HAPPY FRIDAY ANGELS!!! Hope you all slayed the week, or, if you’re like me, you’re simply ✨celebrating getting through it✨ - it’s that time of year eh?? If anyone is in the mood for a good cheering up, Flo made her first TikTok for us, and it’s either really bad or really good - if you were a swiftie in about 2012 then I think you’ll like it. Otherwise, stay for the Matty Healy content I reckon.
I’m going camping this weekend with a bunch of our pals to celebrate Liv and Abby’s (another bestie) birthdays so I’m REALLY excited to go and touch grass and tell you all about it on Monday (remember when I used to do that? I need to get out more…)
As always, thank you for the love, the comments, the email replies, the ever-updating chat threads - you are all my everything and I love every one of ya 💘💘
⚽️A Squish Edish: A few of the controversies surrounding the FIFA world cup in Qatar ⚽️
New episode of The Shit Show!
Kanye West reportedly showed explicit photos to employees at Adidas
A beautiful poem about female friendship 💘
It’s Friday so you get horoscopes
Do you know what an ice cream spider is?
⚽️A Squish Edish: A few of the controversies surrounding the FIFA world cup in Qatar ⚽️
This section was written by my brother Squish (who you all know better as co-host of The Shit Show!! Squish loves space, cycling, wine, and F1 💘💘)
So, the FIFA world cup started this week in Qatar, and it is going… just as well as we expected. From the very get-go it’s been condemned for its human rights violations, with The Guardian reporting that 6500 migrant workers have died since the bid to host the event was won in 2010. 6500! To build stadiums for some football games!
"Some of them include workers who collapsed on the stadium construction site and died after they were taken off it. Others died in road traffic accidents on their way to work in a company bus. And many others died suddenly in an unexplained way in their labor camps," said Pete Pattison, one of the reporters on the investigation, in an interview last year with NPR.
I should note here that “FIFA and Qatar dispute that number. Qatar says that only three people have died as a direct result of work on World Cup construction sites, and acknowledge the deaths of 37 workers that were "non-work-related."“
I’m as big of a sports fan as the next person, but that alone should be enough to piss you off about all this. But wait, there’s more.
In a country that has prison sentences for same-sex relations, it’s also not a surprise that members of the LGBT+ community and their allies are having a hard time in Qatar.
Gay Qataris have been promised safety from physical torture in exchange for helping the authorities to track down other LGBTQ+ people in the country, a prominent Qatari doctor and gay rights campaigner has told The Guardian.
Depressingly, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly suggested that LGBT fans should “be respectful” and show “flex and compromise” if they plan to attend the World Cup. The English Football Association have assured gay English fans that they won't be arrested for public displays of affection (yep, what a grim sentence).
Teams representing seven European nations at the World Cup also announced on Monday that their captains won’t wear LGBTQ armbands in Qatar after FIFA said players sporting the bands would be penalized.
“We were prepared to pay fines that would normally apply to breaches of kit regulations and had a strong commitment to wearing the armband. However, we cannot put our players in the situation where they might be booked or even forced to leave the field of play,” the soccer associations said in a joint statement.
And lastly (because this is all the space Luce will give me, but I could go on) for the fans it’s looking like the football version of Fyre Festival.
To begin with, the accommodation basically looks like it’s just containers with an AC machine inside, and fans are pissed about paying $300NZ a night for what can best be described as unfinished shacks.
Booze will also only be served in Doha's four and five-star hotel bars and restaurants, which will inevitably be packed. And even if you reach the bar, you're coughing up $25 for an average pint. Discussing the likelihood of a carnival atmosphere in Doha, The Athletic's Tom Williams recently described the city as "the most boring place I've ever been to in my life." Great vibes all round!
There’s so much more I could say about all of this, but for now, have a look at Japanese fans cleaning up the stadium after their shock triumph against Germany (and they’ve been sticking around after games Japan isn’t even coming in to clean up too.) God bless em.
New episode of The Shit Show!
First things first, I just realised that The Shit Show is nominated for Best Current Affairs Podcast at the NZ podcast awards which is kinda dope considering its Squish and I having silly sibling banter while trying to bring you the news!!
This week’s episode is really good tho tbh, we go from trips to space, to a new (old) Disney CEO, a shooting in a Colorado Springs club, and all the controversy surrounding the FIFA World Cup in Qatar... its lucky Squish brought some cute animal stories to balance it out. Tune in wherever you get your pods!!
Spotify:
Apple pods:
Kanye West reportedly showed explicit photos to employees at Adidas
“Kanye West has been accused of showing explicit pictures of his former wife Kim Kardashian to employees at Adidas, as part of behaviour many saw as “intimidation tactics”, according to a new report.”
Jesus, are we ready for this folks? In the latest Ye news, he reportedly showed an explicit image of Kim during an interview in 2018, where he said “My wife just sent me this,” and then showed the picture, with other workmates saying he showed other ‘personal’ photos of her to his workmates at Yeezy in the same year.
Former Adidas employees told Rolling Stone Ye frequently showed explicit images, including his own sex tapes.
“I feel it was a tactic to break a person down and establish their unwavering allegiance to him, testing and destroying people’s boundaries,” one said.
The full Rolling Stone article, titled Kanye West Used Porn, Bullying, ‘Mind Games’ to Control Staff, goes into all of this and chats to a bunch of people around Ye during this time, so if you’re interested in knowing more, read it here!
A beautiful poem about female friendship 💘
By our very own Bel, of course.
It’s Friday so you get horoscopes
An interesting Twitter thread for all my F1 fans in the room
Do you know what an ice cream spider is?
Yesterday I tweeted this:
And the replies were largely something along the lines of ‘A WHAT????’
So today’s mundane poll is:
FIFA & the Controversies in Qatar, Explained (The Shit Show Podcast)
TicketMastermind (Taylor’s Version) (Culture Vulture Podcast)
US Walmart shooting: Manager kills six at Virginia supermarket (BBC)
Daniel Ricciardo secures F1 future with return to Red Bull as third driver (The Guardian)
Three women among dozen publicly flogged in Afghanistan - Taliban official (BBC)
SYSCA playlists (✨Supporters only✨)
Our HUGE SYSCA reading list! (✨Supporters only✨)
I also wanted to say I love having SYSCA on Substack. I feel more connected and I think next year I’ll start supporting financially
What the hell is an ice cream spider