do you feel 🌀the change🌀
On the feeling that something is about to happen, that we've been here before. Meanwhile, Millennial editorial gestures are sunsetting.
Election 2023: Key Takeaways
"only because they were 'very sexy' issues"
In one corner, Tuesday saw big wins for Democrats.
Joe Biden Is in Trouble
Poll of the 2024 Battlegrounds
"Hillary Clinton makes the case for Biden"
“young people think he’s mentally absent”
In the other, 2024 prep is in overdrive. Why? So many polls and surveys are coming out about young people being tired of Biden and the Democrats’ defanged approach. Something’s gonna give!
Millennials aren’t having kids.
"more data and more reasons to not want kids"
“I will never own a house”
"when whoopi was 30 was $84k"
Another poll created lots of conversation about young people not having kids or houses. This item and the last item are a great one-two punch to wake (old) people the fuck up. Will they? Probably not! Nothing every changes!
New income tax brackets for 2024
To combat inflation! Okay.
House vote to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib
"only Palestinian American serving in Congress"
The silencing of Rep. Rashida Tlaib is so wild, considering people like Rep. Brian Mast can basically say Palestinians are Nazis.
Gaza City Hospitals Caught in Crossfire
Macron urges Israel to stop bombing
Something is shifting here.
Scholz 'ashamed' at antisemitism wave
Meanwhile, this week marked the 85th year since the Kristallnacht.
Inside Giorgia Meloni’s Hobbit world
Weird but interesting political story of the week: a look at the far right Italian Prime Minister’s obsession with Lord of the Rings – and how she funded an exhibition on Tolkien. Cosplaying as politician!
First U.S. Direct Carbon Capture Plant
I want to believe. I want to believe!
Geothermal resort closes after seismic storm
The peninsula that Iceland’s Blue Lagoon is on was “hit by about 1,400 earthquakes in 24 hours.” People are worried about an eruption!
Prime Just Got Cheaper Healthcare
Did you know Amazon has healthcare?
Chatbots May ‘Hallucinate’
“Chatbots invent information at least 3 percent of the time — and as high as 27 percent.”
Infants Born With Syphilis, a Wide Epidemic
What?
Ending TB Within Reach. Why Are Millions Dying?
Had no idea TB had gotten “so big” (or Covid so slim). What’s interesting is the majority of people who have TB don’t know they have it. Thankfully, it’s curable!
I look at the paintings, each shaped to fit in the sloping space between windows and where arches join. One is an homage to painting, another to music, another to poetry. The artist Santiago Rusiñol depicted his interests and loves, all set in whimsical nature scenes that played into Symbolist expression. These works are unreal, as if viewed in the space between cherubs, visions of reality that feel real but aren’t. Idyllic. As poet Stéphane Mallarmé said of the style, the Symbolist approach evaporates the literal to create further connection. “Suggestion,” Mallarmé said. “That is the dream.”
I look at the paintings and I wonder if these spaces of nature once existed – or were they symbolist exaggerations of late 1800s life? Seaside fields of lilies, blue grasses along streams, tree-lined paths bursting with pink blooms. Was this what nature was like? Could I ever see this? Is it selfish to want to see this? These views are memories, real and imagined. Symbols again.
I wander the museum and I notice selections of the most mundane parts of life captured to represent the past hundreds of years. A spice dish, a baby doll, a door knocker with a dragon’s face. What will be documented from today? There is so much stuff. The V&A describes their preservation process as objects needing justification for collection. A purpose before placement. I watch videos of homes turned to stores, shelves stuffed to become uncanny museums. A culture of hoards, glutted by selection. Will any of this fit within the framing of the present?
“If our pre-industrial revolution ancestors saw what we did to the night sky,” someone muses on Tumblr. “They would pummel us with rocks.”
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How does one know history is repeating itself? Is the feeling like muscle memory? Or déjà vu? How do you know that you’re walking down the same path, looping around to the start? And how was that start made to look new when it is in fact the same thing?
Today’s problems have tails that wag decades and decades ago. John Vaillant’s Fire Weather discusses global warming warnings from the late 1800s. Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement discusses state laws designed to create liveable environments in the 1970s. Jeff Goodell’s The Heat Will Kill You First explains how racist science justified placing slaves in front of heat.
And yet. “Global fossil fuel production plans far exceed climate targets,” the UN says. “Breakthroughs that are coming in the next few years will blow past the paradigm of limited thinking we have today,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom says. “October obliterated temperature records, 2023 set to be hottest year on record,” the news says.
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The vibe shift is finally happening though – cosmically, not literally.
When The Cut claimed the term in early 2022, the idea that an aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural approach would snap culture into something new. There are affirmative arguments for this, but the story largely asserted an NYC (and LA) echo chamber confirming one cut of jean was more “in” than another. This is to say: the idea was surface level. The shift was more a change of seasons, where you take down your coats from the attic and put your tank tops away.
The tech and social worlds have slid downward with layoffs and the continued dissolution of spaces like Twitter. Strike! Strike! Strike! The pope says transgender people can be baptized. No one wants to have kids, no one wants to vote for Joe Biden. Some think we need violence to save the country. Once beloved influencers like Emma Chamberlain are being sacrificed due to a lack of critical thinking. Industries pretend creators aren’t saving them millions in advertising. War! War! War! Exhaustion via loneliness and friendlessness. Exhaustion by having to spend your way out.
We all want more, we all get less. We’re tired of being run over and over and over. I talk to friends, I talk to colleagues, I talk to everyone: they all feel “the change.” We feel something is about to happen – but what is it? The shoe dangles off the toe, as it always does. The difference is this time we aren’t doing the changing: the world is. We’ve changed enough in the past few years, since 2020 and 2016 and 2008 and 2001. It’s the world’s turn, the people upstairs.
The vibe will shift further in 2024 – and things will be worse. In 2025, we’ll fully develop our brains. Maybe change comes then? Either way, we will be ready to start our podcasts in 2026.
He Ran Powerful Conservative Think Tank
“Where is Oprah?”
Don’t buy the “You just need to be happy!” grift that Oprah has been selling: it’s all co-signed by a former conservative thinker, which seems like another “Let’s distract poor people!” tactic. There’s a larger story about the delusional anti-philanthropy of billionaires here.
A Tampon That Can Test for STIs
This seems so obvious. Cool!
The History of the L.A. Cult Grocer
I am legally obligated to share the The Cut Erewhon story.
“New artist at 39”
I am also legally obligated to share the viral Jelly Roll acceptance speech, to give hope to us late thirtysomethings who still haven’t had success.
"no more gender differentiators"
"no hate"
“you trying to get people in trouble?”
The TikTok creator Lilly Contino is getting heat for calling out servers who make mistakes about pronouns. Yes, misgendering is bad – but also if someone is trying, or makes an innocent mistake? Give some grace, especially since gender has gotten so non-binary.
Keke Palmer Granted Restraining Order
”stills from her security”
This is wild, yes, but interesting in that Keke used her platform to show receipts. Perhaps this can help others in similar situations?
Dating apps lose luster with college students
This is interesting, only because everyone (beyond college) are feeling like they’ve hit a ceiling with dating apps. As someone who met my partner of 13+ years on a dating app (OK Cupid!!), I do think they “work.” But, like finding a new job or a new apartment, you have to take an active role in the process. These things don’t just “happen”! I will have to write an essay about this one day!! (NOTE: A friend read this and shared screenshots of how pay-to-play dating apps are and…it is real bad. I retract this! But I maintain dating in any capacity takes labor!!)
Omegle is shutting down
Pour one out kids!
‘Severe eye burn’ following Bored Ape NFT event
This is not funny but also quite funny.
Play to Stage Vecna's Origin
Nintendo making live-action Zelda
Hollywood is down bad.
Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers”
I know I just shared Miranda July’s Art24 but this season is DELIVERING. Christine Sun Kim is a genius, exploring language and difference through simple gestures and words. An inspiration for communicating. An icon!
Suntub by ML Buch
I have become swallowed by the Danish musician ML Buch’s Suntub. I saw
Jezebel has shut down. While I was only an occasional reader, Jezebel (and Gawker and Gizmodo) shaped a communication style that elevated blogging and colloquially written reportage to the mainstream. There are debates to be had about whether or not Jezebel should have continued – but that is not my place, nor is what I want to discuss.
What Jezebel had that is still present in parts of the internet is a distinctly 2010 Millennial media gesture. Yes, the Jezebel audience may have grown younger and older – but we all know that the readership was solidly in their thirties, if not older. This isn’t Millennialcore – cringe posts noted by squealing, silly-faced thirtysomethings and words like “smol,” “boi,” and “snacc” – but something I keep seeing and feeling online that is surprising given the agelessness (or age-inclusive) nature of the internet. And yet: I stop by sites like Pajiba, Vox, The Cut, Uproxx, and Stereogum and blog institutions like The Sartorialist and Go Fug Yourself and you feel I’m standing on carpet that was once soaked in PBR. There’s something about the formatting, the approach to titling, and a mono-tasking cadence (a la, web posting before social posting) that feels of another era, where a personality could “run a publication” and get results. There’s a reason why Perez Hilton is no longer en vogue.
These sites are a warm sweater for a certain type of reader while feeling very old school for others, as they capture the bridge between blogging days and the current creator climate. These are places that are and are not serious news, who devote a lot of time to qualifying their countercultural roots. They are known for their essays, even if the results skew more toward elevated comment section material. Do I read these places? Yes, many of them. Do I think they are locked in a time and place? Absolutely. Can (or should) they change? I don’t know, but I do know that the more closely tied to this editorial gesture – Let’s use Dlisted as an example. – they will go away, as was the case with Dlisted’s closure this year.
This is to say: the loss of Jezebel is a loss for the journalists and digital culture community – but it’s a symbol of a larger deprecation of Millennial-catering, 2010s editorial approaches. I would not be surprised if we start seeing more closures or the 2020 equivalent of “pivoting to video,” where publications go all in on TikTok (Vice News), continue to see fracturing (personality-led newsletters, a la
, , & Dirt), attempt a revamp for modern digital culture (Mic, the “new” Gawker), or shift strategies entirely (ATTN:, Culture Trip, all of social media, increasingly streaming). All is not lost yet, no, but a turning point is being approached for Millennial media. An era is officially over!
"first trailer for the new MEAN GIRLS movie"
I get that there is a Mean Girls musical. What I don’t get is that the movie…looks almost identical to the original, to the point of the same actors who look no different? And no one is hot. It feels like a Make A Wish film made with unemployed theater majors. At least Disney gives completely new actors when they rip themselves off!
“NYU students”
“Gaga’s classmates”
"Lady Gaga everyday during lunchtime"
“Lady Gaga in the corner”
A (gay) meme this week, inspired by a former NYU classmate of Lady Gaga saying she would belt songs while they tried to eat lunch. Also note that that first item, the PEN15 clip, is going viral in it’s own way with people sharing their middle school experiences.
“one student film”
The only post about the actor strikes that matters. I saw the same thing from pick me writers, after that strike ended.
“pizza styles citation styles”
Let’s go Venn diagram gworls.
“cunty truckstop beaver”
tbh i think she needs some earrings
"What happened to a good ol American bulge? "
All the pictures from the Jeremy Allen White GQ story are very sexy but there is no beef. I am begging magazines, publications, media, whomever: let us see some dick. MAKE BULGES GREAT AGAIN 2024
“strangest mormon beliefs”
This reminds me: I saw an ad for The Book of Mormon here, which feels funny considering how culturally specific to America the religion is.
“Who asked you that?”
I did. I want to know why we don’t see dinosaur privates!
“things to do”
Send this to your single friend :)
“PERFECT COVER SONG”
The only song to do for karaoke.
"hate this time of year"
Yes, that is a spider on a dog. I don’t know what I would do.
“such an old lady”
That is a velociraptor, not a dog.
“getting so big”
That baby got fucked up hair.
And, finally, me grabbing the.aux cord this week.
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The bits that took me out this week were Rep. Rashida Tlaib laying humanity out on the table, Mr. Chair, and the Jelly Roll clip. I can’t stand that song, like it hurts to listen to because I hate his voice (strong word I know) but I’m a stan now because what an acceptance speech!! Give him the damn Best New Artist grammy!! I’m easily influenced 🫡
Back to back great essays in this! I also noticed the vibe shift. Specifically with media skepticism, which hasn't been this high since the 60s