Yesterday I made a cheekly lil impulse purchase for myself…. a record player!! We’ve been super lucky in our time at SYSCA to have worked with sick people like Sony Music (remember when we hosted the Harry’s House listening party???) which means we’ve been kindly gifted a few records in our time, and I’ve never been able to play them!! So, yesterday, I went out & picked up a player. She’s small & really cute, but I was slightly disappointed because I looked EVERYWHERE for literally any The 1975 records (well not everywhere, but I spent a LONG time looking) and couldn’t find any 🥺 so ended up grabbing Dr Hook & Fleetwood Mac to join my humble collection.
Speaking of music - you will have seen that yesterday we sent out our SYSCA Soundtracks to all our gorg paying supporters!! This was just a way of making us all feel a bit closer, & Rubes, Liv and I had so much fun putting these together for you! Please let me know what other bonuses/ perks / cute things you would like in addition to the daily newsy! Wanna show my appreciation to all our paid angels in as many ways as I can.
And speaking of music AGAIN… I found out Madonna follows us on Instagram yesterday???? WTF????
Love you all!!!!! xxx
France is kinda showing us all up rn
My multiverse of madness
New episode of Culture Vulture
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in Bahamas
Taylor Swift Shook Off Her Copyright Lawsuit Ahead of Trial
Gen Z loves Minions, horror and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
France is showing us all up rn
A couple of headlines from France caught my eye over the last week! The first: “France makes condoms free for 18 to 25-year-olds,” where, would you believe it - France is making condoms free for 18 to 25-year-olds!! This is gonna start in January and is in a bid to minimise the spread of STIs (in 2020 and 2021 France experienced a 30% national increase in STI rates.) Love that for them!! (Not the rise in STIs - but the free condoms hehe.)
The next headline to catch my eye was: “France Bans Short-Haul Domestic Flights in Fight Against Climate Change.” Now, it’s pretty self-explanatory as to why this is cool - France is literally banning short-haul flights in thief fight against climate change (I hope it’s obvious that I’m trying to do something funny by repeating the headline twice...)
The move will mean the elimination of flights between French cities that are already connected via rail with train trips of under 2.5 hours.
I should note that the initial measure (of swapping flight routes for train routes) only actually affects three flight routes, and Sarah Fayolle, Greenpeace France transport campaign manager said to Euronews that “it’s going in the right direction, but the initial measure is one that’s (not very) ambitious. We must go even further.”
My multiverse of madness
Had to put this here because it’s a freaky mix of all my interests & my dream blunt rotation.
New episode of Culture Vulture!!
This week is our last episode of Culture Vulture for the year 🥺🥺 In it Liv makes a big announcement, we run through all the BIGGEST pop culture moments of the year, and talk to each other about all the best things we’ve read/watched/listened to in 2022. Plenty of recs in here for your summer holidays, so tune in!
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in Bahamas
As recently as the summer of 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried was the boy-wonder face of crypto: a 30-year-old who founded one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, a celebrated philanthropist worth an estimated $16 billion, and a major Democratic donor who quickly found favor in Washington. By early November, he was at the center of an epic flameout that left his empire and his image as an uncannily sharp, altruistic billionaire in ruins. Now Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas and charged with wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering, among other things. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also separately charged him with defrauding FTX investors.
So crypto legend turned… non-legend, Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas. I’m sure you’ve all heard about his fall from grace - he owned the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX, and has been accused of mishandling billions of dollars of customer funds (among other things, which you can read about in-depth here.)The charges against Bankman-Fried are said to include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering, and I’m sure as this story goes on I’ll have PLENTY to update you on.
Taylor Swift Shook Off Her Copyright Lawsuit Ahead of Trial
Do you all remember how Taylor Swift was being sued for allegedly copying parts of her song ‘Shake It Off?’ We’ve def spoken about this story on Culture Vulture before but it kinda fell off my radar a lil, because it feels like everyone is suing everyone for copyright in the music indo these days.
Anyway, a wee refresher: writers of the song “Playas Gon’ Play” for band 3LW (released 14 years before Shake It Off) initially claimed that Taylor Swift had stolen the hook for their song, to the point where they were meant to go to trial in January to fight her on it! They’d actually been trying to sue Swift since 2017, but, in a turn of events, the case has now been dismissed. Merry Christmas Taylor! Now to deal with all of that Ticketmaster stuff…
Gen Z loves Minions, horror and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
Some good tweets for u xx
This Episode Was Written By AI (The Shit Show Podcast)
The Biggest Pop Culture Moments of 2022 (Culture Vulture Podcast)
Netflix’s ‘Harry & Meghan’ Shows the Gen Z-ification of the Royal Couple (The Daily Beast)
I love this edition of SYSCA daily "Taylor Shakes Off a Lawsuit", where, you'll never guess, but Taylor Swift has shaken off a lawsuit!
That Gen Z article reads like they found an alien species and are introducing it to the world. And I’m sorry maybe it’s because I’m the oldest year of Gen Z but aren’t minions cringe to us now? Definitely thought that was like a Gen X thing 😂🤷🏼♀️