A wholesome story about high-fives 🖐
Mōrena lil shits!!
I’ll tell you what, coming out of two long weekends in a row has got me feeling like the LONGEST WEEK EVER (anyone else???) We’ve got some exciting things coming up for you (like a cool series of speaking events that I’ll be doing here in NZ where I can hopefully actually meet some of u! More on that later!) and also book club and also… other cool things which I will naturally be filling you all in on FIRST in the newsy.
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In today’s newsletter:
Belgium tries a 4 day work week (and wants you to ignore your boss)
Families of Sandy Hook victims settle with Remington Arms
A wholesome story about high-fives
A case for checking your spam folder
The wildest things your relatives have fallen for on Facebook
Belgium approves four-day week and gives employees the right to ignore their bosses after work
Go for the choccy, stay for less worky! God, that wasn’t good. But this headline is! In Belgium, they’re rolling out a bunch of labour reforms to improve work-life balance, which means employees are gonna be trialling a four day work week. It’s gonna be four slightly longer days (38 hours overall) and if it doesn’t work out after six months, companies can switch back to a five-day week. Also! I’ve written about it before, but they’ve introduced a recent reform that allows workers to shut off their devices and ignore work calls/ messages without getting in trouble.
Families of Sandy Hook victims settle with Remington Arms
Content warning: shooting, death, violence.
So, Remington Arms - the company that made a rifle used in one of the US's deadliest school shootings - have settled with the families of victims for $73m.
Now, the reason this story caught my eye is because it’s the first time a gun maker has faced liability for a mass shooting - until now, the industry had immunity from litigation.
The settlement comes in response to a lawsuit brought by the families of nine of 26 victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, where Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six school employees in Newtown, Connecticut.
A little bit of background (via the BBC):
In the early 2000s, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun-rights groups pushed states and the federal government to actually enact laws to protect gun manufacturers from financial responsibility for deaths that result from the use of their products. Their crowning achievement was the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, passed by Congress and signed by President George W Bush in 2005.
How did they get around these laws?
They looked at how the guns were marketed. The lawsuit claimed that Remington pitched its rifle to "at-risk" young men in violent video games and with “bombastic, militaristic language,” and pointed to an exception in the federal law that prohibited illegal marketing claims.
Josh Koskoff, one of the lawyers representing the families of victims, said they were delighted by the outcome because their focus was on "preventing the next Sandy Hook".
NEW EPISODE OF CULTURE VULTURE ANGELS
Lovebombing, "The Ick," & WTF is Ye up to? - Culture Vulture — open.spotify.com
We start off with an extremely chaotic chat about Ye - is he ok? Is this a PR stunt? Should we care? How long until everyone tunes out? And then we dive into a far more intellectual chat about the TikTokification of terms like "Lovebombing" and "gaslighting," when "the ick" is actually a red flag, and of course, the Tinder Swindler.
A wholesome story about high-fives
I actually rate a high-five, so this piece from INPUT was so me that I had to share it with you. Basically, on the Wikipedia page for “high fives” live these photos:
The photos were added in 2008, and to be honest, the author of this piece, Annie Rauwerda, was totally right when she thought that these photos looked more than platonic - flirty even. So she took it upon herself to look into this couple.
“I figured that the high-fivers must have some sort of internet presence, so I started combing the web for mentions of the photos. I saw that they’d graced the front page of Reddit several times, and one such post had a compelling comment:
“Fun fact: me and my wife (then girlfriend) are demonstrating the ‘too slow’ high five on the Wikipedia high five-page.”
From there, she tracked down the high-fivers - Tim and Tamara O’Nan from Southern California. “Nearly 14 years later, they’d barely aged, and now they had two kids in elementary school.”
They took the photos three years after they met after returning from a birthday dinner, and they’re actually not huge high-fivers. They also have no personal connection to the “down low/too slow” manoeuvre.
Anyway, to round out this wholesome investigation, here they are now:
Do you check your spam/junk folder?
40% of you do
60% of you don’t
Me? I check it every. damn. day. And I have ever since one of the most important emails of my life was delivered there!!! In 2018, I got a scholarship (from the Prime Minister of all people) to go & live/work in Colombia after I finished uni, and I knew the day the email was meant to come through about whether I got it or not - but nothing had. Then, that night, I ventured into my ‘Junk’ folder for what I assume was the very first time and boom, there my “congratulations!” email was. From then on, I’ve checked my Junk/ Spam folders every day after my Inbox. Most days it’s full of shit like:
“I am Andrew Yakubu, the ex. Group Managing Director of NNPC. I have $55.5m for Investment in your country. Contact me if you are interested.”
or
“Good Day,
We have an inheritance of a deceased client, who bears the same name with your surname. Kindly contact me through my personal email with your full names, address and phone numbers for more details.”
Or newsletters that I’ve subscribed to that I notice are missing. But other days there are hidden gems in there and I genuinely get excited to check it - also, a lot of your responses come to spam/junk, and I’d HATE to miss them!
Some of you commented on my Instagram post saying that you’ve nearly missed out on jobs because the offer went to spam, that your offer of study for your Masters went there, that your Afterpay notices go there - one of you even said your settlement cases always go to spam even though they’re legal. A few of you also reminded us to delete all our spam emails/ unread emails to help the environment (which you can read all about here!)
The wildest things your relatives have fallen for on Facebook
I put a call out on Instagram asking you to send in some of the wildest (non-covid related) things your family members have believed on Facebook and these are SENDING ME. PS, none of these have been edited for clarity (who do you think am?)
@mkenzie03: my mom told me that her and ryan reynolds were having a conversation in the comments of one of his facebook posts. I laughed and told her she was crazy, it was a fake account, etc. except she wasn’t lying, she actually was talking with ryan reynolds. I’m never living that one down
@luraajay: My partners grandma reposted a 420 meme that was a fake diagram about the moon literally turning green once every 420 years, and shared it with the caption that said something like “wow nature is amazing” lmao
@lara.daviss: My dad once saw a mockumentary about mermaids and it took me an hour to explain to him that mockumentaries are a legit genre and mermaids do not exist.
@deerie3" My father was convinced that mermaid-like creatures were discovered after watching a fake documentary.
@mjupshaw: “Bet most people won’t have the courage to share this picture of Jesus on their timeline” photo of Obi-Wan. My aunt shared it unironically.
@gracexcollier: I’m sure lots of people’s family’s have been gotten by this one but I’ll never get over every single adult in my family unironically sharing the picture of Obi Wan Kenobi as Jesus thinking it was just Jesus 😂
@stephsise: No joke my mom thought that there was going to be a Titanic 2. It was just a mash up of different movies. She reposted it and all. 😑
@maegeee: Remember the meme of the girl w a slice of ham w the eyes bit out on her face? And it said she had a rare disease? My grandma reposted it.
@jgainey87: One of my family members once saw (and believed) on Facebook that the little red light in forehead thermometer readers is actually a laser that will "calcify the penial gland in your brain" and since your "penial gland" regulates your melatonin levels, you won't sleep well once that gland gets calcified. So I shouldn't let anyone take my temperature with a reader that has a red light/laser. For the record, I did show them how to fact check this wild claim and educated them that the human brain doesn't have a "penial gland" but rather a "pineal gland" in the back of your brain (not the front). And obviously those "lasers" are just lights that help you aim correctly for accurate temperature readings.
@rosaloess: My mom watched a video about how the dark side of the moon is populated by different species of aliens and the moon acts like a UN for us and aliens. She knows it’s true because the guy in the video was recruited by NASA to be a translator for a species of aliens because he has telepathic abilities. HOW DO YOU ARGUE WITH THAT????
@lessluckys: The rock has died at least 5 times thanks to Facebook and my mum believing in it
@lauren_sil: My mom thought she was talking to The Rock on Twitter for so long and that he followed her. The account name was like TheRock8375928495 and had 7 followers 😭
@kirstinmalachowski: Dad used to add a bit of hydrogen peroxide to his water. He read that it’s good for you because water is H2O (one molecule of oxygen) and hydrogen peroxide is H2O2 (two molecules of oxygen). So when he drinks hydrogen peroxide his guts get extra oxygen. Tried to explain how lungs work vs intestines. Would always just say but two is better than one and I read it online
@subebru: My mom, a few aunt and two of my coworkers believed that all our phones were gonna blow up when the moon got closer to the earth
@sarah28_06: talking tom was watching you through your phone
@loveandtaika: my mum low-key doesn’t believe in the water cycle lmao
There were seriously too many good ones and I can’t wait to show you the rest tomorrow!!!
Lovebombing, "The Ick," & WTF is Ye up to? (Culture Vulture)
Inside the exclusive, chaotic, painful NFT party at Auckland’s Longroom (The Spinoff)
Disney Names Mike White (not The White Lotus Mike White) to Lead Metaverse Strategy (The Hollywood Reporter)
Maybe All Boyfriends Should Be Offline (The Cut)
Out With the Facebookers. In With the Metamates. (NY Times)
Olympics, Omicron, & OMG IT’S SWEATY!! (The Shit Show)
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
