13 things I like (sex robots, bon iver, kendall roy looking sad)
also does anyone know how to code need some advice // also i don't LIKE sex robots there was just a funny video about them not that there's anything wrong with liking them I just -
What’s up you dirty and, if I am to be frank, rotten, scoundrels.
First off, a gigantic thank you to our newest paid subscribers: Marmi, David R., M. Lucky, Sandeep, Teri A., Alvin J., Alex P., Charlie B., Steve V., Medha M., Brad H.
That’s a whole lotta new people. Eleven! I’m sure the uptick in paid subs had nothing to do with my last post in which I both discuss parting ways with my job and that we’re pregnant.
Totally unrelated, if you would like to support me and Both Are True because you love it and no other reason at all, you can do so here and hey what’s this there's even a 23% discount wow.
Hey speaking of dirty rotten scoundrels, I spoke with local vagabond
the other day. I’m not sure exactly what we were doing on the Zoom, but I have to imagine it was for some sort of “make-a-wish” program for writers. Mike, it seems, wanted to have a chat with me and heck, I’m glad we could make it happen.During our call, Mike actually did blow my mind when he said that for his Substack,
, his goal is simple - write about what he himself finds amazing.Easy peasy, I thought. I can do that. I DO do that, right? Yes and also, ring the both are true bells, no. I don’t have much trouble writing about the frankly astonishing realizations I make about my own self, psyche, and related substrates.
But to write about what I find amazing out in the world? That’s hard.
Usually when I’ve tried, I end up writing from the outside in – thinking about what the world might dig about something and then trying to figure out how to express that thing within my own language and world.
But Mike writes from the inside out, exploring within himself what he digs about something and then sharing that with the world. The guy might be many things — my sworn enemy, my husband, a guy, but I’ll give him this — he’s good at the writing.
Let us then, for the sake of experimentation, give it a whirl.
LOOK MOM I’M ON A PODCAST
First up – I had the pleasure and honor of speaking with one of my favorite writers on Substack, Charlie Bleeker, on her podcast, Bleeker Bombs, last week. If you want to listen to me ramble about writing this newsletter, give it a listen. Charlie also asks for my help with something she’s writing and I try to help but mostly just push back on the idea like an asshole though maybe it ends up being helpful maybe!
↘️Subscribe Of The Week↙️
And regardless, your 🏆🔮Subscribe Of The Week🔮🏆 is in fact
by Charlie. As I say in the pod, this is one of the newsletters that when I see it in my inbox, I open it right away and I read it and I love it every time. She’s got a way of writing that makes you feel like she’s just texting you on the group chat about some wild shit she just remembered.🔉 LISTEN TO WHILE READING OR GENERALLY THIS WEEK OR WHENEVER ITS UR CALL
Option one: this mf playing music surrounded by ice and shit
Honestly this is too much. I love Olafur Arnalds but this is insane the dude and his band went all the way out to iceland nowhere and made this ridiculous concert in the ‘volcanic wilderness’ and the music is amazing yes but how are they not laughing at themselves about this not even a little?? Like if they’d included one of them doing a big fart at some point during the concert and then all of them laughing for a good while and then continuing. THAT woulda been nice.
Option two: bon iver is back and sad as ever
There was no single thing I said more in college and afterwards to people than “did you know he recorded For Emma Forever Ago in a cabin by himself after a breakup??”
Well the man is back with more tattoos and more autotune and I for one am here for it. Listen to their full concert at the 2023 Pitchfork Music Festival.
📖 READ: The artist as riddle to be solved
Fame's Inflection Point by a. natasha joukovsky -- a banger that explores the entire framing of 'the artist as a riddle to be solved' through the lens of two recent books that came out — Elizabeth Winkler’s Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies and Claire Dederer’s Monsters.
This brings me, finally, to the hypothesis I’ve been developing for a while, core to the new novel I’m working on, that our worship of godlike genius, our enduring commitment to its biographical fictions, our fascination with “the riddle of the artist” itself—it’s all in service not of some general, indiscriminate desire for status, power, fame, and fortune, but a very specific one: to pass the threshold that I’m going to call fame’s inflection point. This being the point at which the value of a person’s art in the absolute broadest sense—everything they make, say, do, capture, etc.—no longer primarily derives its power from what, but who. Not from the artifact, but the artist.
To which I can simply say: what the heck does a guy gotta do to reach fame’s inflection point?!
🤝 APP: Focusmate
If you think co-working with a stranger over video is gonna be weird as hell, you’re right! It is. And yet.
Focusmate pairs you with a stranger from the internet to work alongside each other for an hour. To start, you both say hi and what you want to accomplish in the session. Then you both go mute and work until the end, when you check back in and see how it went. Then you awkwardly say bye. It’s weirdly nice to feel accountable to someone, and also just to know you’re not alone. The free plan has 3 free sessions per week!
Also included is a free character study of some random person out in the world. You can just write about what you see them doing! I should do that actually, note to self.
📖 READ: “The internet used to feel so much smaller to me.”
Written in the style of an actual old message board, this nostalgia parade of an essay brought me back to the good ol’ days when no one knew, or much cared, about making money online. It was just vibes and passion about very specific, very weird things. And gifs. The gifs…
There are ghosts of my former internet life that still manifest in my life today. I still like to carve out little internet spaces — like my site reese.land or even this essay. I still think there is a lot of power in online communities — both independent of and in conjunction with IRL communities. And my career, as silly as it sounds, really can find its origin story in these spaces. And in a way, I still have the appetite for creating these kinds of spaces. I used to have a forum that I made just for my friend group as a kid. Now, I made my friends all join a Slack group, complete with topical channels, weekly prompts and a daily question of the day.
📖 READ: “I don’t blame anyone for not loving me. I would’ve hated me just a few years ago”
GOAT of all writing
writes about soulmates.😉 LOL: Kendall Roy Looking Sad
Being a millennial means having all that you need and then some while being depressed as shit that you aren’t daddy’s favorite / CEO of a multinational conglomerate media company?
And there’s few people who can pull that off better than Kendall Roy.
📖🥲 READ / CRY: Why we can’t have one nice thing – the Mattel Cinematic Universe
I knew the Barbie shit was too good to be true. There can be no joy that great for the culture without an equal and frankly even worse off counter joy aka capitalism aka the Mattel Cinematic Universe. Currently in development from Mattel:
Barney
Magic 8 ball
Uno??
View-Master???
Not to be outdone, Hasbro has partnered with A24 to release a GRITTY psychological horror film for “Don’t Wake Daddy”.
📔 WANNA READ: D.H. Lawrence’s book about classics
Just bc this part made me feel better about the WAY I often WRITE:
Lawrence’s deep reading and idiosyncratic learning are abundantly evident — he tosses off snippets of French, German, Italian and Latin, sprinkling his pages with allusions to ancient poetry and modern philosophy — but his tone is the opposite of scholarly. With its one-sentence paragraphs (“Flop goes spiritual love.”), jabbing exclamations (“Freedom!”), semi-rhetorical questions (“But what of Walt Whitman?”) and heavy use of italics and all-caps, the book can read like a scroll of social-media rants. Its manner is neither respectable nor respectful. Lawrence harangues his subjects in the second person (“Nathaniel!”), and subjects them to parodic paraphrase and withering, ad hominem judgment. “I do not like him,” he says of Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin!
🤖 LAUGH: Incredible AI sex robots bit
A genius bit executed to perfection – Merrill Markoe posits that AI sex bots are unrealistic because they are perfect. She made a video of seven AI bots each of which are weird in some way. My favorite is The Fun Senior ‘65 going on 25’ Guy.
🥪 EAT: Sandwiches that rotate and that’s it!
Three kingpins of the cozy / weird web – Kristofer of Naive Weekly, Matt of ZINE, and Matt of Web Curios got together and created the tiny awards which they described as “a small prize awarded by an equally-small selection committee of online makers to the website which we feel best embodies the idea of a small, playful and heartfelt web.”
And the first year’s winner: ROTATING SANDWICHES!
If you want to look at every single entry like I did, here’s the full list of 350 websites that submitted.
🅾️1️⃣ THINKING ABOUT: learning to code.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while but now that I am a member of the Funemployed Class, perhaps it is time. I googled the best new coding language to learn and it seems to be Rust or Python or a bunch of others. If anyone has thoughts on the matter do let me know post haste.
I did think though it’d be fun to maybe make a Substack about it, to chronicle my learnings. Feels like maybe that would be something people pay for cuz they’d want to learn too. Help!
Comments!
What’s the best coding language to start learning first? Also, do you think a Substack about my learnings would be cool?
Did you also tell everyone Bon Iver’s origin story circa 2008?
Are you more concerned about aliens or sex robots?
What’s ur favorite sandwich?
Have you tried remote body doubling / coworking yet?
and I just did it for the first time last week and we ended up talking for a half hour but the other half hour was productive!
Fork in the road!
Alex! There is so much in here I want to steal for my own blog thing esp. writing out a series of experiences with focusmate but I also don’t want to tangle with you after seeing what’s gone down between you and Mr. Sowden...