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🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 this week features Soham Chakraborty who explains why LinkedIn continues to pop along with why Millennials are burned out. He also gave Ben Dietz and I a deep dive into the ongoing protests in India and the “Cockroach” movement. Listen now on Substack and Spotify!
Colombia quake death toll tops 250
Climate Change Can Lead to Earthquakes
The Colombian earthquake is very tragic as it closely follows the earthquake in Venezuela. Yes, these things sadly happen, but it brings up another conversation that I’ve seen some mumblings about, hence the second story from last year: climate change can enable more continental rifting and volcanic activity. Not great!
“ global fascism as procrastination penalty”
Piggybacking: Naomi Klein’s thoughts on what comes after climate denial is the moment we’re in now, where the far right preys on desperation as both counter programming and reason for their evil ways. I cannot wait to read her new book on the subject, out in a month! We need it!!
Trump demands Iranian reparations
Vance asked Ukraine to halt strikes on tankers
“Look at me, I’m the boss,” he says to the man he picked a fight with, before turning around and to the man had punched just months ago, begging, “Please be nice to me and my family.”
How Trump’s Great Escape Unfolded
“A weak, stupid old man”
“hiding in a food cart”
This is not the slay anyone thinks it is. Having to sneak out of a meeting due to tensions you created is a very bad thing, a sign that you are a liability and everyone hates you. As this old looking meme was saying…
Democrats Got Lucky in Wisconsin
“when progressive candidates run”
Francesca Hong lost, which is a bummer but also shows even her position was close to a victory while still being 2020 cringe. Onward!
CJP announces plan for nationwide campaign
Parents reveal pressure of leaked exam
HIP REPLACEMENT EP.69
As the India youth protest swells into a political party (CJP, Cockroach Janta Party), a lot of reflection is happening on this situation and how it could thrust national politics forward. Something to continue keeping an eye on, which is why this week’s HIP REPLACEMENT was a class on the subject thanks to Soham Chakraborty offering us an on-the-ground report from Calcutta.
New Orleans joins other cities testing AI 911
“he was trying to kill you”
Other cities? Apparently Seattle and Boston are dabbling in similar services, which is…concerning!
Meta, others lose appeal to addiction lawsuits
‘Bipartisan Majority’ Wants Regulatory Crackdown
Social media addiction lawsuits move forward with people wanting regulation, all while both companies and people want to continue using said tech. Better the devil you know?
Mangione pleads guilty to stalking
Pouring one out for you, Luigi.
I
He was very mad and he had to tell everyone. Why? Because they changed his creamer bottle. “International Delight…what are y’all doing?” he asked, “I’m going to start a revolution now.” Keeping his cool, he explained how their former bottle held a physical integrity that was satisfying, which is a downgrade to the new, cheaper, and worse design. “We are all used to things getting a little bit shittier and shittier,” he said. “Shrinkflation, AI everything, no one saying hi…Products are getting worse, movies are getting worse, everything is getting worse, little by little.” He went on to compare and contrast and explain further his grievances, having a viral moment buoyed by similar sentiments. Another man went viral for KFC skimping on his chicken, with the brand apologizing in his comments. “Thank you for apologizing, but I don’t forgive you,” the man said. “You, going out of your way to comment on my video — for what? Thinking I would be a part of your show? I’m a human.” “He was supposed to get a [KFC] 50-piece and they gave him 30 pieces of chicken,” a woman explained of the situation. “He counted every single piece on camera. For everyone in the comments, who is confused why it’s that serious…If you were ten cents short, you would not get your food. If you were two pennies shy, you would be hungry that day.” Fans of hot sauce Tapatío are of-this-kind too because, after more than 50 years of family ownership, the brand was sold to private equity. “had to stock up before the eventual enshittification,” someone on Reddit went. “Good bye quality,” another post went. “Hello increase price,” someone replied.
This mass ruining is neither new nor singular. AI, as we know, is one of the best representations of this phenomena. Cute animal videos, literary prizes, Google Earth, the job market, relationships: you name it, AI has likely decayed a part of it. Smart speakers are a great example: as Wirecutter explained in a recent review of a new Google Home Speaker equipped with Gemini, the promise of “more natural” conversations and easier commands fell more than flat as it took an otherwise good experience and made it unbearable. “If this kind of thing were a problem with just one device or one AI platform, it would be a disappointment,” the writer said, “But it isn’t an individual-device problem. And it isn’t merely a Google problem, either…Big tech, in its frenzy to make voice assistants smarter and more powerful, has managed to make them worse, by sabotaging their ability to perform the sorts of basic tasks they had evolved to do pretty well.” Video footage proves the point. “We shouldn’t pay to be beta testers” is the story’s conclusion. If you’ve searched anything, anywhere, as of late you’ve had this happen too: whether from Reddit poisoning or limited results, the answers you’ve received are less half-baked and more a cake made with half its ingredients and substitutions that were toxic.
Zoom out, and places and people are suffering the same fate. Example: I was talking to some friends from New York about the city, sharing neighborhoods Bobby and I are considering in the move. They made a point to deinfluence Williamsburg. “It’s terrible,” one said. “It’s like a big hollow mall. It was gentrified to death.” This made me think of the Brooklyn neighborhood’s East LA cousin, Silver Lake, and how it too has been hollowed out by businesses to the point of it feeling liminal. It reminds of a semi-popular TikTok about the neighborhood. “This is Silver Lake?” a young man asked, confused. “Legit a highway w coffee shops,” someone replied. Physical places, whole neighborhoods and communities, gutted to raise rent as corporations holding the knife of gentrification closer to the neck. And yet: aren’t we experiencing the same phenomena via how we speak to and treat each other? The viral “people trying to talk” post and the ongoing “brain rot” no personality trope show how tech has hollowed our capacity to coddle our own personalities and relationships (Friendship drought anyone?) which is exacerbated by losses of reading and illiteracy. We have moved beyond the culture recession, wading in a slop trough that enables a mass echolalia, as spaces online are no longer “social” but individuals offering louder and louder takes to yell over the noise. This whole week TikTok turned evil, a “Hoe, is you cool?” state, an “Everyone repeating the same topics on the internet” feedback loop. “My For You page is only videos of people talking about other people,” a creator said, before screaming, “UGGGG. It’s such a freaking drag! Where’s the fun shit?” Life is hard and now our distractions are hard too, showing that we’ve reached the point where we have more commentary than culture, where profiting off of influence collapses given everyone was trained to act this way as they do talking head volunteer work for the chance at having a precarious non-career career of continuing on the same. Opinions are like buttholes and everyone has cyclosporiasis.
And how does that leave us? Exhausted. In the comments of almost all of these conversations and posts, everyone bemoans how everything feels bad and nothing feels good. Everything has become enshittified, it seems: our goods, our environments, ourselves. This is and isn’t a political state but mainly what it looks like to live under the influence of “late capitalism” that is actually libertarian capitalism, this idea of the self through the prism of profit as communal welfare and the collective dissolves: brain rot, etc. but also what it looks like when everyone is an aspiring tech billionaire turned reality star (or vice versa). This feeling of overall badness has become a defining trait of the 21st century, where every little thing (Pet care! Wooden furniture!) to every gigantic thing (The trustworthiness of produce! Bodies of water!) has been made worse. It’s shrinkflation, it’s privaticed disaster relief, it’s the growing surveillance state, it’s prediction markets for wildfires and cancer treatments, it’s working life becoming hell, all as the planet dies. Worse — and likely the unconscious motivation behind our hysteria — is none of this is acknowledged by our governments or our jobs or our leadership, as a growing majority are looking around and acknowledging this terrible state of things only to be gaslit into being told it’s “not that bad” or that we’re being hysterical or that we have to work harder. Just look at all the AI accusation discourses of this summer — Stop! That! Train! and “Rubberz” and 1666: Amsterdam — which all sought to dismiss critique as unfounded, before shifting from denial to admission: that is exactly the problem, a very “Stop hitting yourself!” state of the world.
As summer continues to boil, after pushing “through” Covid without any resolution, the feeling after years of “this” has everyone feeling madder than ever, none of which is “new” but continues to grow, as we’re in both a drought of resources but also of compassion, of altruism, of conviviality, of care. It’s the wealth inequality, it’s the climate change, it’s the fascism, it’s the corporate greed that distorts our beautiful world all in return for shit like “kinda chic” and yelling at each other about influencers as counter programming to the apocalypse. We have suffered enough, some of us in these small ways and others of us in more major ways, all without reprieve or the compassion. Life isn’t easy, but does it have to be this hard? Must we continue our descent into disaster, fighting with each other instead of working together against the giant greedy asses that have been shitting upon everything for decades?
I Wrote A Elliot Smith A Fan Letter
My dear friend Kirby Rock wrote an amazing essay about a letter she sent Elliot Smith as a teen only to get an answer back decades later. It’s a wild story, so well written and certainly something to inspire you to do something creative and share it with other people <3
Tributes paid to Jason Arday
“publication not hounding Arday”
“hounded by the British media to death”
I’ve casually followed the Jason Arday situation, not fully knowing the specifics but understanding it fit into the trend of anti-academic conservatives pushing to discredit and defame Black academics. As the latter two posts show, his death by suicide is directly connected to this conservative media push. Shameful and very sad.
Is America The Bad Guy?
“We overrate intellect and we underrate wisdom.”
The Hasan Minhaj conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates is very good, one of Coates’ better conversations in recent history as it unpacks intersectionality as far as being “an other” with…bad intentions.
Gates Knew Phia Took Credit for Sales
“What a phiasco”
“to make your startup look better”
Believe me: I am reveling in this, as I declined to “help” in their haunted rich kid antics. Next up: Selena Gomez’s mental health app fraud!
Trump’s ‘freedom finale’ to celebrate 250
“how sports have become a defining part”
“First Event of the Patriot Games”
Trump’s flop 250 summer continued with the Patriot Games, which looked real bad.
Can DNA tell us who cave artists were?
It’s always wild that new things “like this” are found in the oldest shit because, as this story shows, we may be able to figure out “who” the first people who made the “first paintings” were via DNA from the site. Wild we can find their DNA but not Trump’s, etc. at various Epstein sites.
Pillsbury Doughboy Is Coming for Hollywood
Will ‘Barbie’ Get a Sequel? WB Is Scrambling
Two stories of Hollywood at the end of its rope — or at the loss of its soul: one is on the rise of sponsored content from A-list digital series to literal movies while the other is about how the next Barbie movie is in peril due to creative differences and money troubles. Both are bad and neither should be happening, as people crave commercials instead of creative expression!
$TARFACE - Tyga
“may have been too generous”
“Doja Cat calls Tyga a ‘penis’”
“Tyga responds to criticism”
Like ad-sponsored content, the new Tyga album and its viral 0.0 review are a taste of what’s to come: spiritually and creatively empty cash grabs. What happens when every piece of “art” like every aspiring “artist” is just trying to rob a bank? It’s exactly how we lose thinking and end up in the almost-fascist techno libertarian state explained above.
Faecal capsules reduces peanut allergy in adults
Speaking of shit: if you have a peanut allergy, swallowing poop pills could cure you!
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Are queer people bad now? As a whole, no, but it’s a subject that has been on-the-mind given how many queer people in power like Peter Thiel and Bari Weiss are doing very evil things, much of which warps the integrity of our world. And it sucks! It’s a subject that trickles down in various ways, ultimately ending up with queer people being the eye of many political targets as we saw this week given the Jools Lebron and Drew Afualo dramas. It’s rough out there!
But then there is another form of being a “bad” queer, which is almost comforting when we zoom out and consider that “badness” exists on a scale: someone whose experience is atypical and or not-the-norm when it comes to queer experiences. This is where Eliot Glazer falls, whose new book of essays — The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Gay — chronicles a life of awkward missteps taken on the path toward queer excellence, one where he finds himself as a “bad” gay. From working at a Talbots as a teen to exploring cultures like gay nude yoga, Eliot is trying to make it all work as a regular dude within a culture where everything feels like it’s always cranked up to eleven. As a gay man, I can vouch for him: it’s a lot! We’re all trying to make it work, which Eliot chronicles so well in the book but also in his very varied work as a TV and film writer, podcaster, musician, and comedian.
In reading the book and finding many an overlap of queer and generational experiences, I was curious to overlap Eliot’s experiences with this moment. What does he think of these big and small “bad” gay happenings as of late? What does he make of this Millennial mid-life moment? Over email, we chatted about justice for Stanley Cups, loving dog friendliness, why Caitlyn Jenner is uniquely evil, and bridge building between the old and the young.
Tell me about a trend you’re following that you’re really into.
The Stanley Cup, which is definitely not a trend anymore (but I’m historically late to these things) (and I’m not on TikTok). Initially, I saw it as a goofyass adult baba — and, really, just Uggs for the hands — but then I was gifted one. Kyle, I have never experienced whiplash like this in my life. This thing keeps ice frozen ALL DAMN DAY. I don’t care that I still don’t know how to adjust the straw. I don’t care that the clinking ice makes me sound like a walking wind chime. I don’t care that it’s so aggressively big that I hang my carabiners on it (that’s right — carabiners with an S).All that matters is that The Stanley Cup is essentially like having a 24-hour IV drip of iced coffee, and the closest I’ll ever get to being the Grand Marshal of a Pride parade. And that’s something!
What’s a trend you hope never dies?
Dog-friendly dining. LA, in particular, is especially egregious in how we behave when it comes to dogs as customers — and I, for one, couldn’t be happier about it. My dog, Moses, is literally perfect in every way (ask anyone!) and makes an ideal companion in a restaurant, bar, park, but also grocery stores, museums, and hospitals (he’s a therapy dog at Children’s Hospital LA). AND HE’S SO CUTE!But I also think little kids should be allowed at bars, so maybe I’m not the best person to ask.
What’s a trend you are so over?
Sometimes it’s a normal mirror selfie. Sometimes he’s lifting his shirt just to remind us that his abs are — yep — still there. And sometimes the dick is just fully out. As much as I try to regularly purge my feed of impossibly hot gay guys who make me feel bad, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to escape the airplane bathroom selfie. I can only speak for myself, but give me a gym mirror, selfie, a beach volleyball shot, even a COMPLETELY CANDID picture of a guncle cradling his baby niece at exactly the right angle where his bicep really pops.
Make thirst traps earthbound again!What’s the state of bad gays in 2026?
My book is about how I’m bad at being gay: all the cues I missed, all my failed attempts at assimilating into “homonormative culture,” and how, ironically, it took leaning into feeling like a weirdo to finally figure out how to fit in.
But if we’re talking about gays who are bad in 2026, I think you’re right: it’s the comic book villain gays, the subordinate soulless abysses who happen to be gay. Although I still think an honorary mention should go to Caitlyn Jenner. Think about it: she’s already rich, famous, and a gubernatorial failure with no legislative, real world power whatsoever. She is colossally out of touch, but is still — STILL — so thirsty for attention at any cost that she publicly attacks ::checks notes:: trans women who ::checks notes again:: play sports. She chooses a professional loser and fifth placer who deadnames Caitlyn to her face over the community that still exercises a generous amount of protectiveness over Caitlyn’s ability to live authentically.Although there is some twisted glee to be had in watching her crash out over being misgendered on her passport while simultaneously kissing Trump’s nussy. Even Tomi Lohren is giving full math lady gif, which means I’m technically siding with Tomi Lohren. And that’s homophobia!
Bad gay, Caitlyn! Bad! Gay!
What does it mean to be a Millennial in 2026?
Aside from the constant existential crisis of being an elder millennial attempting to avoid appearing cringe (even if cringe is, apparently, cool now??), I think the most telling part of being a millennial in 2026 is watching my parents’ generation at the forefront of the No Kings rallies. As much as boomers laid the groundwork for our current hellscape — global warming, the death of “boring politics,” and making Facebook into a technocemetary — there is something hopeful in watching them lead the charge in fighting the good fight (or, at least, a good fight). I don’t necessarily think they’re winning, but I think Millennials are so exhausted by the last ten years that watching our parents attempt to wrestle for a return to “normalcy” (or whatever that means now) is a surprisingly responsible mea culpa after making a narcoleptic, ailing rapist, pedophile and game show into the leader of the free world twice — no shade to equally complicit podcast bros.
Follow Eliot on Instagram and grab his new book here. In NYC tomorrow? Eliot and his sister Ilana will be doing a book launch event at The Strand. I’ll be there! Say hi!
“the eclipse”
“THE MOON”
“Björk’s eclipse rave”
“Let’s all be SJP today”
“astrologers talking about”
“the sun”
“eclipse finishes”
“Eclipse was seen”
“Visible In The Night Sky”
Best eclipse content!
“My 9/11 conspiracy”
“THIS VIDEO”
“craziest fucking thing”
“Mario 64: War on Terror”
”do you think we’re gonna have”
For some reason, we’re getting 9/11 content really early this year. 25th anniversary, perhaps? Are we getting our wiggles out because the day before will be a bigger meme holiday, a la a year after Kirkification?
“MISPRONOUNCING 40 words”
“I wasn’t ready”
Never skip a Candace Owen mispronunciation video. The first one is a masterpiece I am requiring all of you to watch.
“letting all my non binary friends know”
“Drag race UK names”
This week in queer naming conventions. Similarly, here’s a great thought on British-Spanish language and here are some good UK raps.
“solve the Sphinx’s riddle”
Tokyo Toni should play The Riddler.
“colombus rising”
Why are there so many evil Tauruses!!!!!!
“not knowing Shallow”
Oprah shouldn’t be allowed to sing. “Gonna be on stage, I am” kills me.
“My uncle performed”
I will have to visit the grave with Kevin next time I’m in Atlanta.
“how many biracial”
This was literally what TikTok was like this week and it was hell.
“make your boyfriend a snow globe”
Bobby Aaron Solomon, I have a birthday gift for you!
And, finally, how I feel newly arrived in NYC.
Subscribe to Horstman and gift a paid subscription today.
Everything is enshitified…so true and so sad and so beautifully written ❤️
Oh my god I made the mistake of clicking on that x linkvoutvof curiousity and it would not let me even hear the audio without aggressively trying to force me to download the app. Instant rage. Fuck you, Elon Musk, I won't download this trash and your site is completely unusable now.