- @Alexa
This is a good one, I've been picking up bits from different sources trying to understand what's up and I appreciated this take. I'm rooting for Ukraine
eesh. glad to see more light on these problems. I find it challenging to see so much eutopian convos around electric cars etc when the true narrative is so dark.
Read this ages ago and couldn’t find it to reread, so here it is from the journalists site. Still a page turner, even though true crime shows glamorizing her scam is a hard sell for me
V interesting. They're not wrong. There's definitely a tension here, people want to be paid for their work so the good guys build lists they can monetize. It's such a mess.
I used Brave back in the day when it was beta, maybe I need to dig back in. Personally I'm loving how Readup fills this gap for me, I can skip a lot of paywalls and put my money with folks whose work I appreciate.
It's amusing to me how the big idealistic utopian internet vision fell apart, thanks marketers! (said as a former marketing demon myself). It's the hazards of a "free" and "open" internet that is truly none of those things. Honestly I would pay a hefty subscription for a browser that just wiped all these ads, tracking, and other BS off the map.
I love this. It's such a quintessential modern american story.
Go GenZ trolling the conspiracy nuts. I feel like this form of absurdist character performance can be very cathartic, effective art to get people thinking and seeing how bonkers things are. Big fan.
Birds aren't real!
yessss. The heat around the metaverse baffles me.
It is the future as envisioned by someone with precious little imagination.
Are we really so wrapped up by artificial scarcity that people are buying into this nonsense? Spoiler alert, yes.
I'm not stoked about Meta. I want to predict it fails because VR is a sweaty, isolating nightmare, but i think that could be me projecting my own dislike for it. Maybe the rest of humanity is fine to shed the confines of meat space for meta.
Its weird tho, is our world so bad that we have to shuck the physical & social pressures by playing pretend in a fake digital world? eek.
This is remarkable and really rocked my socks, so much to consider. Grateful for the authors raw authenticity and truly heart wrenching.
Read this if you consider yourself an ally or feminist or just an empathetic human
Excellent reporting, a long read that flies by. So fascinating and really got me wondering.
Important convos here!
I live in CA and the electric car thing is bonkers. The lust for, and narrative around, e-vehicles seems to have always conveniently ignored the battery problem.
Replacing the battery is obvi a recycling nightmare and I'm glad this is coming to light in a major pub like this one. Fascinating stuff.
Doen't even scratch the surface with the humanitarian crisis that is the mining of these metals & minerals.
Such a complex thing. There's no win. Guzzling gas is a lose, e-vehicles are theator for feeling like you're making a better choice, etc etc. I'm jaded tho, chasing a smart recycling method feels like another way to avoid looking our reliance on driving friggin' everywhere in the face for what it is….nyet great (at least for those of us not blessed with good, greener urban/public transit etc). Is this recycling push just another bandaid for bad behaviors/systems overall?
This is everything, an easy 11. I loved Robin Wall Kimmerer's books and haven't seen any of her essays on their own prior to this one. Stunning.
The first snippet is missing, the intro. Here:
"We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth, gifts we have neither earned nor paid for: air to breathe, nurturing rain, black soil, berries and honeybees, the tree that became this page, a bag of rice, and the exuberance of a field of goldenrod and asters at full bloom."
RWK always makes me marvel at the wonders of nature, and this is a special CTA to honor my responsibility to give back to those treasures.
Hahahaha yes
Interesting, this feels like the first time we’ve had a view this clear of a modern social platforms algorithm goals. The usual Silicon Valley types treat it as a black box to the public eye.
Not on tiktok myself, before deleting my socials I never got into it, but I’ve heard it’s nightmarishly sticky from friends.ugh to those late nights where you fall into a fugue state and realize it’s 3am and you’re on your phone still...no thanks.
This makes me wonder, even with the articles anticlimatic conclusion...will we see more outrage or pressure on tiktok because it’s not US based/owned?
Another engrossing AHP recommendation.
It’s a lot to take in, raised in the 90s as a female I definitely have culturally ingrained fatphobia. Never knew my mom not to be dieting, never even tasted full fat sour cream until my late teens (and realized sour cream I’d actually delicious!) it’s a weird thing to consider. Hope today’s younguns get to skip that nonsense
Did not realize this was happening! Zero surprised they were tracking incognito :(
wild. it shouldn't be so hard to avoid shady chemicals in your hair & body products. I DIY all mine now but dang, this is madness
Love this. It's nice to see other nuances of sobriety. You don't have to be a falldown ruin your life drunk to find more value in life after drinking. Sometimes you just find more life, less distraction, and a juicier existence. Love it!
I dig this but have SUCH mixed feelings on it.
I'm a very femme person so heck yea I am here for empowering those who want to rock a winged liner, bold lip, or delightfully slooty outfit but…
…at what point are we self-policing sexist beauty culture ideals that were developed to keep women in red-lipped subservience or diminutive roles? If you want plastic surgery cool, but also…it's reinforcing specific beauty ideals for the rest of women who now are being sold these visions. and they aren't cheap.
I"m SO torn. I want to wear fun, scandalous outfits and still be taken seriously or acknowledged for my intelligence, but can you REALLY dismantle the patriarchy/capitalism when you're dropping 1,000s on lip fillers or outfits that seem to (realistically) prioritize the male gaze? idfk.
Help. idk. girl power vs "if I get botox everyone else will feel like aging is bad too" feels over here hahaha
Big fan of this gal and her McMansion Hell work and when she sent out this link with “I got mad and finally wrote about the metaverse” ... Worth the read.
The vids they share inline aren’t necessary with her explanations but they are rather cringe and support the rant. That ad for quest is depressing, uf.
It underlines my curiosity of...who exactly is the metaverse for? I’ve worked with VR game companies and never grew fond of the headsets or screen two inches from my face experience. And that was for playing a fun game! But to replicate dismal meat space experiences I don’t want to do anyways...hi Walmart...what gives?
It seems like brands grasping to be relevant and pouring more irl dollars into digital kerfluffery. Meaningless brand activations, no ROI possible, it’s just baffling. Is anyone actually excited about the metaverse other than captain delusional zuck himself?
Thoroughly fascinating. Love a good story about macabre lost arts. Makes me want to make my own alpine death cheese for my funeral when I get my goats.
This project mostly just pissed me off that there was an Elif Shafak book I'd never get to read
Otherwise, this is kind of a slap to the optimist in me that thinks (hopes?) we wont have wiped ourselves off the face of the Earth in 100 years. uh…TBD?
Such a weird project, interesting, but weird
I appreciate this take so so much. I've been grappling a lot lately with balancing my own personal risk with collective interests.
I have taken enough precautions to know if I got sick I'd likely be ok, that helps. But, I know people (like my sister) who have medical conditions that don't make getting vaxxed a safe choice for them.
Lately, it feels like I don't quite know how to consider not just my own risk tolerance, but how that tolerance impacts others. This article explores that, and I appreciated how they worked through a lot of the self vs collective thinking.
I too found my way to Eve Babitz through Joan Didion. Eve’s Black Swan was the LA I knew (or wished I did).
Jia Tolentino reminded me of Eve, in a modern (less socialite party girl) way. The sentences, the analysis, the verve of how they write.
So many great females of the written world, and in such varying forms , lost to the last few weeks. Sheesh.
A brief roundup of the iconic Joan Didion's work. What a legend.
we lost a lot of greats from the literary world in the last few weeks.
I appreciate how this piece celebrates bell hooks and her great work, but also explores how (and this is so pertinent to writers) there are always two sides, many opinions, and many ways of looking at one thing. Who is right?
Guess it depends who you ask…this nuance and difference is what makes life right, we can be outspoken if we're empathetic enough to meet others where they're at and respect them for their different views.
Love the call to live as we live, regardless of missteps
Interesting concept, but for all the emotional musing (which tbh I'm kind of here for depending on the day) it misses one point…sure the pandemic may be "ending" but that's thanks to the virus becoming endemic.
This "new normal" that includes covid and throw-your-hands-up folks is just saying this is what it is now, no?
John Hopkins med said a few months ago covid was pretty much endemic. Maybe it's time to start shifting the narrative to how we live with that…maybe time to mourn that this is how it is now and then find ways to do it safely? idk.
This is killer. What a ride.
Horrified by this, but also...so on point:
The internet has conscripted us into the construction and manipulation of our own images, so that the idea of wearing some kind of mask — whether through plastic surgery, Instagram filter, online avatar or cloak of irony — no longer reads as unnatural, but rather as broadly relatable.
Botox fascinates me, repulses me, and yet I'm still drawn to it. Something about the mid 30s makes you have crazy thoughts...I want to rail against it, but I also want to "stay relevant" or whatever other bs goes through my head staring into the mirror and wondering why i spent so much time tanning.
And Errol-friggin-Morris. Legend.
Great look at this weird "fad", although I'm not sure I'd say they "cure" wrinkles. They paralyze your face and soften them, but cure is a bit far.
This is phenomenal. Musings on loss and memory, and I enjoyed the ponderous way it's written.
I have heard so many stories, and told so many myself secondhand, that they crowd out the memories; the two twine up together, a text at once invented and true.
This was a "just trust me" rec from AHP, glad I took it.
Whoooo ok yea love/hate. Where do I land.
Half the people on TikTok are doing a similar form of acting and fronting anyways, they just don't have the backing of screenwriters. These surveillance capitalism based sites should come with a free therapist sheesh, because this kind of warped reality surely messes with you over time!
Finally a major publication calls the beauty culture what it is, violence. If only you could see this in the pages of an actual beauty mag.
Five minutes at Sephora is all you need to grasp the ever-multiplying categories of things we can do to “improve” our bodies. There is no part too small to be monitored, controlled, embellished, augmented or removed entirely, from eyelashes (extend) to lips (inflate) to body hair (eliminate) to pores (reduce) to eyebrows (reduce, but also enhance) and so on, through nails, hair, teeth, ad infinitum.
A compelling story with what happened to her, I always adored Evangelista she is a legend, and an interesting look at beauty cultures toxicity laid bare. When will we allow women to age and recognize the beauty of a changing, maturing body?!
We could retitle this "hobby creating trash problem by making existing trash problem visible"
Amusing, but weird.
I can't believe this gem hasn't graced the 1's and 0's of Readup yet. Pinterest personified.
It's HILARIOUS, and makes me feel vindicated about not being able to log onto Pinterest without wanting to burn my current wardrobe, completely rewrite my eating plan, redecorate my house and make a crap-ton of salads in mason jars. That platform is cursed.
I've heard this again and again about the labor shortage. It's hard to go through a life changing event like a catastrophic pandemic and be able to take all the bs that has, for years, come with working in service.
I know a gal who's a flight attendant on temporary leave and her friends still working are telling her to wait longer before coming back. Why? Because many flyers are either new to the air or have forgot how to be decent human beings.
I did a jaunt over the winter at a bougie hotel locally and OMG was it hard to smile at someone screaming at you for asking them to please put on a mask for a shit wage.
There's a great podcast episode of The Journal. about a restaurant called Dirt Candy in NYC that is thriving after a few changes...which were basically to give benefits and pay a livable wage with yearly reviews and wage increases and adjust the menu to something smaller and more affordable. Turnover is nonexistant and they have 40 person stacks of resumes for openings.
So yea, let's not complain about the workers lets be honest about the conditions that led people to "aw hell no" going back to that work. Yes, solid 10 on this hot take!
Ah, first world problems. And a major underscore for how screwed our supply chain is. Maybe this will inspire companies to bring some production back domestically? Who knows.
Here for this. A take on some of the real cost when someone claims organic isn't that much better for you. Sure, maybe not at the end of the foodchain, but it sure makes a difference for workers who don't have to be bathed in chemicals in the fields. Great take.
This topic comes up around meat and dairy, too, where there seems to be an endless back and forth in food, health, and women’s magazines about whether these products are “good for you.” Occasionally, one will wonder whether they’re good for the environment. Almost no one includes the lives (and illnesses and deaths) of factory farm and meatpacking workers when considering where these products ought to fit in our diets.
Fantastic story