april links
Two pieces on online life worth your time this weekend:
Robin Sloan’s the lost thread, which is the most succinct Elon x Twitter take (with some great roasting of media and publishing types in there (“Scratching at your timeline, you are huddled in a single small tavern with the journalists, the nihilists, and the chaotic neutrals” is um, rude and also brilliant).
Steffi Cao’s is being single not aesthetic anymore? for Buzzfeed News, an essay that validates your sneaking suspicion that yes, relationship content is EVERYWHERE lately. Paired with the whole gentrified cottagecore trend I’m very curious if we’re in the midst of a new specific nostalgia for the usual bucolic nuclear family fantasy, or simply witnessing the tradlife get commodified in more ways.
Stuff I’ve been doing:
Forgot to plug this last month, but: Defector’s Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sujong Laughlin have been putting out this podcast Normal Gossip that has truly infiltrated all of my groupchats…the concept of “people dishing about other people’s normie drama” might seem like it’d only be fun in theory, but the execution is perfect. I’m on this extremely wild episode from February, but a little birdie told me another bonus epi is coming very soon…
Speaking of dramá, you know I had many thoughts on the NYT Twitter memo and the Elon Musk Twitter takeover (<--this latter link includes some choice quotes from all your internet faves; also, everything Safy-Hallan Farah says about online life should be framed somewhere, in my opinion).
Had a nice lunch chat with Ronny Chieng following the release of his new Netflix special! I am kind of accidentally finding myself on this beat of like ~Asian2Asian conversations~ and am nervous about making it all too cookie-cutter cheerleady, but it is cool to hear perspectives from people like Ronny who are figuring this whole “moment” out in real time, too.
Also…have some fun book-related news to announce soon! Stay tuned…
More stuff I liked:
My friend Dan Lombroso has a new doc out with The New Yorker today about the environmental impacts of the border wall, called American Scar. You can watch it here!
Of course I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once and drenched my lil face mask in tears; in retrospect, the use of a sci-fi multiverse to examine the first-gen Chinese-American experience—what is an immigrant if not someone who chooses one universe over another and hopes for the best?—feels so obvious I can’t believe we haven’t done it before. Ke Huy Quan, also, is a total treat as an instantly iconic movie dad.
Some excellent Toks: this one for the Everything Everywhere hive, a requisite puppy Tok, the rare rideshare delight, proof that Barbie possibly has the best brand TikTok across the board (Idk if this is interesting to anyone else, but the level of investment in Barbie’s account, as with her IG, always kills me), and finally: the founding fathers pale in comparison to Founding Daddy (i’m sorry). Also this one really got me good.