Bring Back Planking 🤓
Today we’re starting with a BIG shout out to the 30 new ✨SYSCA SUPPORTERS✨ who’ve joined us in the last week!
Become a ✨SYSCA SUPPORTER✨ and get access to our special 📚bumper book list📚 and 🎶SYSCA playlists🎶 (or just support us coz u love us 🥺)
This weekend was bliss - and I'll tell you about it in a second - but first a huge moment for baby SYSCA!! We're finalists in the Voyager Media Awards 🥺
To anyone who doesn't know what a Voyager is (I didn't either until I joined the ✨media space✨) it's basically an award celebrating journalism in New Zealand!! I've been nominated for 'Editorial Leader of the Year' which is not only a huuuuuge moment for SYSCA (and me!!) but a huge moment for any lil media companies out there doing it!!!! It feels so 🥺 to be sitting up there alongside some amazing (and super long-running) NZ media companies, and I'm so proud of what we've all built (this was defs a joint effort between our team and all of you!!)
Anyway, enough about work - I know you're really here to hear about my weekend. Well, my little bro Ben was here so on Friday night the boys of the flat cooked up a BBQ and we all had a lovely evening of wine and their creations. It ended in us all singing an improv 'good-bye' song to one of the guests, which will go down in history as one of the cringest things our flat has done, but Taylor Swift just told us to 'live alongside our cringe' so that is what we will do.
On Saturday I took Benny out to Piha (growing up we only ever saw it on Piha rescue) and then to the magic Karekare falls, which I also spotted while I was watching The Wilds (spoiler alert: it's where they discovered water!!!)
Then I dropped Ben off at the airport to go and meet Squish in San Fran (jealous) and went out for dinner with my flatties which was wholsome as hell (someone our nights always end up with a game of Picolo being played, but that's chill.)
On Sunday I cleaned the bathroom, bought some new strings and restrung my guitar, had a long overdue catch up with one of my besties over coffee, and sat down to read all the newsletters that I didn't get to during the week!
I hope your weekend was restful and you found some joy. I'm feeling ready for the new week! xxxx
PS YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS CUTE AS HELL VIDEO OF US FROM THE NZ HARRY'S HOUSE LISTENING PARTY 🥺
📚Shit You Should Read About📚
Every ✨SYSCA Supporter✨ gets access to our bumper book list as soon as you sign up! It's all the books we loved, hated, and the books that changed us.
What supporters are saying about the book list:
Louise: "Omg there are so many books and little write-ups! I was literally expecting a list (which would have been totally cool) 🥺 but you guyssss 💕
Taylor: "So excited to watch this list grow. From one book lover to another, thank you for this and everything else you do!"
Jessi: "Already loaded three recs onto my Kindle so safe to say early on that this perk is the move. 😍"
🎶SYSCA Playlists🎶
If you’re a monthly or annual ✨SYSCA Supporter✨ then we are opening up our souls to you and gifting you some 🎶playlists🎶
What supporters are saying about the playlists:
Michelle: “Luuucee anybody with Can’t Fight the Moonlight on their playlist is immediately my best friend. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.”
Allison: "Ahhhhhhh these are amazing—but please especially give my compliments to Chef Ruby for cooking up a playlist that is s e n d i n g m e"
Hannah: “This is the greatest thing. Of all things. At this moment right now. I've been CRAVING new music (cheers Hazza for helping me out) but I don't trust spotify playlists because the ones they recommend to me I never seem to enjoy!!! So thank you. Off I go to listen!”
Become a supporter to get access to all of these perks🥺
Avan Jogia From “Victorious” has started a Substack, and he's in New Zealand???
Guns have become the leading cause of death for American kids
The Viral Online Challenge Is Never Coming Back
A glossary of internet slang that is actually useful
Bankrupt Council spent £28k on HQ's plants
James Corden and Harry Styles made a music video for $300
Avan Jogia from “Victorious” has a Substack, but more importantly, he's in NZ???
Ok, so I felt like I had to write about this for a few reasons. One reason is that I loved Victorious as a kid - however, the hill I will die on is that Jade is a way better singer than Tori (and of course, Cat slayed.) I also had a huge crush on Beck (Avan) and love that he was with Jade and not Tori. The second reason is because every time a 'celeb' launches a newsletter I'm just super interested to know what they're writing about (JLo and Dua Lipa both have one?!) Turns out Avan is writing about poetry and NEW ZEALAND?????
I clicked onto his page and saw this:
So naturally, I read them. Here are few of his musings after his first day here:
He reckons we're pretty 'lifestyle' focussed and came just in time for some public holidays:
This is confirmed to me by the people I’m working with, and also by the schedule of the work I’m doing, we have a four day weekend coming up for Easter. Something unheard of within the grinding gears of North American work worship culture. Then after that is Anzac Day. Which is sort of Remembrance Day for us Canadian and Brits, sort of like Memorial Day to the Americans. This day is mostly about Gallipoli for those among who like history.
A note on fashion:
There is a girl dressed up like early 00’s Paris Hilton, replete with tube top, Von Dutch hat and white plastic pleasers. She is watching her boyfriend, who looks like Kfed, skate, he is quite good.
He finds the sky tower:
I see the big syringe in the sky and realize where I am staying isn't too far.
And here's one of his poems:
92——
go on my marxism commie baby
steal your sugar daddy’s wealth.
redistribute it to the masses
it's harm reduction.
it’s praxis
That's all from me! I'm off to try and grab a flat white with Avan.
Guns have become the leading cause of death for American kids
This made me sick to my stomach. Axios (using data from the CDC) have reported that guns are the leading cause of death for kids one and older, surpassing motor vehicles.
Some more stats, via Axios:
Nearly two-thirds of the 4,368 U.S. children up to age 19 who were killed by guns in 2020 were homicide victims, per the CDC
Another 30% of firearm-related child fatalities were suicides, 3% were accidental and 2% were of undetermined intent
The firearm death rate for Black children was more than four times that of white children, and white children were still more likely to be killed by motor vehicles than guns
The thing that is so clear here (especially when looking at the graph above), is that when lawmakers found out that motor vehicles were dangerous, they put in regulations to make them safer. Why the fuck aren't they doing the same for guns?
The Viral Online Challenge Is Never Coming Back
I loved this piece by Kaitlyn Tiffany (I basically love everything she touches) but it also made me hella nostalgic for the days when the internet was a tighter knit audience. Remember planking? The ice-bucket challenge?? The Harlem shake??? These viral challenges gripped us no matter how dumb they were - and the reason they worked was because the internet felt WAY less fractured than it is now.
What I mean by this is that there used to be a chance that we'd all actually see the same things happening on the web, rather than all having our own crafted 'For You' pages that took us all off into our own little echo chambers. We were all closer as an audience back then.
The challenge once embodied all that social media was meant to be: a forum for exchange; a source of fellowship; a way “to make the world more open and connected.” Our favorite truism about the internet today—that it divides us into warring tribes and makes everything terrible—simply wasn’t true back then, or at least it didn’t seem to be. In the early 2010s—the golden age of challenges—anyone could get involved in an online trend, and that would only make the whole thing better.
It reminds me of this quote from this EXCELLENT piece my pal sent me (and I shared with you a few months back) 'Why The Past 10 Years of America Have Been Uniquely Stupid':
Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society.
The digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So the public isn’t one thing; it’s highly fragmented, and it’s basically mutually hostile. It’s mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another.
Seriously, you should all go and read this piece about viral challenges!!!
New episode of The Shit Show!
Monkeypox, & America's Latest School Shooting — open.spotify.com
Another week, another tragedy because America won't do anything to change their stupid as fuck gun laws. We're sad and mad this week, but come and learn a thing or two with us <3
A glossary of internet slang that is actually useful
Words that we're all using online that are actually useful to understanding us (us being Gen Z)
YOU GET COOL AND EXCLUSIVE BONUSES 🥺
Bankrupt Council spent £28k on HQ's plants
A council that declared bankruptcy last year earlier spent £28,000 on indoor plants which a councillor said are now "dying".
It's pretty self explanatory but if you want to read the rest, be my guest (hey that rhymed!)
James Corden and Harry Styles made a music video for $300
And it's the cutest thing ever.
Monkeypox, & America's Latest School Shooting (The Shit Show)
Harry Styles, Heartstopper & Taylor Swift's Speech (Culture Vulture)
SYSCA playlist (✨Supporters only✨)
Our HUGE SYSCA reading list! (✨Supporters only✨)
Andy Warhol, Clay Christensen, and Vitalik Buterin walk into a bar (O'Reilly)
I Won’t Stop Intellectualizing The Kardashians (Refinery29)
What Bullets Do To Bodies (The Highline)