🐘Addressing The Elephant In The Room🐘

+ When it arraigns it pours!

shit you should care about

and

Bel Hawkins

Jun 13, 2023

Good morning angels!! A rushed one for you this morning because - in classic Luce fashion - I’ve got two cute talks to give to a BUNCH of young people from my hometown this morning and I haven’t exactly prepped them yet (does anyone else have this thing where unless you literally HAVE to do something, you can’t do it???) That’s why I leave writing the newsy til the morning of - my brain simply WON’T let me pre-write it.

So, please forgive me (have I softened the blow at least a little with the Carlos Sainz gif above?)

Love you all!!

🔔Bel Chimes In with a Hot Tip: Elephant in the Rooming🐘
Paul McCartney Says He Used AI to Produce a “Final” Beatles Song
Trump is getting arraigned in Miami as we speak
Illinois is banning book bans
‘Dead' woman found breathing in coffin
Help me with an investigation

🔔Bel Chimes In with a Hot Tip: Elephant in the Rooming🐘

This section is written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chardonnay-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. She also writes our Sunday newsletter ‘No News is Good News’ which all our paying supporters receive. Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!

Goood morning crushes! Buzzy (to be the first one in the world, I just know it) to announce we're officially halfway through the year? Life's a movie, and here we are, riding it. [Luce note: watching it? Do we ride a movie? Or is life a rollercoaster, or a wave?]

This week I wanted to bring you a new lol term that I can't remember if we've touched on in Chimes before but, regardless, felt poignant to bring it back to you here.

Ok, so I found myself giving this piece of advice to a junior at work a while ago but actually, I think it relates to life in general. I call it: Elephant In The Rooming. It's basically a technique of conversation where you come right out and say the thing that's making you feel awkward. It's so useful, and honest, and honestly helps you phoenix out of situations that can feel so challenging or weird. Examples:

(work) I'm really hungry and going to rat girl eat this muesli bar before we start
(work) I wish I could say I knew how to do this, can you show me?
(friends) I want to be fully present but mentally I'm also trying to work out how I owe tax and am not getting a return this year
(crushes) I'm nervous because you're hot and cool and want you to think I'm the same

My other hectic and unsolicited tips for being a woman at work are: complimenting men on something they're wearing because it throws them off (hehe), subtly sliding in your experience when you're feeling like you're being underestimated ("oh this reminds me of a time I worked on [insert impressive things here]", bringing up things they don't think you would know about ('Oh that Warriors game last week, just WOW).

Bleak to still be doing this kind of emotional labour, incredible to be slowly covering the floor in shards of the glass ceiling with you all!

See you on Sunday for No News is Good News where I'm going to unpack money and bleak recesh feelings in a cute and non depressing way! 🌹

Paul McCartney Says He Used AI to Produce a “Final” Beatles Song

You guessed it, I’m on my AI bullshit again! In today’s news - Paul McCartney has produced a new (and ‘final’) Beatles song using John Lennon's voice from an old cassette, and it’s to be released this year!

Chatting to the BBC McCartney said:

“When we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had,” McCartney said in the interview. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do.”

He said he was inspired to do this after watching the documentary about them ‘Get Back,’ and the process sounds relatively simple.

They had an old voice recording that Yoko Ono had sent him in the 90s (previously deemed un-releasable) that they extracted John’s voice from:

“We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI,” he added. “They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’”

To me, if the unreleased music is in the right hands (and in this case, if there is some sort of notion that the deceased would WANT it released) this feels like a good use case for AI in my opinion. Imagine a previously unusable One Direction track that we could salvage using AI? I’m into it!

If you’re into this kind of stuff (or the ethics of it) may I suggest this episode of Culture Vulture that Liv and I did YEARS ago:

🗺Around the world 🗺

USA: Trump is getting arraigned in Miami as we speak

When it arraigns it pours! (Full disclosure, I only put this news story in because I wanted to use that line.) Anyway, Trump is in Miami to head to court to be arraigned for the second time this year (reminder: being arraigned means you have to show up in court to answer your charges - so like - pleading guilty or not guilty or whatever.)

Police are anticipating protests (I mean it’s America sooooo) but no doubt fewer people will show up than anticipated and Trump will tell us that at least two million people were there supporting him (they’re anticipating maybe 5,000.) More on this story here!

USA: Illinois is banning book bans

Yep banning the banning of books! Under a first-of-its-kind law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker “Illinois public libraries that restrict or ban materials because of “partisan or doctrinal” disapproval will be ineligible for state funding.”

“We are not saying that every book should be in every single library,” said Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who is also the state librarian and was the driving force behind the legislation. “What this law does is it says, let’s trust our experience and education of our librarians to decide what books should be in circulation.”

Ecuador: ‘Dead' woman found breathing in coffin

Insane story out of Ecuador today, but mourners at a wake got the shock of their lives when they realised the woman they were mourning was STILL BREATHING.

A hospital had declared Bella Montoya dead following a stroke, so they placed her in a coffin and allowed some family members to hold a vigil before her funeral, but then, after almost five hours, “they opened the coffin to change her clothes ahead of the funeral, the woman gasped for air.”

She is now in intensive care, but responsive:

“"My mum is on oxygen, her heart is stable. The doctor pinched her hand and she reacted, they tell me that's good because it means she is reacting little by little," newspaper El Universo quoted her son as saying.”