we gotta STOP the copy cats 🙀
Unpacking hollowed expressions of creativity and why Pride never really popped for me.
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China, Britain Face an Exodus of Millionaires
So where are the super rich moving? To the UAE—and the states. They’re leaving China and Europe too.
US economy will support global growth
…and this is probably why the rich are going to the states. Home prices are high, but things “are” good.
Biden to announce protections for undocumented
Happy early Hispanic heritage month! Unless you’re on the border!
"No to dictators, no to Trump" billboard in Miami
“They should take it down.”
The jokes write themselves.
Trump Outraises Biden
Is it really Joever? I’m so scared of next week’s debate, as it will be another win for Trump’s entertainment politic.
Amy Coney Barrett poised to split Court
A story of the week, as ACB is breaking from the originalism that defines the conservative Justices. Not that she’s going to “become liberal” but this signals a more modern approach to the job.
Philip Morris suspends sales on Zyn
US sues Photoshop maker Adobe
Two major legal stories.
Greece introduces six-day work week
This embodies two things: what happens when overtourism and too-much-travel goes too far — and what happens when conservatism takes the reins. We’re already seeing it in the states with ever laxing child labor laws.
Namibia: Gay sex laws ruled unconstitutional
Really big deal!!
Energy emissions hit record high
Nearly 100 Million Under Temperature Advisories
Shot, chaser.
Over 1,000 Pilgrims Died
Hajj heatwave deaths underscore climate threats
Related to the above. Context: over a million people attended and not all these deaths are from the heat (though many are). If you’re curious about the conditions and environment, read the “Panic” chapter in Amanda Ripley’s brilliant The Unthinkable.
"Just Stop Oil vandalize Taylor Swift’s jet."
Victory without damage
"Just Stop Oil will claim unparalleled impact."
I fully support JSO’s antics. That said: targeting Taylor is a good move while Stonehenge is optically questionable as far as winning over the divided public. We don’t have time for division on climate!
From 2015 to 2022, the designer Alessandro Michele led Gucci through a time-bending, decoratively obsessed corridor of modern fashion. He fancied laces with glitter, sheers with animal print, tweeds with florals — and everything in and around the space of design collision. It was interesting! His tenure has come to define the 2010s stylistically, as a counterpoint to Demna’s bleak and political Balenciaga. Michele was about fun! Whimsy! Romance! The old fashioned dream of fashion, as seen through the lens of a child in the 1970s. “I often found his collections overwrought and self-indulgent; unedited, like rambling monologues,” Vanessa Friedman observed in the Times. “He had a point of view, and it changed not just how people dressed but the whole trajectory of fashion. That’s a rare achievement.”
If you weren’t privy to this context, that Michele had departed Gucci, you’d find his new collection as more of the same fun. But, if you squint, you’d spot the difference: his overwhelming 171 new looks, all dropped by surprise, are his first outing as the designer for Valentino. The looks all have his staples but little else as far as imagination, save for some playing with the brand’s logo. His brand of whimsy and romance are there. But Valentino himself? Spirited away, saged out in a similar way that Hedi Slimane did to Yves Saint Laurent. Yes, this was a resort collection — A notably concerning, commercialized off-season! — but this was the warning shot of what’s to come, meaning none of the glamor and intrigue and color that marked Valentino will be sticking around, which Pierpaolo Piccioli did such a fantastic job of evolving toward modernity. Remember Barbie pink? Pierpaolo reinvented it through the brand’s lens. The closest thing Michele offered with this collection were desaturated pinks and purples via ruffled ginghams, which you could have gotten versions of from Gucci around 2022.
I understand it is, say, simplistic to compare Michele’s Gucci work to Valentino work, to think they are “the same.” However, these hairlines get at a larger issue in fashion that is reflected in so much of culture: mirroring as a means of capturing. Can’t beat them? Join them! Can’t join them? Buy them out! Beg, borrow, steal. Trompe l'oeil until you make it! Such is the feeling, as Valentino became Gucci and Gucci became Prada while Prada became Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe while Loewe became Caravaggio who became Saint Laurent. Sure, there is “fun” being had, but these are also the symptoms of clout chasing and celebrified branding clouding artistry. This is the opposite of creative ego death: it is the greatest boil upon the face of capitalist expressionism. Just ask Louis Vuitton.
You get the same feeling with “Netflix House.” Is this not reinventing the movie theater-cum-mall? You get this feeling with the reappearance of the silver monoliths. Is this not what we did in 2020? You get the same feeling with Katy Perry’s comeback. Is this not a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign song? That one brave dog TikTok song? Arca, along with Hannah Diamond and Charli? Even this week’s breakthrough of the “AI time travelers” (and other Luma creations) are guilty of this, which are stuck in the mud of iteration. Maybe it’s a good thing that the ahistorical trend mining of the “cores” is fading away as everything else spins onward in repetition.
This might just be the private equification of culture, the intellectual and creative equivalents of short-term profit seeking business vampiricism, as played out as things you’ve seen before, as scooping up one idea and placing it elsewhere as if you haven’t seen it before. It’s the Subway, Arby’s, and Chick-Fil-A sauces in grocery stores, just feet away from the Subway, Arby’s, and Chick-Fil-A franchise locations. Not quite a sequel but not not a sequel. The philosophy is to “stalk and gut” businesses and healthy ideas, as Mother Jones explained in 2022. It’s leeching. It’s dopplegängers. Liminal space as expression! Steal one soul to sell another, projecting scarcity, novelty, anything you can do to keep eyes glazed and heads empty.
The Last Thing My Mother Wanted
This Cut essay seemed to fly under the radar in May but is a really interesting read about assisted suicide and fucked up parents. This definitely fits into the larger mood board of books and texts coming out this year about children working through their parent’s mental health issues.
“omg”
A$AP Rocky is daddy in a new Bottega Veneta campaign
"they got Carrie Mae Weems"
This was my favorite fashion story of the week, which is major but also plays into the problem above. Cool! But we’ve been here before, sadly.
OpenAI CTO: AI Could Kill Some Creative Jobs
Completely cooked.
Elon Wants YOU to Have More Babies
There’s a larger story about techno-capitalism, classism, and xenophobia to be had here, which is to say: this is of-a-kind of belief systems that are in vogue. You can’t sell more shit — and keep poor people poor — if you ain’t having babies! This also sparked the “outbreed the left” convo/meme. (The story’s Fromm Studio illustrations are great too.)
Former Neuralink Staffer Sues
Why? Because she was scratched by a monkey that had herpes while on the job — and she was fired after telling them she was pregnant. Divest from Elon Musk! He sucks!
Disney employees sue company
See above. A bit inside LA baseball but, pre-2020, there was a big threat from Disney to employees in California that they “had to move to Florida.” Some moved, DeSantis happened, and now employees are suing because they never needed to go. Always put you ahead of the job!!
Newly Confirmed Jumping Leeches
Click for the gifs.
What’s the Best City for New College Graduates?
My apologies to the Augusta, GA hive who is following this newsletter.
"her brain must truly be a fucking prison"
"Ozempic is hitting the 0 viewers sitcoms."
These two are and are not related, but beauty is in a very strange state. The first item, about Kim Kardashian, is a window into the modern soul. From veneer techs to hyper-filling, there is a desperate seeking of beauty less to be beautiful and more to keep power, as
The Making Of A Dance Anthem
You can fight me but “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” by Crystal Waters is one of the best dance songs of all time. This little documentary about the history behind the song is fascinating.
Cash Grab Carter
Related to the above essay! In the grand scheme of capitalist popstars, Beyoncé is second place for me, behind Taylor Swift and in front of Rihanna: they’re all bad. This Tee Noir video essay really captured this.
Cryptic video teases posthumous SOPHIE project
Regardless, we’ll find out tomorrow. If this is some AI project, I will riot.
My father was in the military for twenty years. He’s the type who bows his head to any American flag. He stands and salutes any time he hears the “National Anthem.” He listens to patriotic marches for fun. I have seen him wipe away tears, watching fireworks, as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The U.S.A.” plays. He has had multiple American flags stickered to cars he’s owned, alongside the Irish flag and the Puerto Rican flag and the thin blue line. He does not have a Pride flag.
“You should charge a seasonal fee,” he told me a few years ago, as I lamented the onslaught of work I had to do for various publications related to Pride. It was a good time for work, I said. It was like this every year and I was glad to help, to share. “Don’t you get bored?” he asked me last time I saw him in person, enquiring about my fiction, about the subjects always being in some way queer. I guess, I said, but I also think it’s important to reach people who are like me. “Isn’t that limiting?” I write for them but I also write for everyone, I said. His was a fishing for a “gotcha,” or just a jaded curiosity: neither went satisfied. Days later, after he flew home, I realized I should have asked him if he ever got bored of being a veteran. Is it not the same?
I lived eighteen years as a military child before detaching myself as an accessory to the government. I’ve never been to a Pride parade but I did spend years of my childhood standing, hand over heart, watching soldiers march past, movements synched, uniforms pressed into an unending symmetry, sameness. My father was always involved, organizing, as a part of his many battalions. He would be there with his bosses, one of whom was a nine foot tall lesbian, the toughest brick in the yard. It was the mid-nineties and she lived with her partner outside of the military installation, which was assumed to be a matter of economics considering the majority of other families lived on the installation crowded in government housing. Everyone knew she was “that” — but she never talked about “that.” Her “friend” was never seen outside of their house. They were never at any of the military gatherings, never made an appearance at our many family potlucks. There were a handful of other queer persons we met during this time of active military service. Each one was the same: you “knew” who they were but they always lived far away, they always were by themself in mixed company. They blended in. They marched along.
So much of life now for the underserved and underrepresented is to vocalize, to be present, to show up as your “full self” so that you can initiate change. You wave a flag, you wear your colors, you march before each other. This is crucially important, but this is also the same expression of identity I grew up in, multiplied by Catholicism, by being Puerto Rican. Wear the uniform. Carry the cross. Eat the rice. Dance the meringue. People need to be categorized. We need to be categorized. How else will the world know who we are?
I have been out for seventeen seasons of Pride, each stacked at my feet as social calendars, branded events, jobs and gigs and work crafting an “approach” for someone. How can this retail store be gayer? Should this television channel’s handle post a rainbow? Can we play a Pride-themed game with this celebrity? What different type of person can this tech brand talk about? I have piles of content I made to help brands “show up and show out” over the years, none of which is ever that different, all of which is pitched to a non-queer person who always wants something they “haven’t seen before.” It can never be inappropriate. It can never be “too gay.” It must feel the same but always different, in a deck, prepped for executive consumption. Maybe Clarabelle the cow in a rainbow dress? Maybe Stitch leathered up, dancing to Troye Sivan’s “Rush”? Maybe my hands, which can only bleed one color of the rainbow?
Would the same sex partners of the people my dad worked with have attended military Pride festivities? Is it even Pride without Lockheed Martin? I’ve been to Stonewall — but would I find it more interesting now that it’s taken over by park rangers? I look at different Pride memes and wonder what it means to age in queer time: does time really have a different meaning for us? Do we truly get to experience different lifetimes because of our queer lifetimes? Or is queer life just a series of small wheels, reach rolling back to the rainbow center, a place where change kinda sorta does and doesn’t happen, so long as you’re willing to be sanitized long enough to make a commercial about it.
“I woke up to this”
“the integrity of the boom meter”
"Bartender: sorry buddy you’re cut off"
“baby you’re a”
The meme of the week was the BOOM meter, despite it’s 9/11 jokes. I’m also obsessed with The Rizzler.
"it's so obvious!"
The conclusion to the Kate Middleton saga is exactly and not at all what you were expecting.
“everyone’s running with this tweet”
“conservative media literacy”
“open the schools”
This week’s reports from the catacombs of the brain dead.
“Happy Juneteenth”
Favorite Juneteenth post.
“What did I do?”
Me @ capitalism (Speaking of babies, this is a post of the year.)
“New Jersey is so beautiful”
A favorite poem.
“Because he’s dead”
Another great poem!
"me ESPRESSO💜"
A new “donatella VERSACE 💜” may have dropped.
“finally cut back on smoking”
Tweet of the week.
“never guess how this video ends”
Just when you think you know what’s going to happen, it doesn’t. Real talent here!
“please open the pic”
This alone is reason enough to keep AI. What do we call them? Knitties? Bnees?
“Forgot the stool softener”
You are legally obligated to watch the Boomer dad candy salad. What hell!
And, finally, what you can imagine me singing to you in this moment.
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