We’ll always have the sea

Heartsick, but trying to find beautiful things to sustain

Nov 08, 2024

I am, as I suspect you are too, utterly heartsick. My capacity is much reduced and so, in a departure from normal programming, today’s newsletter is in two parts – The Wrap (the best I’ve seen and read on this week’s Catastrophe) and Beautiful Things (to sustain, distract, cheer, entertain). Be kind to yourselves and each other, listen to beautiful music, create things, read good books, hold tight to your dogs and cats and children and lovers, sit under trees in forests, swim in the sea.

The Wrap

(Via Threads … primarily for the comments, for the sense of the mood for so many; eg: “I didn’t even feel like tying my laces today”.🤣)

What went wrong? In The Atlantic, a pop culture writer says the Democrats failed at pop culture: “Arguably the key architect of this ongoing political era was Andrew Breitbart, the conservative pundit – and compatriot of Trumpism’s most cunning culture warrior, Steve Bannon – who founded a series of online publications in the 2000s and died in 2012. The so-called Breitbart Doctrine stated that ‘politics is downstream from culture’ – that is, the ideas conveyed by popular entertainment shapes consumers’ worldviews. This proposition called for conservatives to build a shadow Hollywood that tells conservative stories and raises up conservative stars…” (Enter the hunting-themed reality series, Duck Dynasty … you really need to know about it!)

Trump won, says Wired magazine, because of the “manosphere” in corners of the internet most of us don’t even know exist – “that amorphous assortment of influencers who are mostly young, exclusively male” … “It was on these podcasts and streams that Trump spent a disproportionate amount of time in the final weeks of his campaign, and for good reason. [The list] – plus Tucker Carlson –includes the four biggest podcasters on Spotify. Trump sat with all of them, often for hours, reaching millions of conservative or apolitical people, cementing his status as one of them, a sigma, a guy with clout, and the apex of a model of masculinity that prioritises fame as a virtue unto itself.”

What went wrong? A heart-wrenching Substack essay from American writer Amanda Montei says it wasn’t the economy. It’s misogyny, pure and simple. “This country clearly hates women and wants us to suffer under the thumb of men, alone in our homes pushing out babies and providing sex on demand, and we need to stop dancing around this long held American reality.”

(via Threads)

(Via Threads. Support the media, pay for journalism.)

In The Guardian, George Monbiot reminds us what the Trump presidency will mean for the environment – “Trump has pledged to wage war on planet Earth, ripping up US climate commitments and reverting to unrestrained fossil fuel extraction and burning.” And, he adds: “Monstrous as he is, Trump is no outlier. He is the distillation of capitalist pseudo-democracy. His values, entirely extrinsic – fixated on prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth – are the dominant values projected for years on to every screen and into every mind.”

(via Threads)

(via Threads)

(Via Threads; story here.)

In other fetid turd ball news … scientists have identified the composition of the black balls that washed up on Sydney beaches – human faeces, recreational drugs and cooking oils. Nice.

Beautiful things

niceaunties

A post shared by @niceaunties

(Via Instagram, adore the work by this Singaporean AI artist – click through to see the video. The project aspires to imagine “a different kind of life and unbridled freedom” for a generation of women who had little education and were forced to devote themselves to their families and hard slog, writes The Guardian. Seems right for the week.)

montereybayaquarium