Luging into your inbox (started drafting this when the Olympics were still happening, but anyway…) with an issue urgently dedicated to the ‘artists, unfazed’ guiding us through our mass societal disorientation.

“The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because the artists are the ones who are self-selected for being able to journey into the Other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.” — Terrence McKenna

From Alyssa Liu to the pranksters of JMail and the prophetic work of Gorillaz, it’s been a W for the visionaries - dismantling professional structures like it’s all part of the art…

From this newsletter to god’s ears.

Stay weird peeps (◕‿◕)♡

Krista + Zoe

Honorable Cortina Mention

Our Team USA girlie encapsulates everything we’re trying to say: artistry over academics, freedom over form, creativity over control: America EFF YEAH!

JWiki

The hacktivist group that created JMail back in November to help sort through the DOJ’s chaotic Epstein file release added a Wikipedia skin to the project. To put it lightly, JWiki further guides our understanding of the key players in this unraveling saga of power, politics and crime.

Many have called these parody sites, but in our mind they’re AI scripted artworks that help the audience to “feel” what it’s like to move coldly through the world like a billionaire criminal sociopath, while MSM shoe leather reporting plays catchup.

Gorillaz: Part 2

Our 2026 Gorillaz/Albarn-mania turned up to 11 for release of their new album (out last week) and their first ever appearance on SNL this weekend (30 years overdue).

Formed in response to the marketed fakery of late 1990s pop-culture, the animated band bested K-Pop Demon Hunters by more than 25 years. The ever outspoken Albarn has also had some choice words to share about the corrosiveness of nostalgia that feels especially scathing in our algorithmically-trapped era.

Chef’s kiss!

ChatGPriestT

Real One, Pope Leo XIV popped off at a bunch of priests in a closed door meeting recently to remind them that humans are divine, machines have no capacity for faith and that deploying AI to write sermons is way not spiritual. His holiness also put social media on blast for usurping human interactions.

DropMapp

Beloved New York art critic Jerry Saltz decreed that the work of a community-minded technologist who used data to find drains to route snow piles should be considered an artist. AND WE AGREE!

We don’t even have the language for this yet but we love the idea that creative uses of technology to spur communal action should be considered works of art.

This idea iterates upon the notion that art is an act of creative self expression. What if, in a data-driven society, art as an act of communal expression becomes the dominant form of the age? It would certainly fulfill on the utopian vision of the internet, as its creators (like Tim Berners Lee) intended.

If anyone can find the way, it will be the artists.

Noah Kalina’s Prolific Digi-Oeuvre

Longtime friend of SB - and also longtime friend of making things on the internet - , is not ONLY the creator of Everyday, one of the internet’s first real viral videos - he’s also:

• got an online video podcast / call-in show called the hotline show (really loved this one)

• has an amazingly sweet newsletter about making art and this interview with his neighbor is so good.

• makes and curates a peaceful ambient video channel here.

• maintains photography projects here.

• + took this photo of a Pizza Hut Classic in Pennsylvania for this week’s NYT. Aside from this being a beautiful photo of a stunning Pizza Hut, this blew my mind because my grandparents used to take me (KF)to this exact Pizza Hut when I was little.

If this doesn’t make you feel inspired and unproductive we’re not sure what will :-/

Harry Styles’ Buchla Pop

There is practically no art less selling out, less mainstream, than modular synthesizer music. Which is somtimes why it’s so great to be a fan - like being a member in a secret club.

Having said that, we also love that Harry Styles is making pop music that utilizes such primitive electronic means (with the help of his producer Kid Harpoon and super drummer, Tom Skinner). Sure, Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith are our Synth Queens forever but gotta appreciate Styles bringing the underground buchla sound to the tween masses, without them even clocking it.

10/10, a must-listen.

Making Art / Quitting Weed

We’ve been really enjoying ’s arrival to Substack wherein the High Maintenance creator eloquently covers a vast number of topics, including but not limited to:

projects he’s pitched that never got made, filming an episode of TV while tripping on acid, his journey beyond weed and all things Peter Gabriel.

In this somewhat oversaturated substack landscape, it’s worth a sub.

According to Sean Penn at the Golden Gs and basically everyone else, it’s officially the year of the cig 🚬 but also:

Marco Rubio on pillz, Melania’s cinematic nuclear apocalypse, the new Epstein Files Dump, The national strike, Baldonigate continues with a vengeance, RIP Catherine O’Hara and there’s a new type of mushroom that makes people see tiny elves on everything - and that was just last WEEK!

Highlights from our 78th edition of IHTEFYW include: A New Labubu, IKEA x Roblox, Crimestoppers UK, Gorillaz Luv, New Shrooms and more.

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Mirumi is the new Labubu

Despite the $100+ price point, Yukai Engineering and Kickstarter have proven that once again cuteness rules everything around us and during these dark times, a little bit of joy goes a very long way. Aptly termed the “new labubu” the Mirumi “charmbot” clings to your bag and turns its cute little head at strangers passing by. We’ll take one in each color please!

Lego’s Not-so-Smart Brick

Is it just us or did you also hear the loud thud that was Lego’s “smart brick” launch? It has a computer and a synth in it but there’s still something inherently antithetical, anti-lego and anti-imagination about the new smartbrick which will raise the price of sets by $20-25. It DOES play the imperial march when you pair it with Darth Vader so kinda worth it.

Bandcamp’s Hard Line on AI

In the era of Tilly Norwood (the creepy AI actress that everyone is trying to make go bye bye) and cigfluencer Ben Affleck shocking the world (but not us) with his AI prowess on Joe Rogan, it feels like a never-ending stream of bad AI headlines for the arts and entertainment sectors.

Welp, some slightly old (2 weeks) good news but Bandcamp announced it’s banning music generated “wholly or substantially” by AI from their platform in a move that most everyone has been pretty excited about for obvious reasons.

IKEA x Roblox?

We used to use the internet to escape from the real world but now we need the real world to escape from the internet…

For a few more days, IKEA is testing out a pilot program on Roblox in Australia, where Bloxburg players can effectively peruse digital IKEA products in a digital showroom. There sadly won’t be an IKEA monkey in the simulation but they are apparently paying users real money to be NPCs in the fake IKEA showroom… what a time to be alive indeed.

Crimestoppers UK (Barron Trump Edish)

Truly wild timez when the president’s son is key witness in a criminal assault trial, and the US media doesn’t have the bandwidth to enjoy the Eastern Promises tabloid fodder of it all.

In late January 2025, when Barron Trump placed a video call to his “very close friend” he knew “from social media” and chanced upon the girl getting DV’d by a Russian MMA fighter, he phoned 999 (UK 911) from overseas to halt the crime. The trial is ongoing but s/o to the emergency operator who told Barron to stop talking to him like a little bitch.

Gorillaz in The Mountains

Gorillaz’ upcoming album (2/28/26) isn’t even out but it’s already catching mad critical love as a full-circle return to what the fictional band does best (that’s a yes, dog from us). A joyfully cosmic, grief-soaked meditation on life, death, and rebirth, The Mountain was shaped in the wake of the passing of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s fathers and several of Gorillaz’ iconic collaborators.

To coincide with the album’s arrival next month, the UK band’s 25th-anniversary immersive exhibition House of Kong will open in LA for three weeks, leaving East Coast fans absolutely sick with envy.

Late breaking Cig: the Jenner Deathspiral

Sadly, Timmy Chalamet’s girlfriend’s cheugy AF FAKE drag on a cig in her cameo in a video soundtrack for The Moment (the Charli XCX Brat Tour movie with A24) may bring us down from our ciggie high and remind us that enfin, smoking is NOT cool. Sigh. This cig-fluencer era was destined to be short-lived.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Happy New Year and welcome to the Thunderdome! life in our Year of the Horse: 2026. A little inspo. from the web for what’s to come:

Horses are leaders who rarely accept defeat, so they can motivate themselves to put up an active fight in everything they do. This can come off as tenacity, endurance, stubbornness, or even foolhardiness in certain situations.

Once Horse matures and learns to harness this energy, they’ll be unstoppable since they’re agile and shrewd thinkers who innately understand human nature. They’re also principled, so their efforts will be put toward a good cause.

Socially, Horse has an outgoing and agreeable personality. They speak as quickly as they think and act, and they aren’t shy about showing off their talents and capabilities because to be falsely self-effacing wouldn’t be authentic.

Galloping into the abyss and getting back on the ahem horse with our newsletter production as well.

Highlights from our 77th edition of IHTEFYW include: CES is AI-pilled, Razr Phone’s Air Ball, Cute Cat Train Conductors of Japan, The Great Meme Reset of 2026, and more.

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

CES 2026: “Nothing is not AI”

We’ve not covered CES since it was actually exciting back at the start of 2.0 but what the hell… CES kicked off in Vegas this week and, as Wired notes, AI is in literally everything AGAIN: smart socks, glasses, chairs… so much so that the chatter is now what actually matters versus just slapping “AI” on a product.

The Foldable Razr is finally here…

Feels like we’ve been tracking this Motorola foldable razor phone since like two-iterations-of-this-newsletter ago and now it’s finally here ANNNNND … not sure we are into it.

It’s just a smartphone that’s like a book and nobody knows how much it’ll cost??? See for yourself.

Kawaii Cat Conductors

We already knew that cats run our world figuratively, but now they also run our trains, literally… this week a local train in Fukuchiyama, Japan introduced their THIRD real life train conductor cat who’s now officially part of the crew. The kitty, proudly bearing a tiny conductor’s cap, already has its own station poster and apparently makes commuters infinitely happier (duh).

In other news, Japan remains undefeated in making cute animals the center of our world.

The Big(ger) Short: AI Edition

The “Big Short” guy (Michael Burry, played by Christian Bale in the film) is back in the spotlight screaming to anyone and everyone who will listen, with fresh warnings about a looming bubble in today’s AI market :-/

Whether he’s right or not, or simply too soon to tell - it’s certainly giving October 2007 at a cocktail party vibes… From Burry’s mouth to god’s ears!

The Great Meme Reset of 2026

It certainly felt like Gen Alpha totally DOMINATED pop culture in 2025 (6,7., Labubus, their proud proliferation of brainrot) and no one was more pissed off about that than the usurped generation Z above them (they’d pejoratively coined the term brainrotting first as a way to describe their younger sibs’ insane content tastes).

Well, by the end of last year, GenZ declared The Great Meme Reset of 2026: a self-proclaimed internet movement aimed at banishing Gen Alpha’s “brainrot” memes and bringing back THEIR glory days of classic, lo-fi memes like Ugandan Knuckles, Big Chungus, and Nyan Cat (lest we forget The Grape Lady and the Leprechaun from Mobile Alabama from the actual good ole dayssss) i.e. high art those little alpha squirts could never.

What started as a joke, hit peak earnest discourse about"resetting” meme energy back to 2016-style dank humor (guys, nyan cat is circa 2011 fyi but ok) by January 1, 2026. We’ll see if it holds (you can’t manufacture virality)…

Stay tuned, this is a developing story!

Best of 2025

While everyone unanimously agreed that they were ready to shut the door on 2025 and never look back / revert immediately back to 2016 (and reset the memes too ^^), we wanted to take a moment to highlight a few things that brought us joy, made us laugh/cry/feel distinctly human in 2025.

FILM / TV

• Adam Curtis’ latest Doc Series Shifty: about the UK’s move to finance, monetarism, and hyper-individualism dismantled collective meaning and trust, leading to a confused, disconnected populace. Sure it’s a mouthful but as ever, YESSSS king)

• Ari Aster’s Eddington: too much to write here but it’s basically about how everyone went crazy during COVID and a small town/America’s decent into chaos… absolutely loved it. (streaming on Max)

• This interview between Ari Aster and Adam Curtis about Shifty

• PTA’s One Battle After Another: no notes except that you MUST see on the big screen if you can! (but also streaming on Max)

• Andor Season 2: Tony Gilroy’s brilliant and extremely timely Star Wars/ Rogue One prequel spy show about how ordinary people become radicalized. (Disney+)

• Hamnet: Chloe Zhao is a masterful director and Jessie Buckley’s performance is dazzling + everyone loves Paul Mescal - go see it and bring your tissues.

• The White Lotus Season 3: unpopular opinion but we found this to be the best season yet for its philosophically layered exploration of spiritual existence. Plus, great casting of the Zone of Interest Nazi Christian Friedel as hotel manager; and “the coconut milk is off” *chef’s kiss* (Max)

• the new South Park seasons: no notes (Paramount+)

• Mike Judge’s Common Side Effects: a psychedelic/pharma animated drama that truly has it all (streaming on Max)

MUSIC

• Colombian musical multihyphenate Ela Minus’ album DIA

• The Cure remixes double album Mixes of a Lost World

• Jeff Tweedy’s solo TRIPLE album Twilight Override

• The Chemical Bros’ Tom Rowlands x Aurora (of Frozen 2 soundtrack fame) new band Tomora.

• Pink Pantheress’ “Illegal” which samples Underworld’s “Dark + Long” which is really what makes it great.

• We don’t eff with the corporatist PE-owned Boiler Room TV any more, but an hon. mention has to go out to Underworld’s August 2025 Boiler Room set - geezers 4 eva.

PODCASTS

• Telepathy Tapes - truly mind-blowing, just listen to it

BOOKS

• A recommendation from Chris Tennant - finally got around to reading The Devil’s Chessboard and ooh boy, if you enjoy very thick, heavy books full of conspiracy theories about the US gov’t and the CIA that are actual, real conspiracies - I would suggest this one.

• Our own EW, aka Eric Wareheim (and co-author Gabe Ulla) went on a 65 steakhouse quest across America and made a giant book that includes beautiful photos, anecdotes and recipes. It’s truly great and not just because we were paid to promote it. Steakhouse (Penguin Random House)

GAMING

• Mario Kart World: absolutely bonkers open world version of your fave game, only for Switch2

• Dress to Impress: technically launched ‘24, but supercharged to top of Roblox charts last year. This multi-player Fashion Wheel for girlypops is just so good (KF EDIT: I absolutely do not support Roblox)

OTHER

• Luigi mania

• The Villanova Pope

• Labubus: we don’t want to live in a world without them

• Obituaries of Tom Stoppard: omg what a truly gifted humble mensch

• Meme prof Aidan Walker who helps us understand what’s even happening on the daily, in our hypernormalized dumpster fire.

• Last but not least, the unredacted Epstein Files.

+ 2026 TINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

• The Winter Olympics in Cortina (Italians Do It Better, Baby!)

• The new Daphni album (also coming in Feb)

• Sooo many movies: Mandolorian + Grogu, Chris Nolan’s The Odyssey, the too-hot-for-everything Wuthering Heights (w/ music by Charlie XCX), Man on the Run Paul McCartney Doc, Marc by Sofia (Sofia Coppola Marc Jacobs Doc!!), Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride, RPatz + Zendaya in A24’s The Drama, Tarantino’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth, new Ridley Scott The Dog Stars, Dune Part 3 + Jeremy Strong playing Mark Zuckerberg in Social Network sequel The Social Reckoning

• and this is complete speculation but in the interest of manifesting this one (hopefully) a Radiohead US tour!!

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

It’s us again. Isn’t that wonderful?!

We’re surviving all the extreme and manufactured cruelty the only way we know how —by flinging art into the void and hoping it hits you like a warm hug.

From buried ledes inside the Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb to A24’s suspiciously chill “association” with Adam Curtis’ new series - our takeaway is this: artistry remains the last functioning branch of reason and humanity. And frankly, our global disaster divas in chief could never touch the sheer myth-making genius of the modern folk heroes we’re spotlighting in this here newsletty.

So scroll on, stay weird, and remember: doom is temporary. Great storytelling is forever.

Thanks for reading !(◕‿◕)♡

Krista + Zoe

Occult Espionage + Deep (house) Cover

As soon as we saw reports that the perpetrators behind Ukraine’s extremely sick Operation Spiderweb were a young artist couple: experimental sound DJ Artem Timofeev (37) and his tattoo-artist/stylist/erotic novelist/“witch” wife Ekaterina ‘Katya’ Timofeeva (34), we were like … noiiice.

Katya wiped her socials, but IHTEFYW believes Soundcloud mixes associated with Artem -and a social media profile for the dissident Russian record label where he worked- provide a window to the Timofeyev’s elite instinct for art, music (and espionage).

As it turns out, this Ukrainian couple’s deep cover as two unassuming St. Petersburg creatives (something straight out of Tony Gilroy’s Andor) was *critical* in positioning the trucks that delivered a stunning blow to the enemy’s military capabilities across five Russian time zones.

Still In Our Adam-Curtis-Singularity Era

Last week, BBC’s YouTube posted an official trailer for SHIFTY — a new series from Adam Curtis, the UK filmmaker-journalist-artist who’s this newsletter’s own seer for making documentaries that unlock the mediated mysteries of our modern chaotic universe.

SHIFTY, which debuts on BBC iPlayer this weekend, will pinpoint the exact moments of excessive 1980s individualism (in BRITAIN!) that precipitated the liberal crashout we’re now marinating in.

"Yay" wrote one YouTube commenter "I can't wait to make this my whole personality for the next 3-4 years”

We’re mildly curious about “A24 UK”’s association with SHIFTY, but if it helps proselytize more followers into our Curtis cult, i guess we’re good (us to A24, “hold our beer”).

The Cure Remix Album Incoming

The Cure’s first new album in a decade, Songs of a Lost World, fell somewhere in the Overhyped & Underwhelming™ cultural quadrant for us. But since last fall, frontman Robert Smith has been in his dance music revival era (same, girl, same), and we’re feeling better about this week’s release of the album’s electro-remix counterpart:"Mixes of a Lost World".

Smith has collaborated with a gladiatorial roster of electronic artists and producers — Orbital, Four Tet, Paul Oakenfold, to name a few — on 24 remixes of the original eight tracks. The rework feels set to replot The Cure’s latest effort onto a more respectable quadrant of the cultural matrix.

Bless up for a blissed out Summer union between the post-punk goths and the apocalyptic technostans.

Luigi watch

Evidentiary disclosures for The People’s Prince™ barely pierce through these days, but we’re keeping tabs on the case for Luigi Mangione’s brutal focus on challenging public opinion.

His newly disclosed journal pages allegedly reveal a meticulous targeting of a single individual, and therefore appear to undermine his terrorism charges which require proof of his intent to instill mass fear among civilians or politicians.

We’ve got another six months until His Royal Fine-ness’ next appearance on Dec 8 (fongool!) but Madonne, we’re back on track!

M(ubi)ssolini

Speaking of deranged Italians—our obsessive attention has turned to M: Son of the Century, Joe Wright's adaptation of Antonio Scurati’s novel about Mussolini’s charisma and chaos (familiar, much?). After premiering in the UK and Italy this January, we worried that American distributors might shy away from its politically-charged narrative but last month, Mubi -the international distributor and streaming platform known for The Substance- acquired the global distribution rights, and the series will stream on Mubi US this fall.

Until then, we’ll be over here just disassociating to its techno-heavy soundtrack by Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers.

Embarrassed to write that last time we sent out a missive was before the end of 2024 and suddenly it’s June (2025).

Whoops!!

We were not feeling strong enough to cover so many important 2025 things well-deserving of our attention - like the CA Wildfires, Trump 2.0, ChatGPT becoming everyone’s emotional support companion, Luigi-mania continued, many more updates around the Baldoni v. Lively legal / PR drama and more…

But we’re here now and feeling fortified with hot takes and a few laughs to aid in coating your system for whatever lies ahead.

Highlights from our first IHTEFYW of 2025 (!) include: a French Crypto Kidnapping Saga for the Ages, an American Crypto Kidnapping Saga (!!) also for the Ages, everything TACO, Elon’s Fear + Loathing in Washington and more.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the week ahead! (◕‿◕)♡

Krista + Zoe

Why is TACO so Great?

Investors’ new favorite term “TACO” or Trump Always Chickens Out is giving us life / becoming our new mantra / written on our bathroom vanity mirrors in lipstick hot sauce because it’s one of the most important reminders during these tumultuous times.

Trump Always Chickens Out:

• keeps us calm / sane

• bruises his ego

• is chaotic neutral

• makes us think about tacos

What’s not to love?! Excited to see what other acronyms we can use to maintain our sanity during the next three years.

Ps. speaking of TACO, we missed out on covering this year’s insane / viral / chaotic / MSG-dusted - Taco Bell Live Mas LIVE event in March, but you don’t have to.

A French Crypto Kidnapping

One of the crazier (… saying A LOT) stories from 2025 happened this week when a whopping 25 people went in front of a judge in Paris for various plots to kidnap the daughter and grandson of prominent french crypto boss Pierre Noizat.

This growing crypto kidnapping trend is not ONLY a weird schadenfreude happening to crypto bros who got rich the quick and easy way, but it’s also a crazy trend happening all over the world (see following post) now too.

Hey, c’est la vie baby!

An American Crypto Kidnapping

Another BONKERS crypto kidnapping dramatically unraveled in Downtown Manhattan last week. In this Brett Easton-Ellis horror story of young monied debauchery, the “Crypto King of Kentucky” (a JD Vance lookalike) and his Connecticut prep school compatriot lured a young Italian trader over to New York to sexually and physically torture him in their $21M Nolita townhouse for over two weeks.

The victim was hoping to retrieve Bitcoin they’d already stolen from him before the kidnappers turned the tables, taking him captive and threatening to kill him and his family unless he gave them the seed phrase (password) to his bitcoin wallet. After 17 days forcing him into all manner of ROUGH acts - the least of which was to dangle him by his feet over the townhome’s 5 story staircase - he escaped onto the street one morning into the path of two Soho cops.

The New York tabloids are eating up every last morsel on this one; two NYPD deputies on Mayor Eric Adams’ own security detail were even working for the kidnappers on the side!

“Da fuck” indeed…

Maybe the price of bitcoin is just too damn high but this seems right on the money for whatever alternative timeline we’re on now.

Elon’s Fear & Loathing

Now all the Hitler comparisons and paranoid delusions make even more sense…

Elon’s reported ketamine, mdma and other drug use is coming to light as the White House spills the tea after his bumpy departure from DOGE last week.

Not sure which is worse, being high in the White House or not being high in the White House??

Meme-etic Desire

We (Zoe) have spent a chunk of the past 6 months marinating in TikTok lectures by Aidan Walker — an adorable, 20-something “meme historian” at Columbia*. Aidan’s helpful academic breakdowns of the cultural, political and global brilliance of brain rot will leave you hopeful and pro-memes as the dominant agenda-setting radical art of our times.

*Non-tiktokers can find Aidan on BlueSky.

It’s felt a little awkward to write about things the last few weeks and truth be told, we have written and deleted several versions of this 74th edition of IHTEFYW…

What cringe-inducing AI news could possibly be worth summing up for you all, with the loud thud of the election still reverberating?

How do we “hold space with” (hee hee) our multiple, conflicting realities now?

And then to add to the absolute chaos of it all, there was that United Healthcare CEO murder that somehow felt like it deserved an entire newsletter of its own because there was so much to say, so many conflicting realities to honor and so little that the NYTimes and other outlets were actually covering.

All that to say, we are giving it a go again this week and diving back into some web tidbits that will hopefully give you a chuckle or help you remember that kindness and honoring human life is important because it turns out some news actually needs a publicist way more than the toxic narratives that drive the headline machines.

Highlights from our last IHTEFYW of 2024 include:“Fartcoin” has Arrived, The Luigi Mangione News Cycle, How to Opt-Out of AI Facial Recognition While Traveling, The Sheer Stupidity of Coca Cola’s AI Holiday Ad and more.

Most of all, happy holidays and best wishes to everyone in the New Year!! Thank you for reading our little ol’ newsletter (◕‿◕)♡

Krista + Zoe

“Fartcoin” and the “Crypto President”

With Bitcoin and XRP soaring the last few weeks as we lead up to the inauguration, it’s kind of funny to read about a new cryptocurrency called Fartcoin… but what IS Fartcoin? It’s a “meme currency” that has already had more success than dogecoin and shiba inu…

According to Fast Company:

The rise of Fartcoin is, in many ways, the same story as any crypto gains that have been happening lately. Traders are riding a wave that started when Donald Trump was elected. With Trump’s vow to be the “crypto president,” as well as staff appointments that are much more crypto friendly—including Paul Atkins, a pro-crypto enthusiast who will take over the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) following the upcoming resignation of SEC chair Gary Gensler—virtually every cryptocurrency has soared, even memecoins.

Only time will tell if like a real fart, it will leave as quickly as it showed up, but until then let’s all laugh at how stupid our simulation is.

Why being Luigi-Pilled Makes Sense

Speaking of simulations… Despite the MSM prioritizing corporate interests over the voices of the people, it’s really not that hard to understand how so many people have become “Luigi-pilled” the last few weeks after the same Luigi murdered a CEO in the middle of New York City. Let’s look at the absolutely unhinged new media paradigm below:

• The New Yorker published THIS article.

• Once the alleged murderer was captured at a McDonalds in PA, the NYT published this piece and commenters went OFF with their own personal horror stories dealing with health insurance companies and the system itself.

  • (after less than 24 hours and 7k comments, NYT Turned off the comments)

• MSM outlets initially refused to publish the killer’s manifesto.

  • (Ken Klippenstein published the full manifesto on Substack)

• Many reporters and regular people (including celeb gossip site, fauxmoi) went deep on Luigi’s Good Reads account looking for answers…

• NYT published this article - “Objectifying the Accused / What happens when Violent Crimes are overshadowed by appearances?”

  • NYT sent internal memos asking that everyone not use images of Mangione’s face.

• Eddie Huang said this…

• Even Mangione’s favorite writer weighed in on how unbelievable this all is

• Instead of talking about media literacy, cultural commentator Imani Barbarian makes a succinct point about why we need to talk about the people literacy of the media.

This story is still developing and while everyone agrees that murder is never a good thing, it also seems a majority of regular people from all walks of life and political persuasions are feeling conflicted - as many of us and/or our loved ones have been victimized by the broken healthcare system in our country and the greedy, profit-driven corporations who put profit above human life…

Have a Good Cry

With all the craziness it’s important to look at stories like this one as much as possible: if you haven’t seen the video on social media, an adopted man in Chicago did a DNA test only to find out his bio mom is the owner of his favorite bakery!

Opt-out of Airport Facial Recognition

As we learned recently with Luigi Mangione, NYC and many modern cities are chock full of facial recognition and surveillance opps that seem pretty terrible when you think about our civil liberties… so here’s a handy article detailing how to opt out of facial recognition at the airport while you’re traveling this holiday season!

Don’t: Watch the AI Coca Cola Ad

As you may have heard, Coca Cola used AI to make their cheesy ass holiday ad which is stupid and terrible but if you want to learn more about why without lowering your IQ 10-20 points by watching it, please click here.

Do: Watch The Movie FLOW

Get your ass to the nearest movie theater that’s showing the film FLOW; this animated feature was made entirely with open source software originally intended for video game modeling and follows the incredible journey of an adorable group of animals. Fair warning, there is no dialogue and when you see the film, there will most certainly, not be a dry eyeball in sight.

Beam Us Up?

According to mostly people in New Jersey but also everywhere else, people are spotting a lot of UAPs lately and doesn’t seem like anyone has any good information beyond that.

We’d like to believe these are UAPs from either aliens or interdimensional beings but if so, the real question becomes, why are these entities so heavily concentrated Down the Shore??

Ancient Science in Athens

Due to global warming Athens is hotter than ever and water is becoming more and more scarce so in addition to modern scientific solutions, the city is bringing back an ancient aqueduct that dates back to the Roman Empire. We love a science story that taps into ancient tech!

Blake Lively’s PR Nightmare Explained

Color us naive but turns out some PR firms that do “crisis management” aren’t just putting out statements on behalf of their clients and trying to make things right :-/

Following the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni drama we saw this week that some “PR” firms are actually hired to generate negative headlines about their clients’ enemies using somewhat untraceable channels via social media… But the tea hath been spilt and texts have been revealed and boy are they badddd. We have absolutely no skin in this game but seeing this unfold is stomach-churning: if Justin Baldoni didn't have anything to hide then why would he put so much time and money into hiring people to slander his co-star in order to feel “safe”? Hmmm.

The Biggest Smallest News Moments

Here’s a handy overview of the biggest “micro news” moments of 2024 - many of which made it into the newsletter already! Let’s pour one out for Raygun, Pommel Horse Guy, Moo Deng, Mob Wife Aesthetic, and so much more.

Instead of the usual links this week - we are sending a punch list of things you can do if your cortisol is at 1 Million and you’re already feeling like a cross between ET in the riverbed and Zuul from Ghostbusters and there aren’t enough guided meditations and sleepy girl mocktails in the world to bring you peace during this election cycle of insanity.

We got you. xx (◕‿◕)♡

10 Things To Do Right Now: From the Group Chat

At IHTEFYW we have had a friendly political-adjacent group chat since 2016ish and here are some suggestions from its esteemed members (and ourselves) to avoid falling into despair over the next 7-10 days. Hang in there!

1. Just Say NO to the News: Stop reading the news and especially avoid public polls or “anything written by anyone named Nate.”

2. Make a Voting Plan: this seems overly basic but know what you’re doing on election day. Are you voting early? Are you voting by mail? Are you going to the polls? Do you need to double check your registration status or polling location?

3. Take Action: Phone Bank in a swing state - just google “phone bank for” and your candidate of choice or click here. Or go to mobilize.us to find an activity you can vibe with in your area.

4. Follow this person’s completely unscientific 3 item checklist toward combating election anxiety which includes preparing yourself for your “worst case” scenario without jumping out a window. Good luck!

5. Treat yo’self: but seriously, be gentle on yourself, do something you enjoy that isn’t doom scrolling on a phone or typing on a computer. Go to a 24/hour Korean spa, take a bath, meet a friend for coffee, play with your dog.

6. Eat your feelings: Cooking and following involved recipes to completion / sublimation is scientifically proven to keep you offline, distracted and busy. Sarah sent this insanely delicious looking recipe for French Onion Mac and Cheese - truly could be the pie de résistance for Tuesday night’s spread or literally breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next week, no judgies.

7. Watch: Rivals - for all you Jessica Jones / Dr. Who fans out there - you will love our eccentric king David Tennant in this Jilly Cooper adaptation about the “horniness,” “homophobia” and “hedonism” of 80s Tory politics. Also, it’s on Disney+ hahaha.

8. Listen to music: whether you love the ntz ntz ntz of the boiler room or the soothing drones of binaural beats or maybe some jazz or classical… either way, let the healing vibrations of someone else’s creation guide you into a calm state so you can simply and strategically show up for life the next 7 days. Pace yourself.

9. Read: this book about US presidential elections past where we already know the results.

10. Be of Service: This is honestly the number one thing but saved it for last - help a friend, neighbor, family member or stranger. No good deed is too small!!

+ email us your suggestions that aren’t in the list above and we’ll send an update this weekend!

This week -as with all weeks- we are diving into the juiciest news fit to click + we are hot on a new case, investigating why, where and how the return of the elusive Monchhichi came about.

Highlights from our 72nd edition of IHTEFYW include: Gov. Newsom’s Anti Smart Phone Legislation,The Half a Billion Dollar Flop You’ve Never Heard of, Diddy + SBF = Unlikely Bunkmates, A Fashion Show for the Media Lovers, Kamala x Daddy Gang and more.

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Blockbuster or Bust

With Megalopolis finally in theaters last week it seems only appropriate to write three (actually 4) long paragraphs about three different creations (2 movies and a video game), all years in the making and all highlighting different ways in which Hollywood and Silicon Valley are objectively broken.

First up is Brady Corbet and his film The Brutalist which is getting a lot of buzz since premiering at Venice. The 3.5 hour “epic” is supposedly very good and ONLY cost 6 Million dollars (which is still, of course, a fucking lot of money but also qualifies as being basically free / extremely indie in today’s backwards world). A lot to unpack with this one but still seems like a positive thing for creativity and the low-budget, high art oeuvres we love.

Next up is The Apprentice, and as we discussed here (a lot), not all heroes wear capes but a few people battled the odds to make sure this movie was able to come out in time for the election - and it’s finally coming out this week so please support your indie filmmakers!

And that half a billion dollar flop (MegaFLOPolis if you will) is actually a video game called Concord that was 8 years in the making when Sony unexpectedly yanked it offline in early September after just 3 weeks. Concord's failed mega-launch has left the video game industry reeling with postmortems saying it fell victim to the pervasive greed of Silicon Valley investors whose relentless pursuit of fast-scaling-growth-at-all-costs has been crushing tech creativity for over a decade. This story is barely being covered by MSM but the biggest video games in the world - all the Roblox, Minecrafts, Fortnites and Sims that have your kids completely addicted - are all now over seven years old, which indeeds point to a dearth of innovation in what was always seen as tech's creative bastion…

Gov. Newsom vs. Teens

CA Governor Gavin Newsom is making it known that he is on a one-man mission to save CA teens and children from the harms of social media and smart phone addiction while simultaneously becoming enemy number one of CA teens. Recently he signed legislation to legally force schools into limiting cell phone use at school. Not really sure how this will work in practice but it’s all a step in the right direction?

Kamala’s Unorthodox PR Strategy

Everybody has a hot take on why Kamala and her PR team are geniuses (or not) for their “unorthodox” media strategy as we hurtle toward the election and she is notably not doing many MSM interviews but instead went on the millennial podcast, Call Her Daddy + Stern Show this week.

Here at Serious Biz, we have no less than one zillion hot takes on this subject but for once we’ll let the readers have a look for themselves, aka. no comment.

A Fashion Show For The Media Lovers

In the modern era, the only consistently interesting fashion collections are by Prada. A few weeks ago, the indisputable star of Prada sister brand Miu Miu’s Spring show in Paris was not the clothes (nor was it the celebrities), but rather, a printing press installation set designed by Polish artist Goshka Macuga - printing a dystopian periodical called The Truthless Times; truly a treat for the print-pilled among us.

Come for Miu Miu’s offset newsprint press fetish and stay for our offbeat king ^^ closing out the show.

Monchhichi Cold Case

Our investigation on why we’re seeing Monchhichis everywhere in 2024, went pretty cold pretty quick tbh, and usually when this happens (hello Snoopy / Peanuts / Grateful Dead / Barbie) there’s a secret or not-so-secret licensing deal that went down somewhere along the way but even so, seems extremely random.

That said, we love Moncchichis so this is cool for us and now pls do Cabbage Patch Kids.

Please email us with your Monchhichi leads by responding to this email.

Diddy + SBF: Bunkmates @ Hellhole Jail

Not unlike Dorothy, Rose and Blanche (above), Diddy + SBF are apparently bunkmates in the clink and just what a crazy headline.

You May Find Yourself… Stargazing

NYT has all the tips and tricks on how to see this “once-in-a-lifetime” (see what we did there?) over the next few days. It’s called Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, or C/2023 A3 to scientists who likely also had difficulty pronouncing Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. We haven’t been able to spot it yet but please have a look.

This week we are looking at all the different ways human life in 2024 can have world-altering effects on treasured artifacts, our own wellbeing, privacy, AI, the environment and more. TL:DR it started with a dropped bag of cheetos in a cave and ends with unknowingly signing over our data to train someone else’s stupid AI! Dangit!

Highlights from our 71st edition of IHTEFYW include: Forgotten Cheetos Explainer, Australia raises their Social Media Ban to Age 16, The New Yorker calls BS on your instagram “photo dumps”, LinkedIn is about to mine your data (+ how to stop them) and more.

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Psssst!

… It happens to be Zoe T’s birthday TODAY so Happy Birthday Zo Zo and please feel free to send her your best wishes!

Cave of Forgotten Cheetos

This is more of a biology / conservation story but feels relevant to many of the topics we cover here every week.

WaPo recently covered news of a Facebook post wherein rangers at Carlsbad Caverns expressed their frustration over a dropped a bag of cheetos inside the cave, threatening the livelihoods of its dwellers:

To the owner of the snack bag, the impact is likely incidental. But to the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact.

The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi. Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organize into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues… At the scale of human perspective, a spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing.

So no, this actually wasn’t a headline about Trump, but its contents are a cautionary tale, great for a) teaching small kids why they can't litter and b) why humans can't have nice things.

Australia to Raise Social Media Age to 16

Following in the footsteps of their patron saint, Steve Irwin (RIP), Australia is fearlessly wrestling its own unwieldy beast: teenagers on social media. Australia’s federal government is promising legislation aimed to keep its children and half of its teens off social media, before the end of the year. Fair dinkum mateys! We endorse!

Your Insufferable Dumps

New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka said what everyone was thinking this week in his article about the insufferable and desperate trend of IG “photo dumps.” Of course, sometimes the dump can be an appropriate venue for a sweet tribute to a family member, your impressive wedding anniversary, a lost loved one/pet, but when it’s just 15+ photos of your trip to Greece or inside jokes with two other people, the general consensus is maybe think twice before publishing :-/

LinkedIn is Trying to Trick Us

Most people use LinkedIn, albeit to varying degrees (shoutout to the three people we all know who love to post on LinkedIn), but it was revealed this week that they’re trying to exploit their updated terms + conditions to mine users’ data to train their own AI.

If that sounds scary to you Fast Company made a simple how-to on opting out and reviewing your updated privacy settings.

Lionsgate’s AI Move

Despite The Emmy Awards and Ted Sarandos’ / Netflix’s cry for transparency, those still weren’t the biggest stories in entertainment this week as Lionsgate decided to pull a real Cheeto-drop of their own, sure to have world-altering effects in the entertainment industry for quite some time.

Lionsgate announced they will be handing over their library to generative AI company Runway, to train their own AI model and enable cheaper production. According to Puck’s Matthew Belloni it’s pretty messy already:

Who’s gonna sue over the Lionsgate A.I. deal?: When the history of Hollywood and A.I. is written (probably by A.I.), let’s all remember that Lionsgate—the studio that brought us the bombs Borderlands, The Crow, and The Killer’s Game all in about a month—was the first to willingly hand over its library to a learning model. And C.E.O. Jon Feltheimer and vice chair Michael Burns did it not just for money, but for a new tool to enable their own A.I. dreams of cheaper production. The question now is: Whose rights are potentially violated by this deal? Runway, the generative A.I. startup, has already been sued for copyright infringement over its practices, and I’m hearing anger from the talent community over potential right-of-publicity claims and the use of names, images, and likenesses.

This is a developing story!

The Antidote

Sure, things seem eternally f*cked and reading about the cave of forgotten Cheetos (and other stories highlighted in this here newsletter) can feel depressing and hopeless but the universe has a celestial treat for all of us!

Everyone loves talking about the moon - I mean did you SEEEEE her this week? - and everyone loves a mini version of something (see: Baby Yoda)… turns out we, of Earth, are getting a second “mini-moon” for two whole months this year!!! From September 29th to November 25th a small asteroid will be orbiting our planet and while not visible to the naked eye, it will be visible with a telescope which is pretty feckin’ cool and fun. Yay!

Bits + Bobs

Miscellaneous things worth noting this week:

• Nuzzi-gate

• Moo Deng Mania

• Adam Sandler's new Josh Safdie-directed standup spesh

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

This week’s temperature check: It’s Back2School across the US, John Oliver is still on hiatus and LA was 107 degrees yesterday. But there is change in the air and things just *feeeeeel* different since that nasty Mercury Retrograde and other astrological bs has passed.

Highlights from our 70th edition of IHTEFYW include: A feel-good post-Olympics story, AI is killing the planet, dispatch from Europe: HRH gossip edishy, Megalopolis trailer drama, South Park’s big election move + more. Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

The Next Gen of Pommel Horse Guys

A feel-good story for our fellow Olympics-loving readers:

Remember Pommel Horse GuyTM, our bespectacled gymnastics king?

After PHG took a nap and then swiftly and surgically helped the USA men’s olympics team FINALLY medal at the Olympics, young boys starting flocking to gymnastics! We love that kids are inspired by PHG’s combination of sublime dominance and blasé winningness. Yay!!

Paralympics are Amazingggg

If you’ve not been watching the Paralympics you have a lot of internetting to do. If you want to mainline those real deal GOOOOOOD feelings and be in complete awe of the human spirit, we GOT YOU with this one.

Highly recommend the seated volleyball, archery, swimming and long jump.

Dispatch from Europe: HRH Edition

In maybe the least surprising revelation of all time, a new book claims that Queen Elizabeth found trump to be “very rude” and didn’t like the way he kept “looking over her shoulder.” LOL @ Her Royal Highness flaming Trump from beyond the grave.

Trump Biopic Update: IT’S HAPPENING!!!!

The dumpster fire around Trump’s biopic / The Apprentice has finally been extinguished and it's good 2 gooooooo ahead of the M’Fing electionnnn!!

Now we can put our money where our mouth is as the film’s producers have launched a KickStarter to help boost its imminent theatrical release.

Peep the first clip here. Come for the young Donald but stay for Jeremy Strong’s epic orange-tanned Roy Cohn…

Robots Need Water Too

The irony is not lost on us that like humans, AI also needs water to “live” and apparently the crazy demand for water needed to cool AI data centers is fueling a level of water consumption that is straight up, not sustainable at all.

Megalopolis PWNS Itself, Lionsgate Apologizes

The latest Megalopolis trailer drama proves once again, the dangers of AI, human laziness and having people with no experience or common sense, run your marketing campaigns. Guys, this really does keep happening though :-/

Here at IHTEFYW we love FFC and are pleased that Lionsgate has at least owned their embarrassing snafu. If you’re not clued in, enjoy the latest here.

South Park Passes Up 2024 Election Coverage

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have announced that they will not be making any new South Park episodes until 2025, ie. after the election. In a meta re-reading of what Parker and Stone are thinking at any given time ... it’s that Trump is simply too pathetic for words / energy / attention. Also, they’re waiting for Paramount to “figure their shit out” which sounds about right.

NB: despite this week’s posts (above), we too are highly considering taking the same 'grey rock approach to the toxic cheeto…

A Fred agIFT…

In addition to serving up the freshest links in this here newsletter and doing ”public relations” (whatever that means), we are all about peace love unity and respect.

In the spirit of PLUR, we have a little treat for y’all:

Yesterday, Brian Eno collaborator / millennial EDM royalty Fred Gibson, aka Fred again, released his highly anticipated album, ten days.

Fred also recently made headlines for completely blowing away what everyone thought they knew about a touring strategy (worth a read if you love seeing live music).

Posting our fave ten days tracks and early autumn anthems below; hope you’ll consider hosting a sunset album listening party this weekend with your nearest and dearest. xoxo K + Z

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

It’s back to school in Cali and still summer basically everywhere else. The Olympics are over and we’re on a level 10 comedown, so we’re getting back to mainlining the news for y’all to bring you the best - and certainly the weirdest - stories from the web and assorted digital media.

Highlights from our 69th edition of IHTEFYW include: RIP Francine Pascal, a Bro-letariat Media primer, the best of the Meme-lympics, juicy Gawker movie news, Shack Shack on Wheelz and more. Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

RIP Sweet Valley Queen

Learning that Francine Pascal - the mother creator of Sweet Valley High and fixture of every 80s girlhood (who should, quite frankly, be sainted for popularizing the word "like" in the English lexicon - had passed away a few weeks back, was pretty devastating. 

As a tidal wave of obits came rolling in, our heads spun to discover that this lifelong East Coast queen was a frustrated news journalist at heart (she wrote a nonfiction book about the Patty Hearst trial) who had never even visited SoCal before writing the first six Sweet Valley High books! 

A Bro-letariat Media Primer

If, like us, you've wondered why the hell the thoughts and opinions of so many loudmouths in tech have become so ubiquitous of late, this is a great primer on the bro-letariat media ecosystem of their silly soapboxes.

Best Olympics Meme-ments

While we’re all still reeling from “Raygun” the Aussie “breakdancer” who wasn’t, there are so many things to discuss including but not limited to: Snoop everything, why is rhythmic gymnastics so amazing?, The American bronze medalist whose medal is being revoked, our pommel horse king, the casual but deadly Turkish pistol sniper and more.

Gawker the Movie: DRAMA

We don't think a day has gone by that we haven't mourned the dissolution of the original Gawker (at the hands of Peter Thiel operating under the thin veil of Hulk Hogan's sex tape privacy lawsuit).

Now that Gus Van Sant (cool) is set to direct the big screen retelling of our deepest media trauma, the Trump tough guy/former wrestler/ultimate carnival barker Hulk Hogan is out issuing real threats against the production if they "go too far” in their dramatic interpretation of events. For someone whose catchphrase included saying he feared “no man, no beast or evil” it kind of seems like the Hulkster is pretty scared of… Gus Van Sant??

While unlikely these threats have Thiel's backing this time around, it would be delicious retribution to see Hogan lose on this one if he took it to court. Talking of Trump-related movie projects: we the people need an update on the distribution of The Apprentice movie ... brb. 

Apprentice the Movie: DISTRO (UPDATE)

Re: distribution of The Apprentice - the drama feature about evil lawyer Roy Cohn's dastardly 1980s mentorship of Donald Trump starring Jeremy Strong that premiered at Cannes. The most recent info we've found on the Wrap from about a month ago was that somehow WME and CAA were joining forces to buy out the Trump donor-stick-in-the-mud who'd been holding up the US distro deal. Turns out, he had a price: purportedly seven million dollars (which will cover the million dollar political donation he flushed down the Trump toilet lol). Assuming no news is good news, the details are being worked out and the film will hit US box offices before November. Now, Let Us Pray. 

The ASMR “Creamy” Keyboard Craze

ASMR / retro-tech enthusiasts are taking a page out of Mike Nichols’ Working Girl with their “creamy” keyboard obsession. So what is a “creamy” keyboard? It’s basically an 80s-style keyboard that makes a very specific clicking noise that people loooooove.

As actual humans who lived through the era of clicky, clunky keyboards it seems like these new ones are certainly an homage to the ones of our youth, but they do sound kind of different?

Look, watever sparks your joy!

Your Shake is in Danger, Girl

Shake Shack, the unofficial sponsor of Serious Business, just announced that it will be partnering with Uber to use autonomous sidewalk robots to deliver orders in LA. Not sure if we think this is cool, good, bad, or otherwise but if you’ve ever seen a cute little “Saymo” robot trying to simply cross the street in LA, let’s just say your burger and fries may well be in danger!

AI ‘Journalism’ has Arrived! :-/

Yoooo, this is what we’ve been screaming about when we scream about the dangers of f**king AI!! Sort of. Turns out, like most things, it’s human laziness and stupidity that makes it dangerous… This week, a 15-year veteran of the Wyoming Cody Enterprise Gazette got stone cold busted for turning in AI generated quotes and stories.

Just WTF.

It Ends With Us in PR Free fall

We saved the best (and weirdest) for last which actually feels pretty tame compared to some of the other PR mishandlings we have covered here. This one is a tale as old as time that proves bad press doesn’t always mean bad for busines$$.

If you have not been following Blake Lively’s It Ends with Us press tour rollercoaster, you can catch up here. Despite beating Deadpool at the box office (?!) last weekend the film has been having a rather turbulent PR launch - to put it lightly. Supposedly Lively and her co-star / director Justin Baldoni didn’t get along on set and as such, have been doing press separately + people think she’s been behaving weird / rudely + out of touch with press (for a WHILE). With all the uproar around Lively this week, it’s completely unshocking that *someone* has now leaked an “anonymous” story to TMZ about how Baldoni “fat shamed” Lively on set and lingered too long on the kissing scenes. Baldoni has reportedly hired Johnny Depp’s crisis PR to smooth things over but whoa guys, this is getting out of hand, and quickly!

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

We are absolutely loving brewing up this newsletter for y’all each week.

This week we’re covering some stories that were underreported during the oxygen-sucking Trump show / assassination attempt / RNC / Biden-Kamala torch passing. What a time to be alive!

Highlights from today’s 68th issue include: The PA Teens Who Used TikTok to Ruin Their Teachers’ Lives, Hidden Algorithmic Price Discrimination, JAWS turns 50, Steve Bannon’s Epstein PR Connection, and more. Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Evil PA Teens

It’s difficult to sum this article up in a short post but here goes:

A group of teenagers in a Philadelphia suburb recently used TikTok to coordinate a first-of-its kind attack on their teachers and the fallout is REAL. The students created fake profiles impersonating their teachers, and posted content that covered topics ranging from pedophilia to homophobia and racist memes. :-/

Needless to say, the teachers - whose livelihoods were effectively ruined - were pissed! But that’s not even the craziest part.The teens showed little to NO actual remorse when interviewed by The Times. This totally horrifying quote really got us:

“Move on. Learn to joke,” the other student said about a teacher. “I am 13 years old,” she added, using an expletive for emphasis, “and you’re like 40 going on 50.”

Yikeeees.

NB: Advertising and Creative Friends: where are the public health campaigns?

Angelic UK Teens

As a somewhat feel-good follow up to the previous story above, elite British boys’ school Eaton announced a few weeks back they will be joining the wave of schools to ban smartphones (for 13 and 14-year-olds anyway), giving all incoming students a flip phone upon arrival and sending their iPhones back home.

Now do it for the 15-18 year olds!

We said what we said.

Jaws is 50!

Jaws, the book and the film is a cultural phenomena that lives outside the interwebs entirely and stands the test of time… and it just turned 50! The book, which quickly became the ultimate beach read, and according to the NYT “with the shark at its center embod[ies] the unease of an era of political and social upheaval.”

Definitely still feels relevant!

All Roads Lead 2 Epstein (feat. Bannon)

Remember Bannon’s Toxic Hot Tub of Acid? Neither do we :-/

It seems that Faux Comrade of the People Steve Bannon is nothing more than a hype man for the wackiest members of the powerful elite he purports to hate. Shocker :-/

E.g. 1: This week, billionaire chinese crypto fraudster Miles Guo - upon whose mega yacht Steve Bannon was living (whyyyy?) when he was arrested by the Feds in August 2020 - was convicted in SDNY. Bannon was also Chairman of Guo's kooky fake news network GTV and Guo's Manhattan apartment mysteriously burned down after he was arrested so you do the math on that shady equation.

Anyhoo, don't let us get distracted because this week (e.g. 2), strong new evidence emerged that Bannon was helping Jeffrey Freaking Epstein rehabilitate his image prior to his death. Well isn’t that nice of him.

Surge Pricing is Everywhere Now

Turns out those bespoke realities we wrote about are coming for you economically too… wherein retailers and corporations use your personal data to predict the price that you might be WILLING to pay vs. what they would normally charge across the board? W. T. F.

We <3 The Messy Conways

They say that these days, politics is entertainment. If so, the Conway family are something of our reality show. We can't help but love outspoken eldest teenage daughter Claudia Conway who has proven herself to be the one person in the world capable of getting under her bleep mom, Kelly Ann Conway's skin.

Grindr Down in Milwaukee

There’s nothing wrong with using Grindr. But the irony of Grindr’s usage going so far up during the RNC that it crashed in Milwaukee, is not lost on us. Cheers!

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend. As we enter back into our screen-based, email-filled existence, we really do hope this email finds you well! <3

Moving on, here at IHTEFYW we don’t shy away from a complex, hard-to-stomach story. And so far, only one other Substack has covered the saga of Derek Blasberg’s Goop / poop curse, but fear not, it’s all in here.

Other highlights from today’s very influencers x bullshit themed issue include: WaPo’s New Leadership, Tech Industry is Welch-Pilled, Dead Internet Theory: No Longer a Conspiracy, a plethora of stories about “influencers” that are sick-inducing. Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

We Weigh in On WaPo (FINALLY)

The unravelling of Bezos' newly installed British leadership at WaPo has been a weeks-long media frenzy so completely off the rails that our quaint lil' substack has not been able to do it justice.

First off, media reporters on both sides of the Pond have created a formidable Rat King of allegations against the corrupt and murky tendencies of Murdoch's ex-UK newspaper execs. Our fave thus far is a scoop from 2010 about how current WaPo CEO Will Lewis told Scotland Yard (with a straight face) that Murdoch Inc. had deleted 30 million emails during the illegal phone hacking investigation cuz UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was trying to steal them. "Seizmic, if true!" thought police, but Lying Lewis never produced receipts. More deets after the jump.

Tech Industry is Welch-Pilled

Silicon Valley PR guy ’s latest 11K-word-screed makes a strong case for an AI-hastened tech recession because the C-Suite who run the Magnificent 7 are managers not developers and tech hasn't innovated anything new of proven utility since 2014 (see: metaverse, crypto). He also alleges that AI is just the latest pseudo-innovation meant to uphold the shareholder-driven smoke-and-mirrors that is fueling our “economy” for the time being. After all "Workers-are-unecesssary" is a salivating managerial concept upon which to pump tech stocks that originated with Jack Welch.

Dead Internet Theory = SpooOOookyyyy

A fringe idea that started as conspiracy on 4Chan -Dead Internet Theory- sounds like it's on track to go mainstream. The theory was that once humans began creating content to juice the algorithms, the internet would die. Truly does not even sound that wild, right? Well since Generative AI bopped along: 1 in 3 internet users are now bots, 50% of internet traffic is coming from non-human sources and all of it's now generating new content by “crawling” synthetic content made for algorithms. What if the real threat of AI is not to humanity, but to the Internet itself? Long Live IRL.

The Influencer Whisperer

When do we get to skip to the part when the Surgeon General puts a warning on Influencing (with a capital I)?

This WSJ story about a 31-year-old UES “influencer whisperer” who started her business in 2019 is… interesting. In fact, the first para is absolutely blood-boiling:

You might call Shana Davis-Ross a Dr. Frankenstein for the influencer-marketing era. What she’s fashioned isn’t a monster, exactly, but a woman with an algorithmically covetable Manhattan life. Her creation works out at Alo Yoga’s invite-only gym, grabs afternoon Aperol spritzes with her girlfriends, dines at the hottest restaurants and always seems to have a perfect blowout.  

David-Ross is clearly no dum dum, and has turned her agency into a lucrative business with over 80 clients, in 5 short years. But to what end? As far as we can tell, the rise of influencers is directly contributing to the death of legacy media and quality journalism as we know it (see also DEAD INTERNET THEORY above).

We have also now clearly moved from dabbling, to huffing, to mainlining late stage capitalism. Yippeee.

Parenting Influencers Have to Pony Up

A new law in Illinois says that parenting influencers in the state now have to pay their children for using them in content. It’s only a 15% cut but it’s a 100% chef’s kiss. <3

Bespoke Realities

According to people who are smart enough to know and have written entire books on the subject, influencers + the algorithm are creating bespoke realities wherein actual human beings are getting a custom feed of mostly bullshit and disinformation. Wired spoke to researcher Renée DiResta about her new book, disinformation, bespoke realities and how nobody is immune. Fascinating stuff but also scaryyyy.

Derek Blasburg’s Schadenturde

Settle down kiddos, we elderly media folk have a story to tell:

We’ll start at the “catastrophic” finale, which involves some disgusting body humor. Just last week it was revealed that celebrity hanger-on and professional bestie to the stars -Derek Blasberg- had diarrhea in Gwyneth’s guest bed and fled the scene, leaving her and her staff to clean it up themselves.

Normally we’d give the poor guy a pass because everybody poops, etc.

HAVING SAID THAT, for over fifteen years, Blasberg has been on a seemingly never-ending social climb, leeching off the rich and famous, without contributing much of anything meaningful to the culture in return… and all while notably mistreating other members of the media world - editorial and PR alike. Seriously, nearly everyone we know has an unsavory story about the guy.

And if that doesn’t give you a schadenfreud-gasm, let it be known that Blasberg, who fancied himself a writer, was called out all the way back in 2010 for invoicing brands in exchange for editorial coverage (shady / illegal), in addition to insisting on insane, diva-level perks on press trips. The story was rather quickly forgotten and Blasberg continued operating as he does… Until last week.

Who knows what the future holds or how this will play out. According to , Blasberg has hired a crisis PR firm and umm, that makes a lot of sense. His wikipedia page has been scrubbed in the last 48 hours, but not before many people on the interwebs secured the receipts:

Anyway, adieu for now sweet readers, and let this cautionary tale be a reminder to us all, to enjoy our lives on the Z list as long as possible and of course, ABK / always be kind.

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Looks like memes have won again after a debate that left everyone reeling and terrified but at least we have the healing antidote of laughter.

Not coincidentally we are living in an actual infernal hellscape that is seemingly hotter every day, so thank you for knowing exactly the correct moment to bring up Glenn Frey’s The Heat Is On (to coincide with the release of the new Bev Hills Cop movie, duh).

Otherwise, the vibes are generally very weird so we hope everyone charged up their crystals under the Full Strawberry Solstice Super Moon last weekend. No worries if not, as someone took the liberty of drawing a giant pentagram in the ground at JPL / NASA this week, which if you didn’t know, is allegedly already a giant hell portal. Cool cool cool. ;)

To state the obvious, this week’s newsletter is feeling extremely witchy and esoteric which makes a lot of sense when you consider the introduction above and the content below.

Highlights from today’s issue include: Unscrupulous Online Targeting of Egg Freezing Females, A Very Lethal and Very Cute Underwater Sub, Horrifying Florida Dentist Murder Plot, The Tompkins Bball Court Glow Up … and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

On the Subject of Eggs

Yooo where's the .... FCC?? This story about how much young women on social media are being hard-sold to freeze their eggs has been making the rounds; it’s unfortunate seeing as the effectiveness of premature egg freezing is far from guaranteed and often thought to be unnecessary.

The predatory online marketing of costly egg removal procedures also ladders into a growing and worrying propensity of medical startups influencing young people -without much oversight- to undergo invasive medical procedures they may later regret. File this alongside “preventative botox” and the beauty industrial complex cuz we’re calling bullshit.

This Killer Sub is Sewwwww Kewwwt

Not endorsing weapons-o-war, but Northrop Grumman's unmanned covert sub MANTA RAY is the most adorable thing to come out of the military industrial complex since, well, ever. Unveiled last month in an orchestrated PR flex that our friends in RU/CHINA/IRAN would be sure to take note of, and now DARPA be scrubbing its cutie capture on google maps. It sounds like the US is totally ready to deploy this bad boy.

Dentist = Florida Man

If, like us you have severe dental anxiety then I guess TRIGGER WARNING in regards to this story because nothing has ever scared us more:

An unhinged Florida dentist was on some IRL Little Shop of Horrors shit recently and sent hundreds of racist and violent death threats to victims; he even went so far as to send the middle finger emoji to an FBI agent (lol).Following the recent revelations surrounding the architect who turned out to be the infamous Long Island Serial Killer, it seems white collar dudes are really having a Patrick Bateman Summer :-/

A Summer, Basketball Glow-Up

There is nothing more NYC than Tompkins Square Park in the Summer (except for maybe Tompkins Square Park at Halloween, and the dog costume contest…) and their basketball courts just got a very chic glow-up courtesy of Glossier (seems random but they’ve been partnered w/ the WNBA for 4 years), artist Na Chainkua Reindorf and Project Backboard, a non-profit focused on rehabbing courts throughout the city.

As much as this feels somehow cheapened by Glossier’s involvement we really do like an ultra low-key brand collab and extra points for elevating the vibes of our fave park.

Experts Are Calling BS on AI

Sure, doing drugs is cool but have you ever read a research study wherein actual nerds explain how the word bullshit is the most scientifically and philosophically accurate way of explaining AI’s flaws??

A trio of philosophers in Glasgow recently published a research report titled “ChatGPT is bullshit” which explains why ‘bullshit’ is a better term than ‘hallucinations’ when referring to AI’s false outputs. It’s kind of a lot to explain here but more nerdy, details after the jump.

Aborting the Web

In another move that seems to unequivocally prove many studio heads and corporate media execs are in fact, evil lizard people: Paramount just wiped out the entire MTV News online archives (in addition to online archives and websites for Comedy Central, TV Land and CMT - what. the actual. f*ck??) which obviously includes decades of cultural historical moments, talk show clips and mementos that deserve to be preserved!

BRB, putting out the bat signal to save our culture…

The Mysterious Case of the Buried Lede

So while everyone was quick to cover the A24 / Josh Kushner news, pointing out the obvious -that VC money has a way of inevitably ruining everything pure and artistic in this world- only one publication went deeper on the AI piece of this story. And of course it’s paywalled… but a snippet from The Information’s newsletter is included below for your convenience:

People who would know, seem to think this is more than a smoking gun in regards to AI and the entertainment industry; it’s certainly naive to think the connection is meaningless but only time will tell… meanwhile Reddit is currently full of only the most feral hot takes on the subject so we’ll just put this here.

Summer Recs

What we’re Making: Look, food isn’t all about consumption it is also about making things with intention for yourself and the ones you love 💞.

• We are still working our way through ’s Health Nut but also keep going back to her first book, Salad Freak 🥗 for the light, seasonal, food we crave during this hot ass summer.

• Wine king and tall Pennsylvanian, Eric Wareheim put out his own bestselling cookbook FoodHeim a few years back, which features stunning recipes for every occasion especially all things cooked on a grill. 🔥

• Truly anything by the angel, . 🍅

What we’re Reading: We are loving these juicy summer reads.

• If you’re into the self-help genre, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender is super underrated and our lives would all be 500x better if more people read and absorbed this knowledge.

• Here at SB we love a gov’t conspiracy so waiting to crack this book by CI-Angel Phil Mudd, til we hit the beach.

• If you felt underwhelmed by the recent Hulu doc on Jonestown, maybe try this book about it which answers a lot of questions.

What we’re Watching: We actually did watch The Acolyte so you don’t have to, and with the exception of one very long and cool light saber fight seen, we cannot recommend. However…

• The Eggers’ Nosferatu Trailer is finally HEREEEE! The feature isn’t out til CHRISTMAS which is weird timing but always happy to extend spooky szn. 👻🧛‍♂️

• For the scream queens and kings (+ Nic Cage devotees) we are hearing Longlegs is a 12/10 and the Letterboxd gods agree.

• Yes Chef! Our beloved Carmy / The Bear is back but be forewarned, nothing beats Seasons 1/2. 🐻👨‍🍳

What we’re Listening to:

• We are rave moms above all else so you better believe the holy EDM trinity of Four Tet, Skrillex and Fred Again is on repeat all summer.

• On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jessica Pratt’s amazing new album “here in the pitch” is nice for a relaxed nap on a hammock, down the shore.

Happy Summer-ing! 🌼 🏖 🏕 👙 🍹

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Highlights from this week’s edition of IHTEFYW include: The Rise of Dopamine Culture + The Fall of Dating Apps, Elon Musk vs Sam Altman, Sony Buys Alamo, Biden on Shrooms … and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Mass Abandonment of Dating Apps

Sort of good news: the general consensus seems to be bearing out that the monetization and gamification of the best free things in life is for nought.

PSA: The Rise of Dopamine Culture

As an addendum to the above post, we cannot stop thinking about this amazing post (and powerful graphics) from internet oracle , that so adeptly explains how social media addiction is not only REAL, but for lack of a better word, killing all the things we love + so much more.

Plead take the time to read and absorb it ;) Send us your thoughts and comments!

Remember What Happened with ScarJo?

So… remember a few weeks ago when ScarJo told Sam Altman / OpenAI a hard “no” about using her voice but then he did it anyway? Let’s start there. Another piece of background, Elon Musk and Sam Altman are mortal enemies. The next part of this story is that Apple is planning to integrate OpenAI into all their devices. Apple says your data is totes safe but Elon says nobody knows if that’s true because nobody actually reads Apple’s T&C just like that one South Park episode. Worst case scenario, Apple users may be willingly sending their precious data straight to OpenAI to do whatever they want with. What could possibly go wrong??

NB: Mysteriously, Musk just withdrew his lawsuit (related but unrelated) against OpenAI this week.

Nigel Farage Gets Pie’d (part deux)

Who knew the world missed pie culture as much as we did at IHTEFYW? Nigel Farage getting one to the face last week actually inspired another man to throw a coffee cup (and wet cement) at him this week; here’s to never letting a good trend die!

An Unlikely Memelord

Not a dull week for the Biden family with Hunter’s gun trial / verdict and all, but somehow President Biden still managed to steal the show with his “lack of movement” at a Juneteenth event and all the funny memes about being on shrooms that came out of it. Get it henny!

Fake News > Real News

It’s a misleading headline but there is actually MORE fake news being churned out now than real news, thanks to low-vibrational, dark money groups and such….the inflection point being around domestic fake news masquerading as - and in some cases having acquired - existing local newspapers. It’s depressing and shitty but better to be aware of it than not. Basically, it’s time to put on your extreme discernment goggles and never take them off.

Don’t Forget The Alamo

There's something exciting about the possibilities here: Sony (formerly of iconic Columbia Pictures fame + also Amy Pascal’s equally iconic hacked emails) is buying the Alamo Drafthouse chain of movie theaters. We believe all involved are sincere that they'll screen all studios' new films. Now let’s all pray they don’t do what Netflix did with the Egyptian which involves a beautiful remodeling and then an unholy abandonment, but we digress (Netflix, please call us!).

The real added value here is the reprioritization of live theatrical events and access to the Sony / Paramount back catalog. Huzzah!

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you would like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Going to skip the expanded intro for this week’s edition (after all, we did just publish a few days ago) but highlights include: Corporate Surveillance Ickiness, Unearthed Adam Curtis Gold from 1982, Lego Larceny, a Xennial Electro Music Report (pt 1 of infinity) … and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Burn it Down

Wanna read a story that will make you want to burn down our entire, capitalist system?

This amazing WSJ investigation discovered major insurers are using aerial surveillance devices to spy on policy holders and cancel their coverage if they spot irregularities. Corporations are the Worst. (non Paywalled version here.)

From the Archives of Adam Curtis

This one's for the Adam Curtis-heads (we won't stop reporting on the Adam Curtis beat until at least 10 of you finish HyperNormalisation. Sorry, we don’t make the rules).

UK culture site Londonist unearthed Curtis' first known directorial work, a 1982 day-in-the-life at Selfridge's dept. store. The 30 min BBC short is one part "Are You Being Served" 70s sitcom, one part pro-worker socialist polemic and 100% pure Curtis-ian poetry.

Nigel Farage Gets Pie’d

OK we know you all thought the last time someone got pie’d and it mattered was Gawker founder Nick Denton at the Radar party circa 2005 or Rupert Murdoch at the hacking hearings in 2011 (what a time) but don’t despair…

In the same week that Mexico elected it's "first jewish / female-identifying" puppet prez, and that Trump got convicted by a jury of 34 criminal counts, this clip of Nigel Farage getting a banana milkshake to the face on his first day of campaigning for UK Prime Minister wins for being the most visually-satisfying piece of global political news coverage from the past 7 days.

Lego Larceny

Inflation + the stress of life in 2024 has given rise to a new alarming wave of crime and this time, it’s affecting cute nerds:

Independent brick and mortar Lego sellers around the country are being targeted by thieves! Less than 2 months after LAPD busted a Lego-fencing ring that was offloading $300k of stolen sets, the thieves are at it again. Pro-tip: our cool, lego-loving friends just re-sell one to two of their finished sets a year - to fund their expensive habit.

Xennial Electro Report (Part 1)

Brands put so much emphasis on what people under the age of 25 are into that sometimes it’s easy to forget those of us over the age of 35 are still extremely cool and fun. This week’s reminder:

Quite the week to be alive when genx/millennial dance éminences grises Caribou, Fred again, Floating Points and Jamie XX each released new tracks — and so soon after their amazing B2B2B (Jamie xx / Floating Points) sets at Coachella. Peace Love Unity and Respect (YOUR ELDERS).

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you are like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Welcome!! We normally send these out on Friday or Saturday but we’re changing it up to brighten your inbox when it needs it most… so happy Monday ;)

Highlights of this week's edition include: The Anti-Biden Tik Tok “wildfire", a Zoom Criminal Gets Busted, Legacy Media Bringing Back The Goods, NY Gov Wants to Ban Smartphones in Schools … and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

The Anti-Biden TikTok ‘wildfire’

Here at SB we are truly the first in line to complain about the stream of misinformation that comes from TikTok, usually delivered ad nauseum by your nearest teenager. Having said that… our president is suffering from serious backlash coming from the platform’s most influential users, due to a myriad of somewhat understandable reasons.

Apparently the tides started to turn when POTUS began moving to ban the app itself… and TikTok users and influencers who use the app to get their news and pay their bills, were understandably upset. But other recent, unpopular policy decisions have fueled an additional increase in outrage against the president. Cut to the once prioritized group of young influencers no longer getting invited to White House events and press conferences and yeah, whoopsies!

Not coincidentally, Trump just joined TikTok…

Judge Judy Would Never (OK she Probably Would)

We honestly felt for this defendant whose self-own - calling into his court hearing via zoom while driving his car on a suspended license - went viral this week.

The poor guy had to turn himself into jail THAT NIGHT and we don’t even know what his original charge was but our hearts went out to him.

ED NOTE (KF): Driving while Zooming is incredibly dangerous and doing so in front a judge while on a suspended license is moronic, so I am actually kind of OK with this.

Return of the OGs, For a Time

Earlier in the year, ex-Vanity Fair writer Delia Cai ran "Hate Read" (an 'anonymous' poison pen columns on her substack) as a limited run. Now, New York Mag is bringing back a"limited Summer run" of Brock Colyar's nightlife column.

We like this trend: it creates a kind of frisson-demand for the printed word or at least for musings from sort of old guard media people. Or harks back to 19th C serializations of blockbuster novels. Or something.

Bye Bye Smartphones

Yas Gov! NY Gov Kathy Hochul is launching an overdue and much-needed bill to ban smartphones in schools. Curious to see if the anti-fredumb fighters will cry "but muh liberties" or if everyone feels pretty much aligned on this one. We can dream!

New OpenAI Chatbot is a Flirt?

So, in addition to sounding like ScarJo to a criminal degree, ChatGPT’s latest upgrade also “hit all the notes of an obsequious female, giggling at the antics of its male researchers and praising their outfits…”

Nice try guys but lol, this is giving stepford wife / Barbie’s first trip outside of Barbieland energy… and that probably has a lot to do with the lack of females who made it.

More appalling details after the jump.

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you’d like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line. ♡

Another week, another set of worrying, fascinating and mildly erotic news clips to fuel the never-ending dumpster fire of human existence. Wheeeeee!

Highlights of this week's holiday weekend edition of IHTEFYW include: The Lucrative World of Fake Podcasting, Sam Altman’s AI Lies, A Glitch in the Atlantic City Matrix, AI Search’s Human Source Material Dilemma… and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

What is Fake Podcasting?

How to explain this quickly… Actors are making a LOT of money making fake podcast segments for brands -who publish them as boosted social media ads- as if they were real. Got that?

Truly there are so many podcasts out there, and so many creators looking for interesting editorial content, you’d think a brand could just get on a real podcast, for free?

Dear brands, if you like the “validating veneer” of fake podcasts, you’re gonna’ love getting an actual press placement.

Love, publicists

Sam Altman is a Lying Liar

You might assume that anyone who so adeptly plays an under-the-radar, sexy, man-eating alien is not someone you wanna’ mess with.

But that didn’t stop Sam Altman from trying… his lies, however, are catching up with him. After Scarlett Johansson soooo publicly gotcha'd him this week, folks are paying fresh attention to the habitual accusations of mistruth and manipulation that seem to follow him like a bad smell.

This "just-the-facts-ma'am" substack is chock-full of receipts and should act as a PSA: buyers beware - OpenAI is being built upon a pile of doodoo by a specious bullshitter.

The Atlantic City Jackpot that Wasn’t

For maybe the first time ever, we are on the side of the gambling masses with this blood-roiling tale of how a woman won over $1MM on an Atlantic City slot machine, only to be told the machine was “glitched” and therefore: No Dice.

Girl, sue his ass!

AI Search Eats the Web: a Cautionary Tale

Axios did a neat summary of WHERE THINGS STAND with AI on search - which really needed a refresh, but a refresh could mean a lot of problems for businesses and educated human opinions that need to thrive / be heard, online. One of the cool things this rundown points out, is that AI search’s source material - like Wikipedia and Reddit - is still largely human and not profit-driven. Let’s hope some things never change…

Boobs = still controversial

A tale of two boob controversies:

Around the same time a Times Square billboard featuring chef and author Molly Baz was taken down for a suggestive breast-feeding cookie placement (?) a Flatiron art installation was having a controversy of their own:

The Portal -an art installation in NYC and Dublin, meant to boost interconnectedness between people and also generate a stream of real-time, interactive art- came under fire after an OnlyFans model flashed her breasts (for likes/subscribers of course) on the NYC side and people on the Dublin side showed pictures of swastikas and 9/11… Not exactly the interconnectedness they were hoping for.

Now the installation has put up signage + rules as to how many people can interact at a time + added 24/7 security and a commitment to “blur” any feed that features nudity.

So many questions, but the big ones being: how prudish are we as a society? sure public nudity is illegal but what about 1st Amendment rights? and, do people really care that much about boobs in what we’re calling “art” or “commerce” for that matter?

Send us your thoughts and hot takes!

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you’d like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line.

Cannot believe this newsletter is entering its golden years, nor do we understand why that is so funny to us, but hehehehe nevertheless.

This week we’re tackling all the usual bits and bobs and also the very specific and annoying trend of everyone being a critic and having a hot take in 2024 (ourselves included, but still).

It’s most obvious within arts & culture, but it’s also everywhere else now too: finance, business, therapy, your body… the list never ends just as the unsolicited advice and opinions truly never cease. Why must so many media (and normies) now have an embarrassingly unresearched hot take to share with the world? Is it for clicks? Probably, but let’s dig deeper while also barely scratching the surface; this newsletter is supposed to be a quick read…

Highlights of this week's critics’ critique edition of IHTEFYW include: Scented Billboards, What’s the Stink on Fall Guy?, Eric Cartman on Ozempic, Cats are the New Movie Stars … and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

Mc-Smell-o-Vision

McDonalds, who raised their prices a *Whopp*ing 200% in the last year, is trying out these very fun fry-scented billboards in Europe.

No notes on this, but if you’re sick of hanging out by the exhaust vent at your nearest McDonald’s to get a free whiff of their iconic fries, let’s hope they bring this concept to the States soon. McWitches activate manifestation protocol!

Flop Guy

Fall Guy is a movie that is full of contradictions: absolutely insane stunts + it’s also a rom com (??). If you didn’t see it, maybe you didn’t know this. We didn’t follow the marketing but certainly did not realize the romance was front and center, which actually surprised and delighted us. It’s also a movie that pulled two stars from last Summer’s biggest box office hits (Barbie and Oppenheimmer) and now all the critics are saying that simply wasn’t “Kenough” because it missed its opening weekend targets and only made $28 MM (vs. the projected $40).

Everyone has a theory about why Fall Guy is a “flop”: bad timing, the stars are “too old” to appeal to a younger audience (excuse us?), not marketed well to their target/moms, and more. The funny thing, beyond $28MM not really looking like a failure to most people, is that all of these theories are moronic.

This post is already longer than expected, and we didn’t anticipate taking a position that somehow defends the studio system, but let’s at least consider normalizing a world where movies can play the long game before media jump to calling them a failure because all that is doing is conditioning studios to make more vapid garbage and not to take any risks at all?

Fin.

Embracing the Chaos of MEGALOPOLIS!!!

Few successful artists have also achieved commercial success in outside areas (NO, Kylie Jenner does not count). Francis Ford Coppola however, straight up sold his lucrative Sonoma winery to finance his film, Megalopolis. On the heels of the last few posts let’s look at this self-funded work (four decades in the making) which just premiered at Cannes.

Lots of hot takes already on this one, but also, lots of people who want to see it no matter what. Here at IHTEFYW, we are proudly in the latter grouping. Past and future Letterboxd hot takes aside, we cannot wait to see and support auteur-driven, independent cinema!

Cats are the New A-List Talent

For those of us who consider ourselves cat-lovers, it’s no surprise they are finally getting their time in the spotlight. However, there are actually several good explanations as to why REAL cats are now increasingly the stars and main characters in Hollywood blockbusters.

We also want to point out the author of this piece somehow forgot to include Key & Peele’s 2016 film, KEANU (which featured seven cat actors who all played the film’s cuddly star).

The Inaugural San Quentin Film Festival

A heart-warming story that puts some of the above posts in perspective, to say the least. The world's first ever "film festival behind bars" will be taking place inside the notorious, maximum security San Quentin Correction Facility this October, to help promote the inclusion of incarcerated people in the arts!

Cartman goes on GLP-1

Dying to see how our cultural/life oracles Trey Parker and Matt Stone decode society’s conflicted thoughts and feelings towards miracle weight loss drugs like Ozempic in the upcoming South Park special on the topic. Sunken-faced-celebrity-Cartman trolling the red carpet about his diet and exercise regime is definitely on our bingo card for the episode, which airs May 24.

CSI: Beethoven’s Toxic Hair

First RFK Jr’s brain worm, now Beethoven’s toxic locks? OK first of all, wtf is going on with y’all lately (and also 200 years ago)? Seriously, I have a weak stomach and this is too much.

Scientists have uncovered a clue to Beethoven’s deafness (as well as his chronic diarrhea, unrelenting abdominal cramps and unstoppable flatulence - boy eww!!) and it all allegedly has something to do with high levels of lead and mercury found in his hair.

Read at your own risk but this diarrhea whodunit felt like a fun way to sign off. Stay safe out there babes!

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you’d like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line.

After a sort of long, unplanned newsletter sabbatical… we are back babes! Did you miss us? We certainly missed being here with you. <3

So, it’s not that all the latest news from the web is terrifying, but a lot of it is, and we are here to talk / laugh about it together and also find some uplifting stories and lighter stuff for funsies.

Highlights of this week's edition of IHTEFYW include: Your VPN isn’t Working, Banning Phones in Schools, Graydon Carter’s West Villy Pop-Up, Neuralink Grads: Where are they now? … and more!

Enjoy !! (◕‿◕)♡

VPNs Are Done?!

For those of you who don’t use VPNs, they’re the things *some* people use to actually browse the web anonymously. However it was just revealed that researchers who launched a “novel attack” against nearly all VPN software, have rendered them useless.

The attack is called TunnelVision -which sounds cool but is actually sort of NARC vibes- defeats the entire purpose and selling point of VPN software, which is to create an encrypted channel, cloaking the user’s IP address.

Cool cool cool cool.

The AirMail Newsstand Est Arrivé!

There’s basically nothing we love more than an OG media throwback so of course we love this; it’s far from an original concept but the AirMail Newsstand is a cute ode to the olde days of printed media. What’s not to love?

The shop features “a rigorously edited of books and high-end glossies like ‘The World of Interiors,’ ‘Kinfolk’…” and more. Eat your heart out Substack hive!

Optogenics: Sounds Evil but it’s Good

Whenever we think about Nueralink we feel a little bit icky. But now some Neuralink grads have developed eye implants (Optogenics) that can restore vision to the blind and show us that this biotech doesn’t have to feel icky at all. Yay!

A detailed explanation on the somewhat involved tech is available here.

A Connecticut School is Battling Cell Phones (and Winning)

This feature about a CT high school that has successfully banned cellphones (and the guy who had the balls to go through with it despite being wildly unpopular among most students and some parents) is absolutely amazing.

It cost $31,000 to buy the phone pouches but seems like a small price to save Gen Z and future generations from complete tech annihilation?

Merrick Garland is the New Taylor Swift

Looks like Taylor Swift Merrick Garland is finally gonna try and bring Ticketmaster to heel with an anti-trust lawsuit / investigation over the myriad ways in which it's been able to jack up US ticket prices. This overdue action has been 14 years in the making ever since DOJ declined to block the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger in 2010 (something something ... Great Recession ... something something).

Everybody’s in LA

If you remember the iconic public access show TV Party with its very legal dry and very cool host Glenn O’Brien (RIP) then you might enjoy it’s funnier, limited-time cousin, Everybody’s in LA with John Mulaney. The show is very weird, takes viewer call-ins and channels the public access vibe perfectly despite having big Netflix money behind it. Episodes 4 and 5 are our faves and all episodes, while airing live without a delay, are also available to re-watch on Netflix at your leisure.

Best guests include Elvira/Cassandra Peterson, comedian Luenell, helicopter journalist Zoey Tur, Bill Hader with pink eye and a cool seismologist.

I Hope This Email Finds You Well is a weekly-ish love letter to the best of the web and assorted digital (and print) media, penned by Krista + Zoe at Serious Business.

We are communications specialists and creative/social liaisons, with a focus in art, culture, food, drink, emerging tech, fashion and design. If you’d like to know more or collaborate on something special, please send us a line.