sessions recusal - which are pretty well documented and don't support a sustained connection. These should be used to decode other actions.

Unnecessary i18n/l10n note, but interesting that the Dolly ad here uses "¡Libros Gratis" for consistency with the lower Spanish message ending in !, but from a basic glance I was thinking, why the stray ¡ ?https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/1vydpfv/dolly_parton_on_cta_buses_promoting_her/