billionaires don't dream of buses lol Ⓜ️🚍💺

In this economy, is public transportation a fantasy? Or a future we can actually have? We explore, along with why disagreement always trends around elections.

Reading this? And not subscribed? Then you should subscribe! You’ll love it! 🤭

Milton Is the Hurricane Scientists Were Dreading
4 dead from tornadoes ahead of Milton landfall
Webcams show Milton making landfall
Milton wasn’t a total nothing burger as far as disasters, but it highlighted a theme (that you’ll see) as far as the steep descent into climate disasters via irreparable planetary harm of our own doing, multiplied by the very “now” mediaification of such disasters, as discussed last week. This week the celebrity breakouts did indeed occur, evolving Typhoon Shanshan’s palm tree live cam to concrete house lady, “Lieutenant Dan,” and Caroline Calloway. It didn’t end there as, with all entertainment, fan fictions emerged like talk of democrat weather machines and the embracing of acknowledged AI fake news. As Charlie Warzel wrote, “what we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built.” Going to be an interesting rest of our lives!

Hurricane Kirk remnants reach France
Anyway, this also happened which was very on trend.

Antarctica ‘greening’ at dramatic rate
We have two more stops on this horror tour.

First floods in the Sahara in half a century
Did you see this?

Drought has dried a major Amazon River
What about this? Hope you had a good Prime Day!

Solar storm brings spectacular Northern Lights
Why are Northern Lights becoming a thing? This is the second time this year. They’re tied to solar storms too. What does the sun know that we don’t?

Google's former CEO: AI more important than climate
"This is the true AI doomerism"
"Why does everyone hate us"
When my nephew dies from heat exposure via a 120 ºF day in October, I will eulogize him by saying it was all worth it because of the incredible advances in AI video that will allow me to imagine the rest of his life that he didn’t get to live.

Finance bosses to skip COP29
See above. They really could give a shit!

Trump making case for ethnic cleansing
Not to outdo last week’s Purge statement, this week he suggested immigrants have “bad genes.” Can’t wait for his stellar economic plan!

Human Lifespan May Have a Ceiling
Someone make sure that one billionaire who wants to live forever sees this.

Her Face Was Unrecognizable. Placenta Restored It.
A fascinating story about how placenta are becoming a healing tool for burns and other chronic wounds.

“You gotta give it that Walk Tuah,” a trending TikTok audio goes, taking the Hawk-Tuah-is-smart meme and applies it to the value of public transit. It continues: “If we provided suburbs and the urban core alike with better infrastructure for walkability and transit access, it only makes a better experience for everyone.”

That’s the funny thing about public transportation because, outside of the walkable city (meme or reality), it feels more mythic than real, even in cities where thriving public transportation exists. Take a cab instead of the subway, drive instead of catch the bus, prattle on and on about how other places (Europe! Japan!) have the public transportation that we really need. “This” — they look around —  “will not do.” There’s a lot to unpack here, that the contemporary mind approves of public transportation with limitations: pristine, unshittable subway cars; buses where you’re the only rider; a San Francisco trolley where you can wave an arm out open sides, or a London double decker bus where you can sit, face to the sun, the camera zooming in on your beautiful, unbothered face. Where public transportation collapses in reality is the same way we collapse for each other: we are late, we are unclean, we are unpredictable, we don’t want to share. Public transportation is a dance between you and other riders, you and the city, you and the world — and we’re more inclined to put the self before the many. What’s worse, the closest many get to experiencing public transportation is the occasional commercial flight — and that is not a public service but a communal activity paid with personal money. Public transportation is inherently by and for the public, as they’re funded by tax dollars. So when 70% of people in DC don’t pay for the bus (or 48% in NYC), that represents the disconnect in this public service, from the self, in what we want and in what we are capable of. Like a walkable city, public transportation relies upon team work, in working together for the greater good of something. Like voting, if we don’t work together for the greater good, we get the results we deserve.

That’s the irony: we dream of a full life in public — third spaces, full dining rooms, walking places, subways (NEVER BUSES!) that go everywhere — but what we actually want is to be alone, in our own space, to be royals in our kingdoms. As we get lonelier and non-religious, so goes away our trending toward communal activities and actions like public transportation. Like a language, we’ve forgotten how to speak in the tongue of sharing, instead thinking that all we are is what we can afford, what we can buy for ourselves. Why is it surprising then that, after a decade of app and tech driven me-me-me-ism that enabled collective disconnection, that this week saw Uber drop a “shuttle” (a la: a private bus) and Tesla do a hail mary via cabs and vans and robots (again: buses, or “Ro’bov’ans”) (and also slaves). The future is public transportation turned private, Silicon Valley commutes for the masses. We have again hit a ceiling of what’s possible, of what can be imagined.

But why wouldn’t this be what businesses think that we need? We scoff at this and yet people are afraid to take the bus because of “crime” and “safety” when murder and crime are dropping — but fears of personal safety continue to climb. The brain infection that Trump implanted into popular culture — which is aided by obsessive property keeping consumer tech (Ring, AirTags, indoor cameras) — has infected everyone, making us all feel that someone is going to shoot us and steal all of your money when you leave your house, which is why walking is now seen as too scary an activity. “Abolish the police! But become a vigilante!” we subconsciously say — and that’s the point: if you’re scared of everything, you’ll be all alone, with your gun, cowering in your little kingdom seeing anyone on the outside as an attacker. But if you’re outside, entering the world, accepting the risks that can happen with simply living? You see that so much of life is free to do, so much of life is better when we work together instead of cry apart. This is why Covid saw car ownership and gun sales go up. This is probably why pedestrian deaths are up too: too many people alone in their cars.

That’s the problem though: it’s not that public transportation “doesn’t work” or is actually “scary” but that the promise of modern America is the promise of individual lives full of fear. Kamala declaring “I have a glock.” this week is less a dog whistle to gun owners and more an appeal to this modern American individualist fantasy: "The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares,” JG Ballard wrote (as observed by). Adult dorms and unsettling corporate towns emphasize what Shina Shayesteh wrote in 2022 of suburban infrastructural horrors: “I feel trapped, consigned to staying shut up in the confines of a car or my home, unable to go out without a chaperone…I’m an adult; why can’t I walk outside my own door without being scared?” Cue the person kayaking around their flooded living room instead of evacuating. I die in my castle — and you can’t stop me.

Why are we surprised that public transportation — like third spaces, like friends — are becoming a fantasy? We are buying fears to invest in individualism, separatism. Ring Nation was greenlit for a reason: our personal panopticism only works if we’re constantly worried about monitoring what’s outside of our front door. Yes, there are real threats and there are real people who “need” such tools for survival — but does everyone really need this stuff? Does every single human need a car, cameras detecting what’s in front and behind them, a gun to ensure that people keep their distance? No. Obviously not, which is best exemplified by the exact places we dream of (Europe! Japan!) but do nothing to change our lifestyle toward.

When public transportation dies, pulled back and downsized as people pity party along about it being a shame, will we really be surprised? It’s what we wanted: we bought the idea that the world is a horror show and we need to protect ourselves from each other. Public transport is one of the greatest group projects in the world and yet we keep getting failing marks, as we back into our homes, hand on holsters, smiling as we calculate the best way to not answer the doorbell.

When Election Modelers Attack
The slim era of the celebrity pollster is over. What a time!

The Glory Days of the Pop-Up Store Are Over
And the answer? Obviously sample sales, silly geese.

How Hamas Book Sparked Protest
Most unhinged drama of the week, with one of the wildest moments being someone saying that Brentwood is a Jewish neighborhood. Um.

How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war
If you read anything this week, let it be this piece by Naomi Klein on media and art created in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel — and how trauma and righteousness are clouding reality via propagandist art. That Naomi Klein…genius. lfg Doppelganger hive (I read this story directly after this one about Sheryl Sandberg’s Hamas rape doc which…huh?)

America’s french fry king sounds an alarm
McDonald’s largest french fry maker lays off hundreds
Is fast food really on the down swing? Were the Ozempic theories on food right? I love french fries! Granted, at this point, I eat them like once every other week, if that.

Wine Bars for the Vibes, as Well as Wine
Thank you

Casey Lewis

for capturing the vibes of the natural wine world. Is this the turning point for the culture, in the way that there was a turning point for rosé a decade ago? (Unrelated and related: someone should write a story on how every city has a Lolo’s, which is maybe the most Zillennial name ever.)

Han Kang wins 2024 Nobel Prize in literature

Bobby Aaron Solomon

was onto something when he bought me Greek Lessons for my birthday!

Lionsgate’s Box Office Flop Streak Continues
"Lionsgate movies lost how much"
Megalopolis…The Crow…Borderlands…woo wee: what a string of duds. Anyway, best Megalopolis post of the week was how it looks like a Linkin Park video.

A brief history of poisoned Halloween
This is old and I randomly came across it but: it’s interesting that scares of “poison candy” pop up in times of American uncertainty.

The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time
Can we collectively sue Variety for this? Including The VVitch? Putting The Thing at 46?? And Hereditary THERE??? Not including The Exorcist III or Poltergeist or Rec???? JAIL!!!!!!

“DIRTY G&T”
I am halfway through a two week cleanse and you better believe this hybrid gin and tonic via dirty martini is what I’ll be drinking once it ends.

I have a brother I don’t talk to — and I haven’t talked to him in over a decade. He’s three years younger and, despite our growing up in the same household and of the same circumstances, we somehow became two people at opposite ends of ideology.

I can pinpoint when this break happened: it was 2009, two years after I came out to friends after a life spent brainwashing myself into believing I was straight and “creative.” For two twilight years at the end of college and during my first jobs in Los Angeles, I lived in a gay-but-not limbo where all my friends and co-workers in the city knew me as me but only a handful of family and others back home “knew.” This is where the friction started, as I would return home for Thanksgivings and other holidays, where we were all under one roof, happy and smiling and having a good time — and then my brother would start making homophobic and transphobic and other queerphobic jokes.

I was barely “political” at this time (My frontal lobe hadn’t developed, etc.) but I knew better than to let such things be said, not just because of my own identity but because we had queer relatives whom we loved, because we as a family worked at a dinner theatre and welcomed many queer people into our home. My family’s favorite movie to watch together is the god damned Birdcage! So, I would tell him — repeatedly — that such language wasn’t cool and, in seeing him and his soon-to-be wife’s echo these ideas in Facebook posts, I (And friends! And family!) went to bat to say “Look. This is not-right. We don’t approve this language or sentiment.” He laughed it off, suggesting that it wasn’t a big deal, that we were too sensitive. “Who gives a shit about faggots?” was the subtext. Understanding that this person would never think or do otherwise, I ended the relationship, going full no-contact. (Not that we were really “talking,” outside of the odd text and even odder family gathering, as he was east coast and I was west coast, he in the army and I in the civilian world).

More than fifteen years later, I wonder: was this the right decision? Was I being dramatic? A baby? Someone who didn’t “do the work”? Some might say yes, no, no, no but others might say no, yes, yes, yes: it’s all interpretation. I maintain I made the right choice. He has his life and I have mine. We are both happy in our respective corners of the world and, if these worlds overlap, they overlap. Our relationship is a non-relationship because of the belief systems we align with. I forgive but I don’t forget: that’s why I’m not foolish enough to open myself up to someone of the same flesh and blood to come into my house and defecate upon (Or stab.) me and those I love.

Have you had a situation like this? Maybe not specifically but I think such stories for progressive persons, for non-majority persons, are increasingly common: they are Millennial and Gen Z rights of passage. We do this for mental and (for some) physical safety. Why would I want to give my time and energy to someone who directly hates people like me? Somehow, such tensions and relationships pop up seemingly every election since 2016, that we have to “work with the other side” and yet the other side won’t listen, won’t take us seriously, won’t discontinue their attachments to dehumanization. A line of thought that I keep hearing is that the left “stops” befriending the right because they can’t agree on things, because things are “too political.” This happens every election — but why is that?

“People don’t want to be friends with you not based on your political issues but because you are an awful human being,” someone said on TikTok. “If you are voting for someone who is being endorsed by the KKK, what does that make you?” RaeShanda Lias shared on her TikTok. An image on Twitter went viral, of a man standing, arms up, with a cardboard sign that read, “WE CAN DISAGREE AND STILL BE FRIENDS” Intellectually, this is true but, as one person pointed out, “this applies to things like pizza toppings, not human rights.” “We can’t disagree over stuff like should police be able to kill black people or should women have autonomy over their own bodies,” another person said. This may be the appeal of those very viral Jubilee videos, because they simultaneously propel the premise of cross-belief friendships while reinforcing its impossibility. (Is that is why we can’t have public transportation? Hm.)

This gets complicated not only by geographic and cultural differences but also generational, as the calls of hate always come from inside the house: it’s never just a wayward son as there is always a further askew father, the apple rotten right to the core. “When did the generation that raised us to be kind and understanding and cognizant of other people…when did they stop doing that?” someone observed on TikTok. “As a woman, I am empathetic toward my mother — but as a daughter, I hold a lot of resentment,” a viral post shared. Like observations on Gen X sanctimoniousness, the blame of change is always placed on the young and the less off, that those on the bottom have to shift to how things were or are versus what they can become. This enters us into a self-fulfilling prophesy of relationship divorces, of cycles ending. As one person said, “You don’t need kids if your parents are Boomers.” (Or, as I said at the end of September, “I often wonder if we’re the adults that our parents wanted us to become.” I don’t think we are, which is a positive for us but a “negative” for them.)

Reaching across the aisle is so supremely 2017, a post-deplorable obsession with popping bubbles so you can see how the other side lives and thinks. I did that, for a time, with others beyond my brother who I thought could be saved, who could see my humanity. You probably did too! What did that get us? Further frustrations and dug in heels, realizations that “God helps those who help themselves.” But it’s the situation with my brother that feels like a butterfly effect, a classic situation that paints so many of our families, so much of our reality. From my experience, things do change, broken bridges getting mended — but misunderstandings continue as quiet sides are taken, as a great forgetting (and selective understanding) of history sets in. You’re just sensitive! Maybe you need to hear them out. Don’t be a snowflake! Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Okay, yeah, sure — but why is it up to me to do that work, to constantly grow as someone else is allowed to remain small, in the dark? Why is it that I and others like me have to reshape ourselves to be seen as human?

It’s not worth it — especially when the truth speaks for itself. Example: in April, I wrote a story about hipsterdom that had me scouring my inbox for emails from 2009. In the results, I found a message sent to the family from my brother’s wife. She shared a blog they started, in the hopes that the larger family could keep up with them as they travelled for military service. I clicked on the link, these fifteen years later, to see if it was still active. It was. There were only seven posts that continued for the span of six months after the emails was sent. They started with sharing posts like a “nice trip to the museum as a family” but ended with a portentous — if not completely ominous — declaration: “self explanatory” the final post title read, featuring the image of a black and gray rainbow. The copy, the only words of the blog post, read “Straight Pride.”

“Milton is nasty!”
“Hurricane Abu”
“cunty little skirt”
“topless diva”
“new smiling friends”
“CLEAR proof”
Best Milton memes.

"i was nervous"
I’ve been wanting to write an essay about how edibles hit too hard but I keep not doing that. Anyway, I get her.

"My grandmas FB"
Profile pictures like this make me want to go back on Facebook but I know it’s not worth it 💜

"Anyone else's TikTok"
See above: why go back on Facebook when you get this type of Boomer slop all the time on TikTok?

“POV you know the randomest facts”
This epitomizes too-much-ness culture so well.

“burtiful spirit”
Like Speedy, I spent a lot of this week crying at Glorilla’s Memphis accent. Nursfeed.

“never seen two people”
"embarassing how i can recreate this cover"
My still not listening to the new brat remix album is self-care <3 (I don’t care if it’s a response to fame! Sympathy really is a knife!!)

“where some of y’all should be”
I’d like to visit this Boiler Room.

“This is a Chappell Roan concert.”
Halloween is very scary.

“free glasses medicaid gives”
RIP office siren.

“Katya’s Messy Story”
For all the angels out there missing UNHhhh…a gift for you.

“proud of them”
“Locktober?!”
“lockincore”
I am obsessed with what (straight) men think “locktober” is.

“What’s the matter”
Sadly, I’m ambient boy.

“to the gender neutral bathroom”
The pronouns in this TikTok…Nobel Prize for literature.

“Probably going to get a lot of hate for this”
Hard agree. If you stay to the end, this too is you.

And, finally, a window into what’s happening between my ears.

---

Subscribe to The Fox Is Black and gift a paid subscription today.