You're supposed to wash your washing machine? 🧽

➕ What we know about the Colorado Springs shooting, & an introduction to the enneagram💘

Holy shit… judging by the number of mistakes I made in yesterday’s newsy it’s lucky I prefaced it by saying that at the moment I’m SLEEPING ALL THE TIME?? Like I’m just really really tired???? (Luce, it shows.) I’m usually such a get-up and GO person that it’s so weird for me to legit neeeeed to get back into bed every few hours, but that is life atm I guess??

On another note - thank you so much for all of your heartbreak stories so far - one thing I love about this community is how open & honest & vulnerable you all are with me (makes me brave to be that right back for you) but reading through all your stories makes me so 🥺 and ❤️‍🩹 and 💔. We’ll be taking submissions for a while, so if you want to vent/ share, come and do it here!

• What we know about the Colorado Springs shooting

• A new episode of Culture Vulture!!

• London Laura: What’s your (enneagram) number??  💅🏻

• Do you wash your washing machine?

What we know about the Colorado Springs shooting

Content warning: Gun violence

On Saturday, a gunman opened fire at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and injuring 18. The gunman was stopped by patrons of the bar who came together to tackle the gunman and prevent future deaths. One of these patrons was military veteran Richard Fierro.

Richard M. Fierro was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends on Saturday, watching a drag show, when the sudden flash of gunfire ripped across the nightclub and instincts forged during four combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan instantly kicked in. Fight back, he told himself, protect your people.

In an interview at his house on Monday, where his wife and daughter were still recovering from injuries, Mr. Fierro, 45, who spent 15 years as an Army officer and left as a major in 2013, according to military records, described charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.

As he held the man down and slammed the pistol down on his skull, Mr. Fierro started barking orders. He yelled for another club patron, using a string of expletives, to grab the rifle then told the patron to start kicking the gunman in the face. A drag dancer was passing by, and Mr. Fierro said he ordered her to stomp the attacker with her high heels.

Note: I have seen reports that differ from The New York Times, saying that she wasn’t actually a drag dancer, but a trans woman who was a patron of Club Q that night!!

Club Q, where the attack took place, had been considered “a safe haven for the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the area,” and on this particular night they were celebrating Transgender Day of Remembrance, “an annual commemoration that underscores the grave danger that transgender, gender-nonconforming and gay people who openly embrace their identities can face.”

As of right now, the suspect faces murder and hate crime charges, The New York Times report.

The authorities said they were holding Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, on suspicion of murder and bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, Colorado’s equivalent of a hate crime, for each of the five people killed in the shooting.

I don’t really have the words for something as cruel and inhumane as this, but I loved what Samantha Allen wrote for Them, so you should really go and read that.

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New episode of Culture Vulture: TicketMastermind (Taylor’s Version)

Of course, we HAD to do an episode unpacking what EXACTLY went down with Taylor Swift’s tickets, the Ticketmaster/ LiveNation merger, why it’s being slammed as legit UNLAWFUL, how Pearl Jam have beeeeeeen saying this since 1995, and how Taylor Swift is low-key a capitalism queen, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love her.

And yes, we do also go into the Harry Styles/ Olivia Wilde break-up (just a lil.) A banger of an ep for you!!

Spotify:

Apple Pods:

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London Laura: What’s your (enneagram) number??  💅🏻

Laura is our resident ray of sunshine. She’s a new London dweller, chief of romanticising literally everything, and will definitely ask you all what your love language is at some stage. We love her to death and can’t wait to have her therapeutic wisdom in here whenever we can!

Morena lovely SYSCAhood! Things are tbh simply magical here in London - mulled wine everywhere, the Christmas lights are starting to go up and I convinced my partner to get us a tree farrrrr too early!

Something diff for you today!! I work in music, and for the past two years alongside that, I've been doing research on the relationship between artists and mental health, which we all know is a topic the SYSCA community is vvv passionate about! So if you're into it - for the next few of these I might dive into a few of the things I learnt/became obsessed with along the way, incl attachment theory (aka why you should maybe date the person who makes you cringe), cognitive-behavioural therapy and a few things in between 💕

To kick things off softlyyy, today I am coming to you with something I have a love-hate relationship with: ✨personality tests✨ namely the enneagram. The origins of personality tests are more than murky (Myers-Briggs, I’m looking at you) and are by no means science-based, but they do peak interest around our desire to grasp our personalities. They provide a way to describe ourselves for those initiated, which can be helpful in a Hinge bio, but also lazy rhetoric - ‘I'm an ENFP’ is far easier to say than ‘I'm kinda outgoing and creative but anxious and feel everything…’.

They also run the danger of putting people into boxes or excusing bad behaviour (I intro'd the enneagram to my office, and while it was a cool way to get a bit deeper w everyone, there was also defs the odd 'you're such a type one' comment thrown around). SO a large caveat to say, this is by no means prescriptive, but I for one enjoy it as a prompt to ask myself questions and explore core drivers in ways I otherwise wouldn’t have. 

So introducing - the enneagram! The basics? It revolves around 9 types, or numbers, that are based on your core desire ❤️ and core fear ❌

Once you’ve done the test you are also given a 'wing' which is like your ‘sidekick’ number - not your dominant number, but a supporting one, so you end up with a merging of two numbers (2w3 over here!) What makes this quite different from other personality tests, is it also indicates where you go when you’re in a place of health or stress… stay with me. 

Exhibit A: Type 2, the 'Helper' ❤️‍🩹 loves to make friends, encourage/understand people and love them deeply, and can be v creative when healthy. However their deepest fear is being unloved, therefore, in stress, the Helper can seek validation of their worth by believing they must sacrifice for others, causing them to help others in an attempt to get their own emotional needs met - which can lead to someeee bitterness. 

The enneagram explores these drivers and fears for each number - a three (Achiever) lurves to feel valuable, and fears feeling worthless. A four (the Individualist) desires to be unique, and hates the idea of lacking identity (unsurprisingly a popular number for a lot of creatives!). What can also be fun / confronting is figuring out how your number interacts with the people in your life. For instance, my partner is a Type Seven - the ‘enthusiast' aka just 🎉 wants 🎉 to 🎉 party 🎉 which is fab, but they can be partying to avoid experiencing pain - and Two’s simply love to seek pain out 🙃🙃🙃

There is a lot more to it  - but before you start slapping numbers on yourself say it with me *it’s not prescriptive*!! With that in mind,  if you’re interested  I wrote up an enneagram 101 / overview of each type here a few years ago, some more in-depth descriptions here, and there are even entire feeds dedicated to it! Tbh there could be a whole discussion on the number each type goes to in stress/health (this could definitely be a podcast episode - luce tbd??)

As always pls reply with your thoughts/numbers/experiences too [LUCE NOTE: I’VE SET UP A SUBSTACK ENNEAGRAM CHAT SO GO PUT UR RESULTS IN THERE], I’d love to hear them -  lots of love!!!

Laura xx

[Another Luce note: I haven’t done the test yet but I have been told by SO MANY OF YOU (based on you knowing what I’m like in the newsy) that I’m a 7. We’ll see!]

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Do you wash your washing machine?

Every day something comes along to remind me that I’m not fit to be an adult. Today’s thing - THE IDEA THAT WE ARE MEANT TO BE WASHING OUR WASHING MACHINES?

It all started with this tweet:

liv @littleocean_liv

How was I, a 28 year old teenager, the youngest woman on record, supposed to know we’re supposed to wash our washing machine?

So I guess this could only call for one thing: a mundane poll.

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I need your ❤️‍🩹heartbreak💔 stories!!

My angels!! We’re about to work on a really special project all about HEARTBREAK!!! And as usual, we want this to be not just FOR you, but INFORMED by you! So, if you’ve got a story that you’d like to share with us about any type of heartbreak (and you’re comfortable with us using it/ sharing it - you’ll be anon if you like!) please drop it here!! Some thought starters for things you might have experienced:

• Cheating (being cheated on or doing the cheating)

• Gaslighting

• Ghosting

• Jealousy

• Abusive Behaviour

• Mental health causing the breakup/ making you feel like you should stay

• Friendship/family breakups

• When nothing was wrong but it just wasn’t right

Drop your stories here!

• Trump, Twitter, & Iran (The Shit Show Podcast)

• TicketMastermind (Taylor’s Version) (Culture Vulture Podcast)

• Solomon Islands: 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes Pacific nation (BBC)

• Hate Is No Match For a High Heel (Them)

• NASA’s latest moon mission is the dawn of a new space age (Recode)

• SYSCA playlists (✨Supporters only✨)

• Our HUGE SYSCA reading list! (✨Supporters only✨)