[A Pleasurable Headache] Tumblr Is Everything
Some quick housekeeping to begin with. The URL for this newsletter now lives at:
It’s been like this a while but I’d completely forgotten to point it out. The URL obviously stands for the name of the newsletter which, I think, is more representative of this whole endeavour.
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Links
Jamie Demetriou’s moment has arrived
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/jamie-demetriou-interview
Some of the non-British readers of this newsletter may not be too familiar with Jamie Demetriou. You may have seen him in a few episodes of Fleabag or Apple TV’s latest, The Afterparty.
What you may not know about is the fantastic Stath Lets Flats, which he created and co-wrote. The series follows the hapless adventures of the world’s worst estate agent and the friends and makeshift family he surrounds himself with. It is great. It also stars his sister, Natasia, who many of you will know as Nadja from the excellent What We Do in the Shadows.
All of this is a long winded way to say this GQ interview with Jamie is great and fulfills my deep personal need to get more people to watch Stath Lets Flats.
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an i shipped 1 game and finished 79 video games in 2021 and here is a list of all of them
GB ‘Doc’ Burford regales us with the games he finished in 2021. As ever, he provides an excellent (and long) list and appraisal of the games, shot through with the kind of insight only someone who has looked at games from a player’s‘ and a dev’s viewpoint can provide.
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David Fincher and the Cinema of Doomscrolling
https://newrepublic.com/article/165033/adam-nayman-david-fincher-doomscrolling
Adam Nayman has written a book looking at the films of David Fincher. The book, titled Mind Games, came out in December. This interview with Nayman at The New Republic touches on some of the common themes in Fincher’s work and the ‘smugness’ of Fight Club.
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Carbon Colonialism
https://www.monbiot.com/2022/01/31/carbon-colonialism/ Newsletter stalwart George Monbiot on the countless schemes and programs being offered by the world’s energy companies in an effort to green-wash some of their more aggressive and dangerous policies.
“For example, Shell’s Drive Carbon Neutral scheme tells businesses that by buying fuel on its loyalty card, the “unavoidable” emissions from their fleets of vehicles can be offset “through Shell’s global portfolio of nature-based solutions projects”. It assures customers that, by joining the programme, “you don’t even have to change the way you work”. Similar claims by Shell in the Netherlands were struck down by the country’s advertising watchdog.”
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How the Snowflakes Won
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/02/tumblr-internet-legacy-survival/621419/
I know Tumblr hasn’t gone away but, as this article states, it’s a shell of itself at this point. This piece, by Kaitlyn Tiffany, is largely praiseworthy of this strange and beautiful corner of the web.
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Our Animals, Ourselves
https://lux-magazine.com/article/our-animals-ourselves/
A gut-punch of an article on the intersections between animal rights and socialist feminism. The article is accompanied by some excellent photography and wood cuts too. The article begins with Joaquin Phoenix’s speech at the Oscars a few years back and uses the reactions to it as a springboard for further discussion about the modern idea of animal rights.
“Two centuries after Shelley penned his missives, the case for abstention is even more compelling. Between farming, ranching, and feed crops, the livestock industry now devours 40 percent of the world’s habitable surface. Not only is industrial agriculture a leading cause of deforestation and climate changes (a recent study predicts that the largest meat and dairy companies’ greenhouse gas emissions will soon overtake those of the largest oil companies), it also puts us at increased risk of future pandemics, as new zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistant bacteria are bred on crowded factory farms — including pathogens that could one day make Covid-19 look like the common cold.”
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Right, I’m off to see how long our joke of Prime Minister can remain in power as scandal after scandal piles up at his feet. See you in two!