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Bobby Aaron Solomon is off this week back to Barcelona to pack up life, as I keep on keeping on with things in NYC, as we are 99% sure we landed an apartment (!!). One item I’m attending, in case anyone else will be there: Patricia Lockwood / Grace Byron discussion at The Strand, which I’m stoked for because Patricia is one of my favorite writers of all time. Hopefully she will let me kiss her feet 🙂↕️
Anyway! Do you know a young person with a lot of opinions? Send them to me! This idea came from ANU, in response to Olivia Choi — who is in college — joining us as a guest on a recent HIP REPLACEMENT. So, I made a Google Form to pass around, to invite on young people between 18 and 22 (More of less!) to “apply” to be on the show. Share and send to whomever! Send me your YOUNG.
Speaking of: this week’s 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 tackled the iced coffee job interview drama, which featured some brilliant takes from Janira Planes Frías. Listen to the chat with her, Ben Dietz, and I on Substack, YouTube, and or Spotify.
Cornell University Rape Investigation
Post–Me Too Generation Gets Me Too Moment
“Last year of America”
Story of the week, a stomach-turning statement of “now” that collapses a decade — if not 40+ years — of inaction and injustice. There are too many good takes on this.
Trump’s aiding US consumers run into resistance
Trump loses favor with crypto fans
Trump urges public to trust self-policing of AI
Military withdraws from Iraq over 2 decades
Are you tired of winning yet, Boomer Dads?
Federal loans cut for low-wage programs
The programs affected are domains like “social workers, artists, teacher aides and especially certification programs for barbers and nail technicians.” And you wonder why I, we, etc. rage on about class wars! A silver lining is this may curb the predatory practices of for-profit colleges — but that’s not an excuse for this.
OpenAI cancels launch, citing safety
How Meta Uses Data Centers to Avoid Billions
AI moves to thwart backlash ahead of midterms
If a data center is camouflaged, will anyone hate it?
I AM TIRED OF THESE THEATRICS!! ESPECIALLY META MUSE!!!!!
Pope Leo leans into statesman role
Anthropic Nearly Walked Out on Pope Leo
“it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art”
My man. To turn your stomach, read this story on Claude. As someone said on Twitter, “They are basically saying they enslaved a sentient being and used it to generate billions of dollars.“ See yourself out, AI chuds.
Why Are Students Protesting Across France?
French schools burn as student unrest spreads
The first item speaks to students standing up for better education, while the second speaks to politicizing of the issue. This plays into a trend contemporary youth rebellions, which has a full section devoted to the subject in the upcoming Q3 Trend Report: Trend Report™. I’ll continue to wait for American students to take action…
Europe’s movers are younger
A fascinating look at something that can shape EU elections: a chunk of young voters don’t live in their home country, resulting in lower voting where they’re from and a disallowance of local civic participation. A fascinating upside down voting story!
Bangkok declared a ‘disaster zone’
Dengue fever prompts Florida emergency
This is our world on global warming.
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My brain rot? The “YOU’RE NOT HOT ENOUGH!!” brain rot, where I compare myself to the summer’s day that is “traditionally hot” men. I submit myself to this abuse every day, as overly pumped up AI thirst traps haunt my timelines, sending me back and forth to the meat market to further devalue myself. This is my AI psychosis.
But I did scare these thoughts away recently: while walking after a run, thinking about how much I hate running but do it for-my-heart, I remembered how boring the pursuit of hotness is. This has long been a salve that held as a shield from lookism, in places like LA and NYC: hot people are boring. No interests, no life, with little personality outside of a body pumping and a fluency in dubious supplements. Queer people know this well: chatting with a “traditionally hot” guy is an endurance exercise in tolerating the painfully boring, as you tick off your bingo card at his mentioning of protein, shows like Friends, artists like Katseye, and preferring men who look exactly like him. Homo homogenity, we could call it, which puts boyfriend twins on steroids.
It still amazes me that this mindset broke containment in the 2020s, with so many people becoming “this” thanks to GLP-1s, peptides, protein, MAHA, and other related messes of the body-mind. You’d think we’d be steeped in a steamy sexiness but instead we’ve landed in its opposite: deeply boring times. So many of us have become gay bar himbos, happy to bomb each other with an anti-culture of self-interest and narcissism. Dreams of “white picket fences,” of leisure and community, replaced with being hot and rich. The Kardashians set a pace in the 2010s that we’re still so desperate to keep up with! But here’s the thing: for the himbo, bodily obsessions and the constant caring for one’s temple enables a wellness OCD that robs one of time, meaning, and interest. This is why the Kardashians sell supplements, promising normies their brand of perfectionism that cannot be bought at that price point. People sacrifice their uniqueness and versatility to worship at the altar of optimization. This “new” American dream is just as much of a lie as the old one: Bryan Johnson’s autoimmune disease is a great reminder of this.
This is how and where obsessions with taste die, or where it should die: “the point” of the taste discourse is to make you so fixated on “being perfect” that you outsource your thinking to machines that expedite your becoming a more boring someone. Cue this week’s suite of stories about boringness and agentification! Boringness — and the AI agents enabling being boring — is politically important because you think less, having no opinion, becoming a weapon to be loaded and fired in their name. Thanks to Amazon, thanks to YouTube, thanks to Temu, thanks to TikTok, you’re made to feel as if you’ve licked every corner of the world and that such access is proof of transcendence for nothing. This loss of friction affords temporary salvation that you believe you should pay to subscribe to. Your time fills with work and working out, two acts that typically monopoloize your time while robbing you of purpose and utility.
The thriving economy of boring celebrity podcasts is a great expression of this mass boring event. Podcasts as a format — the audial equivalent of the docusoap genre — allows the culturally and socially disenfranchised to export a social life to other people. Eavesdropping “becomes” conversation, opinion “is” fact, the mundane “has” meaning: this is culture on podcasts. It feels like we’ve been jogging in place since Covid (Or since 2016?) as a never-ending Groundhog Day of non-participation in life ungreases the gears of sociability: enter the viral 2026 findings that we’re talking to each other less. “Is anything provocative anymore?” the New York Times wonders for the second time this year, both instances tied to Paris Fashion Week, both directed at the luxury brand Matières Fécales. Are they edgy? Or are they selling vampire teeth to people whose mouths are wide wet gums? Our boredom is the result of our adopting a meme mindset. Our boredom is why the bystander effect has become a dog whistle to blow to change our ways, becoming a social media fixation (and has been for years) and is likely the motivation for shows like The New Stanford Prison Experiment. “Become the co-star of your own life,” our boring now commands us.
To “be boring” is to “be empty.” Cultural homelessness paired with our hot body problems is exactly why a subject like looksmaxxing thrives, particularly in a culture where men have spent a decade very much lost: its courts one’s ape brain to become a rape brain, dumbing you down to think only by binary. Yes, no. Man, woman. Hot, ugly. Is the “Clavicular raped a teen girl.” news at all surprising within this moment? This chud mentality is why “Relax, pal.” has become a thing, where a man “looks cool” for “mogging” a TV reporter, where the pursuit of accountability for (allegedly) shitting on other men as a part of a fraternity initiation is undone by being cool and hot. “Relax, pal,” he said — and the crowd goes wild, forgiving him for abusive homo-scatology. Rebranding submissive beta maledom isn’t a bug but a feature of this mindset: the Cornell 7 rises and falls as a breath of this red-pilled homo-normal body. Will justice prevail? In our loser-based society, where AI women can be summoned to suffer male whims, doubts remain as we’re told again and again and again to relax, pal.
Pete Hegseth proclaimed this week “No fatties. No tr*nnies. No beardos. No weirdoes. No wimps. No radicals.” Any gay guy will tell how white gay male boring this mindset is — but it “makes sense”: in our surveilled, over-optimized, “post” body positive now, where athleisure becomes personality, your being beautiful but boring — instead of ugly and interesting, where weight, queerness, body hair, and solid beliefs have you questioning systems — is a threat. The fat, queer, weirdo “thinks too much” while the beautiful and boring conforms: the goal of making you boring and hot is that you don’t think, you don’t do. You become a machine while “machines” profit from doing your thinking for you. Kill and rape, kill and rape: ain’t that America? Drink your protein and shut up, you sensitive woke libtard.
It’s easy to get sucked in trends. Trends, at their core, are an expression of group think, the collective trying to form a community through its actions and ephemera. Trends are our trying to fit in and feel special, to find belonging. That has been taken from you, or at least hijacked: so many 2020s trends are about losing yourself, become boring and selfish as your comfort-seeking makes you docile and dumb, a mark whose personality and identity can be assigned. You may feel special because you “are hot” but you are simply meat for the mill, to be sacrificed in the service of causes that neither your beauty — nor your gender — will save you from. If only you had thought so long ago, to stop and think, to build a community and to be part of something beyond yourself and the rush of blood pumping through your veins.
Fat from dead bodies used in butt filler
I wanted to pop this in the above but it didn’t quite fit. It’s very now, very representative of our evil ugly boringness.
Why Ed Ruscha made poster for ‘Digger’
Boomer cringe, but also: Ed is old. He can sell out a little! But this “work” being up at LACMA? Michael Govan, you will be dealt with.
TN halts executions after inmate survives
TN Botches Execution Despite Warnings
People are joking this woman is Bane, which is funny but it overlooks a very fucked up Tennessee trend: this is “the second failed execution in less than five months.” The woman, Christa Pike, is one of seven people to have survived lethal injection, all of this due to difficulties “setting the IV line.” Literal nightmare, torture, etc.
Partner of Gypsy Rose dead
”You see how this looks?”
She claims it was an overdose, but you know we’ll hear about this for months to come.
‘Long flu’ can linger for months
Another item we discuss in the incoming Q3 Trend Report: Trend Report™ is how our health concerns are being ignored. This story reflects a cautious and caring mindset emerging as macro-care wanes. Get your flu shot and Covid boosters, people!!
Scientists Identify New Penguin Species
A new cat? Followed by a new penguin? 2026 isn’t all bad.
1940s experiment failed to create ‘super dog’
Absolutely wild story about dog breeding, eugenics, and a time when scientists could do anything.
Paul Reubens’ Big Auction
“personal belongings are being auctioned off”
I’m keeping an eye on the Paul Reubens ephemera auction — and I need this portrait of him!! NOBODY BID ON THAT!!!
“Schmitt claims Jack Smith perjury”
“thought he was about to become famous”
One of the best entertainment items this week happened during a Senate hearing.
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Thundercat is a very modern man. He embodies so much of what makes Millennial culture great, from thoughtfully questioning categories — consider his pushing at the edges of what R&B can be — to juggling our many polycrises with aplomb, which is a big theme of his latest album. He’s a student of our culture too, from a name that evokes 1980s Saturday morning cartoons to crafting mesmerizing melodies about the mental gymnastics of love. Again: he’s a very modern man!
Given his status as a grand Millennial mind, I sent a note to see if he’d be down to talk trends, explore who is at the cutting edge of R&B, and what the hell is up with men and matters of love today. We squeezed in a quick call before he embarked on his national “Distracted AF” tour, which has him on the road through early December. We covered a lot within a twenty minute sprint: depressionmaxxing, the need for physical culture, the importance of calling men ugly, and why you really do need to put your whole self into your art making. Take it away, Thundercat!!
Tell me about a trend you’re following.
Hookermaxxing? Uglymaxxing? Depressionmaxxing? Acceptancemaxxing? [LAUGHS] What have I been doing? I’ve unintentionally been a hobby person. I’m very much a comic nerd. There’s a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog merchandise. But I’ve been depressionmaxxing by doomscrolling. It’s a real day-to-day Ninja Warrior Challenge just to walk out the front door. $2,000 just to walk out the front door! You’re trying to fight that. I will not immediately spend $2,000 as a daily functionality! That’s a very specific thing. Immediately: you go to the gas pump? $200. Let’s go get coffee! And then your friend’s broke. I guess I’m getting everyone in the store coffee? Then they need to borrow your car real quick. You can’t wear the same shirt seven days in a row. It’s been pretty interesting. Choosing the word “no.” I’ve been saying the word “no” lately. That’s pretty trending: learning to say no. Just say no more often, with love in your heart. Just be like “Absolutely fucking not.”What’s a trend you hope never dies?
Rick rolling. [LAUGHS] But really: people realizing that physical media is very emotionally a thing. The touch/feel/see/taste/sound is just as important as its own medium. If we ever lose that, we will definitely have lost. As long as people understand that the balance of digital versus physical is — and will always be — of importance, the frontier goes in both directions. I hope we never lose sight of the importance of the physical.What’s a trend you are so over?
Trying to go viral. Everything feels like that one episode of Looney Tunes where Daffy Duck can only do the trick once. You’re struggling to be a part of the algorithm! It’s a soylent green functionality we’re all part of. It’s complicated to navigate, in many respects, because you start to realize your emotions are tied to the importance of the thing. It’s a lot to juggle. But also, in the same breath: I’m always looking for funny content. We’re depressionmaxxing! [LAUGHS] They keep recalling everything! I’m just going to start eating gravel. I watch pigeons do it everyday and they look great. Want that hot summer body? Eat sand and cinderblock.Who and what represents R&B now?
The first person that comes to mind — I love watching her function and flow — is Willow. I love her to death. I love her music. I love how she’s getting to be free and show up. I love watching her, in many respects, on the frontier of creating exactly what she feels in her mind. I love watching Willow do her thing. I really enjoy artists getting to do exactly what they want to do. That goes in both directions, because it’s not that it’s somebody new as compared to somebody that’s just getting a chance to do and say exactly what they mean to do and say. Another person is Erykah Badu and The Alchemist. This new album for me, for everybody, is one of those moments where it reminds you that this is how you do this. I’ve been recently watching The Weeknd out here doing his thing. I love to see it. He invited the woman who sang the Evangelion theme song on stage. He’s full blown out here. He’s just unabashedly showing exactly what it is for him, and the music and how these things feed and change, how each one informs the other. There’s so many. The line between said artist and and the chances they get to show up with stuff: I’m excited, across the board, to hear these moments. We kind of just shat on the viral thing, but sometimes the music gets a chance to thrive in these things. It’s those little moments that I love that happen, for sure, from Durand Bernarr to Steve Lacy to Willow to Erykah: these are people I feel that I get a chance to enjoy who they are, and I think that’s more the thing. I’m really excited about the in betweens and people being able to show up.How would you describe the culture of love now?
It’s one of those moments where I feel like the world hates [men] right now, as said man. [LAUGHS] You know what you’re supposed to do: go jump off a cliff somewhere! That’s what it feels sometimes like. But the reality, in many respects, is the idea of love and the pain and the joy of it: it will always be of the nature of this. Better to have loved and lost than never loved before — or: all is fair in love and war. These things — in the places that they meet you, the revolutions that you experience them — you become wiser as you get older with it. At the same time: you’re dumb as an ox out the gate. You know everything and nothing as a functionality. It can be complicated, unless it’s easy. I’ve always had this saying about love: it’s easy, but it’s the hardest thing ever. Compare it to working out: “You want to get in shape? Just work out.” You didn’t just tell somebody to work out! Love has a similar ring to me, emotionally, where it’s easy when it’s easy — but when it’s complicated? It is extremely complicated. All these healed versions of ourselves that we’re all searching for…it’s toxic to be healed. I’m joking, but you know what I mean: it’s the healthy balance of the pain and the happiness. That’s the importance of it. Understanding your role in that is a thing. But…everybody keeps getting caught cheating! I would hope that, going forward, we’ll be able to do better about seeing each other emotionally. A lot of the time, with the men in my life, as the relationships can be complicated, I try to remind them that they’re loved — but I also still remind them that they’re ugly. “You know you’re ugly, right?”: you always tell your friends that. But, at the same time: I got you a gift. I got you something. You’re still ugly — but I got you something.
Follow Thundercat on Instagram and explore his music on Bandcamp. Don’t miss his Distracted AF tour, which just kicked off and continues through December.
“fake and gay”
“there were signs”
“hold back her smile”
“only a DL person”
“I have exclusive photos”
“never make me hate her”
“She was soft launching”
A highlight of the week were the jokes made about (rumors) that conservative firebrand Candace Owens is a lesbian. She has denied the allegations.
“learning about the KGB from Adela”
“Being dumb? To not have to be aware?”
Two things unrelated but in conversation, even if the first is certainly from a child.
“they all grown up”
Circling back on the BBC Dad as the BBC Kids are now…older!!!! Wildest part? The original video is from 2017 but, in my mind, it happened firmly during Covid 🫠
“she clicked at it”
Martha Stewart certainly has an interesting way with kids.
“stay informed”
“Every legacy media company”
Two TikToks that sum up our evil powered now.
“8 billion of us”
“the earth is a resort”
“get richer off of your child”
These are more interesting than funny, but they capture big eat the rich feelings, which build on the very funny eat the rich memes. I am not a don’t-have-kids person, but logging this as it’s context for a vibe many of us feel.
“9th grade TikTok”
To quote a quote, this is “a whole new kind of politics.” But if this is how the American Gen Z revolution starts? I will kick their asses myself.
“retirement is calling”
A reminder of how AI has flattened so many modern forms to the point that entire ouvres are now stained by such AI affects. It reminds how all the AI Pixar ads are made to sound like Billie Eilish songs!
“Mama has concerns”
“take your time”
“psalms 23”
“he anointeth my head”
As a long time shully, gully, and mercy stan, I’m very happy the video is getting its moment. And I dee well!
“no one knows who you are”
This guy is about to have a big moment, all because he plays characters in the wild. Start the countdown clock for him to be an Abbott Elementary character.
“If Jesus Christ were a furry”
“Jesus already is a fursona”
This week’s deep philosophical question: if Jesus was a furry, what would his fursona be? I agree with the second item, that his human form is the furry.
And, finally, a typical situation to be for persons named Kyle.
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Still can recall that “Thundercat threw a listening party at CAT cafe” early this year. Funmaxxing in the physical world.
“Send me your YOUNG” hahaha.
Also I saw Digger on Friday and it was fantastic. Not perfect but because of the too-close-to-reality fucked up world it portrays it’s getting way worse critic reviews than it deserves.