rip diversity 🪦🌹😭

Examining how and why the landscape of diversity is caving in while musing on the little good things.

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Rebranding Trump: RNC Takeaways
“Trump is also very old”
J.D. Vance Left His Venmo Public
"When I say it people think I’m being an asshole."
Divorced Men for Trump
RFK Jr. Campaign Leaks Trump Call 
Big week for Republicans. The last story I felt went very under the radar and this Tweet captures the divorced men story.

Trump Pledges He Won't Ban TikTok
The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reports
Vance, Musk, Thiel, Silicon Valley's Embrace MAGA
"radicalized by the platforms that they themselves run"
Just some tech news related to the Trump campaign. I would do anything to publicly spit on Peter Thiel. Deport him!

Days after assassination, Trump shooter enigma
I am very tempted by the conspiracy talk — But someone did fucking die, no matter how much of a dickhole he was. — but it’s remarkable that there’s still “nothing on” this person.

2/3rds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw
"@AOC just did a nearly hour long live"
And, on the left, all this is going down. The AOC live is one of the more important takes on the matter. I watched the whole thing, which offers a complicated yet refreshing take on what’s happening with the Democrats behind closed doors. It’s all…not easy, but I do believe Biden is gonna go bye bye given the Covid thing, age, and increasing party pressure. Whether that is a good or bad thing is for us to find out. Either way: a plus is that Trump doesn’t have a good nickname for Kamala.

France’s leftist alliance suspends negotiations
Well, it was fun while it lasted! Anyway, here’s Paris Mayor Anna Hidalgo swimming in the Seine to cleanse your palate of liberal fantasies.

ICJ Confirms What Palestinians Have Been Saying
Big week in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as the UN essentially confirmed that, yes, this is an apartheid state.

Bangladesh Deploys Force to Quell Students
This is becoming a bigger and bigger story, as students fight for more job prospects and the government tamps down hard. This is a quick video explainer.

South Korea's confirms state benefits for gay couples
This is a big deal!!

CA's ban on LGBTQ parental notification policies
This is “why” Elon Musk is moving to Texas. Speaking of, look at that shit stain in a cowboy hat.

'Largest IT outage in history' leaves world reeling
So it was impossible to ignore this, and was likely why a security alarm outside my apartment was going off all day. It was blue insanity.

6 CO workers contracted bird flu
“The most human cases in a state.” Alright!

'Very high' COVID in 7 states
You know this but this shit is everywhere. Not just these seven states, as it is running through the EU too. Going to make for an interesting Olympics! Which is a wild statement to say in 2024.

A few years from now, we will remember the 2010s and early 2020s as the diversity heyday, a time when people were thinking plurally, doing the work to undo biases, trying to figure out ways to bring more in versus building walls at the gates. While imperfect and hard to see while in it, the Obama-ish times through at least 2023 were marked by efforts to apply justice to the capitalist system, to benefit persons of racial, gender, sexual, ability, economic, and more differences. It was a wide-eyed time, where people listened, where there was a hunger for change.

We all know what came next: the slow dissolution of the future that Sesame Street promised, all conducted publicly and privately via small soft power pickaxes that the right used to hollow out laws and eat away at the minds of — say — older, white, male, etc. executive types who didn’t want to face threats of power from the bottom. Keep the people on the bottom pregnant and living paycheck to paycheck! Kick the non-normatives out of here! That is the storm cloud that hit what was becoming the “mainstreaming” of diversity, smuggled in by unenlightened “luminaries,” the stupid man’s “thinking” man, persons like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, etc. Thus, the fall of diversity as we know it, via dissolving affirmative action and reframing “DEI” as discrimination.

This is — and has been — happening in small and big ways, in ways that are related but also removed from the subject: we’re within a tempest of competing forces that are washing away difference. Obviously actual DEI roles and hires of difference are falling hard, as the target is on the back of entire departments all the way up to Harvard’s Claudine Gay. You know this. The not-so-obvious examples are things like Black-owned businesses having greater difficulties thriving, as they close down and face financial hardships due to lack of support, as the larger world is squeezed of power and income. (For context: Black owned businesses are the smallest share of all businesses owned in the States, with 2.7% of all businesses being Black-owned while the Black population makes up 14.4% of the total population.) Something else, which is obvious and not, weird and not, related and not, is the disappearance of the plus-sized model: for months and months, weeks and weeks, people have been sounding alarms that physical diversity on runways is disappearing, as priorities and ideologies shift and tools like Ozempic emerge, creating a did-or-didn’t they culture of thinning, which implicates Barbie Ferreira, Ice Spice, Lana Del Rey, Guy Fieri, Dave Bautista, random sitcom dudes, and many more. Sustainable fashion brands — which are working to undo overconsumption, prioritize workers and the environment, while creating more just practices — are closing and closing and closing, playing into a larger trend of more thoughtful, more sustainable brands dying in the name of change, as the ever-sharpening gears of The Machine™ swallows them too.

These things are all connected — DEI death, the loss of Black-owned businesses, the disappearance of the plus-sized model, the closing of sustainable brands — because they have to do with doing things differently. (And, surprisingly or not, all of these examples relate to more minority persons involved. Hmm.) The non-normative is never an easy road to take as it represents change and we — creatures of habit, of comfort — are wired to resist even the tiniest peas placed under our seats. This is upsetting for obvious reasons but it’s also trickling down elsewhere: the chronic unemployment trend. For the second year, layoff stories bubble (This week alone Warner Bros. Discover laid off a thousand people.) which do not account for the smaller businesses and workers who are taken down when big business “faces tough times.” Obviously unemployment is up (despite inflation “cooling”) which is best represented by the the months and months long unemployed social poster (and recently not-unemployed social poster), the surest sign of these bigger trends if there ever was one. Naturally this is set against a concerning job searching landscape.

Blame AI, blame Joe Biden, blame whoever you want but know that this is an organized effort at the top to rattle branches and eliminate excess apples while taking an ax to the whole tree at the same time. All this as a new narrative is laid out, one born of the American lie that diversity sought to undo: being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Ask JD Vance, the new-old-new poster child for climbing ladders of (midwestern and “lower” class) difference — only to pull up the ladder behind him (which may or may not be the fault of those who put the ladder out to begin with). Who is surprised? History repeats itself and rhymes, which is why we know where all this goes, should we allow the story to write itself.

Updates On-Location, Stage-Based Productions
YouTube, TikTok Eroding Viewing Time
Two follow-ups from June’s story on the state of the film industry, which reveals…things ain’t great!

Quirky, edgy popcorn buckets now part of moviegoing
"A new ‘ALIEN: ROMULUS’ popcorn bucket"
See above, but these two things are directly related. What a shitty, landfillcore trend.

What Makes a Healthy Pooping Routine
I will always read a shit story and this one is interesting because…constipation may be an indicator of oncoming Parkinson’s and chronic kidney disease??

How Sleep Became the Next Big Trend
The economy of sleep is such a sham and really captures how capitalism twists the brain up, forcing you to buy your way to normalcy (even if you’re designed to fail). Related: the “stiff gum” maybe trend.

EssilorLuxottica to Buy Supreme for $1.5B
There’s probably a smarter, more knowledgeable take on this elsewhere but I feel like this is…such a waste? The Supreme bubble has long popped, considering it sold for $2B four years ago.

"Writing headlines is tricky."
“very successful copywriter”
What the f is up with copywriting charlatans? As someone who “works” in copywriting, being a copywriter is painful work, isn’t lucrative, is undervalued, and is an AI target. Who eats up this content? Non-creatives who long to be creative? Real loser shit that keeps spreading.

Ingrid Andress performs National Anthem
"I'm not gonna bullshit y'all"
In case you missed it, the best National Anthem performance since jazzy Fergie dropped — and is what we deserve. It’s remarkable in that it almost sounds like she’s singing it backwards.

We interviewed Poo Crave
Very important story for online people.

“EMERGENCY BUDOTS”
A must-watch breakdown of Budots, a Filipino meme-club genre which are sneaking their way to TikTok dominance.

slob air
This song is like if William Basinski made a My Bloody Valentine song. Obsessed.

Madonna - Vogue (​!​GOR Edit)
Another ten minute track that is the midpoint highlight of the incredible Summer Sound mix by Chucheewa, which is where I discovered it.

let's talk about THE KIDS 👧🏾🧒🏼👦🏿👶🏽
The Millennial Effect
Paid subscribers got a one-two punch this week: a conversation with the

Coco Mocoe

about generations. A chat about Gen A is on my site and a chat about Millennials and Gen Z (along with…everyone else) is on her site. They were fun to do! And I liked how I looked in the (video) podcast!!

“The astrology is doing exactly what it said it would do,” an astrologer shared on TikTok this week. This of course alludes to how astrologers have been saying that July, that this time of the year, was going to have an element of chaos. Were these the butterfly wings whose flaps enabled the recent discomfort in politics? Is this why workers rejoiced and travelers cried, glowering toward blue screens just days ago? Is this the rain that will bring greener fields? That sounds nice.

“We have shifted into a more positive timeline,” a person on TikTok said, becoming part of a growing chorus of people speaking about divine timing. In another corner, a new affirmation dropped via Love Island: “Suck my dick. Whatever you heard about me, times it by a million and, if you think it’s bad, make it worse.” Run clubs, entrepreneurial men, questions about having kids: on the way out because they’re annoying, insufferable hustle. Divide it by a million. Make it better. These are posi times.

“I woke this morning in absolute disbelief that this is my life,” a person confessed on TikTok from their car, wearing their USPS uniform. They stare off, juggling empty hands, eyes glazed. “I always thought I’d be some sort of artist.” Drag star Trixie Mattel has been alluding to taking a three month sabbatical. This week, she finally kicked off her time away with a near twenty minute announcement video. “All my wildest dreams came true,” she said. “It was the pay checks I always wanted, doing my dream job, and I just — over time — squeezed out my real life so fiercely, where all I was doing was this…It’s not so fierce to work yourself to death.”

“If you're not really enjoying the doing because you’re so focused on the becoming and achieving and arriving at this future point,” German educator Eckhart Tolle explained, “then the enjoyment of the doing is so greatly diminished that it disappears completely.” “It’s like trying to convince your doctor that you have a tumor based on nothing except you kind of feel like you probably have one,” the performer Cole Escola said of the creative process. “Then you meet people who are not doctors and they are convinced. Yes, that is a tumor. And, in fact, we also think we have tumors.”

Every few weeks, a story or a post gets attention for being about people who discovered what humans discover every twenty years or so: living together with others is a key to happiness. A mini-hood with 20+ people, queer friends with a property in France, Brooklyn roommates who fuse townhouses or buy a communal living space or take on 23 housemates or start a polycule: more people, more happiness. Financially complicated, emotionally volatile, constant negotiations: all of that, sure — but happiness? Even if momentary, this is what goes unsaid in these stories as dreams are fulfilled, as imagined futures become the lived present. Thoughts are made manifest, a warm cave to den in versus the quick crossing of a finish line. Keep the good times going.

Maybe this is just called “being in your thirties” or “adulting” or “stability.” These are the good-time-bad-times, where the world may rot but you find yourself flying. “Disillusionment,” I said a few weeks back, which is true but also leaves something out. This thing that unites generations and demographics, capturing the point where the dust of life settles, where you shift from wet clay to greenware, approaching a final form that you may never fully comprehend as you’re too busy doing what we all have been doing: living life. If you stop and look, there are always roses within reach.

“community note is crazy”
“NYT needs a Joever needle”
“dem lmao”
“watching the news”
“Ugandan Kids re-enact”
“regretfully they cooked”
“real democrat campaign”
“not prepared for what happened”
“Y’all see the common factor?”
“Tuna Salad”
“this exchange”
Best politics (“politics”) posts of the week.

"KAMALA LAUGHING SONGS"
Look: this is a really weak meme but I’m sharing it as it was a major moment of the week and captures how the coconut pills are creating a movement out of giggles. I feel like this is…unprecedented?

"what their song of the summer is"
I don’t think any readers think this but, if you ever thought Republicans were “cool,” let this be your anti-boner pill.

"Wearing green is gay culture"
Yes, this is true. And people wonder why chartreuse has been my color for years!

“me coming to terms with the context”
Best post by a celebrity in a very long time.

"the guy who does bowling alleys"
“British anti-smoking ads”
Just some shitty animations that I liked this week.

“not up to date on trends”
“I’m an open book”
Comment “ME TOO.” if these are you too, because they’re me.

“Online boys friend group”
This is true. It’s the kid of the married friend for me, which is maybe most accurate.

“It rhymes with uncle”
This is me, if I were an uncle. (I am an uncle.) (I'm also this uncle.)

“that one soldier”
The world needs an In The Army Now remake now more than ever.

And, finally, a biblically accurate representation of who I am.

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