we aren't dumb...are we?? 😨

On these cruel dumb times and the need to unplug from the human accessories of the rich.

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2,600 Federal Programs Under Scrutiny
About the Trump funding freeze
Trump rescinds memo freezing federal money
This idiot is going to force a government shutdown. Obviously this is all DOGE reset vibes, etc. But! As AOC (among others) noted, this is why complaining, being active, and pressing politicians actually works. As for Elon: that Nazi saw Tesla profits slide by 70%, which means little as he’s the richest — and is coming for Social Security. In other news, Trump wants an Iron Dome, is turning schools into indoctrination sites, disallowed trans kids from being trans kids, and pushed for concentration camps. Woo wee.

What New Post-MAGA Supporters Look Like
(NOTE: Don’t click yet, as to not cross the New York picket line. Follow here for updates.) This story went wild, as it’s a nauseating look at current young, NYC-based, Zara wearing, non-serving Trump supporters. The photos are great.

How Europe Swung to the Right
Italy Shipping Migrants to Albania
President of Vox will attend Trump's inauguration
Musk: criticism for encouraging move beyond 'guilt'
“I always think about immigrating”
Japan to loosen rules on rice reserves
The states are in a bad place — but this badness is all over. I know I say this again and again but, while the “grass is greener,” there are Trumps everywhere if you know how to look — and they’re gaining traction for the same reasons: poverty and immigration. This is why Musk is meddling anywhere there’s an election, why Nazi salutes are becoming trendy: everyone, everywhere, being broke is “solved” by relentless pursuits of cash which demagogues offering quick “ways out” of. This is all a Mr. Beast-style political game. A toxic soup to wade in!

What we know about the plane collision
Trump criticized DEI, the FAA's diversity policies
“If no Black people were involved”
“Truly despicable”
The lives lost in the D.C. plane
The plane collision is shocking and sad, made worse by the racist DEI boogieman-ing happening. If anyone in your world uses “DEI,” they’ve outed themself.

DeepSeek: The Chinese AI app that has the world talking
AI-Fueled Stock Rally Dealt $1 Trillion Blow
"how these two models perform"
"shattered the confidence of Silicon Valley"
…and the new Cold War took a turn! This seems to be repeating history. Remember that Humane AI pin? Rabbit? All thing that got AI buzz just to flop as it’s neither novel nor new, as China forces Silicon Valley to shit its pants. Metaverse 2.0?

Asteroid has tiny chance of hitting Earth in 2032
Sure. Why not.

These are cruel, dumb times. The cruelty is obvious — the inequality, the violence, the destruction of identities and environments — but the dumbness is what we may miss as those at the top do stupid things because they consider us to be stupider. Are they right? Well, if we constantly participate in said stupidity, yes: they may be right, as the self-talk of culture is that we are stupid which in turn allows others to treat us — as individuals and a society — as if we really are stupid. That has to stop! Some examples that came to mind this week —

• China is a dominating cultural, economic, technologic force — and we’re supposed to pretend that that isn’t the case. The AI wars started this week as Deepseek usurped (and potentially used) OpenAI, undoing billions of dollars in supposed American tech investment: a baller assertion of dominance. The government (and Ai Wei Wei) may scream “CENSORSHIP!!" which: duh — but don’t we have that from American tech too? Cool story bro. Plus, SHEIN and Temu and electric cars and, yeah, maybe Red Note but definitely Chinese memes: as the designer Hasan Rahim said, China is so locked in and yet those upstairs maintain that we’re supposed to continue digging our heads in the sand as the race for the best plagiarism app continues domestically.

• AI being sold to us in the name of “efficiency” despite increasingly shoddy evidence of its helpfulness. See above. But: the slopification of culture is here, as everyone from your mom to Donald Trump fall for and propel it. It’s also making industries like HR a nightmare, is fucking around with academic papers, and is generally taking jobs: it’s supposed to make human life better but clearly isn’t, as best exemplified by AI users giving up their critical thinking skills. What’s worse, in both expression and at-work, is we’re losing necessary human imperfection. “The promises we’ve been hearing about efficiency and the push for efficiency [are] so dubious,” journalist Jacob Ward explained, connecting “efficiency” in the government to the mid-air collision and air traffic personnel gaps. “I want to believe that we can be efficient and effective with technology, but I think we’re in a moment right now where there’s a willful misdirection and casual destruction going on.”

• The fast fashion and luxury fashion spaces are increasingly the same — and we’re supposed to believe that the latter is “better,” deserving of its price point. The fast fashion space and the luxury fashion spaces have long crept toward merger: fast fashion creates unfathomable waste while luxury fashion wastes its own products due to “trade secrets”; fast fashion abuses and uses questionable labor practices while luxury fashion takes advantage of vulnerable workers. It’s also quite obvious that the quality of these low and high goods aren’t far off. Moreover, these mega-brands at opposite ends of the spectrum are chasing each other’s work: a Prada Ugg dupe? MiuMiu fleece in the style of Old Navy performance fleece? A mini bubble skirt from Dior? These industries are colliding, showing that both are harmful, eating each other’s scraps as they eat us. No wonder Stella McCartney wants out of the game. All this, too, as both markets crib vintage looks that already exist and cost so much less: buying from either sector is a waste.

• Trump support enabling straightforward xenophobia, racism, and supremacy as masked by terms like “DEI,” all of which is deeply cruel — and any call out of this is seen as “dramatic.” The breakout New York story about “young” MAGA people paraded around supremely mean behavior without impunity, people who intend on upholding old world ideas (Aesthetics!) by unchecked supremacist expressions (Anti-body positivity! R-word use! “My heart goes out to you”! “Make America Blonde Again”!). “You want me to go swimming?” Trump asked regarding his not visiting the site of the collision victims due to his cutting “efficiencies.” “We talk about the things people are interested in,” Dr. Phil said of filming ICE deportations live. The White House tagged Selena Gomez in a video about murders “by illegal aliens.” Politicians calling Black persons “blacks.” Government websites deleting pages about HIV, gender violence, LGBTQ+ youth, climate change, and more. RFK Jr. saying Black persons shouldn’t get vaccines! Food prices and deportations enabling forced (slave) labor via prisoners! Elon’s pro-border supremacist takes! All tried to pull over our head as “nothing,” as masks come off in the name of “normalcy.”

We can go on and on — Tuberculosis outbreaks! Bird flu and egg prices! Rolling back formerly progressive stances! The poor idolizing billionaires! Positioning inflation, higher prices, and impending tariffs as an act of patriotism! FAFO and the cruelty of FAFO! Indonesia tugging out of the Paris Agreement! — but they emphasize the deeply “You don’t think so I treat you like you don’t think.” ways of the world now. This isn’t learned helplessness or media illiteracy (Both real, etc.), but more the way of a bully holding your hand, to use it to punch your face. “Stop punching yourself,” they say, dealing bows by your hand: it’s the same thing, treating our questions with “Curious!” faux-intellectualism that co-opt identity and left-wing techniques, bludgeoning us with the debris of the “woke” movement.

Yes, of course, stop shopping and strike and boycott: participate in radical acts of defiance — but also don’t put up with the shit. Don’t let people treat you like you’re stupid: we know better than this. The reason why billionaires and far right politicians treat us as such is because they know how the pendulum has swung and they can squeeze the culture because few people quit Instagram or delete their Amazon accounts or stop shopping fast fashion: they can count on us to be dumb and our doing nothing proves their point. How quickly we’ve forgotten Luigi.

“Throughout our culture there are windows of culture when people are open,” RuPaul explained to Joan Rivers in 2013. “You really think it will close again?” Joan asked Ru. “Absolutely,” he said. “That’s the history of mankind.” Such is history: leaping from cruel, dumb time to cruel, dumb time. We’ll push for the window to open again.

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I interrupt the weekly Report™ to say: mark your calendars, Madrid!! As mentioned in my cute little long goals post, Trend Report™ events are in-the-works, the first “big” one being a meet-up in Madrid for the art fairs. If you’re in town March 6, in the early evening, I’d love to meet you <3 More details soon, etc.

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28 Days of Black History
I love Nicole Cardoza/Anti-Racism Daily’s work and this daily effort feels particularly necessary given our entering what may be one of the most disorienting and frustrating Februarys.

Louis Vuitton chief on F1 tie-up
See the above essay. Fewer things represent these times like moving from proper fashion to sports accessories. Being gay was fun — now it’s time to become a bro. (Speaking of: Arnault and LVMH simping for Trump is…a very bad sign.)

Unapologetically Iris
My aunt sent this to me and it is…a gem. So many coats! And so many good dog paintings!!

Karla Sofía Gascón’s Social Media Posts
So, the 2025 Oscar race — and Emilia Perez — continues to be a mess, after Karla’s ridiculous, racist, and more posts surfaced.

For Some, McDonald’s Is a Destination.
Did we just watch Pulp Fiction or something? If you want international kicks abroad, go to a supermarket and look at their weirdo products. Literally do anything else!!

Woman faces jail after videos of her FARTING
“first ever cyber-farting case”
I, for one, think you should be able to send your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend as many cyber-farts as you want. Is that too much to ask, TRUMP?

The early frontrunner for 2025’s best album is obviously ‎EUSEXUA, FKA Twigs’ 2020s answer to Ray of Light via Koreless multiplied by “the pussy.” It’s well known Twigs was inspired by dance music and Euro techno, using the album to express sexuality and how the body can be a tool to heal. It’s a mesmerizing merging of concept and sound, which Twigs is a master of: she is a concept queen. MAGDALENE? “cellophane”?? Hello??? ‎EUSEXUA continues this, the work of an artist who is locked in, committed, showing the world how artistry and pop sensibilities can be balanced.

But Twigs, after all, is human — and flawed: on the nearly skipless album, an irresistibly unskippable song has made itself deliciously skippable due to its politics. “Childlike Things,” a riff on a playground diddy about adult frivolity, is innocuous enough, a hard vogue beat lined with Japanese-inspired flutters that seem legitimized or landed by the featured artist’s “dun dun duns” and English-Japanese bridge. Who’s the guest? North West, Kim and Kanye’s daughter. What is the eleven year old rapping about? Praising Jesus, the one true God. Really: that’s what her Japanese rap is about, along with saying place names. It’s so, so, so extremely cringe.

The Jesus and Japanese part are bad, but we must have a serious talk about literal nepo babies, less as far as the concept of nepotism and the powerful enabling the powerful but more the lack of critical thinking and general simping for children when they produce shit like this — especially when many of these children are tethered to antithetical — if not completely, wrong — ideologies and expressions of power that further stratify society. It’s bad enough that Twigs has stamped ‎EUSEXUA with Kris Jenner’s production logo but it comes at a time when Kim wants to join the Trump family and Kanye is under the thumb of neo-Nazism. And yet, somehow, because Twigs is an artist and this is an extremely wealthy 11 year old, no critique can be given. Twigs knows that, as she plays it up on TikTok, enabling the song to pick up on the platform.

It reminds of when someone like Blue Ivy, Apple Paltrow, Lily-Rose Depp, Sunday Rose, Lila Moss and Kaia Gerber, and whoever else rich-and-a-(near)-kid does anything in public and gets critiqued, only to be told that they’re trying, that they’re still figuring it out (even if that’s actually not the case, as best exemplified by Brooklyn Beckham and Armie Hammer — and North West) (all of which does and doesn’t validate the sexism of the “nepo baby” title). But here’s the thing: is it not really fucking strange to have a parasocial relationship with a celebrity’s kid, to the point that we — as an audience, as the not-rich, as adults — cannot critique the merit of whatever product a public child figure puts out into the world? There’s a strange public ownership of these kids like North West that results in fans who have “watched them grow up” going to bat for them. Sorry: that’s really weird behavior. You don’t know this kid! And, yet, you probably wouldn’t stand up for your own niece or nephew, your own cousin or neighbor — and this rich stranger? That is very dumb behavior. Lest we begin to wade into the untouchable oddity that is MAGA’s love for Prince Barron Trump, not to mention Kai Trump, both of which are crossing over from far right to mainstream. These children are accessories to the empire, propaganda for something.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying fuck them kids but I’m going to say something controversial but brave: MichaelJordanFuckThemKids.jpg. If we must be subjected to their talents, said talents should be critiqued, should be called out, should be checked and placed into the context from which they came. Otherwise, we reinforce the empire we’re within — especially when their presence is a power grab to legitimize all parties who bought into the game.

“Incredible things are happening on fb”
“idolizing a billionaire is like”
“#darkwoke financial”
“bacteria does not exist”
“Poop Day Clock”
“Trump is 78”
“Gulf of”
”Bro you have to be in SF”
“closest to having a real superpower”
Lib posts for un-lib times.

"she looks like a scary dakota johnson"
I cannot stop thinking about this as the headline of Gaga’s new era. (Another thing: why is Ariana Grande serving Joan Didion? This begs the question then: who is her Eve Babitz?)

“New York’s carpet guys”
I’ve heard of these dudes but we need a documentary (or a John Wilson special) on these two.

“literally us in retirement”
"On Earth"
Just some very bad, no good, shots-fired-at-our-hearts posts about being a working adult.

“@the nine inch nails concert”
I’d like for this to become a dance trend.

“four tet”
As someone said in the comments, it’s a bit more Björk but you get the idea. Anyway, stream PC Music Meghan Trainor.

“I can’t.”
“why are you surprised”
“it’s giving”
Niche, incredible drama of the week: white Russian DJ who guys by “BLACKWOMAN” — and “djblackkkkwoman” on Instagram — got a lot of attention for obvious reasons. Maybe the Blessed Madonna can suggest some new names?

And, finally, a sneak peek at the new Saw movie.

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