Last Sunday, instead of writing this newsletter, I was having breakfast with my partner at a cafe in Long Beach we hadn’t been to yet and reading The New Yorker, one of the pretentious habits I stopped feeling bad about a while ago. Amy Davidson Sorkin asks “How hard was it, really, to see what Jeffrey Epstein was doing?” (spoiler: not very) and Louis Menand explains how cultural anthropologists were integral to how we thought about humanity but now they’re pretty much forgotten.
My partner and I really liked this full page in The New Yorker being reserved for Rico Nasty’s brand of punk in all its glory. Later that week, Rihanna showed us this photo from her Vogue Hong Kong feature.
Here is Matthew Ismael Ruiz’s Pitchfork feature on Cuco and his parents about his sudden success, their Mexican roots, and how much they worry about him going out into the world with all its demands and disappointments and it filled my heart with so much joy and I also found myself worrying about him to the point that I didn’t know what to do with myself.
"Swallow your pride and put aside your ego," a playlist.
Amanda Petrusich has a genius profile on Iggy Pop that reminds us all of the man’s deep and gentle humanity despite his reputation. Petrusich shares a tiny, decent moment:
“Do you want to see mine?” Pop asked, gesturing toward the Rolls-Royce. The interior was a creamy-white leather. After I pressed a button marked “Door,” the door closed. Pop took down the top, and turned the air-conditioning to high. We spent the next two days cruising around like this. Pop is a courteous chauffeur. When the traffic necessitated quick braking, he shot his arm in front of my chest. He travels with an extra hat for guests, in case the sun or the sea breeze becomes overwhelming.
I’ve watched this video of James Harden and Russel Westbrook dancing and this video of the Rutgers’ football team dancing and this video of Ricky Thompson’s new boots about a million times and it never stops making me feel happy. Also, editing this feature about the first head shop in Tijuana by Lindsay MaHarry and this explainer about a stoned C-3PO meme by Andy Andersen were among the most joyful moments during the week.
One idea: pivot to video?
Andrew Luck was the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts until he decided he didn’t want to do that anymore because he was rapidly feeling more and more trapped in his soon to be broken body at the age of 29. That, and there wasn’t much joy in it anymore. A professional asshole accused Luck of being a millennial, which is actually true, but it became an interestingly telling moment in sports where millennials’ focus on the self and prioritization of interests outside of their profession spat in the face of the culture and ethos that is corporate sports and, in particular, the NFL. Luck is an incredibly thoughtful, sensitive, and unique individual — he sincerely offered “nice hit, buddy!” when defensive linebackers twice his size violently slammed him to the ground and sports weirdos gravitated towards Luck’s own weirdness in a way that was beautiful and very internet — all bad traits for a person doing the most complicated and visible jobs in one of the most popular and violent money-making operations in American history.
The NFL’s version of football is somewhat of a farce. It’s supposed to be a game in which extremely loyal men compete to see who can be the most well-prepared and disciplined as they efficiently slam their bodies into one another at dangerous speeds, over and over again until the clock runs out, but really, it’s all business. Luck was among the games’ best and loyal managers until his body and spirit broke. The Sunday business meetings weren’t fun anymore, so he quit. The horrible people who love this wretched sport booed and called him awful names. In the end, Luck choose himself, and even though some professionals called it one of the most bizarre moments in sports, it makes all the sense in the world if you stop to think for longer than 15 seconds but I know that’s asking a lot, so, oh well.
Megan Greenwell’s farewell blog as Deadspin’s editor reinforced everything we know and fear about the current state of digital journalism — it’s increasingly run by men babies in slick, expensive suits. It’s a familiar tale of content mills, SEO manipulation, “stick to sports” directives, and corporate temper tantrums to the tune of an episode of Succession, a show media people seem to love for its cold depiction of rich people corroding journalism with the most potent solvent of all: capitalism. This part sums it up pretty well:
The question I hear the most about the owners of this company is “Why did they buy a bunch of publications they seem to hate?” I and my colleagues have asked Spanfeller only slightly more diplomatic variants of that question on several occasions. The answer he has given is that the publications didn’t cost him much and that he liked their high traffic numbers. The unstated, fuller version seems to be that he believed he could simply turn up the traffic (and thus turn a profit), as if adjusting a faucet, not by investing in quality journalism but by tricking people into clicking on more pages. While pageviews are no longer seen as a key performance indicator at most digital publications—time spent on the site is increasingly thought to be a more valuable metric—Spanfeller has focused on pageviews above all else. In his first meeting with editorial leaders, he said he expected us to double pageviews. Several weeks later, without acknowledging a change, he mentioned that the expectation is in fact to quadruple them. Four months in, the vision for getting there seems less clear than ever.
Did your spine tingle when you read the “double pageviews” part? Mine did the same way it did a couple weeks ago when I was watching Succession and Roman is trying to “do shit” at Vaulter by suggesting this:
These are the brilliant ideas of the adults in the room, sticking to sports and pivoting to video. This is doing shit. Later, Roman will suggest gutting the publication and his brother will fire an entire newsroom and Greenwell will end her kiss off by affirming her fellow editors, writers, artists, producers, sales reps and product managers as the true leaders.
Today, I was at a different cafe having breakfast with my partner, and I was reading the same folded up issue of The New Yorker from the previous weekend to finish Andrew Marantz’s piece on how Big Tech reconciles with the guilt and shame of moving fast and breaking things by going to a historic retreat on the coast of Big Sur and looking for “ethical and spiritual guidance.” One passage describes how a secret workshop with some of the most powerful figures in tech fostered actual introspection:
“It accelerated a lot of questions I’d been asking myself but not necessarily prioritizing,” a co-founder of a popular mobile app said. “I didn’t spend a lot of time in the hot tub—I got more out of just talking to everyone, honestly and openly, without us being distracted by our phones.” Like most mobile companies, his measures how much time its users spend on the app; the implicit assumption was that this metric should be maximized. “Afterward, I started thinking, Maybe our goal should actually be less time on the app,” he said. “Maybe the best way to serve our customers is to get them off the phone, building relationships in the world.” This realization didn’t become corporate policy overnight. “It’s never easy to reverse course, especially when it’s a decision with financial implications,” he said. “But it’s also the case that no C.E.O. wants to go to sleep at night thinking, I built something that is causing massive psychological harm.”
And while it’s only a tiny sign of humanity, it’s also a tiny sign of humanity. Anyway, thanks for reading.
header is a photo of Barkley L. Hendricks’ painting, titled What’s Going On? footer graphic by styler.thecreator