Edition #20
Games nights, Becca Bloom, hard holy water, a cheat sheet to pronatalism, elevating your bed rot, and so many other really random things.
It’s a long one this week, you’ll need to open it in your browser to read the whole thing.
Whenever I write anything about board games or card games, my DMs are filled with people asking for specifics, so I’m assuming lots of you would be interested in partaking in the 500 person, free BYOG (bring your own game) board game night that the NYT is calling “New York City’s Hottest Hangout”. It’s held in a food court after hours and aside from chess, Ticket to Ride (love) and Catan (which a former staffer claims Facebook employees would let Zuck win) I hadn’t heard of most of them (but will be looking them up), including Splendor, Hues and Cues, Saboteur, Nertz, Wavelength, Blokus, Camel Up, Codenames, Decrypto, Wavelength and Exploding Kittens.
In the meantime, over in LA, people are paying US$50 a pop for entry to a Rummikub and martini night - called, what else, RummiKlub - held in a Beverly Hills ballroom.
Also playing into my love of a nerd hobby, Hyperallergic reports that embroidery is experiencing a feminist revival.
Becca Bloom had never posted to TikTok before January, but she’s already accumulated 2.6M followers and had an article on Airmail calling her “the Queen of #RichTok”. And the thing is, she’s… not annoying. In fact, as she plates her caviar-loaded breakfast of dim sum prepared by her private chef (not sure why he gives it to her unplated, but ok), or buys up half of Van Cleef in a single shoppy shop, you really can’t help but… like her, despite yourself and your anti-billionaire stance. She’s cute, her voice is very calming, she has good taste for someone that rich (uncommon), and she also has a job (in finance, natch) which is nice for this kind of content creator. I’ve never watched an episode of Housewives or the Kardashians, so I don’t claim to be an expert in rich people voyeurism but I’m more excited for her upcoming nuptials in Lake Como than I was for the Succession finale.
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While we all wait with absolutely baited breath to hear what direction the conclave is going to take the Catholic Church in after meeting with JD Vance killed the Pope (the internet is praying for the 67 year baby - by papal terms - Filipino progressive Luis Antonio Tagle) it’s worth noting that modern religion is a weirdass space. According to Snaxshot, True Vine is a direct-to-communion company who sell prefilled communion cups, which come with a gluten free wafer option, and are apparently looking to soon offer a THC-infused version. Alternatively, a company in LA (of course) is making Sacred Seltzer (tagline: “get crunk on Christ”) which contains 95% holy water, 5% alcohol. It’s currently sold out.
🍼 The Pronatalist Movement: A Cheat Sheet
Pronatalism — once an obscure philosophical stance, now an aesthetic on Instagram — is the belief that people (particularly educated, wealthy people) should be having more children, not fewer. Like, a lot more.
It’s positioned as a “solution” to everything from declining birth rates to humanity’s supposed creative and genetic stagnation. In practice, it's increasingly becoming a lifestyle brand for a certain subset of tech bros, billionaire whisperers, and soft-focus family influencers.
Why do they think this way? *Declining birth rates (globally, fewer babies are being born, and certain people - read: the rich and powerful -are panicking that society will collapse without enough young workers to pay for old ones) * Preserving “elite genes” (in a not-so-subtle eugenics-adjacent twist, some pronatalists argue that the "best and brightest" - translation: themselves - have a duty to reproduce prolifically to "save" civilisation. * Fear of ‘replacement’ (tied up with some extremely dodgy racial and cultural anxieties) * Individual legacy (a tech bro's version of building a cathedral: why create art when you can create an army of descendants?) * Vibes (for some of the newer, lifestyle-influencer pronatalists, it’s just another performative flex — like wellness culture, but with matching linen dresses and eight children).
Who are the players? * Elon Musk (of course - has fathered at least 11 children and says civilisation will “crumble” without more babies) * Simone and Malcolm Collins (a former venture capitalist couple who run Pronatalist.org, where you can sign up for info sessions on how to "save humanity" by, you guessed it, having lots of kids) * Katy Faust and Them Before Us (American advocacy group pushing for policies that prioritise "children's rights", meaning conservative family structures) * Tech elites (quiet donor networks pushing embryo banks, surrogacy expansion, and fertility tech investments) * The Insta-mamas (a newer wave of glamorous mothers turning giant families into lifestyle brands — part tradwife cosplay, part aspirational “soft pronatalism.”)
Has it come to Australia? Not in full-throttle form yet, but: Australia’s birth rate is dropping (to about 1.58 children per woman); right-wing and religious groups are already starting to frame parenthood as a patriotic duty; fertility clinics and egg-freezing services are booming, often pitched with the undertone that “you’re running out of time” — a softer, more corporate version of pronatalist panic (like anything else, Big Fertility is set to cash in on the panic).
Anything else I need to know to arm myself (and my womb) against these psychopaths? Just that your worth is not determined by how many children you have - or whether you have any at all. Here’s a good podcast to listen to as an antidote: Is the Future too Bleak to Have Babies?
Speaking of things that are icky, according to the Atlantic, offal is having a moment. (And we don’t need more proof than Erewhon “selling a US$19 selling a $19 “raw animal” smoothie last year made with freeze-dried beef organs”.) No, thank you.
Besides ground-meat blends and supplement pills, offal is being sold as salted crisps, chocolate-almond-flavored protein bars, vinegary meat sticks, and freeze-dried powder toppings to be sprinkled on dishes like pizza or steak. Whole Foods is planning to expand its offal selection, Fitzgerald told me; easy-to-cook options such as premade organ-meat burgers and meatballs should soon be available.
I was so affected this week by The Cut’s incredible story about The Telepathy Tapes — a successful podcast that looks at non-verbal autistic people whose caregivers believe they have telepathic abilities, accessed through a technique known as “spelling” (briefly: one person holds a board with letters, while the autistic person points to the letters to form words, with the caregiver acting as “communication partner.”) At first, the idea feels wildly hopeful — a way to bridge an almost impossible communication gap. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that spelling, for all its heart, is also deeply questionable. One section recounts a former teacher, Janyce Boynton, realising — after devastating consequences — that she had unconsciously invented abuse allegations on behalf of her student. Another moment, with a mother and son desperate to prove their connection to a visiting journalist, instead reveals just how fragile and painful the whole thing is. And yet the story is told with such tenderness and compassion for everyone involved. No villains, just people clinging to whatever thread they can to find meaning, to be closer to someone they love.
"A child without language is so hard to accept. So hard to accept that a parent and caregiver’s desire to find that child language can send them far out of the world as they’ve known it, far out of themselves, out of logic.
I left Manisha’s house in touch with my good luck and how it shaped my life. But I also left knowing I am her. I’d race out of the whole quenched galaxy of beliefs and illusions I consider to be myself in order to protect and care for my children, even to maintain the thinnest filament of connection to them, if that was all the connection to be had.
Manisha’s story, Katie’s story, Boynton’s story — these are stories of longing. They are stories of the lengths we will go for those we love."
Meet the bonobo, radical feminist overlords of the ape world. From the NYT:
It’s known among primatologists that bonobos make a lot of love in addition to war. They carry out rather heavy petting, make sex toys and engage in homosexual intercourse. With their sexual activity and lower levels of violence compared with chimpanzees, the idea that bonobos are the hippies of the ape world is pervasive.
However, observations by Dr. Surbeck and his team, and those of other researchers, challenge the harmonious stereotyping of these primates. “Bonobos are not as peaceful as people might think,” said Maud Mouginot, an anthropologist at Boston University who was not involved in the current study.
That includes conflict between the sexes. From 1993 to 2021, the researchers observed 1,786 instances of a male starting beef with a female. Examples included acting aggressively toward a female or her infant, or monopolizing food. In roughly 61 percent of these fights, the female teamed up with other females and emerged victorious.
Such conflicts “can be very severe,” Dr. Surbeck said. “On a few occasions, we suspect that the male died as a result of the attack.”
Males have been known to lose fingers and toes in such conflicts. In one unfortunate incident, a male bonobo in the Stuttgart Zoo in Germany had his penis bit in half during a battle with two females. A surgeon was able to sew it back together.
Surbeck and his team tested several hypotheses for how females maintain power in bonobo society. After crunching the numbers, the only one the team found evidence to support was one researchers call the “female coalition hypothesis,” which suggests that females work together to overpower males during conflicts, resulting in higher social ranks for the winning females. The average female bonobo, the researchers found, outranks approximately 70 percent of the males in her community.
My hair is ridiculously long at the moment because I haven’t had time to get a haircut. But apparently everyone is going to Rapunzel lengths so let’s pretend mine is also intentional.
Lorde is going all out for her first record in four years. Her team includes creative director Terrence O’Connor (who was the visionary behind Brat) and stylist Taylor McNeill (who was the visionary behind Kendrick in the Celine bootcut jeans at the Super Bowl). I’m not yet wowed by the song, What Was That, but sometimes it takes me a minute to fall in love with a song, and I do appreciate the effort.
Did you know that you can use a new Google service “Results About You” to see what personal details people (ie scammers) can find out about you on the internet, and request to have them removed?
UK Cosmo reports on a boom in women coming out as lesbians in their late 20s and 30s. (The internet-famous ‘Lesbian Masterdoc’ can help you work out if you should be one of them.)
This societally ingrained notion of heterosexuality as the ‘default’ is known as ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ or ‘comphet’… compulsory heterosexuality remains prevalent in our culture, with people of all genders internalising the idea that anything besides heterosexuality is an aberration.
“Comphet is so insidious because it starts young — before we’re able to understand what’s even happening,” says Megan James, TikTok’s ‘Trap Dr’, who came out at 28. “From such a young age, we’re bombarded with the belief that the most important thing you can do as a girl is get a boy to like you.”
Meanwhile, women are told to aspire to relationships with men, but we’re also told not to expect much from them. “Between comphet and the pervasive messaging from friends and media that ‘dating men just kind of sucks’, folks are led to believe that any dissatisfaction they feel is a normal part of having a relationship with a man, rather than a clue that they might be gay.”
Last week, we talked about about how while the media discourse of the past few years has been selling us the idea that pubic hair was back, the reality was that most women still didn’t quite have the confidence to pull off a full bush. This week, LNS fave Jessica De Fino is making the same case for teeth, calling it “The Tooth Gap – the echoing void between our cultural beliefs and behaviour”.
For many months now, the internet has been foaming at its FaceTuned mouth for the return of “real” smiles. People love Ayo Edebiri’s crooked incisors (“buck tooth girls rise!”). They long for Margaret Qualley’s micro-gap (“so refreshing”). They’re charmed by Aimee Lou Wood’s overbite (“if Hollywood touches her teeth I’ll riot”). As the viral saying goes, teeth are so back.
Except: even as the general public grows tired of Hollywood’s cookie-cutter veneers, they’re getting their own in droves.
The dental prosthetics market has tripled over the past 20 years and is expected to grow by more than 70% in the next five, with the typical patient motivated by aesthetics rather than health concerns. Those who can’t quite afford the $20,000 – $50,000 price tag in the US (up to £1,200 per tooth in the UK) are flying to Turkey or flocking to barbershop back-rooms for discount work. Those who can afford it are paying extra for “perfectly imperfect” caps – fake teeth just “off” enough to look real. Even braces are making a comeback with adults who see them as a status symbol. “They show that the wearers care about their appearance and can afford to invest in themselves,” reports the Washington Post. (We are a very unwell people.)
There’s a Clueless sequel with Alicia Silverstone in the works.
Glamour took a look at why we’re suddenly so comfortable dropping C-bombs, a thing I have definitely noticed of myself over the past couple of years. It did include this quote though, in regards to the globalisation of language - “But in Australia, cunt is used as a general word of endearment sometimes; it’s less negative, so there’s less of that social context” which… I was not aware of?
As we head into cooler weather (I’m so happy with the rain today) it’s time to elevate your bed rot situation. According to bustle:
For those not in the know, a bed rot sesh typically involves wearing three-day-old pajamas while you lie in bed and, well, rot. You might surround yourself with snacks, watch a comfort TV show, and scroll on your phone — and it truly hits the spot. A bed rot is about lying around and relaxing to the max, but if you want to elevate the experience, it’s easy to add an extra layer of sophistication.
In a viral video shared April 7, TikTok creator @girlllllhouse showed off their fancy bed rot set-up featuring a dirty martini, popcorn, and candy in a crystal bowl. It was all laid out elegantly on a silver tray, and they even added a mini lamp for the perfect mood lighting. Lush.
In their comments, someone said, “This is what I mean by romanticizing the little things.”
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See you next week xxx