the world is not enough
cuomo vs mamdani, depression, podcasts, žizek, herzog, getting online in 1995
ladies! a hot new workout routine just dropped!
would you like to watch a fatality
Listen, some if not most of you don't even live in NYC, so it's totally okay that you didn't watch the mayoral debate that just happened featuring Cuomo, Sliwa and Mamdani. This is the only part you need to see because OMFG.
Mamdani's grin at the beginning is familiar to anyone who was ever on their high school debate team and no, I will not explain further. I will however strongly urge you to read this WIRED interview with him by Katie Drummond about going from polling at less than 1 percent to building a social media juggernaut and becoming the front-runner. It's a truly great interview because it shows you exactly why New Yorkers love this guy:
I think the way that you move around the city, it influences the way in which you see the city. Too often if you're riding around only in a car with tinted windows, the only New Yorker you might see is a reflection of yourself.
That is part of what leads to politicians who do not engage with the public in the manner that they should. My not only hope and dream, but my commitment, is to live in the city as New Yorkers live in it. To take the train, to take the bus, to ride a bike. You will not feel the pain of the slowest buses in the United States until you ride that bus.
Also he is adorable in literally every single photo—so adorable that I can't even be embarrassed about using that word to describe a politician because in this case, it's not opinion but fact. (The only other politician I can truly describe as objectively adorable is Michael D. Higgins, the president of Ireland.)
n.b. Even a noted grump like Slavoj Žižek thinks/hopes Mamdani (along with Francesca Albanese) is the future of the left!
this is what it's like, part one
Imagine being trapped in a small cage with electrified bars so you can only even peek at the outside at a remove—that's what having major depressive disorder in a capitalist society is like. As you get sicker, the space between you and the bars gets larger and so the space left for you to occupy inside your cage gets smaller and smaller until there's nowhere you can move to; the best you can do is try to stay in place and breathe shallower and shallower breaths, or you'll die.
It's a trap, of course. Depression wants you to be depressed, so when your brain is hell-bent on its self-destructive loop, eventually no amount of guided breathing exercises, well-meaning pep talks from loving friends, your current care regime of medication plus therapy plus snuggling your perfect little dog can keep you alive in that teeny tiny space you've been stuck in within your cage. Then it's time to check yourself into the hospital for a grippy sock vacation because the alternative is jumping into the Hudson and letting it take you away and you don't want to do that but also you kinda really do.
three podcast recommendations
Maybe a decade or so ago (before it got overrun by Nazis) my pal Anil Dash publicly committed to using his massive Twitter platform to only retweet women, which in turn led me to reconsider my media consumption. I was already watching a lot of things featuring women in lead or featured roles that would pass the Bechdel test, so I resolved to read mostly books by women—increasingly easy if you read a lot of science fiction and fantasy—and I only listen to podcasts by women. Here are my three favorites:
Reasonably Shady is the podcast by Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon, best known for the Real Housewives of Potomac, which is the funniest, if not the best, show in the current Housewives universe. Gizelle is one of my top two Housewives of all-time because she's incredibly funny and also unbelievably gorgeous—I have seen her in person and she looks like a Black Barbie for real—but also the podcast is frequently the perfect combination of smart and silly because of her insight (her late father was a civil rights activist who worked with MLK and was one of the first African Americans to serve in the Texas legislature post-Reconstruction) and her chemistry with Robyn, who is the reasonable one in their friendship. If I can only listen to one podcast, this one is it because it has me howling in laughter more than any other.
If you haven't read about the I've Had It podcast by Jennifer Welch and Angie "Pumps" Sullivan in the last week or so, after they've been profiled by both the Guardian ("How two blond suburban moms gave Democrats an answer to the rightwing media ecosystem") and Rolling Stone ("Is the future of viral left podcasting these two hilarious red state moms?"), consider this the universe's third attempt to get you to listen to what's probably the funniest, but also most cathartic podcast about American politics. If just reading the news since last November makes you want to scream all day every day, this is the podcast that will make you feel seen.
Giggly Squad is a top ten comedy podcast hosted by Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo, who are both millenials but don't hold that against them. It's the perfect thing to listen to when you're out with the dog on a mental health walk and can't deal with anything complicated, because just listening to two women laugh about pop culture and dumb relationship shit for an hour every week is healing.
a few other things
Not only is Werner Herzog on Instagram now, he seems to be really sincere about it. It's super charming!
Anil Dash (again!) points out that "very few [tech insiders] agree with the [AI] hype bubble the tycoons have been trying to puff up." Which like, okay, good to know tech bros aren't completely evil or complicit… but our already at risk clean water reserves are going to get used up for dumb shit in the meantime. Can't wait for this particular bubble to burst already.
Phil Gyford on what it was like to go online for the first time in 1995 (which is also the year I went online!): "If I logged in to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) or a telnet chat room I might ask someone who was connecting from the US to say hello to my friend. Hey Tim! they might type. Yes, those characters were really typed by someone in California, right now! A real person! Hard to believe."
This is huge news if you're Catholic (I'm a Cradle Catholic who spent ten years in Catholic school and came out atheist): it looks like Pope Leo is following in his predecessor's footsteps and making moves to finally dismantle Opus Dei, breaking the powerful conservative prelature up into three separate groups.
Matt Haughey on how LA's BMO stadium added AI to everything and made it worse, which I'm guessing is at heart a cautionary tale of how someone in the C-suite got bamboozled by AI and/or kickbacks. Wonder how much money they're going to have to lose before they go back to hiring humans.
For those of us stuck behind a desk, here's a simple ten minute desk yoga routine you can do every day. Everything but the last step can be done while sitting, and the routine targets all the muscles you fuck up by sitting still for hours.
NYC is getting its first-ever cheese conveyor-belt restaurant, an import from good ol' Knifecrime Island.
This New Yorker/ProPublica piece by Andy Kroll on Project 2025 architect Russell Vought is chilling: Trump might be making all the headlines for saying and doing the crazy things but "[Vought] has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the Commander-in-Chief,” a senior official said."
song of the day
Not only is Garbage's The World Is Not Enough the most underrated Bond theme, it's got the best music video of the entire lot. Shirley Manson is a goddess.
bonus for scrolling all the way down
