⛈️ cloudy w/ a chance of ihatemyjob ⛈️
Examining the storm clouds above our careers and understanding why everyone is going country.
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Biden campaign joins TikTok
”Jill & Joe”
Biden has entered his “Pokémon Go To The Polls!” phase of campaigning this week and it sucks.
‘US will be out of NATO’ in second Trump term
Trump Asks Supreme Court to Pause Ruling
Judge fines Donald Trump more than $350m
Incredible loser behavior.
Half of Republicans say California isn't American
I’m sorry but anyone who thinks “California is in decline” maybe has a lot of other questionable beliefs.
15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real
See above.
Putin prefers Biden to Trump, mocks Tucker
House chair's warning: "serious national threat"
Alexey Navalny, Who Defied Putin, Dies
The three biggest stories from Russia this week.
UK, Japan Fall Into Recession
Do we need to be worried about this?
Super Bowl Viewership: 123.4 Million, a Record
Paramount Global Braces For Layoffs
Shot, chaser. Was this the power of Taylor? Either way: as we discussed last week, major successes don’t mean such businesses care about you or that they won’t become mega-corporations.
Billionaire Family Wants to Convert You
“The subtext that everybody seems to be missing”
Literal vomit.
“Words hurt.”
A great little mini-doc about how Massachusetts state senate aid is advocating for the removal of the R-word from laws. Boston culture is so wild!!
Remote work jobs are disappearing
“Companies know hybrid working is preferred”
A lot of talk about remote work “going away” which…nope. So backwards! What next? Work from work?
OpenAI Unveils Sora
"UNBELIEVABLE videos were created using Sora"
We’re going to hear about this AI development for a long time. It will largely be nothing, but the creatively vacuous will try to sell it as “the next thing” in Hollywood.
Soho House Is Tired of Being Public
Can’t wait for Soho House to rebrand as Flop House. I didn’t realize they went public!
Oregon resident contracts bubonic plague from cat
"first fatal case of #Alaskapox"
Some cute lil diseases of the week!
CDC to drop five-day covid isolation
Only one day of isolation? Oh, that’s capitalism baby!!
While we talked last week about the death of the big tech dream, another item in the air of working today are the frictions between generations. A series of storm clouds are coming together, which will get more and more thundery given the context of political disenchantment (and distrust) we’re living in, paired with the general “state of the world.” Not a great climate!
At the base, making the most rumblings, are the Gen Z and Millennials “This shit sucks.” vibes, as younger adults in the workforce are arriving at the existential conclusion that our jobs and industries are at dead ends. All those things you were promised after college? lol not possible. This isn’t new, as this has been percolating for a decade (for Millennials), only to become exaggerated during the pandemic (via Gen Z’s entry into the workforce). There is a rabid desire to dismantle these systems, to gain the power to live versus participation in the indentured servitude of the techno-capitalist industrial complex. Pray for icebreakers and mandatory meetings and to stakeholders all you want — but it won’t help! Corporate Erin always wins, despite the “human” gestures of corporations.
And up in the next stratosphere? Gen X, who are assuming more robust leadership roles on their journey to reach the top of an old school corporate ladder. The problem? They’re working by the Boomer playbook that younger generations are about to burn, given their frustrations, institutional knowledge, and fatigue with corporate blue balls. Pair this with these leaders having sneaking conservatism and non-modern cultural paranoia, the working world is charged as so many heads are hitting the ceilings of advancement held by non-suit wearing status quo propellers. As Peter Turchin describes in the incredible book End Times, this is an example of our culture’s problem of elite overproduction, which happens “when you have too many elite wannabes [and] elite aspirants vying for a fixed number of power positions.” How did we get here? Too many people were offered college and advanced degrees as paths to success — only for the market to become oversaturated, older generations to stay in place, and as the general population becomes full of the too poor and too unsatisfied. Not great!
At the top, a curious thing is about to happen: make wayism — both willingly and unwillingly. Most explicitly happening in American politics, examples of willing make way-ism is someone like Mitt Romney stepping down to make room for a “new generation of leaders.” At the other end is what befell Nancy Pelosi this week, and Diane Feinstein before her: her local paper in SF endorsed her — but also criticised her for not making way for younger, more innovative leadership. This is echoed in our presidential candidates, as the race turned has shifte to mental fitness and cognitive testing, which is both unsubtle ageism and an advancing of a contemporary malaise: we have deeply unappealing and deeply unsatisfactory leadership who are too disconnected from reality but won’t move on. This isn’t to mention that more Americans are staying in the workforce at much older ages, partly due to insufficient retirement savings — which loops us back to the reskinning of the problems that Gen Z and Millennials [And likely Gen X!] have.
Everyone is down bad, and we’d all benefit from working together to dismantle the infrastructure keeping us all in a holding pattern. This is the wind that could blow away these clouds because no one has the security of a single job anymore: that time has passed. The majority of Americans aren’t into their job and the percentage of all generations looking to switch jobs and careers are up, despite limitations in pay increase and opportunity. Again: everyone is in the same boat — and we all are suffocated by elite overproduction, hence so many advanced degree holders not having jobs (which is a story we’re repeating from literally a decade ago). As our drumbeat of our dissatisfaction is set to lost work/life balances and mass employment depression, Turchin’s End Times posits where this will go: collapse — and or our working together to undo the elites and the elite systems pulling our strings. Until proactive steps are taken to solve the problem(s), the working world will continue to be stormy.
Cybertrucks are rusting
Did I share this already? I don’t think I did but it’s so funny. If you want another Elon L, enjoy this.
$50,000, Handed It to a Stranger
Where Do New York Tweens Like to Shop?
The Cut cooked this week with not one but two viral stories. They were all a segment of the internet could talk about for the latter part of the week. (This is the best take on the $50K scam story.)
How Actors Spend Free Time
I will gladly shit on Hollywood (Or any big business!) but this series of actors and their “counter programming” was cute.
Criterion’s March 2024 Lineup
Obsessed with Criterion inducting films like Showgirls and Freddy Got Fingered.
“didn’t know it included gaffers”
“It looks washed out.”
The most interesting conversation around the Wicked trailer was trying to figure out why movies are desaturated now. Is this part of the “everything is gray” trend? I’d say yes!
JoJo Siwa Promised Them Pop Stardom
Juiciest gossip of the week. End momagers!
New Dictionary Words for Winter 2024
Dictionary.com is the people’s dictionary, and I appreciate how they keep their database full of new, trending, words and phrases. Always interesting stuff here!
"Jodie Foster est l’invitée d’Alexandra Bensaid"
Watch Jodie Foster speaking in French. Intense sexual aura radiating from this video.
"So confusing"
Closing the loop: Dakota Johnson doing press for a flop is my love language. And, yes, she will be getting an Oscar for this movie.
A stingray with no male companion is pregnant
His Best Friend Was a Warthog. It Killed Him.
“A turn spit dog”
“#snowgeese!”
“Hermit crab in a clear shell”
Some interesting animal stories from this week.
the aesthetics of 🥹🤔😳
Paid subscribers this week got to read a lil emo-ish essay on the feelings factory produced by aesthetic videos.
In 2017, Miley Cyrus released an album called Younger Now with the lead single “Malibu.” The discourse around the song, then and now, was on her breakup with then-fiancé Liam Hemsworth but there was also a very specific framing that is lost in our cultural recollection of this moment: Younger Now from a visual and sonic standpoint was Miley’s “return” to country-pop. Why did she go from pop bad girl to stoner bop to country? A Billboard feature from the time offers a clue. “I want to talk to people in a compassionate, understanding way — which people aren’t doing,” she said. “The fact that country music fans are scared of me, that hurts me,” she said moments later.
Lest we forget the context, which this story frames the interview around: this was all in reaction to the 2016 election of Donald Trump. This shift was to sell records, yes, but was also sonic drag: if I talk country, I can reach the country. The results were middling, but worked better than something like Katy Perry’s more directly political pop move at the same time — which flopped. Country, as a genre and as the idea of a nation, is “the people’s music” meaning it’s the music of middle America, of the common, of the white, of the heard-who-are-unheard in the landscape of America. To go country is to speak a different language of the oppressed. It’s no surprise that Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga did similar things in 2016 and 2017.
We’re missing that today — and I mean we’re missing that as country music is coming into focus again this year. Whether you like it or not, the biggest conversation of the week was about this subject: Beyoncé announced a new album, the country sequel to the dance-focused Renaissance: Act I: Renaissance: Act II. The fandom’s memes and Dolly jokes and general country shenanigans are centering Beyoncé but aren’t quite zooming out to see this for what it is: yes, bringing Black voices to country and reclaiming a genre but also speaking this white language. As the Hive pretends to be MAGA people to get her song on radio’s that bar her, Bey is doing what Miley did: a voice for and of difference is playing the game of commercial caucasianness. This is a politics of the blonde. (Is this also a capitalist move? Yes, duh: preach it, Bell Hooks! Is the song “Texas Hold ‘Em” country? Eh, all I hear is this very cringey song and Azealia’s words. Also didn’t Solange do this era in 2019? I am digressing!!!)
The other ghost in the room is obvious: to be country is to be deeply mid. This isn’t a dig at country stars but it proves the point that many were saying about Taylor Swift’s recent Grammy win: Taylor wins because she’s non-exceptional, she is approachable, she has a power in her being only-so-talented. She, like us all, has room to improve. Hence, her populist appeal — and that all has to do with the semiotics of country, which her very calculated origin plays into. Taylor too is blonde, after all. (And is…so easy to hate. There’s a larger sociological piece about disliking her representing a larger, emerging dislike of Millennial Karen-core — but someone else will be writing that. Not I!)
Beyoncé’s and Taylor — Who also has a new album coming! — aren’t alone in this either as we’re in the throes of a country something: Lana Del Rey recently announced a country album; country’s most interesting star, Kacey Musgraves, announced a new album; Maggie Rogers announced a new album too, produced by Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy winning country producer; Post Malone announced a country collab; Coi Leray expressed wanting to collab with country stars; the Luke Combs and Traci Chapman collab went viral; all of which builds upon a landscape of “progressive,” crossover country acts like Jelly Roll and Zach Bryan. The country space — and who is included and listens to country — is growing.
Just like Miley in 2017, this timing is interesting: we’re staring down the barrel of the shotgun that is the 2024 election. While musicians pivoted to country after the fact to win hearts and minds in 2017, Beyoncé and her peers are doing that strategically now, perhaps for politics but perhaps because all eyes will be on the country as we race for the next gerontic king. Will the rodeo be worth it? I’m doubtful, but many will get in the saddle of this new yeehaw agenda.
"fuck your beauty standards"
“4 mins to valentine”
“HAPPY VALENTINE DAY GRANNY”
“america’s favorite senior citizens”
“she was actually funny”
“looking for the right man”
“Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s”
“what my mom is like”
“unfortunate oversight”
“Do you guys ever”
“Mark Wahlberg”
Some good Valentine’s (and Lent) posts.
“rebooks with the strap”
“watching Aquaman 2”
“Did You Know”
“woof that’s rough”
Some good Super Bowl posts.
“video game emotes”
“Fellini-like”
I’ve been thinking about this Trump video all week.
“Nana stays at the wedding too late”
Why does this Nana look like one of them bald parrots?
"if my dad invented a mouthwash"
“took you 50 years”
Two posts about savage parents.
“Cindy Sherman count your fucking days”
Trisha Paytas is absolutely cooking.
“I can’t stop laughing”
Speaking of cooking, Tokio Toni keeps posting increasingly unhinged things. We stan. (Actually she seems sociopathic.)
“WHAT IS THIS”
It is cinema. Let the stans create!!
“Rachel Dolezal got fired”
So this was an unexpected saga of the week, that this TikTok recaps perfectly.
“funniest sounds”
That is the sound of depression, my friend.
“KILLING MEEEE”
Speaking of funny sounds, this one’s for you Ethel Cain hive.
“gotta be the worst”
Poor, poor, Jacques Greene.
“i want to put in my cpap”
I would never actually drink a Baja Blast but I’d CPAP a Baja Blast.
“those resumes getting thrown into a volcano”|A child named Dubai though is kinda lit.
"which one is the Godzilla which one is the Kong"
I think I’m the Godzilla and
“hm”
This should be an ad for public transport.
And, finally, how I hope my writing sounds like in your head.
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