šøRanking Every Harry Styles Song šø
MÅrena lil shits!!
I'm loving seeing so many of you with your āout of officeā messages turned on - go get that holiday!!! Another thing Iām loving? EVERYONE WHOāS MADE BACON AND EGG PIE FOR THE FIRST TIME! Iāve had a bunch of photos/ stories about people baking it and loving it and thatās just so cool. Glad you get to enjoy one of lifeās simple pleasures. Speaking of simple pleasures, I watched Lemonade Mouth last night, and something about that movie just fucks me up in a really good way. Itās cringe, so if you arenāt tied to it with nostalgia, donāt go and watch it - youāll judge me so hard - but thereās something about the high school musical / camp rock/ lemonade mouth/ bandslam genre that Iāll never get tired of.Ā
I also wanted to share this cute response from Izzy, who was teaching her kiddies about insects when they ran into the āis it a ladybird or ladybug?ā question, and suggested I make it into a mundane poll:
āI have finally found a moment after all of the chaos of week 6 at uni to email you and say thankyou so much for posting my student's question about the 'ladybug vs ladybird' conundrum, it was super sweet of you and very appreciated <3!! I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the SYSCA account, and in the daily newsletter, and I enthusiastically told all of the tamariki about it. Once we had taught the 5 year olds what instagram was and what the 'Stuff You Should Care About' page was (we had to change the name hehe) then they were all so excited that their question had gone around the world. They are now confidently saying both, and are pretty stoked about it all. So ngÄ mihi nui, you're the best šā
SO CUTE AND HOPE THEY ALL READ THE DAILY NEWSY NOW :P
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Abolish Facebook memories for this reason onlyĀ
Rolling Stone Ranked Every Harry Styles Song (and did a pretty good job!)
Why the Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
After a Gunman Seemed to Vanish, These New Yorkers Helped End the Search
Driven From City Life to Jungle Insurgency
āāThe growing, lightly controversial industry teaching kids crypto
Cardi B and Offset Announce Their Sonās Name
Do you say airplane or aeroplane?
Abolish Facebook memories for this reason only
Yesterday Squish got a Facebook memory yesterday for 10 years since Rubes and I made these and held them up at a One Direction concert in Wellington:
Kinda cute tho because this reminds me of like the best day of my young life. It was their first time in New Zealand and they played in a tiny venue and we just cried. AND, we were STILL HOLDING THESE SIGNS at about 3am when we saw them in a bar in Wellington and lost our shit. Donāt get me wrong, we werenāt in the bar with them (we would have been about 15) but the bar had glass windows, so we saw them all drinking (except Zayn I think) and cringely, they defs wouldāve seen us.Ā
Rolling Stone Ranked Every Harry Styles Song (and did a pretty good job!)
I gotta say, I love the dude that wrote this piece. Look at this intro:
āHarry Styles dropped his debut solo single āSign of the Timesā five years ago, in April 2017. Since then, heās built one of the wildest, weirdest songbooks of modern times ā a brilliant body of work from a genius singer, songwriter, and performer. And itās just about to get bigger, since heās also an evil angel of chaos who never gets tired of wreaking havoc on our lives.ā
Gorgeous selection of words there, Rob.
And then:
āLetās face it, there are lots of Harrys. Heās a pop star. An actor. A scholar of music history. A fashion icon. A dangerous madman who finds his pleasure in getting under our skin and trashing our expectations and dancing on our madness. And honestly, bless him for that. Heās all these things, but as these songs prove, the realest, truest Harry is the one who puts his heart and soul into this music.ā
He puts āWomanā pretty low on the list, but includes this great line:
āWomanā has a hook that sounds like a sexually agitated duck, quacking in ecstasy. As Harry told the BBCās Nick Grimshaw, itās not a kinky mallard ā just his own voice through a filter. But when he first played his debut for his parents, āThe whole album finished, then my stepdad said, āIāve got one question ā where did you get the duck from? How did you get a duck in the studio?ā I was like, āThat was me, thanks.ā
I loved the lil snippets of song trivia throughout it, like how āSign of The Timesā is written from the perspective of a mother whoās dying during childbirth:
āAs Harry told Rolling Stone in 2017, itās sung from the perspective of a mother dying in childbirth. āThe mother is told, āThe child is fine, but youāre not going to make it.ā The mother has five minutes to tell the child, āGo forth and conquer.āā Thatās why āSign of the Timesā feels uplifting, finding beauty in bleakness. (Itās a totally different song if it happens to carry you through a grief experience.)ā
Also, the story of how āSheā was written as a shroom fueled masterpiece:
Itās Harry and his loyal crew at their most unhinged, which is probably why he loves this song so much. Halfway through āShe,ā Mitch Rowland steps into the stratosphere for a cosmic guitar voyage. āMitch played that guitar when he was a little, ah, influenced,ā Styles said. āWell, he was on mushrooms, we all were.ā They forgot about āSheā until they went back later. āBut Mitch had no idea what he did on guitar that night, so he had to learn it all over from the track.ā āSheā is the kind of fucked-up beauty you can only get from making music with trusted friends ā Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson, Jeff Bhasker, Rowland ā instead of hired guns. And throwing the rulebook out the damn window.
I reckon the list is compiled pretty well, though I wouldāve put āGoldenā and āFallingā a bit lower and nudged āMeet Me In The Hallwayā and āFrom The Dining Tableā up a lil. But well done Rob!
More things I read while I was on holiday that you should read:
If you read just one thing I recommend you today, let it be this: WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
Itās a bit of a long read, but stick with it. Iām always looking for things to help me put into words the way I feel about the internet/ cancel culture/ the world (arenāt we all) and one of my besties sent me this piece, which touched on a lot of things that I wish Iād said first. Iām going to put in a few of my fave parts, but please go and read it.
If the pre-digital era was like talking to one big audience who were all looking into one mirror, then:Ā
āThe digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So the public isnāt one thing; itās highly fragmented, and itās basically mutually hostile. Itās mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or anotherā
A take that I will post time and time again because I find mob dynamics and cancel culture incredibly unhelpful :P
āEnhanced-virality platforms thereby facilitate massive collective punishment for small or imagined offenses, with real-world consequences, including innocent people losing their jobs and being shamed into suicide. When our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we donāt get justice and inclusion; we get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth.ā
And then this too:
āSocial media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous. Is our democracy any healthier now that weāve had Twitter brawls over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezās tax the rich dress at the annual Met Gala, and Melania Trumpās dress at a 9/11 memorial event, which had stitching that kind of looked like a skyscraper? How about Senator Ted Cruzās tweet criticizing Big Bird for tweeting about getting his COVID vaccine?ā
Hey, at least Iām self-aware.
After a Gunman Seemed to Vanish, These New Yorkers Helped End the Search
I tried not to consume too much about the Brooklyn Subway shooting, but this piece from The New York Times about what it was like to be travelling on the Subway that day & how those on board were helping to solve the crime was fascinating. Content warning - it describes the crime and the scenes that followed, so read with care.
Driven From City Life to Jungle Insurgency
One thing about me: Iāll always keep up with the news in Myanmar. After visiting, and then studying the country/ their media at uni, I feel weirdly connected to it. This story is about the āGen Z Warriorsā who are fleeing the militaryās brutal crackdown and living out in the jungle areas to fight against them. Marketing managers, dentists - people like you and I (except theyāre not like you and I at all) - have dropped everything from their city lives to live a completely different and dangerous lifestyle. The least we can do is read about them.
āāThe growing, lightly controversial industry teaching kids crypto
How young is too young to be teaching kids about crypto? I always wished Iād been taught about investing at school/ when I was a kid, so what makes this so different? Read about crypto summer camps for kids here.
Cardi B and Offset Announce Their Sonās Name
Itās Wave Set Cephus.
Is it an aeroplane or an airplane?
Iāve been thinking about this since the release of that B.O.B and Hayley Williams song.
34% say aeroplane
66% say airplane
Boris Isnāt Sorry For Party Rocking (The Shit Show)
What Your Jealousy Is Really Telling You (Culture Vulture)
The case for muting your friends online (Embedded)
Inside the āFestivalā That Ruined Influencersā Coachella Weekend (The Cut)
Why Did Everyone Think Rihanna and A$AP Rocky Broke Up? (The Cut)
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