Author | Lightnews

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃

@icarusfloats.bsky.social

510 followers 370 following 1.8K posts

English Language Arts video-maker at @KhanAcademy.org. Children's book author, bean evangelist, wife guy, bon vivant, bon-bon vivant. He/him davidrheinstrom.com

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · Aug 26

It's been a pretty bad summer for me here in Washington, but you know what's been great? WORK. I have the opportunity to bring you EIGHT count em EIGHT glorious financial literacy videos.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMrA...

In this one, Darnell and I play scammers who teach you the ropes.

Real world: Scams and Fraud | Teacher resources | Financial Literacy | Khan Academy

YouTube video by Khan Academy

www.youtube.com

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 1h

Hello, fellow speed-skaters! Do any of you want to, uhh—

*checks notes*

—abuse prescription medications?

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 2h

funnily enough, the root/nucleus of the horrible drain hairball, which I think predated us in this apartment, appears to have been a broken-off tip from one of those selfsame plastic drain snakes

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 2h

This is only semi-related, but I got one of those drum auger drain snakes this weekend to clear out the bathtub's u-bend—and let me tell you it was a REVELATION after years of using cheaper, plasticky drain snakes.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

Well, you're doing a wonderful thing, and a dog like that is sure to find a loving home.

His rolls remind me of my own dog: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-yd...

(yes, the cemetery is also, sometimes, a dog park! I promise it's less weird than it sounds)

rolling in the grass at the congressional cemetery

YouTube video by David Rheinstrom

www.youtube.com

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

Are you sure you don't want Lambo to be a foster fail? He's so cute!!

I'm sure you have your reasons, but oh man that's a *great* dog.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

can you imagine making a roux in that thing for a 50-gallon gumbo party, my god

now THAT a party, chère.

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

One attendee at Ruth's apple-butter shindig suggested we do a Stone Soup party, where everyone brings a vegetable or a cut of meat and then we have one enormous soup.

50 gallons though, man. That's a lot.

... oh damn though you could do one helluva crab boil in there

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

If you had a 50-gallon cauldron, what would you cook in it? What sort of parties would you throw as an excuse to haul this thing out?

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

By the end of the afternoon, this is how full it got. Ruth and Avi purchased *15 bushels of apples*.

I don't think I've done anything quite so autumnal in a really long time.

a bubbling copper cauldron rests on an iron stand over a gentle woodfire. Silt from the nearby creek, stones from same to form the firepit.

The cauldron is about 7/8ths full with sliced apple and cider, and a long wooden stirring implement juts out of it.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

Also lookit how cute Jillian is

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

I also knew NOBODY except the host (and obviously, my wife), and that was okay, too! Ruth's friends are all public servants—scientists and doctors, angry and heartbroken and devoted and *so unbelievably smart*, and I knew at a stroke that I was among good people. Made a friend!

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

Kids rolling around the hill, half a dozen people at a time working at wet plastic tables, washing and peeling and slicing and carrying so many apples

and inside the house, fried chicken and stuffed mushrooms and garlic knots and crumbles—everyone brought something and all of it was good.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

By the end of the afternoon, this is how full it got. Ruth and Avi purchased *15 bushels of apples*.

I don't think I've done anything quite so autumnal in a really long time.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

Letter of recommendation: get you a friend who has a 50-gallon cauldron and spend the weekend making an UNSPEAKABLE quantity of apple butter. My old college friend Ruth invited us out to her place for an apple butter shindig, and we're already scheming about more ways to use that magnificent kettle.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 17h

"We shall bring you a treat. Something NICE of Washington to ease the sting of this wretched place!"

Nick (derogatory) ✨ @slothropsmap.bsky.social · 18h

lol we’re both guilty

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 1d

What a creep! I'm sorry some putz tried to steal your family's halloween.

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 1d

Surely this is a thing that we can fix!! Surely this is a practice that can be rooted out

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 2d

Also, unrelated, but it won't leave my mind:

Charlie Brown had hetairai

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 2d

Icarus: Oh, so we're only allowed to fail UP now?

Tantalus: I'm sorry, I thought you said you were *hungry*

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 3d

Describe a character in Greek mythology the way someone trying to defend a politician would. I’ll start.

Oedipus: Like you’ve never had sex with someone and regretted it later

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 2d

Nah, I get it! I also appreciate that RDJ's Richie Holmes is the only one to engage in combat sports, like Book Holmes does.

🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 2d

I think Basil of Baker Street *is* actually my favorite Holmes, even moreso than the Jeremy Brett Holmes (which is an immortal Holmes to be clear). He's so moody and petulant, so manic. I love his mad abandon!

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 3d

I should say: as a chicagoan by birth/former chicago resident.

What prompted this, though? What'd you get?

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 3d

I'm gonna stick my neck out as a Chicagoan: I think Philadelphia is perhaps America's *best* sandwich town. And I'm not talking about cheesesteaks, which I think are a little flashy and showoffy and easy to impress with. I mean the roast pork sandwiches, I mean the cutlet sandwiches.

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 3d

What's awful is that as a NORMAL MEN listener I can hear that so accurately in your speaking voice
and I hate it, thank you

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 3d

It's this, George: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Plaid Cymru wins Caerphilly by-election for Welsh Parliament

The prime minister is "deeply disappointed" at Labour's first parliamentary defeat in Caerphilly for 100 years.

www.bbc.com

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🎃 David S. Pumpkins Rheinstrom 🎃 @icarusfloats.bsky.social · 3d

But part of it is that I deliberately perform verisimilitude. There is stuff that I *insert on purpose*—light occasional stammer, strategic filler words (like "y'know" or "right?")—that lend a kind of off-the-cuff, improvised feel to my delivery.