would you live in an adult dorm?

How a style of building represents the fall of cities and why humiliation is *the* thing right now.

Capital Reels After Anti-Lula Rioters Storm Congress
Brazil’s attempted coup was thwarted by Lula’s decisive action
Sad and bad, signs of some concerning things.

Republicans Who Voted To Overturn Election Get Top Committee Posts
11 of the 17 appointees wanted to overthrow the 2020 election. Oof.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders bans 'Latinx' on first day
Some unhinged right-wing behavior. Like. You aren’t even Latina!! Why do you care, Sarah? The GOP is Streisand Effect-ing legit liberal things like this and “critical race theory,” in order to make those ideas illegal. Real sicko shit.

Another Big Boomer Effect
Be for real: most people are broke and can’t “afford” retirement anyway. Just ask my parents! I feel like it’s all going to collapse, as we Millennials are quite tired of working it all away for nothing. We will never retire. And that sucks!

D.C., Philly and New York have seen no snow this winter
I guess we have to be concerned about snow droughts now.

Long Covid Fade for People Who Had Mild Infection
This is good news, it seems!!

US Safety Agency to Consider Ban on Gas Stoves
Are Gas Stoves the New Cigarettes?
A very viral talking point this week that we will surely continue to hear about.

Xbox consoles get new ‘carbon aware’ power mode
Don’t Be Fooled by ‘Carbon Neutral’ Shipping
Junk Carbon Offsets Make These Big Companies 'Carbon Neutral'
A few recent stories to show all the ridiculous gestures by companies to fool you into thinking they (And you.) are making a difference.

Twitter is closing or getting kicked out of many international offices
Twitter Employees Escorted Out of Singapore Office
Elon Breaks Guinness World Record for Losing Most Personal Wealth
Elon Musk May Never Be the World’s Richest Person Again
He really wants you to know there is an L in his name. Anyway, SmackThatBitch.mp4.

Egg prices haven't come down with inflation.
Inflation was a big subject this week, largely because eggs are still expensive due to avian flu.

At the intersection of “They don’t make them like they used to.” and “Everyone wears gray now.” is the idea of the Adult Dorm.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I assure you that you do. The Adult Dorm is a “luxury apartment” in a city that features on-site shopping, on-site gyms, on-site restaurants, communal spaces like game rooms and pools, and are occasionally attached to or across the street from malls. Walking distance to a movie theater and or Cheesecake Factory is a plus. Think Atlantic Station in Atlanta, The Americana at Brand in Los Angeles, 485 Marin in Jersey City, Amli on 2nd in Austin, The Auria in Notting Hill: these are all examples of Adult Dorms, mixed-use buildings that are satirized in pop culture as “The Lofts at SoDoSoPa.”

These places all seem familiar, comfortable, and like a warm suburban hug. They are spaces that you would wander in high school or college, yawns of retail and things-to-do that perform adulthood instead of being adulthood. Gone are the complications of life, the difficulties of “finding things.” Everything is under one roof! Nothing is dirty. It’s quiet too! You aren’t on your way to a destination: you live there. Life is easy. This is the Adult Dorm fantasy.

What’s interesting about the Adult Dorms is that they seem to mirror or predict or evoke the feeling of the “small town” in the big city. Can’t afford a place in an up-and-coming homebuyer market like Wichita, Toledo, Akron, or Tulsa? Move into an Adult Dorm! Miss home because you moved to the city and don’t like how dirty it is? Adult Dorm!

This isn’t a new phenomenon, no. What they and their comforts and their ease represents is something even more curious: the sanitization and globalization via gentrification of cities, where every place feels the same and is the same. Restaurant openings are another way to look at this and which is helping New York become Los Angeles and vice versa. Examples: Abbot Kinney’s Gjelina is now in Noho while Soho’s Le Coucou has a new sister, Café Basque, in Downtown LA. Beyond this, if you live or have lived in these cities over the past ten years, you’ve felt a sort of osmosis occurring, particularly as friends seem to transfer between the two cities as if a phantom tollbooth exists.

But it’s not just New York and Los Angeles. Nashville is getting an In-N-Out. There’s a Peter Luger in Vegas. Massimo Bottura is opening a Miami restaurant. Yes, this is just modern city behavior. But these “familiar feelings,” the niche becoming non-niche is scrubbing cities of life, making you feeling everywhere and nowhere at once as prices rise because things are getting “nice and nicer.” This means every city is Disneyland now. The flavor, the life, the difficulties are expunged for respectable businesses like Chick-Fil-A to open their biggest location in NYC.

Growth, disposability, and lack-of-flavor has turned the city into a bridge and tunnel, instead of the city being a place where people bridge and tunnel into. No wonder the cities across from the main city are more interesting: because the real culture has left. Ask Jersey City and Boyle Heights! Adult Dorms aren’t the problem but a symptom: they’re a commercial solution, not an urban planning solution. They’re just hotels you live in until you move back home.

The 2023 Trend Forecast
My thoughts on this year! Also let me know if you like things like this.

Gwen Stefani: "I Said, 'My God, I’m Japanese'"
I am shocked more people didn’t talk about this story!! It’s absolutely an unhinged, must-read, because Gwen Stefani says shit like she is Japanese and Latina – not as a joke! Completely seriously.

2022 Word of the Year is “-ussy” American Dialect Society
I don’t think enough people talked about this!!!!!!!!!!!!!

‘Astonishing’ Pompeii home of men freed from slavery
Pompeii residence unveiled with panel depicting a giant penis
“They were buddies”...”cupids engaged in activities such as making perfume or selling wine”...“a fresco at the entrance depicts Priapus, the god of fertility, with a huge penis”...”Hercules as a child, crushing two snakes.” Y’all. Just say these two Greek dudes with this fabulous house were gay. It’s not that difficult.

"Lisa Marie Presley was mind blown watching Austin Butler"
Austin Butler thanks Lisa Marie Presley at Golden Globes
Lisa Marie Presley dies at 54
The Lisa Marie Presley news cycle was a whirlwind, as we had to hold both her being overjoyed at the Golden Globes and her dying in our hands, to make sense of this news, as if that is a normal thing to do. (Unrelated but Austin Butler and his lingering Elvis voice is top tier actors-are-freaks shit.)

Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ in Peril As Crew Exits
I’m obsessed with this news. It’s just great. Death to a dynasty!

WWE Co-CEO Stephanie McMahon Resigns
Saudi Arabia may be buying WWE
What’s happening over with the WWE? Looks bad!

"BREAKING: Popeyes has signed Dieunerst Collin"
'Popeyes Meme Kid' Scores Deal with Popeyes
The needed update on the Popeyes meme kid.

Yes, Your Job Is Important. But It’s Not All-Important.
A good reminder from Roxane Gay that you ~are not~ your job.

"BEAU IS AFRAID, a twisted odyssey"
The new Ari Aster looks like not-his-best but I think it’s time to talk about the long-lasting effects of Synechdoche, New York. I am going to write about that soon because it’s influence keeps revealing itself.

U.S. Girls - Futures Bet (Official Video)
U.S. Girls – the band of my favorite post-American, Meg Remy – have a new album coming soon and the first single captures the sort of existential angst of our past, present, and future so well. “Nothing’s wrong,” she sings. “Everything’s fine! This is just life.”

I think something is happening with embarrassment right now? Hear me out.

You have the ongoing humiliation of Elon Musk. You have the humiliation of Kevin McCarthy. Then there’s the humiliation of Samuel Bankman-Fried, Andrew Tate, Dr. Oz, Liz Truss, Amber Heard, Liam Hemsworth, and Piqué. Some have called this a trend before, but there is something to this word and this idea that seems to have emerged as a media and internet talking point. Part getting-owned, part shoot-and-a-miss, we’re living in the widespread spectacle era, where someone’s quiet effort or small happening is now everyone’s situation to laugh at.

This isn’t bad (For us, at least.) and continues the logic that everything is high school, that each of these is a chance for someone to attempt the three point shot at the pep rally only to be laughed off the court. The big-failure-is-funny thing seems to lie at the intersection of bombasts like Trump colliding with big losses, making something like January 6 as alarming as it was hilariously humiliating.

Simultaneously, the rise in humiliation culture could be seen as a byproduct of the “I am cringe but I am free.” phenomena. This subject has been playing on loop for months – Washington Post, The Tab, Vice – as everyone is giving less of a fuck and trying to swing for the fences like all these billionaires who keep failing in different directions. It plays into a genre of creators like @karvetv, who “save” cringe creators with zero views by giving them love. We’re seeing this as too as we come to the tail of Prince Harry’s Spare press cycle, where the mood is shifting from “Gotcha!” to “Wow…this is embarrassing!” (Which repeats the cycle of Harry and Meghan’s Netflix show.)

This is likely what happens when society now lives inside of a camera: everyone is auditioning – and most people are bombing. In a world where we’re all entertainers, we all have giant canes to pull people off stage, to throw tomatoes, to point and laugh because of how legitimately funny or sad a situation is. Or, maybe, our mass delirium has yielded a mass humiliation kinks. That wouldn’t be surprising either as many are starting to write about that too.

Animated 3D Gif Artist | Dave Sutton
3Dgifartist
I came across this wild GIF artist this week and I am obsessed. The work is so old and arguably “cringe” that it has circled back around to being perfect. I mean, a platypus holding a sign that says “shit scared”? A teddy bear flasher with “I need some advice” over the crotch? A wizard with a sign that says “I’m a virgin”? Move over Jordan Wolfson, this man’s coming for the gig!!!

"Am I old or is something very wrong here"
"what your little cousin watches 14 hours"
The internet discovered Gen A media consumption this week.

“jesus fuckin christ”
"TRUE CRIME safety"
“If I go missing binders” are having a moment (and are deeply ridiculous concepts).

“is mlk eating”
“This angle of it looks worse”
“I have some questions”
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Corretta Scott King sculpture is beautiful but also looks like…other things.

“it’s actually because she’s mean”
The appeal of M3GAN to f*gs is…not that deep y’all.

“This two-dimensional creature”
“I shouldn’t have stolen from a two-dimensional creature.”
“more horrifying and more enlightening”
"me, a 2D girl"
The 2D TikTok lady is having a moment.

"she could’ve had her own Star Wars series"
Gina Carano & Ben Shapiro's relationship going well
Have you heard about the Ben Shapiro-Gina Carino movie? It’s an incredible study in schadenfreude.

"Jennifer Coolidge delivers an epic #GoldenGlobes speech"
Fuck the Golden Globes and all of Hollywood, but this Jennifer Coolidge speech will remind you to keep your dreams alive.

“that ratio is soooo off“
“Kill Bill x Unholy”
Two great songs from TikTok this week.

"i make half these faces"
Best taxonomy of gay faces.

"They don't know we’re technically a queer couple"
I’ve met this couple at several literary events, yeah.

"A oak china cabinet"
I feel like her. I understand her.

"it's like a temperature blanket but disgusting"
After a long wait, the shit blanket is complete.

“how do a prenat”
This isn’t new but I just saw it and I think it may be my favorite meme ever.

And, finally, proof there is a god.

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