how are *YOU* saving kids??
how are *YOU* saving kids??
Exploring the misdirected idea of children and an app that's the new Twitter.
How Young Adults Want Their Country To Engage
One of the most fascinating studies of the week.
Biden expected to OK Alaska oil project
Biden’s back on his dumbass bullshit.
These companies affected by Silicon Valley Bank crash
The Incredible Tantrum Venture Capitalists Threw
Arguably the story this week. Tech people continue to be dumb! But there are some solutions.
"Paris is littered with tons of uncollected garbage"
Garbage piles up as French strike nationwide
In case you missed it: Paris is messy now, because they don’t want to have to retire later. I respect their game!!
Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started Pandemic
Happy third year of Covid!! Spoiler: the animal isn’t pangolins. It’s raccoon dogs!!
An Update On Dianna's Health
Speaking of Covid, this video is over a week old but it is a must-watch, sharing the reality of long Covid.
California Bill Would Ban Tobacco Sales to All Born After 2006
This is from February and feels like it very much went under the radar!!
U.S. cities are fighting over keeping covid street closures
Close the streets! Close the streets! Close the streets!
Pentagon UFO chief says alien mothership in solar system
Well…there’s this! Also the illustration is so fucking ridiculous. Our tax dollars at work!!
Brown Widows Winning Fight for Your Attic and Garage
Last week it was orcas eating whale livers, this week it’s brown recluses eating black widows. Next, they all eat us!
New ocean may arise as Africa continues to split
This will take millions of years, yes, and I did learn this from a TikTok joke.
Children are becoming less literal and more symbolic. This is both obvious and not.
In the recent battle for and against queer rights, what’s at stake is the protection of children. The irony here – that, as The Righting noted out this week, GOP noisemakers like Ron DeSantis are hitching their wagons on the ideas of “parents’ rights” – is that the concept of the family and children are becoming abstract as birth rates drop, as more births happen outside of marriages, as families are smaller, as more adults live at home, as more children are raised without religion (while those who do practice religion are trying to lock their families in). No, families and children aren’t going to disappear, but this certainly looks like the construction of a house on sand, of reaching for the short-term instead of the long. As Joy Reid noted this week, the DeSantis agenda isn’t being bought-into by most Americans, let alone their children; thus, the GOP is abusing state governments to force values on children and the public, neither of whom want it. All this to mask their childish behavior. This year, as the 2024 election forms more fully, we’ll see just how well saving children pushes votes.
Happening in parallel in the fight-for-children is a deeply ironic forcing of children to grow up, adultifying at younger and younger ages. The most notable and egregious example of this is the new and deeply absurd dissolution of child labor laws: from Arkansas to Georgia, Iowa to Minnesota, Missouri to Ohio – all by the same anti-gay, anti-immigrant lawmakers – bills are being introduced to make it easier for children to join the work-force. This is likely due to “staffing shortages” (which, um, usually frequently based in seeking better rights for workers), which would mean child education would get more flimsy and faulty, while social media and the internet would educate (and exhaust) them instead. The soul of Gen A is already in jeopardy and, in many ways, they are going to be the most ruined of us all, with the deepest grudges against their parents and grandparents for all the harm they committed. The children lawmakers are seeking to protect are not even children.
So who are the children that should be saved? The adult-children, a population that is officially larger than parents. I’ve written about this in my own personal experience, but this is notable because so much of what is being “fought for” is a means to secure a decreasing population: there are simply less kids being born. This is a time of scrambled eggs, freaking-out because there isn’t a new replenishment of impressionable minds, as younger adults have been bought-out of both parenthood and homeownership. Tag on income going down as rent goes up, women being forced into mothering bondage, concepts of money becoming bastardized, and young people continuing to split-rent and you see that the other children aren’t being helped – and they will most definitely revolt with their votes and ideologies.
And how are these adult children? They are still very much children. I’ve noted this but, with things like Disney adults and indulging self-infantilization and disliking kids (and farting on them) and generally vibing, we don’t feel or look like or act like adults because we’re just not. And that’s okay!! In our generational therapy session, it would be revealed that we were largely robbed of teen years and young adulthoods – or helicopter parented to the point of being unable to grow up. For now, we ourselves – along with our spectators – cannot figure out what it means to reach middle age. As the thinkpieces are being written and written and written, the story will be that we adults who didn’t grow up were robbed of so much of a life, instead kicking off a redefinition of life. Soon, the GOP, et al, will realize they were hunting the wrong young people all along.
What does that mean of children? They’re everywhere and nowhere. Children are now conceptual, instead of factual.
Beloved and debated, French bulldog top US breed
MAJOR DOG NEWS!!!!!
High-Profile Art Couple Offers Worst Job Ever
”Tom Sachs is not a name everyone knows”
Tom Sachs Promised a Fun Cult
Tom Sachs is having a reckoning.
The F.B.I. Has an Art Crime Team. It’s Busy.
New covetable job for gay people just dropped.
Builders accidentally demolish latest Banksy
While I don’t think any artist deserves this, I have to laugh.
The Weird Beauty Of The Photos Our Kids Take Of Us
I love this story about the ugly photos kids take of their parents. Very cute!!
Everything Everywhere All at Once Most-Awarded Movie Ever
Everything About the Sliver of Australia in the Oscars Gift Bags
Ed Begley Jr. And Daughter Continue Tradition At Oscars 2023
“my beloved father and many other departed actors were left out”
"Ke Huy Quan was born in Vietnam"
"I hope she do it again"
“Her activia fart”
"This photo goes crazy."
“Academy Award goes to”
Your Oscars news roundup and sillies. (Also: not that Malala can’t have fun but…this was so awkward.)
Alison Hammond confirms she is Bake Off co-host
Bake Off is about to get much, much better. If you’re not familiar, Alison is an absolute ray of sunshine.
Great Apes Caught Spinning Themselves Just to Get Dizzy
She’s so me.
3 ways to clone yourself before you die
“I'm certified as a kimono consultant”
Two content pieces about AI and death. (Speaking of AI and death, I’m not worried about AI directly killing us: I’m worried about AI supplying a bomb recipe without knowing it.)
"thanks pop crave for this pop news"
We Spoke To The Student Who Did Not Have Fun Studying Abroad
“Japan COULD be better”
I’m sorry to defend the Study Abroad Girl but…there is such a fetish for living abroad, that any honest, ill statements about is seen as the person being dumb. As someone who lives in Europe, I can tell you: she’s not entirely wrong. This last TikTok captures the idea too: heaven isn’t another country.
"INTRO-DREW-ING OUR 2023 #MTVAWARDS HOST"
I think I need to do a deeper trend dive on Drew Barrymore but it is fascinating that MTV seems to be pivoting “away” from Gen Z and toward…Millennials and Gen X?
Alison Goldfrapp - So Hard So Hot (Video Vignette)
Alison Goldfrapp saw Róisín Murphy release new music and said “Oh, bitch: let me try.” Queer people who came of age in the early 2000s are winning. (Also: Special Request had a hand in producing the new album. She ain’t fucking around!)
Remember a few months ago, when Elon bought Twitter, and everyone was speculating what would “become” Twitter? Now, I can confidently say that TikTok is the new Twitter.
Everyone knows this, as that dang clock app continues to dominate headlines, but there are four main reasons that speak more to the gestures of Twitter being absorbed by TikTok. Here’s why –
TikTok is the home of the 140 character thought. Now that Twitter can go up to 4K characters, there are too many words – and why read an idea when you can say it? The best TikTok accounts are ones that capture the feeling of original Twitter, of walking into a party, yelling something, and leaving. Accounts like @bismutharsenide and @khaotickayleee and @shaelovve and @loloverruled – amongst many others – prove this, that the bite-sized “stray thought” is no longer written but spoken (and that such stray thoughts rarely “go long,” which is why no one wants 4K character Tweets or 10 minute TikTok videos).
TikTok has perfected the status update. You’ve seen the screenshots likely on Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook but the TikTok “wall of text” is the new status update cum storytime cum shower thought. The act of placing wild messages over videos or images has yielded a culture of screenshot accounts whose virality is suggestive of early Twitter, where funny Tweets were an economy. The “wall of text” works because they are relatable ways to share experiences, while offering silly, visually interesting on-platform designs to be shared off-platform.
TikTok has the real main characters. While Twitter may have one main character a day (recents include the study abroad girl, the husband who’s not paying for childbirth, Law Roach), TikTok has seventeen main characters – and formats and sounds – happening a day. This week, for “people,” it was Jasper The Doll, boss and CEO Mainly Mannie, Law Roach, Gwyneth Paltrow and her eating disorder, the shitty dragonfruit, and Covid “depression / third birthday.” For sounds and formats, it was the 4:30PM dementia grandma, the depressive CapCut chaos cut, the That’s So Raven obsessive realization, and variations of Sonia Marac. There is porousness as far as time, but the simultaneity and multiplicity of trends on this app is why the theory that “TikTok killed trends” has gained traction. The trends aren’t dead: they’re just more complicated and too quick to keep up with.
TikTok’s single-serving accounts (and brands) are better. Yes, some single-serving accounts still slap on Twitter (@natlparkservice, @Amtrak, @USCPSC) but they are being outdone by accounts on TikTok that tap into trends in more interesting and memorable ways. The best example of this is American public library accounts like Evergreen Public Library, Hays Public Library, and the LAPL, who go viral in the stupidest, stupidest ways. What they do well – and what literally perfect account Milwaukee Public Library proves – is a dedication to their specific niche while celebrating the faces behind these so-called little jobs, all of which builds community and kinship. See also: retirement homes, candy shops, and ice cream parlors.
Of course, the barrier for entry for TikTok versus Twitter is different but the same: you need a phone and yourself. The medium is different – you use your image versus your words – but the outcome is no different: it’s all relatable content that’s easy to share. It’s as if the past decade had us memorizing our lines, learning how to interact online so that we could step on stage and become our own stars, going in front of the camera to say what we were saying. Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, the app just has to keep out of the ego-politics that have killed its peers. If there’s anything TikTok’s gains and other platform’s losses have taught us, it’s that the hubris and exhaustion attached to CEO main character energy is bad fatal for your product.
What You Need to Know About Pluto in Aquarius
I have a confident passing knowledge of horoscopes and I read Chani: that is my astrological barometer. That in mind, this post seemed important to share given that “we’re about to board a once-in-several-centuries rollercoaster ride.” Buckle up!!
"i need people to stop singing in cursive"
"Enunciate the words!!"
I was originally going to write an essay on the end of cursive singing in light of this video – which is from December, which I hadn’t seen, which I think is incredible and says it all and was deleted from the Tweet. (Also because cursive singing anthem “Habits (Stay High)” turned ten.)
"it's begun"
I don’t know how we describe this sort of liberal policing but, yes, the autistic coded Tweet is real. While on this Jennifer Lawrence movie, the trailer got a lot of views (even if I can’t validate that it “broke records”).
"Marion had a singing performance this past weekend"
This week in wholesome content: an update on the iconic BBC News interrupting kid!!
“cardboard box build”
Mom of the year.
"the simulacrum that exists in Kim Kardashian's backyard"
”this is the end of an era”
Speaking of moms of the year, this week in the fall of the Kardashians.
“white woman jumpscare”
Even though I knew it was coming, it wasn’t what I expected.
“biggest glow-down”
“baggy shorts era”
There’s a rising observation that 1990s-style long shorts were stupid. I agree!
"Adam Brody and Hayden Christensen dead in a ditch."
Favorite celebrity news story of the week. Justice for Bill “I got that dick!” Hader!!
"jesus minimalista"
What is the point of a crucifix if Jesus isn’t gonna look sexy? I stand with Janelle James!!
"Watched a YouTube tutorial in desperation"
I think this Tweet sums up why YouTube is important and its cultural impact so succinctly.
“me using my therapy session”
"please change your username"
Two things about therapy that I think you’ll like.
"At the goo goo factory"
But on a spiritual level: what is a goo goo?
“if you saved a dollar a day”
Financial advice of the week.
“guy that i’m seeing does crack”
I can’t pinpoint why, but I can’t get enough of this TikTok.
“Dog’s bum holes for no reason”
I have absolutely, positively zero notes.
And, finally, my thoughts on St. Patrick’s Day.
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