Just the One for deep summer '23
Maybe it's not technically (meteorologically? temporally?) deep summer, but with the heat, humidity, hazardous air quality alerts everyday, it feels like deep-somethin'. I guess there's supposed to be some hold-on-to-your-butts astrology things happening this week. And yet...
People love nothing so much as looking at the world through the lens of a fictional sorting system: astrology, Hogwarts houses, Myers-Briggs types. — Garbage Day
Garbage Day is a newsletter for people who are too online. I read it for a while, but then stopped wanting the Internett* and social media explained to me. But it is Just the One recommended if you want to know what's happening without engaging addictive behaviors.
* That was a typo, but I decided that I like it and that is now how Internett should be spelled.*
That was my cold open.
Shall we recap?
I asked for your baby/kid pics, but I didn't ask for permission to share them.🤦🏾♀️
You, dear reader, will have to take my word for it: Just the One subscribers were adorable tykes whose photographs attest to the personable humans you've become! You gave me Herzschmerzen.🥰💓
You also helped me prove my theory that there's something special about an era of kid-photography when kids weren't performing for a camera from birth. I'm dancing around a theory of posing versus/and performing more so than, "Back in my day, kids were cuter..."
Survey results! Let's not bicker about "statistical reliability" and "sample sizes." You feel how you feel, sweet babies, about this post(is it tho) pandemic period!
Here's a new survey about people and pets!
Fret not, those of you who I've floated my controversial ideas about pet ownership by already...okay, this might be just as controversial.
🫴 Do people buy animals that look like them? Or do people and their pets grow to look like one another? (Click your choice of me ventriloquizing you, but not quite.)
* What is this more-than-human jazz? A more expansive way to think about the environment beyond centering the species that is aggressively ruining it. Us, that'd be US.
Let's get into some "ones!"
Just the One weather app to pay for: I've finally started paying for apps, leading with this weirdo weather app, Carrot. It says things on a 91 degree day like, "Did you move to the desert without telling me?" Why, yes, yes, I did, SHELLEY--that's the voice I picked, which is supposed to be Friendly (personality) and anarchist (politics). Like Michelle in this .gif, sometimes I forget I chose this...
Just the One bit of unsolicited of work advice for Americans: don’t just hand your paid vacation days over to The Man by not using the vacation days you earned! These notes (with my annotations) from the Pew Research Center:
Nearly half of workers who have paid time off say they typically take less time off than their employer offers (🙄). About half of these workers say they don’t feel they need to take more time off (52%—🤦🏾♀️) or worry they might fall behind at work if they took more time off (49% — "behind" what?! Work is unending.).
I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Work won't love you back...but it sure will fuck ya if ya let it!" 🥁🥁🥁
Just the one idle musing: The more I try to be less device-attached and scantily read NYT headlines, the less I give one sweet-che🍒y-soda-fuq about famous people!
If we’ve not heard from a celebrity, let's assume that they’re fine and minding their sweet legend-ass business (R.I.P. Tina Turner).
Hope you’re both healthy, relatively sane, and thriving, Diana Ross...
...and Pat Benetar.💐 (If they aren't, don't tell me.)
I'm enjoying more cultural output now that I stopped paying attention to what these folks do when they're not creating art. So just the one TV recommendation: Kevin Can Fuck Himself. It's dark comedy, but how they render the idea of a candy-colored sitcom encased within a drab-colored reality is creative and perfectly capped over two seasons (trailer):
Just the one weird Internet thing I'll admit to: whether shopping or reading, I'll read the first few sentences and then scroll to the bottom to see how long the article/list of items to see is. I need to gauge:
my time-investment x "how much do I care" = timewasting!
If you did that with this newsletter...WE ARE KIN.
Just the one music genre I'm loving is Amapiano! I won’t “Columbus” it since I neither invented nor discovered it, but I feel found! Deep house x piano melodies x bass bass bass emerging from South Africa. Janelle Monae expertly dropped thee hit of the summer, "Float" in March, so plenty of runway and enticement for summer remixing and pool parties I shall neither be invited to nor attending. But I'm remembering I wanted to make friends with someone who owns a yacht, so an amapiano soundtrack is on brand. Here's an amapiano mix of Float: score + bonus!
Just the one thing that seems like a gimmick, but is actually effective and feels so satisfying: tongue scraping. I would've called it something more appealing, but tongue tickler was taken.
Just one ethically questionable Internett practice: Since I've started paying for apps, I adjusted my Entitlement Budget accordingly and now over-underspend by avoiding website paywalls. Until they catch up, use reader mode! Or a site with resistance principles about thwarting Google...but still enabling a content scam.
Here's just one from my personal archive:
YODER.
This is a Valentine’s Day Card...from my mother. It seems very unlike her, but then we are a card-sending peoples! Since it's undated, I'm going to guess this is from the era of card-giving we had between Hallmark getting worse and worse, Shoebox being too twee, and our current, "the gloves are off" cards we have now. It was a dusty-dusty desert in the Rite Aid aisles there for a bit!
🤖 Just the one tech tool: If you need an authenticator for two-factor authentication and like open source🤓, consider one of these. iOS users check out Tofu. I'm 23% less annoyed when I have to authenticate via something called tofu.
I'll close with just the one headline that continues to tickle me and provoke responses by skipping reading the article:
Wow.
I mean, wow.
I can think of at least six theories all prefaced by: BECAUSE WE ARE A HOT-MESSY CHAOTIC ENTITY, thus proving aliens are smart and not codependent.
Too, if you encountered an archive of a species that consisted significantly of films (made up and "real") about what a piece of actual trash you are and in which you routinely get blown up, would you then want to "reach out" for a chat to the producer of those films?👽🚫📱🏠
When a wolf says, "I'm a wolf," don't stand around asking, "What kind of wolf are you?" BEAT IT. HIT DA BRICKS. The aliens do not want to hear everything you just put on social media.
Too many good delete—.gifs take your pick!
Closing challenge: when you take the vacation days you earned, find the oldest postcard in a shop, scan it, and submit it by replying to this email. I've seen and found some doozies!