Bouba-licious

Internet round-up for the week of April 3, 2023

Happy Friday, friends!

It’s overcast and cloudy here because why wouldn’t it be? I opened up my Weather app today and saw sun predicted, then opened the blinds and was like “damn, is this thing broken again?” only to realize I was accidentally looking at the weather for Chicago, which looks warmer and sunnier than Cali all next week! Very cool and normal!!

I’ve made it through my first full week of being unemployed, and I’m happy to report I’ve put the finishing touches on the first draft of the pilot I’ve been working on! It’s been really cool to be able to finally take something off my “ideas” list and actually finish¹ it. I’m excited to move on to the next thing on the list, which somehow continues to grow exponentially faster than I can manage it…

I used to worry all the time that if I tried to make a living as a writer that I’d eventually run out of ideas. But I think what I’ve found is that it’s never a lack of ideas that’s the problem, it’s the lack of time to get to them or the lack of focus to get through them. Right now, I have both. So, full steam ahead!

That is, of course, whenever I’m not perusing my sites! Gotta check my sites, y’know. Very important. It’s bad for my eyes, probably, but good for the newsletter, because I’ve got a big pile of goodies for ya here:

Nostalgia Corner

The Discourse™ this week has been hot and heavy on millennial’s high school experiences. I’d love to embed related tweets here, but I’ll just have to screenshot and/or link them instead (I’ll get to that in a minute).

Anyway, this video of kids waving at a camera in 2002 was shared on Twitter and DAMN I was feeling the nostalgia super hard. I imagine it does look very “chill” compared to high school today, considering no one had smartphones or ever even expected to see the video of themselves. In 2002 we all knew that tape was coming out of the camcorder and going right into an old shoebox in our friend’s house, which is where I’d guess the majority of them still are because no one wants to pay to digitize them.

And then this guy showed up.

Millennials were quick to correct him. Because, like…apolitical? Yeah, I mean — there’s nothing more apolitical than watching 9/11 live on TV in your welding class sophomore year.

(I know what you’re thinking. “You took welding?” Look, I had to take an Ag class to stay active in FFA. And yes, I did actually weld things. I am a mediocre MIG welder and a horrible ARC welder (literally just me instantly getting the rod stuck to whatever I’m working on). Also my teacher knew I wasn’t about to build something big — some guys in my class were putting together legit BBQ pits — so he just gave me all the scrap metal and let me play in the corner. It was a good semester, except for, y’know, the terrorism.)

In the spring of 2003 we spent downtime during our One-Act Play rehearsals in the wings of the theater watching the first bombs drop on Iraq for “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. But um…no politics involved there. Sure.

Also, this embarrassing nostalgic fact:

Midwest is Best

Congratulations to my dear Chicago on their new mayor!! BYE LORI!!!

I may not live there anymore but I’m still always following Chicago’s politics. Really excited to see what Brandon Johnson brings to the table!!

El*n M*sk

Every week I say I’m going to stop talking about all the stupid things he does, and then every week, he somehow outdoes himself.

Last week, I mentioned the impending removal of blue checks from verified users. Well, that got retracted pretty fast, probably because of this, and then a bunch of other dumb things happened. Fine. Whatever, right? Until this morning, when I tried to embed a tweet thread in this newsletter, and got this message:

A Good Business Decision™ not at all related to a billionaire’s ego

I…have a guess as to why. This week, Substack announced a new feature called Substack Notes, where writers can “publish short-form posts and recommend almost anything: quotes, links, images, and comments.” It is definitely Twitter-esque, which is, I guess, the problem.

(As I was putting this together this morning the newsletter from

Garbage Day

arrived and it seems my conjecture was right. I highly recommend popping over to today's post, "There's always some idiot ruining your favorite website" because Ryan sums up this whole thing really well.)

It’s just…plenty of Substack users still want to embed Tweets in their newsletters. These embeds LINK BACK TO TWITTER. Disabling embeds is taking traffic away from your own dying site, ya damn drangus!! I truly cannot with this man.

Karma is The Breeze in My Hair on The Weekend

Bloomberg is reporting this week that Google and Amazon are having trouble laying off workers in Europe due to their strong labor laws. They’re required to do additional negotiations and are offering severance packages to encourage employees to leave voluntarily, rather than just laying them off randomly on a Friday in January and letting them figure it out for themselves by locking them out of everything. (I’m fine!)

But perhaps…there is a lesson to be learned here…🧐

Wholesome Fun

Click this link to see all the Peggdros.

Good Read

The New York Times posted this article (gift link!) this week about reserving social media handles and email addresses for your newborn.

This is wildly interesting to me. I have, in the past, wondered what it’d be like when everyone on the planet had an email address that was like “name_4758924@gmail”, or social media handles like “@firstname_lastname_______623495”. I’m lucky enough to have my name on most sites because I signed up relatively early. (Don’t ask me about TikTok, I thought it would probably fade away so I didn’t sign up until much later. This is why I don’t invest in the stock market.)

Though, interestingly — I don’t recall whether I put the number on my email address of my own accord in 2007 or because the email address I wanted was already taken. (I actually know I created my account in 2007 because recently I was talking with some friends about how old our email accounts are and I dug back through to find my first-ever sent email from my current account, which was to my mother, and titled “Bite”; it contained an artsy gift of two blurry photos of a spider bite on my arm with a 4” streak heading up toward my shoulder and a kind note asking her if she thought it “looked bad”.)

But can you imagine getting a pre-reserved email address handed over to you as a teenager? Is this the benefit of spelling your child’s name with 3 extra y’s? So she can have mykynlyigh_smith@gmail? Also, like — as a teen, you’re likely fully uninterested in whatever sweet little notes your parents sent you on your 2nd birthday. And how will you ever get to Inbox Zero™ if you’ve got a pile of your parents’ thoughts sitting in there? What if the kid deletes them? Either on purpose or accidentally? Like…all that work to put memories in a fun little scrapbook is just…gone. Woof.

Also, what if they don’t want the one you’ve reserved? Maybe you set up “@tomriddle” and they’d rather have “@voldemort”. But now “@voldemort” is taken and so what, they’re supposed to just have “@voldemort_69_420_7934798”? How lame!

Honestly you want to do your kid a favor? Start a credit card in their name when they’re 3 and pay it off every month so they can get their first car loan with an 800 credit score, and let them choose their own handle.

Substack Suggestions

I’m subscribed to an inordinate amount of Substack newsletters that I really enjoy, and I’d like to start recommending some to my TMI crew!

First up, I’d like to share my friend Sarah’s newsletter. To me, she’s like the epitome of the word “artist”. She writes, she takes very cool photos, she makes things with her hands (LIKE REAL SWEATERS FOR HUMANS TO WEAR!!) and she’s funny, too!

She’s just started out her foray into Substack, so if you're looking for something more to read, give the

the anti-niche

a glance!

I’m Blinding You With Science

This. Is. Wild.

@talialichtstein @talialichtstein ♬ original sound - Talia Lichtstein

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

How do we all just like, get bouba and kiki?? I read up on it on Wikipedia, and apparently the consensus seems to be that it has to do with the shapes our mouths make when we make the sounds for bouba (round) and kiki (sharp).

And her classifications are 100% correct!! I am totally a bouba. My husband and all celebrities I find attractive are also bouba-licious!! What is this?!

I need to know if any of you are kikis, attracted to kikis, or if you’re in a couple where one of you is a bouba and the other is a kiki. Please. This is important. It’s for science²!

Randomly Selected Animal Cutie

@littlebearlumiReactions to my 52 lbs dog in his backpack 🤣 #fyp #dog #puppy #samoyed #nyc

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

OMFG. I REQUIRE A GIANT BACKPACK DOG IMMEDIATELY. I also need stronger quads to carry said backpack dog, and I want them without having to exercise. Gwyneth Paltrow must sell a powder or something for that, right?

That’s it from me this week! Hope everyone has a great weekend!! Please send me some sun in a jar or something!!

K

1. My work is never done, I could literally pick apart any piece of my writing for 100 years.

2. It’s me. I’m science.