Are there more wheels or doors in the world?
Mōrena lil shits!!
I had such an eventful weekend that I had to pull out the notes app to make sure I was documenting everything properly for you all (because I know you all care about what I do soooo much.) So on Friday night my flattie Hayden (who’s big into BBQing) cooked us all up a lovely dinner which we ate outside while reminiscing with some old pals about our uni days (why do I feel like I do some sort of reminiscing every weekend lol). Then, on Saturday morning Rubes and I jumped in the car and headed to the mighty Hamilton to celebrate one of our besties getting a new job (and I’ll take any excuse for a party!)
That night when we rocked up to our dinner reservation they were playing “Make it in America” by Victoria Justice which was the first green flag of the night. (DID ANYONE ELSE WATCH VICTORIOUS AS A KID??? Jade had way better pipes than Tori but this is all beside the point.) We ordered some bubbles & decided to start playing Picolo (not the instrument, the drinking game/app), and please bear in mind that this was quite a nice restaurant and I am quite a non-quiet/subtle person. I was well behaved tho, and also felt like this was totally acceptable (it’s just answering questions and taking sips of your drink) and the playlist they had going was basically BEGGING for a party to be started.
Anyway, we finished a bottle of bubbles, our dinner, and our first game of Picolo before deciding that Long Island iced teas were on the cards (none of us has ever dabbled in these before, but you know when you get something in your head and then you have to do it/have it?? That was us.) We complimented the restaurant on their playlist & got on our merry way to the next bar where we ordered the aforementioned Long Island iced teas and started game number two of Picolo. WHICH IS WHERE SOMETHING WILD HAPPENED.
One of the games we had to play was “word association” where you had to think of a word and the next person had to think of the first word that came to mind when they heard it. So in my head for some reason, I was prepping for the word sandwich to come up (for absolutely NO reason) and then Rubes was the one who had to start the game off and guess what her word was… FUCKING SANDWICH. Let me tell you, I YELLED! I was soooo shook. I still am! We literally had not been talking about sandwiches at all that day or anything??? I love when shit like that happens and re-iterate how much you’re on the same wave-length as someone.
THEN we were all laughing about those Gossip Girl memes where they mix up the letters to say like… “GoPiss Girl” or “Go Sip Girl” like:
AND I WENT TO THE BATHROOM AND A GIRL WAS IN THERE WITH HER FRIEND. AND SAID TO HER OUT OF NOWHERE: “GO PISS GIRL” (lucky I was on the toilet because as you can imagine I WAS PISSING MYSELF.)
Anyway, after all of these weird psychic moments, we went home, danced to “These Words” by Natasha Beddingfield (which is now my current fave song now because I forgot how much of a BANGER it was) and then watched episode one of The Dropout (the show about Theranos/ Elizabeth Holmes.) What a time eh????
On Sunday I drove home, developed a hangover, cleaned the bathroom, and finally made some things with my beads (in that order.)
But look what I made for Rubes & Liv 🥺
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In today’s newsletter:
A Russia/ Ukraine update
TikTok plans to add labels to ‘some’ state-controlled media
We’re Getting a New Phoebe Waller-Bridge Series!
A gripping yarn: inside the Knitting.com drama
Are there more wheels or doors in the world?
HS1 or Fine Line?
The latest from Ukraine:
Here’s your daily summary from the BBC:
More than 1.5m people have now fled Ukraine into neighbouring countries, the UN says
More than 2,000 are reportedly detained in Russian cities after jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny calls for anti-war protests
Russia's military action will not stop until Moscow's demands are met, Vladimir Putin says
Payment giants Mastercard and Visa are suspending operations in Russia
Russian forces are responding to Ukraine's resistance by targeting "populated areas" in several cities, according to the UK government
Here are some more stories worth reading:
And here’s the latest from The Kyiv Independent:
Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: Explained - The Shit Show — open.spotify.com
Everything you've been wondering about what's going on in Russia/Ukraine right now, in words you ACTUALLY understand.
TikTok plans to add labels to ‘some’ state-controlled media
Remember last week when I taught you about press freedom? Well this is kinda an interesting update when it comes to ✨checking your sources ✨on social media. TikTok have just announced that it’s gonna start putting labels on some state-controlled media outlets.
Here’s what TikTok said about it:
Bringing more context to content on TikTok:
The war in Ukraine is devastating, and our hearts break for all those who are suffering. It has also brought pain to our community and our people. And as a platform, this war has challenged us to confront a complex and rapidly changing environment as we look to be a canvas, a window, and a bridge for people across the globe.
With the safety of our people and community as our guiding priority, we've dedicated significant resources to developing and enforcing new protective measures, and we want to share more on some of the steps we're taking.
Piloting our state-controlled media policy
Over the past several months we've engaged over 50 experts from multi-disciplinary backgrounds across 20 countries to inform our definition of state-controlled media – entities for which a government exercises direct or indirect control over their editorial content or decision-making – and our approach to making such designations. As we start labelling content now, we'll continue to gather feedback from experts in parallel to inform the development of our global approach and expansion. We'll share additional details on our broader policy roll out later this year. Our goal is to ensure our community has context on this type of content, and that we have the appropriate processes in place to consistently enforce the policy.”
They’re also upping their safety and security measures to ‘combat misinformation’ and have added digital literacy tips (developed in partnership with the National Association for Media Literacy Education and MediaWise) to their discover page. This isn’t exactly new - YouTube added similar labels in 2018, and Twitter and Facebook started applying them in 2020 - but I guess it’s a move in some direction, considering so many people are getting their news from TikTok (even if it’s not by choice.)
We’re Getting a New Phoebe Waller-Bridge Series!
A gripping yarn: inside the Knitting.com drama
If you wanna give your brain a break, you should read this story. First of all, great headline, second of all, knitting drama. Essentially, two dudes, Michael Jackness (not to be confused with a singer who shall not be named) and Dave Bryant, planned to ‘disrupt’ the knitting industry by buying the dormant knitting.com site, and creating a direct to consumer e-commerce brand that would reportedly bring them in $10m a year.
Before this, the two sold colouring books for adults:
“We created a very successful coloring company [in 2016] that had incredibly good reviews that people just really couldn’t get enough of. We paid our artists really fairly, and gave them all the credit. We provided amazing customer service. We provided community events and color-alongs.”
And this did not sit well with the knitting community. The story goes into a few things that the dudes said on a podcast, like when they stereotyped those in the knitting community as 'grandmas with little blogs' (which to be fair would massively piss me off... why is it so hard for poeple to wrap their heads around women having hobbies????)
But I wanted to look at this quote from the article for a second:
“To give you an analogy, it was like two guys with an air fryer under their arm, walking into the oldest restaurant in the country and proudly explaining how they were going to make a million dollars in a year selling air-fried frozen chicken nuggets from Costco,” says Amy Nowacoski, a New York–based marketing strategist and knitter who was one of those to highlight the issues with the Knitting.com plan.
Now, I don’t want us to take this story too seriously, BUT I can’t help but think about how naive it would be for us to assume that every person who started a business - especially an online business - knew the most about X thing - or how silly it would be for us to even expect that??? (I know I sound like a cynic here. It gets worse.) In a lovely fairytale village, the knitting shop would be owned by someone with all the knowledge of yarn in the world. The grocer would have tasted every single bit of produce. The bookstore owner has read every book in their shop.
But in reality? And on the internet? And in 2022? We’re buying shit from influencers who we know are being paid to sell it - and they probs haven't even tried it. And these days basically anyone can set up a Shopify account and start selling stuff - these are the barriers to entry that we were once soooo excited to have removed! Honestly, I hate as much as you that this is how the world works now (and I wish it didn’t come with the sexism, racism and looking-down-on-women-with-hobbies-ism that this story showed), but maybe the solution here is that the knitting community forms a DAO so they can collectively raise the funds to buy knitting.com themselves & make the business decisions together??? (I was joking when I wrote that but now it kinda sounds like a good idea + possibly... the future?? Idk tho.)
Damn, I thought I was giving my brain a break with that story but I actually ended up thinking pretty hard about it. Must be time for some beading (anyone wanna buy beading.com w me?)
Are there more wheels or doors in the world?
The other night I was sitting on the couch when my flatmate posed this question to me, so naturally, I had to bring it to you. It’s one of those rare mind-bending questions where the more you think about it, the harder it gets to crack.
56% of you reckon there are more wheels
44% of you reckon there are more doors
I’ve never spent so much time considering what makes a door a door - or a wheel a wheel? The more you think about it, doors and wheels are on EVERYTHING! Here are some other people who are thinking really hard about it:
[tweet https://twitter.com/DyeMasterDiscs/status/1499612587348140036]
It pains me that I will never know the answer.
HS1 or Fine Line?
37% say HS1
63% say Fine Line
I gotta say, as I get older some of the slow songs on HS1 really get me, so HS1.
WHY IS MY BENTLEY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN? (The Shit Show)
Oops, cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was probably a bad idea (Vox)
Zendaya Is Glad You Like Her ‘Little Tiny Toe Dip’ Back Into Music (Vulture)
The Ugly, Embarrassing Spectacle of ‘Milling’ Around Online (The Atlantic)
Volodymyr Zelensky Is Not a Meme (WIRED)
I love Beanie Feldstein (The Cut)
Lizzo, Britney & the death of the RomCom? (Culture Vulture)
Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: Explained (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
