Hi all! S and I went out to eat last night - not exactly newsworthy - except the service was a little slow throughout (it happens) and the waiter came by to make it up to us by offering me (lol, sorry dear) a second iced tea. It is now 3:50AM and I just woke up WIRED and what else is there to do than comb through two months of links waiting to be sent out. Hello it’s me again, your caffeine novice.
🎵 Music Everywhere
Here are a few pieces that lost their place in line. They each were a click and a personal 🤔 but just never got their turn.
Number Neighbor || The Generation X Origin Story || Around Half of Your Chances of Career Success Comes Down to Sheer Luck || Dog Science is Timeless || Pentagon to Build Fleet of US Navy Drone Warships || This Is the Way: A Baby Yoda Coloring Book || The Wild Story of How Mary Steenburgen Wrote the Best Original Movie Song of the Year || A Two-Legged Delivery Robot Has Gone on Sale—and Ford is the First Customer || Meatless ‘Impossible Sausage’ is Coming to Breakfast Sandwiches at Burger King || ‘Emoji Jacket’ Can Help Cyclists Communicate to Drivers
Anyways, Music Everywhere (above! with an absolutely psychotic Jake Gyllenhaal!) nearly got lost as well but you can fix that by clicking and giving seven minutes of your day to the Sack Lunch Bunch’s closing number. It is NUTS.
✈️ 😱 We Will Never Find Dignity in Air Travel
I found the something bad happened on an airplane video making the rounds last week exhausting. Not the actual thing - I didn’t click at first - but the idea of it:
Human dysfunction to the tune of blue/gold dress? I can’t do it!!!
I’m pleased, however, to share that Rosa Lyster redeemed the entire episode with a few key takeaways over at The Outline. Here’s the first:
The main thing about being on a plane is that it is humiliating — basically undignified in all aspects, everyone sitting so close to each other eating reconstituted eggs and sobbing their way through the Paddington Bear movie, hydrating obsessively, getting electric shocks from the blankets, smiling at the cabin crew with red wine teeth, being one of those inexplicable guys who walks through the airport with their neck pillow still on.
It only escalates from there. If anyone has a neck pillow recommendation, I think I’m ready.
📺 HBO Max Is the New $200 iPhone
Dunno if anyone else has this issue - it’s very specific and barely a problem - but I’ve started keeping a checklist of all the streamers I have going in a current week. For example:
The New Pope
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Better Call Saul
McMillions
The Outsider
Those are my five currently (alright wait, that looks underwhelming when I type it out) but I just had to remove Picard (I WANTED TO LOVE YOU PICARD) and Briarpatch last week. OK, new thought - forget everything above - because the list I keep glancing up at is actually personally soothing. I think what stressed me out this month prior was having the aforementioned Picard/Patch both drop on Thursdays. Like, I’d collect my shows that Sunday/Monday and then have the entire week to chop through them. The mid-week drops were what sent me into a scramble. Netflix brain is real. Okay, thank you for seeing this through with me. It’s 5:03AM and I am now deleting my checklist. OH, and also this all exists in part because phone companies need your 👀 and have moved their moolah from subsidizing phones (miss you babies) to television services. I think the current scoreboard is Verizon/Disney, ATT/HBO, and T-Mobile/Netflix. Our household is currently 2/3 so I guess the dog is getting his own phone line.
🔫 The Great Buenos Aires Bank Heist
HERES A TAKE this is the best heist story I’ve ever read. Is this a genre? Are there are more of these? Maybe send some more my way when you see them.
The Argentines who had sat glued to their televisions that Friday the 13th would spend the next weeks engrossed by the story of the Banco Río job—and years after enthralled by a saga that provided one unbelievable twist after another. The incident is still as legendary today as it was 14 years ago. Long after its mysteries were untangled, the so-called Robbery of the Century endures as a modern-day Robin Hood saga—one that immortalized a crew of colorful thieves who set out to become rich and became folk heroes instead. And it all began with Fernando Araujo.
Araujo had a crazy idea, and he shared it with his friend Sebastián García Bolster. This was a few years after the botched Ramallo heist had lodged itself in Araujo's brain. It would be crazy to rob a bank but not leave, he mentioned to Bolster. To disappear through a hole. Bolster had been friends with Araujo since high school, and he agreed: That did sound like a wild way to rob a bank. But he assumed it was just some lark; his pal Araujo smoked a lot of weed.
Heist! Heist! Heist!
👰🤵I Ignored Warnings From Friends and Family Not to Marry My Husband. Was I Making a Big Mistake?
Finally, something sweet to end with. This bite-sized story has just enough of a hook.
When I was 20, a man I barely knew proposed without a ring.
I said yes.
Our friends were alarmed about our fast decisions to marry and move from Tennessee to New York City. I got a handwritten letter from an elder at church suggesting I wait to get to know my fiance better. His friends held a tearful intervention. One of our beloved professors questioned the decision. My mother referred to my fiance not by his name — David — but by the nickname “rank stranger.”
But we were in love. After refusing premarital counseling (we didn’t need it, we insisted), David and I got married and moved to Gramercy Park. We could see the Empire State Building at night when it was illuminated, if we craned our necks while sitting on our creaky fire escape.
My life was as romantic as a love song. Then, after one week of marriage, the phone rang.
Bye see you next time I look at a Diet Coke past 4PM.