hot girl rat dinner girl lemon walk girl 💋💅👠

On the era of girls-as-salespersons and considering the death of "fine dining."

Wagner chief presumed dead after plane crash
The story of the week, imo. Messed up, dictator ass shit!!

Why China’s economy won’t be fixed
China’s 40-Year Boom Is Over.
"economy collapsing isnt a good thing"
"a ticking time bomb"
A lot of talk this week about how China is collapsing. It will be curious to see if this is true! We’ve been talking about this all year but it very much seems like this chapter of globalization is ending, due to the (literal) climate and impracticality.

Richest Americans make 40% of U.S. emissions
One about the Maui: Most responsible won't pay
“Planet gone be gone”
Are we ready to eat the rich yet? I’m very hungry!

Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule
The longread of the week: Ronan Farrow’s peek into how Elon Musk’s businesses (and stupid fucking whims) have major effects on lives worldwide. Again: I’m ready to eat!!

Panama Canal drought threatens 40% of world
The world’s cargo ship traffic, that is. Another reminder of climate and globalization problems!!

Five takeaways from first GOP debate
"he definitely got Americans interested"
“Who do you think won the debate?”
GOP debate recaps! Vivek stood out (and copied Obama), DeSantis floundered, all were insane as they said the climate is fine and that we should defund public schools. (Meanwhile, Trump showed how he’s going to campaign in his own universe.)

Mug Shots of Donald Trump, Co-Conspirators
HAPPY MUG SHOT WEEK TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE!!!

A store owner was killed over a Pride flag
"she was a relentless and unapologetic ally"
One of the most fucked up, saddest stories of the week, about a store owner in California who hung Pride flags in solidarity – only to be murdered for it.

'Near Collisions' of Jets Happen All the Time
Did you know airplane collisions almost happen multiple times a week? Sounds bad!

Adults Drinking, Using Marijuana at Record Levels
No shit! Life sucks and alcohol is good!! Fix the world (and work) so we can stop!!

New strain of E. coli traced to lettuce
Been seeing a lot of talk about lettuce being really bad lately. Apparently that’s because there’s a new E. coli strain!

This summer is for the girls. We got girl dinner and rat girl summer. There are tomato girls and lemon girls. We’re hot girl walking through our (fifth) hot girl summer. So many people are talking about this too!! Vox covered it, Washington Post covered it, Bon Appetit covered it, Time Out covered it, Yahoo! Life covered it. The girls are girling!!

There is a lot and nothing to say about this, but the thing that The Trend Report™ will say is: to be a modern woman is to be a PR machine. Digital femininity as we see with all these “girl things” is a branding exercise. Yes, they are trends, but they are also packaged goods. Look at blueberry milk nails from earlier this summer, which struck a cord of annoyance as it took a common idea (the color “light blue”) and rebranding it for no reason. Most of these trends come from one source – Final capitalism girl, Hailey Bieber and her Rhode Beauty. – who uses TikTok to feed non-trending trend psychobabble like strawberry girl (source) and latte makeup (source) into the zeitgeist. Blueberry nails were the canary in the coal mine of empty calorie girl posting, all of which are about foods you look at but never eat. The end to this cycle of girl branding is coming as we see people calling bullshit on Hailey’s “cinnamon cookie hair.” All treats, all girly things, but never just “something normal.” To be a girl is to be special and consumable, okay?

Girl branding is innocuous and cutesy, as it’s all semantics crafted to sell ideas even if the original thought – girl dinner, for example – eventually reaches its end as a literal sales tactics. Language, positioning, the ways we perform ourselves are always up for co-opting – especially for young women. It has been documented again and again how teen girls are the culture engine, crafting how the (Western, capitalist) world consumes and behaves. They originate the idea that being a woman is performance, a long studied idea that is now a meme about selling yourself. Ask Dylan Mulvaney, who hinged her public persona on the performance of girlhood, or Addison Rae, who successfully rebranded from TikTok cringe to slayified pop wonder the house down boots. Ask Barbie! All performance, all a show!!

We’re all performers on this state of the internet. By surveillance alone, there are at least a billion cameras worldwide paired with 1.46 billion iPhones. Someone is always watching, to see if a girl is a strawberry or a rat or an eel with a gun. This idea of digital performance is as old as social media, studied and studied and studied and studied and studied, as “being yourself” in the world is a grossly self-aware act to disconnect you from yourself and plug you into shopping systems. No wonder we’re in the era of the theater kid: you have to perform to live, not that that has never not been the case. The fact is women and young girls are the best performers in the world. Men – and those who craft the kingdom – needn’t perform: they’re the audience, the gaze, the one’s holding the strings as they sign the checks.

8 habits can add decades to life
I think these are obvious but, in the service of all of us living as long as we can, here are some habits identified from a study that will keep you alive longer. You already know what they are, but it’s my job to remind you of them.

What Is Going On in Scooter Braun’s Empire?
The Scooter Braun musical universe of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Carly Rae Jepsen, and more collapsed this week. Messy!

Why Are So Many Celebs Playing Uno?
This is silly! It speaks to most of these celebrities having children and being in the public eye, as it’s an easy-but-advanced on-the-go game to maintain peace. Something about this is a little cringe though? Play Dutch Blitz instead!!

Shallow Hal almost broke Paltrow’s body double
The best interview of the week, about Gwyneth Paltrow’s body double in Shallow Hal and how making the movie was empowering – but the reaction to the movie gave her a complex.

The Shade Room Has Been Misleading Public
“The Shade Room responded to me”
Big week for calling out The Shade Room for being right-wing propaganda.

“radical centrist”
Not a Republican Anthem
One of my favorite stories of the week, about how the “Rich Men North of Richmond” singer…came out as not-Republican, bashing the conservatives who use the song for credit. Love a twist! He still sucks though!

Communication for people with paralysis
Scientists at Stanford have pioneered a way to help people with diseases like ALS communicate via a computer hooked up to their brain. Good science shit!!

Facebook TERF controversy explained
Don’t mind that link or website, but this week in alt-world gossip: a Facebook post from Roisin Murphy leaked which places her in the JK Rowling TERF camp, a surprise given her embracing of (and adoption by) the queer community. Who knows if this is real-real, but it has people in a deep tailspin. (At least we got a good mug shot!)

For Bobby’s birthday, we went to three different “nice” restaurants. Think Michelin, think amuse-bouche, think crumbers.

The first was The Menu adjacent, the venue a country house and the utensils our fingers. We sucked milk from breast-shaped gel and on cottony fungs covered beans. We drank approximately 16 glasses of “wine,” ranging from light champagne to thick cabernet to aged sake to light rum. We never saw the chef, none of the food was salted, and I was hungover for two days, one spent entirely lying down, trying not to vomit up the gelatinous spaghetti cube that ended the meal.

The second was in a basement in the city. The decor was my mother’s idea of nice – robin’s egg blue chairs, chef figurines, blinding white LEDs – but the food was great. Yes, some things we ate by fingers but there was a self-taught cooking sensibility to each dish. The chef and her one server delivered all the food, asking after the dishes as she bused. There was no wine pairing (Thank god.) and a lot of the food included flower petals on the backs of sauced silver fish. It was unfussy. As we left, the chef sat outside with her staff, smoking and drinking the rest of the bottle of wine that we ordered two glasses from.

The third was an Anthony Bourdai favorite, which a friend told us before we went. We walked a mile outside of the city to get there. The interiors were Michael Graves for Target meets the art dealers from SNL. Like the first spot, the food was overly-conceptual – but it actual food, like lamb coins on a sunset of seasoning and chocolate bonbons on a small wooden jungle gym. Everything was delightful, aided by the chef popping up to tell you stories about diners and her life experiences. We didn’t have a wine pairing but a couple nearby did, which resulted in their being poured four glasses of wine per course. The servers encouraged experimentation, curating off-menu items that pushed our palates.

We debated if these were the best meals of our lives – and our answer was quick: no, mostly because we’ve lived (and still live) in cities with incredible restaurants. Any meal we’ve had at Bavel or Bell’s (or at my aunt’s house) was more memorable – and so much better – than these “best restaurants in the world.” Who are those lists for? Interesting settings, the performance of “fine dining,” culinary charms to charm…who?

The answer seemed to be tourists, vacationers, and non-food people, as most spoke in English around us. The idea of “fine dining” as a concept feels dated, anti-modern, for boomers, rich people, and those who get off on power play. And? That’s boring. Maybe The Menu killed the vibe, but the age of Michelin’s dominance feels dated.

Zooming out, this means the bubble of molecular gastronomy has completely burst. What is the future of dining then? Is it performance-forward venues, where you eat off someone’s literal face or watch someone give birth to a stone? As more Millennials and Gen Z step into the kitchen, bringing their authenticity, queerness, and diversity, will the common, relatable, and familial be the top note? I can see the future being about bringing the source to you, or downsizing to eat in someone’s grandmother’s dining room. Invitational versus curational. Community and co-ops, places for-the-locals instead of culinary Colombuses.

So many “nice restaurants” have forgotten the point of food, as the Top Chef-ification and business-ifying and Michelin baiting of restaurants put concept over cooking. Fine dining has definitely expired. I can’t wait for what a next generation is baking up.

Your round up of GOP debate and other right wing mania items from the week, including the Trump mug shot –
“he’s serving”
“yassify”
“Tyra does not approve”
And co-conspirator mug shots –
“grindr looking crazy”
“wow okay”
And debate memes –
“was a mess”
“absolutely gonna let you down”
“who wants to band drag”
“you are fired”
“hi i am hitler”
And general right-wing nonsense –
“to the mosquito”
“men are so shady”
“his baldness is reaching”
“cursed deepfake”

“AMY”
"get a hold of yourself"
LET AMY KLOBUCHAR (AND ILHAN OMAR) HORNY POST!!!!

“barbz taking over call of duty”
icymi a Nicki Minaj skin dropped on the popular war game and…the girls have showed up.

“tattoo on her wrist”
“every word makes it funnier”
“felt good”
“have septum rings”
The TikTok-On-Twitter main character of the week is a Christian woman who shared how her husband had to close his eyes when Florence Pugh’s boobs popped up in Oppenheimer.

“PragerU out of context”
“POV: PragerU”
Defund public education so we can watch more PragerU!!

“Republicans speak to each other in code”
You heard it hear: if someone listens to Joe Rogan, they’re trying to tell you they’re secretly a republican!!

“new hustle podcast just dropped”
New slavery-to-hustling theory for you.

“lol”
As I posted this week on Notes, our lives would be better if our dads were Fortune 500 CEOs.

“stupid shit i would do”
This week’s fun fact: the woman who wrote Goodnight Moon died from doing a high kick. It’s true!

“what lmao”
“always something”
You gotta be your own biggest fan! It’s a fact!

“oh no”
The freakin bean melted.

“further into hell”
Please enjoy these awful AI images, especially the last one which is actually brilliant.

"my 7 year is going to get in trouble"
I love my nieces and nephews, but this kid is the child of the year.

"saturday scaries"
The most deranged, why-did-you-post-this post of the week. Girl…delete this!!

And, finally, me after I send out my newsletter every weekend.

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