TicketMastermind (Taylors Version) 🎫
➕ A message from Hank Green 💘👀
Morning besties!!! I spent this weekend ✨still in pain✨ as one side of my mouth is still #reallysore after my wisdom teeth removal, so… not sure what I’m meant to do about that. This is fine, except I’ve got band practices with our Battle of the Bands team that I’ve been missing out on AND two podcasts to record this morning! But I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself in 3,2,1…
In other news, we finally got a couch at my new whare (whare means ‘house’ in te reo Māori) so the house is ✨getting there.✨
Since I’ve not been going out and have been trying to recover, I’ve caught up on Season 2 of The Sex Lives Of College Girls (love that show), also on The White Lotus, and ALSO on The Kardashians. I also found time to watch the Hannah Montant movie (love that movie), and have now run out of ideas, so what are you all watching atm that you think I’d like??
Meanwhile in our subscriber chat:
A few shit chats went down over the weekend - first of all a discush about Harry and Olivia breaking up (more on that below), secondly a SYSCA gift guide where I want you all to tell me the best gifts you’ve ever received to help us all figure out xmas gifts this year, and most imp - ONE OF OUR NEWSY READERS MADE A PLAYLIST OF EVERYONES ‘FOREVER SONGS’ and it’s so cute (thank you Mars!!!) Here it is:
And now some housekeeping:
A bunch of you are telling me that your newsy’s are going into your ‘promotions’ tab in your Gmail app - if you want it to stop doing that, follow these instructions:
How to move a specific sender from Promotions to Primary:
Select the check box next to the newsy
Click the 3 vertical dots at the right end of the tool strip
Click on Filter messages like these (observe if you now have all the emails of that type as Gmail search results. If this is not the case, add filters in the advanced search panel to get your desired results)
Click Create filter at the bottom of the search panel
Tick the Categorize as checkbox
Click the Choose category dropdown menu and select Primary
Hit Create filter, and you’re done
Have a fab Monday angels!!!
Hank Green: On Socks You Should Care About
Rich countries to pay poorer countries for losses caused by climate change
Justice Dept. Is Said to Investigate Ticketmaster’s Parent Company
Musk lifts Donald Trump's Twitter ban
North Korea's leader Kim reveals his daughter in rare appearance
The UK government joined discord and it... didn’t go well
Hank Green: On Socks You Should Care About
This lil section was written by new SYSCA bestie Hank Green (yes, THAT Hank Green) and it’s just the cutest shit ever.
I’m your special guest columnist, Hank Green, known for making science videos on TikTok, teaching high school students biology, and making hockey fans mad at me on Twitter (apparently.) My brother and I also had this dumb idea that the SYSCA people thought was cool enough that they gave me a lil space in their newsletter.
Basically, we figure, you’re going to wear socks, and you’re going to drink coffee, and we thought, why not let you do that in the best possible way.
So we worked super hard to make sure we created fantastic socks and spectacular coffee, but then also, that we’d donate 100% of the profit to charity - and we do.
The coffee is very good, the socks are very good, and the socks subscription is only open until next Monday!
OK, that’s all the space I was graciously given, goodbye!!
GO GET A SOCK OR COFFEE SUBSCRIPTION!!!
Rich countries to pay poorer countries for losses caused by climate change
“A historic deal has been struck at the UN's COP27 summit that will see rich nations pay poorer countries for the damage and economic losses caused by climate change.”
The global ‘loss and damage fund’ was said to have taken an all-night negotiation sesh and was not an easy decision to come to:
It was the most contentious issue at the conference, and has been a long-running demand by developing countries since 1992. For nearly two weeks, the EU and the US refused demands from poor countries for a new fund to address loss and damage, arguing that existing funds should be redirected for the purpose. Early on Friday morning, the EU made a U-turn, to agree to a fund on condition that big economies and big emitters still classed as developing countries under the UNFCCC rules, which date back to 1992, should be included as potential donors, and excluded as recipients.
It’s probably going to take at least a year to sort through how the fund is going to work, and so far, few nations have actually pledged significant amounts of money to the fund, so I guess we’ll wait and see!
Justice Dept. Is Said to Investigate Ticketmaster’s Parent Company
After last week's absolutely botched attempt at selling Taylor Swift tickets, the Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment (the owner of Ticketmaster), to see whether it “abused its power over the multibillion-dollar live music industry.” A little bit of context: Back in 2009 Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged, creating a monopoly where one company controls access to the majority of tickets for any given event.
The Justice Department is looking into this, as they say the merger “created a giant in the live entertainment business that still has no equals in its reach or power.”
I’m not going to go much further into this here, because Liv and I are off to record a whole episode of Culture Vulture about this for you! So tune in on Wednesday!
Musk lifts Donald Trump's Twitter ban
Elon Musk ran his own mundane poll over the weekend. He asked whether Donald Trump should be reinstated on Twitter and after 15 million people voted, the group who voted ‘yes’ came out on top.
Trump has previously said he doesn’t see ‘any reason’ to come back to Twitter, but with a 2024 presidential bid on his (tiny)hands, he might find one. God help us all.
North Korea's leader Kim reveals his daughter in rare appearance
I know it’s my job to know everything, but I did NOT know Kim Jong-un had a daughter! The pair had a cute and wholesome moment together in their rare appearance… watching a missile test. Anyway, her name is apparently Kim Chu-ae, and here she is!
The UK Treasury joined discord and it... didn’t go well
I probably could have told them the outcome of this and saved them the hassle. But anyway, the UK Treasury joined Discord in response to Twitter’s potential demise, and were… dunked on quite heavily. Discord, as we all know, is like a big group chat, used largely by gamers and Web3 bros - it’s like an edgy version of slack. So, when the UK Treasury launched its own channel - despite it being read-only - they really shouldn’t have been too surprised at the outcome.
Even though posting/ commenting was not enabled in the threads, the ability to react with an emoji was well and truly alive, and thanks to their ‘welcome channel’ every single new member was announced as they joined. And look at how The Guardian reported on what happened:
That means the Treasury’s server has been eagerly posting automated messages such as, “Welcome, LOCK UP PRINCE ANDREW. We hope you brought pizza”, and “Welcome Jeremy Corbyn. Say hi!”. The latter does not appear to be the real account of the former leader of the opposition.
The latest official post from the Treasury has reactions including the middle finger emoji, clown emoji, and aubergine emoji, commonly used to indicate a penis. Less plainly abusive emoji reactions have included the trans rights flag, EU flag, and a pregnant man emoji, protesting against government policies in those areas.
Others have embraced the fact that letters are included in the list of emojis, and more than 100 people have apparently coordinated to attempt to write out the chancellor’s name, “Hunt”, underneath the post. Unusually, however, every one of them seems to have made the same typing error, accidentally spelling out a vulgarity instead.
Honestly, stories like this keep me going.
If you couldn’t picture your life/ mornings/ family debates without Shit You Should Care About, then I reckon today would be a pretty cool day to become a ✨SYSCA Supporter ✨
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Today’s mundane poll:
Trump, Twitter, & Iran (The Shit Show Podcast)
Queerbaiting: what is it and what ISN’T it? (Culture Vulture Podcast)
The many, many controversies surrounding the 2022 World Cup, explained (Vox)
SYSCA playlists (✨Supporters only✨)
Our HUGE SYSCA reading list! (✨Supporters only✨)
The Swiftie uprising is imminent (The end of Z internet)
Omg Hank green has a section in the newsletter now??? 🤯🤯🤯🤯 I love this
Sorry you’re still sore Luce! I’m popping my mum hat on here and recommending you call your dentist and let them know it’s still sore and they might get you in to have a quick check that all is ok (my dentist has done this before for no charge) hope you are healed up and back to best asap ✨