2day is 22/2/22!
Mōrena lil shits!!
It’s 2/22/2022 (at least… it is in New Zealand) so, happy Twosday folks! Last night I went and had some beers and played some backgammon with a buddy of mine - intensely cool, I know - and I am coming here to advocate bringing a board game/ card game to a bar. Then you can spend 10 minutes catching up with your mate and the rest of the time trying to stay sober enough to win/ not put your dice in the pint glass instead of the shaker.
Also, how about that episode of Euphoria last night??? No spoilers obv, but that last scene to ‘It’s Raining Men???’ DEAD.
Oh and I want to show you a completely false thing I saw yesterday that made me laugh a lot:
[tweet https://twitter.com/FilmUpdates/status/1495295511594684422]
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In today’s newsletter:
When celebrity nudes were everywhere
Online “auctions” of women are just the latest attacks on Muslims in India
Another newsletter you should REALLY subscribe to
Some useful internet things for you
$1.7 million in NFTs stolen in an apparent phishing attack on OpenSea users
An Ode to ‘Arthur’
When celebrity nudes were everywhere
Liv and I just recorded an episode of Culture Vulture about celebrity sex tapes (in response to the new show ‘Pam and Tommy’ being released without Pamela Anderson's consent) and as if she was reading my mind Constance Grady wrote this piece for Vox all about celebrity nude photo scandals. Idk if you remember when Vanessa Hudgens’ photos were leaked in about 2007 and huge outrage ensued, to the point where she had to apologise… for someone stealing her photos??? Well here’s a wee recap:
“The world was shocked. Disney moms pronounced Hudgens “ruined.” OK! confidently reported that she would be dropped from High School Musical 3 and replaced by one of the Cheetah Girls. Hudgens released a chagrined statement taking responsibility for the photos (“I want to apologize to my fans, whose support and trust means the world to me”), and Disney made its own statement regretting Hudgens’s “lapse in judgment.” Days after the pictures leaked, Hudgens was photographed by paparazzi at a church, as though to cleanse her reputation. “Baby V she is no longer :(” lamented Just Jared.”
At the same time as we’re prepping for this episode, Liv and I have both also been listening to the Shameless Podcast episodes on Miley Cyrus, and the ‘purity ring’ culture that was enforced by Disney, largely because of the Bush administration and their pro-abstinence stances (for more on that you should look at this article from The Guardian in 2002, titled: Bush ‘Promotes Virgin Values To Curb Teen Sex’ where Bush makes an election promise to “spend as much on programmes that teach abstinence until marriage as on medical services that provide contraceptives to teenagers.”)
This shit is SO interesting to me:
“Disney’s good girls were often held up as the role models families needed in the age of Girls Gone Wild raunch culture, a wholesome and much-needed antidote to the Disney-gone-bad Britneys and Christinas of the world. But Disney’s virginal ideal was less a counter to the midriff-baring bad girls of the ’00s than she was the other side of the same old virgin/whore coin.
“Make no mistake, raunch is Republican,” wrote Chaudhry. “The sexuality that reigns supreme in Bush World bears the basic imprimaturs of right-wing ideology: gross materialism, sexual hypocrisy, and acquiescence in the name of empowerment. It is in every sense a conservative wet dream come true.”
Sorry - this section has really got no structure, but I think this line sums up one of the takes we kept coming back to on Culture Vulture (which you should listen to when it drops on Wednesday):
“While from the perspective of the 2020s, Hudgens was clearly the victim of a gross invasion of her privacy, in 2007 Hudgens was expected to take the blame for the photos.”
Anyway, you should go and read Constance’s piece. Much more cohesive. Less thoughts-interrupting-other-thoughts.
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Online “auctions” of women are just the latest attacks on Muslims in India
“Qurat-Ul-Ain Rehbar, a journalist based in Indian-administered Kashmir, was travelling when a friend called to tell her that she had been put up for sale. She was told that someone had taken a publicly available picture and created a profile, describing her as the “deal of the day” in a fake auction. ”
This is really happening. Rehbar was just one of about 100 women whose photos were sold on a fake auction site, hosted on Github in January. The site has since been taken down, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen attacks like this on Muslim women in India - last July there was a Clubhouse chat (remember Clubhouse lol) where men were “auctioning” off parts of Muslim women’s bodies and openly issuing rape threats.
The women being targetted are often” journalists, activists, lawyers, politicians, radio hosts, pilots, and scholars; they’re active on social media and speak out about issues, and specifically about rising Islamophobia in India.”
Honestly, there's not a lot of movement from either tech companies, or the Indian government on this one, but you should go and read more about what’s going on, here.
Some useful internet things for you
One of you asked for the tool that helps you get behind paywalls (I’m not sure how well it works anymore but here it is) and also! This tool helps you ‘veganise any recipe’ so you just put the link in for the recipe and it gives you a bunch of substitutes!
$1.7 million in NFTs stolen in an apparent phishing attack on OpenSea users
Yeeeeeet. Imagine if you had hundreds of thousands - even millions of dollars of NFTs (or, because I know this throws some people’s minds into a tailspin, physical art) and you woke up one day and it was all just… gone. Well, that’s what happened to a few users on OpenSea (an NFT marketplace) on Feb 19th (including some Decentraland and Bored Ape Yacht Club stuff which you’ll know allll about because I’ve carefully described both of these concepts to you.)
Here’s how it happened:
“The attack appears to have exploited a flexibility in the Wyvern Protocol, the open-source standard underlying most NFT smart contracts, including those made on OpenSea. One explanation (linked by CEO Devin Finzer on Twitter) described the attack in two parts first, targets signed a partial contract, with a general authorization and large portions left blank. With the signature in place, attackers completed the contract with a call to their own contract, which transferred ownership of the NFTs without payment. In essence, targets of the attack had signed a blank check — and once it was signed, attackers filled in the rest of the check to take their holdings.”
And here’s just a really good site to keep you up to date with the latest hacks, scams and silliness of this world we’re maybe or maybe not moving into: “Web3 is going just great.”
Saying Goodbye to My Childhood Friend Arthur
Aw! The final season of Arthur starts this week, and after 25 seasons it's the longest-running animated children’s series in history. There’s a really nice ode to Arthur in The Atlantic today that you should read it if you watched the show - here’s a lil excerpt:
“Reflecting on the place Arthur has occupied in my life is challenging because the show was so all-encompassing. When I got picked on for getting my first pair of glasses, there was an episode for that. When I discovered a love of reading at the library, there was an episode (and a rap) for that. That Arthur began as a bedtime story is fitting, because watching it felt like opening a storybook that traced the contours of childhood, showing us new ways to navigate them.”
And here are some Arthur memes, because the show may be ending, but his balled-up fist will live on forever:
What do you call the game 'Duck Duck Goose'??
Inspired by this tweet:
Thankfully:
95% of you say Duck Duck Goose
5% of you... I don't know you
Confessions of a Bitcoin Widow: How a Dream Life Turned into a Nightmare (The Walrus)
The elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency (BBC)
The Sublime Narcissism of Euphoria (Vulture)
Is everything viral an industry plant? (Embedded)
Prince Andrew, Avocado Bans & Scomo's Singing (The Shit Show)
Lovebombing, "The Ick," & WTF is Ye up to? (Culture Vulture)
GET A 14 DAY FREE TRIAL TO WATCH EUPHORIA OR YELLOWJACKETS! (Neon)
You can listen to us talk about all things pop culture on Culture Vulture, about THE WORLD on The Shit Show or watch us explain the internet on Extremely Online.
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LOVE YOU THE MOST, LUCE XX
