Being a rat girl in a recession
+ Indian rescuers are just 2 metres from reaching 41 men trapped in a tunnel, & why is Jason Nash begging for money on TikTok?
Hi angels!!! Had such a cute moment this morning when I attended an early morning writers group and the girl sitting beside me (there were only about 7 of us there) was a CLOSE FRIEND!!!! I’d posted on my story that I was on my way to ‘write with a group of strangers’ but it turns out we weren’t all strangers at all! Crazy small and huge world we live in, glad you’re all a part of it (and hi Isabella 🥺)
We have our first SYSCA live(ish) hangout tomorrow and OMG we are so excited about it!! If you registered for the November 30th catch up you should have already received an email/ calendar invite to join - let me know if you didn’t and I’ll get you set up. See you soon 𓆩♡𓆪
Indian rescuers are just 2 metres from reaching 41 men trapped in a tunnel
Bel Chimes In: Are you embracing recessioncore right?
Jason Nash is begging for money on TikTok live
Where to get trusted information on Israel-Palestine
Something for you to watch if you’ve been reading Fourth Wing with us in Book Club
Indian rescuers are just 2 metres from reaching 41 men trapped in a tunnel
I’ve been lightly following this story and hoping for a breakthrough like this - 41 men who have been trapped in a tunnel in India for 17 days have nearly been reached. Experts, who’ve been manually drilling through rubble to get to them said there was just 2 metres of rubble left to remove.
The men got trapped over two weeks ago after a landslide caused part of the 4.5-kilometre tunnel to cave in about 200 meters from the entrance. Since then, attempts to rescue them have been met with a series of snags (like their giant drill breaking down inside the tunnel). The men are all thought to be uninjured (there’s even a video of them here) and have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe.
Progress came after flying in a team of experts in “rat mining” (a primitive method of extracting coal through very small tunnels), and now they’ve managed to remove the final 12 metres of rubble that blocked the tunnel’s entrance using hand drills and pulleys. Reports say they’re nearly ready to begin the evacuation process (which will involve putting the workers on stretchers and wheeling them out through a 3ft-wide tunnel.)
At the time of writing this, the evacuation process hasn’t begun, but it’s expected to start soon. Here’s hoping it all goes well! BBC are giving live updates here!
Are you embracing recessioncore right?
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!
Hello crushes 🌹
Another week turning by in the matrix, but not just any old week - the week all our Bookies and paid subs have been invited to our cute af online meet-ups! A gift! A joy! A slightly overwhelming task to be interesting enough for a whole hour online for you, but I honestly can't wait and j'adore seeing how many of you have clicked attend!
Bleak black Friday and embracing your inner Rat🌹
This week, I wanted to bring you an unacademic, extremely short think piece on the delusion of the internet and reality at the moment (whoa, Bel, hot take). Lol, no, but I was thinking about this after a phone convo with my friend the other day when we were laughing about 'letting ourselves go because of the recession'. Lucky, I know, to even be able to joke about this kind of thing and don't think for a second I'm trying to diminish class or the horrendous wealth gap in the world, but I have a point that doesn't make me sound embarrassing, stay with me.
We were talking about how often the smallest things can make you feel better in a world that feels so out of control — maybe that's going to a yoga class, getting a mall massage, or a manicure or a nice coffee or a haircut, and how being able to do these things have drastically diminished with the cost of living crisis. You look down at your shitty, worn-out sneakers and are like, oh well, gonna have to keep making these last. Or you cut your own bangs in the bathroom mirror and are stuck trying to make it work til they grow out. You get what I'm pointing at.
Then, on the complete other end of the spectrum is Black Friday shopping hell, and hot people on the internet making it seem super normal to have deliveries of chic outfits each week and a whole subgenre online about how to make your life as aesthetically pleasing as possible in every single facet of it. Is it... a lie? Constant visual perfection seems pretty unattainable and stressful to me.
Which brings me to the idea of the Rat Girl (again, I know) but going deeper on it a bit, in light of the above. It's about the importance of instigating a level of unaestheticness in your life. It's about ensuring you're having periods of time where you're not preoccupied with how you look and what your life looks like to others and not feeling like you're chasing down one extra purchase that will then perfect your life. It's accepting life's messiness and getting creative with what you have instead of being made to feel like what that is is ~ not enough ~.
Something to muse on? In the meantime, see you on the internet! Tomorrow, this weekend, or otherwise. Oh — also love your DMs on things you want made sense of in the newsy. Keep em coming! Ily!
Jason Nash is begging for money on TikTok live
Bit of a niche one today but for people who used to watch David Dobrik and the Vlog Squad (who all kinda fell off) you’ll know what I’m talking about. Each night for the past few weeks I’ve scrolled past Jason Nash (David’s 50-something-year-old friend with two kids) doing challenges on TikTok live where he’s basically BEGGING young people to send him ‘gifts’ (which equal real-life money btw.) TikTok users are joking that it’s because he’s allegedly been “taken off the David Dobrik payroll” and while that’s kind of a joke, it’s also true that Jason used to have a podcast with David where he got a cut of their earnings from ads, and he used to be in/ help out with Davids's videos where he also either made money from David himself OR from the clout he could then use to monetise his own online presence. Now that David is far less online and Jason can no longer rely on him, I guess he’s trying out… begging?
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Rubes actually wrote about this for us in this week’s ‘Should We Care' segment in Culture Vulture and made a point that I wanted to bring to you all: Is this a glimpse into the future? Will we be seeing most of the creators we once loved having to resort to doing things like this when they’re no longer relevant? Reminds me of what Kate and I said about influencers diversifying their brand while they still have people’s attention so they can be financially stable when they inevitably fall off.
We’re going to chat about this more over on Culture Vulture this week so tune in!!
Where to get trusted information on Israel-Palestine:
It’s so important that we keep reading the journalists out there who are covering this horrifying situation in-depth (and often risking their lives to do so), so here are some live updates I recommend:
Something for you to watch if you’ve been reading Fourth Wing with us in Book Club:
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