Slack — 9:54AM, Feb 27th.
Redacted Co-Worker
UGH there's an NYT Opinion piece out today called "My ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend is Lady Gaga" and IT'S BEHIND THE PAYWALL
I CANNOT ACCESS IT
Twitter is alight with praise
🆘
@bret you seem the most likely to have a NYT account
📸👸🤴 A Royal Instagram Mystery
What a compliment! Hi hello it’s your cheerful workplace PDF-paywall-busting letter writer. I first would like to say, yes - the Gaga piece is very good. It’s earnest, there’s a nice lesson at the end of it, and the lede might make you consider $8 every 4 weeks for one year.
I was eating bodega grapes at my desk on a recent Monday morning, gearing up to wrangle my inbox, when my phone started buzzing:
“Check Facebook.”
“Check Twitter.”
“Are you OK?”
It was an emergency: My ex-boyfriend, I learned, had a new girlfriend.
Lady Gaga.
“Lolol” if you want. (Everyone I know did.)
I come here, however, to begin instead with the craziest, least consequential conspiracy theory of our newborn decade. Just IMAGINE A WORLD where @KensingtonRoyal (William & Kate) inexplicably - and against all reason - maintained the same strange slim margin of Instagram followers over @SussexRoyal (Harry & Meghan) for nearly all of 2019. Were these follower boosts in the form of bots? You decide:
Read the whole thing - the case itself is both plainly laid out and psychotically detailed - and I think you’ll become a believer with me.
🏃♀️🏃♂️ How the Nike Vaporfly War Was Lost
I stopped drinking a couple weeks ago. There’s enough I’d like to do this year that didn’t feel compatible with a glass of wine in hand by 6:30, and nights had been getting away from me more often. Unsurprisingly then - and hopefully you’ve got your newly sober bingo card handy - I signed up for a half marathon. Hal Higdan, it’s you and me buddy.
I also thought it’d be fun to pick up some shoes to train with and SRW suggested the ones that make everyone run faster. The Vaporfly! In the end, I opted for the kicks that prevent injury instead but couldn’t shake the curiosity of what Nike had figured out. What exactly was shaving minutes off of marathon times? This is the satisfying, definitive read of not only the shoe itself but the whole debate of technology in footwear.
💊 Three Things re: the Coronavirus
(1) I don’t have too much to add to the stream of Here Are The Things You Can Be Doing Now To Prepare posts (learn how to properly wash your hands, stop touching your face, elbow bumps > handshakes, etc). I did want to take a moment to share the one input I’ve enjoyed daily that probably isn’t as obvious. John Ellis’ News Items is the newsletter I crib most of my robot articles from (Google taught a robot how to walk yesterday and before that scientists use stem cells from frogs to build living robots).
News Items also, however, has been doing a terrific job aggregating as much Coronavirus news as coherently possible. For instance:
(2) We were talking this morning at breakfast how it’d be really helpful in sorting the panic to know exactly what demographics were most affected. Only two hours later and Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths was in my inbox.
Age:
Sex:
Existing Conditions:
(3) I know that’s all a lot so - if needed - this thread is a laugh to end on.
Will definitely be humming Landslide tomorrow while washing the backs of my hands for the first time ever.
// and a Playlist
These tunes collectively are a little more mellow than last year’s lists so plan accordingly.
Someone’s Gotta Do It
Slow Rider — Cuddle Magic
Garden Song — Phoebe Bridgers
City of Habits — Reptar
Lucky for You — Novo Amor & Gia Margaret
rangerover (Bonus Track) — Porches
The Cost (Australian Bushfire Relief) — Gordi
Prairie Winter Wasteland — Daughter of Swords
Long Road Back to Idaho — Cataldo
A Good Place — Grizzly Bear
💚 Spotify