Look, squirrel! A few of the distractions I’ve been relying on this week.

By Erica C. Barnett

I don’t know about you, but as someone who was disappointed but not surprised that US voters rejected a competent, capable Black woman in favor of a troglodyte who represents their worst instincts and darkest wishes, I am TIRED AS FUCK of listening to the Discourse about what happened on Tuesday. The outrage industrial complex requires constant fuel, but that doesn’t mean you have to engage, participate, or pay attention to every post-election explainer that comes off the hot-take production line.

As I write this, I’m sitting in SeaTac Airport, looking around and wondering who in this crowded terminal voted against my autonomy and humanity, along with those of every racial, gender, and religious minority in the country. To quiet these intrusive thoughts, I’m plugging in to some of my favorite podcasts that aren’t explicitly political, including Scam Goddess, The Constant, The Flop House, The Adventure Zone, and Revolutions, a show about historical revolutions that’s taking a brief sojourn this season into sci-fi with a series on an imagined future Martian Revolution —and who wouldn’t rather be on Mars right now? I may even go back and listen to My Dad Wrote a Porno again, for a reminder of simpler times.

If you’re looking for comfort food on television, I’m currently doing a rewatch of Parks and Recreation, a warm-hearted show about local government in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. (Its last season ended in 2015, just before Trump’s first election). As a city hall reporter and someone who follows celebrity news, the show hits differently on this watch for a lot of reasons, good and bad. (Ahem. And also.) If it’s been a while since you watched this show, or if you somehow missed it the first time around, I highly recommend it as an antidote to MSNBC, social media, or whatever else you might be outrage-scrolling in an open tab right now.

And if you want even more Aubrey Plaza, I highly recommend Agatha All Along, a queered-up sequel to WandaVision that—unlike that show, which crapped out in a typical Marvel CGI slopathon—is genuinely surprising and also gorgeous to look at, thanks to handmade sets that hearken back to ‘80s fantasy films like Labyrinth and Neverending Story.

You’ll know whether this show is for you from the first episode, which includes where the titular witch, Agatha Harkness (Katherine Hahn), is interrogating a mysterious young man she believes has broken into her home and yells, “TOTAL LOSER? OR TOTALLY LYING? LET’S FIND OOOOOOUUUUT” that sets the playing-to-the-back-seats tone for the entire series. (She’s trapped in a delusion where she’s the lead in a detective series. It’s Wanda Maximoff’s fault. It doesn’t matter). Agatha All Along also stars Patti LuPone (yes of COURSE there are songs) and Plaza, who plays Agatha’s nemesis/ex-lover, along with Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, and Joe Locke.

If you are braving social media these days, you’re probably aware that a ton of people are moving from X to Bluesky, where I’ve been posting since mid-2023. The good (and currently unique) thing about Bluesky is that your feed isn’t controlled by an algorithm that constantly shoves the hottest takes in your face; what you see is entirely dictated by who you follow, and there is (as of this writing, anyway) a strong culture of just blocking people who engage in harassment, attempt to bully, or otherwise start shit, so it was a much more pleasant place than TwiX even before November 5.

But you know what social media site is really an escape valve? Pinterest. If you haven’t looked at Pinterest since sometime in the Obama administration, it’s basically a visual bookmark site where people save and organize links to stuff they like and find interesting, which show up in a visually appealing grid.

So far, so useful. But the real magic of Pinterest is its algorithm. Click on one link about the top ten things to do in Zagreb, and you’ll instantly be served dozens of links to posts about travel in the Balkans; click on one of those, and you may end up in the land of recipes for traditional Bulgarian baked beans, or the role of the region in World War I. I’ve been going down a sneaker rabbit hole lately, so my current board is pretty shoe-centric, but yours will be literally whatever you’re into—meaning that yes, you can ruin the experience by clicking on national politics stories if you insist. For years, it’s been the place I go online when I need to turn my brain off for a few minutes, and maybe you’ll find a similar escape in its innocuous, endlessly updating grid.