🧐 Is A Guesstimate Just An Estimate? 🤔
Today we’re starting with a BIG shout out to the 19 new ✨SYSCA SUPPORTERS✨ who’ve joined us in the last week! We’re working on some bonuses for you all as we speak, so if you want more SYSCA, become a ✨SYSCA Supporter✨ here!
You know how I usually give you a weekend update and it’s usually really wholesome and vibey?? Well, considering ya gal has covid this weekend I sat in my bed drinking coffee that I can’t taste, eating spaghetti on toast that I can’t taste and texting my family about the fact that I can’t taste. I did however watch some GREAT shit, like ‘Crashing’ (Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s pre Fleabag show which SLAPS), Turning Red (the BEST lil film ever for past and present fangirls) and Insecure, which I am slowly but steadily getting through. I also went back to SKAM (if you know you know) which is my comfort show. Specifically Isak and Even’s season.
Also, look at this pic that Annalese sent me of the daily newsy in a presentation at her work 🥺🥺🥺
Got a big week ahead so I'm focussing on getting well & being able to LOVE THE NEW HARRY ALBUM WITH ALL MY MIGHT 💘💘
PS, we're launching our first special bonus for our recurring supporters this week, so if you're not a ✨SYSCA supporter✨ yet, you should change that...
Ten people were shot dead in a Buffalo supermarket
How the son of a dictator used TikTok to win the Philippine election
Britney Spears announces loss of ‘miracle baby’ early in pregnancy
A good definish of Web3 for normies like me
A listening party update
A lot of poll results!!
Ten people were shot dead in a Buffalo supermarket
Content Warning: Racially motivated gun violence.
An 18-year-old man in military gear has been arrested after what is being investigated as a racially motivated hate crime, where he shot 13 people, in a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, killing 10.
On Saturday the suspect drove for a few hours to get to the ‘predominantly black area of the city’ before entering a busy supermarket in Buffalo and opening fire.
Here’s an excellent piece from Ben Collins about social media’s role in the shooting. It details how the suspect wrote a manifesto where he claims that he was 'radicalized on 4chan while he was “bored” at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.’
It goes into how he repeatedly cited the “Great Replacement" Theory, which is ‘the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with non-white people through immigration, interracial marriage and eventually violence.’
More updates on this whole story, here.
How the son of a dictator used TikTok to win the Philippine election
It’s 2022, so not even elections are immune to TikTok trends. The use of TikTok in helping to elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr (the son of an extremely problo dictator) though? Sinister as hell. I read this amazing piece in the LA Times over the weekend about how an alternate reality was fabricated on social media to help Bongbong come to victory:
During the 14 years that Ferdinand Marcos Sr. ruled the Philippines under martial law, he ordered the killings of thousands of political opponents and plundered billions of dollars from the national coffers so his family could live in extreme luxury.
But Crisdel Almarez, who was born a decade after the dictator was overthrown, knows that period only as a time of national bliss.
She knows this from TikTok.
“TikTok remembers the good times,” said Almarez, 25, who sells home appliances at a mall here in the capital. “We don’t believe the history books anymore. We have social media now.”
I know we’re all bored of hearing the takes about how social media disrupts elections and misinforms young people - but this shit is actually super important. A brand new fake narrative was made up and fed to users on TikTok, painting a time of martial law and brutality as a ‘golden era.’
The Chinese-owned app best known for its trendsetting dance memes is brimming with slick videos portraying the Marcos family as a political dynasty that brought Kennedy-esque glamour and global respect to the presidential palace. The snippets establish a narrative, but more importantly for millions of young Filipinos, they deliver a vibe.
There’s a retro clip of the resplendently dressed first lady, Imelda Marcos, meeting with Britain’s Prince Charles set against Swedish pop singer Tove Lo’s soaring hit “Habits.”
Putting videos of such a horrific era over trending sounds, and captioning it with shit like ‘FEM Walk Hits DIFFERENT’ (FEM is an acronym for the dictator's full name) is honestly just using our youth, knowledge and lingo against us and it’s like… how the hell are we supposed to spot this shit when we don’t all know the history of every political family in every country in the world? Misinformation (and those behind it) are getting smarter/ more tactical, which means we need to as well.
Britney Spears announces loss of ‘miracle baby’ early in pregnancy
Content warning: Miscarriage.
In heartbreaking news, Britney Spears and her fiance, Sam Asghari, have announced that they have lost their baby. They announced it on Instagram, saying:
"It is with our deepest sadness we have to announce that we have lost our miracle baby early in the pregnancy. This is a devastating time for any parent. Perhaps we should have waited to announce until we were further along. However, we were overly excited to share the good news. Our love for each other is our strength. We will continue trying to expand our beautiful family. We are grateful for all of your support."
Just a good definish of web3
I talk about Web3 allllll the time - but I KNOW IT MAKES A LOT OF YOUR EYES GLAZE OVER! It’s hard to define because it’s not it’s final product yet (will it ever be? Who knows?) But if you wanna understand a bit more, you should first watch this super fast and fun video that we made about it:
And then you should read this interview that I saw in the weekend. It's in WIRED and it's with Gavin Wood, who coined the term 'web3' in 2014:
“To believers, Web3 represents the next phase of the internet and, perhaps, of organizing society.
Web 1.0, the story goes, was the era of decentralized, open protocols, in which most online activity involved navigating to individual static webpages.
Web 2.0, which we’re living through now, is the era of centralization, in which a huge share of communication and commerce takes place on closed platforms owned by a handful of super-powerful corporations—think Google, Facebook, Amazon—subject to the nominal control of centralized government regulators.
Web3 is supposed to break the world free of that monopolistic control.”At the most basic level, Web3 refers to a decentralized online ecosystem based on the blockchain. Platforms and apps built on Web3 won’t be owned by a central gatekeeper, but rather by users, who will earn their ownership stake by helping to develop and maintain those services.
There's also a really good interview with him that follows this, but I mostly wanted to show you this definition.
Read this for more if you want!
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A listening party update!
We are SO excited about all of your entries and I can’t wait to meet you/hang out with you/ listen to the new album with you!!! We’re picking the winners as we speak and will be getting in comms tomorrow, so good luck, and thank you all so much for getting behind this!!! WE LOVE YOU!!
A bunch of polls
After you shower do you get dressed in the bathroom or your bedroom?
23% say bathroom
77% say bedroom
Is a guesstimate and an estimate the same thing?
45% say yes
55% say no
How many times a day do you shower?
76% say once
14% say twice
1% three times
9% say… none?
Elections, Elon, & A Heroic Dog (The Shit Show)
Making Sense Of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard (Culture Vulture)
I Invented Gilead. The Supreme Court Is Making It Real. (The Atlantic)
Music lovers care more about climate change than the general public, new study reveals (Screenshot)
The killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, explained (Vox)
The Mundane Thrill of ‘Romanticizing Your Life’ (The New York Times)
The “It’s Not The Vibe, Stop” Creator Doesn't Care If You Think She’s Problematic (Buzzfeed)