Social metabolism, China's one-child problem, and how actors cry on command
These are the best things I found on the internet this week!
Hey internet explorers!
Just checking in on you, hope you enjoyed the long weekend. Nothing brings this country together quite like a disaster, and the abomination of Madame Web is the monoculture right now (or more accurately, Dakota Johnson’s press tour). I’m not sure it’s a good use of this newsletter just to relay to you what you already know: the movie is historically bad. Not even fun bad (think The Room)…it’s…not fun bad. Those interview clips are a way better use of your time.
Elsewhere, there’s a whole new slate of “conversation starters” to dive into. These are the best, most interesting and most entertaining pieces of content from across the interwebs (Madame Web pun intended) for you to enjoy. There’s something for everyone, or at the very least, something for someone.
Hope you enjoy, subscribe, and consider sharing with a friend!
What’s the coolest story or thing you found on the internet this week? Reply to this email and shoot me a link. Would love to hear from you!
How do actors cry on command? It’s an age old question, tackled brilliantly in our Long Read of the Week in New York Mag, when one brave journalist uses herself as a test dummy to see if just anyone can learn the technique.
Lil Dicky’s appearance on Hot Ones this week might’ve been one of my favorite (and one of the funniest) episodes in the show’s history.
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson is frequently brilliant, and in his latest, he argues that part of what made America America in the 20th century was its incredible social metabolism and dynamism. But the amount of face-to-face socializing has fallen off in the past few decades, and as a result Americans are more anxious and depressed than ever before.
Key quote from Thompson:
“I don’t think hanging out more will solve every problem. But I do think every social crisis in the U.S. could be helped somewhat if people spent a little more time with other people and a little less time gazing into digital content that’s designed to make us anxious and despondent about the world. This young century, Americans have collectively submitted to a national experiment to deprive ourselves of camaraderie in the world of flesh and steel, choosing instead to grow (and grow and grow) the time we spend by ourselves, gazing into screens, wherein actors and influencers often engage in the very acts of physical proximity that we deny ourselves. It’s been a weird experiment. And the results haven’t been pretty.”
My mind was blown this week when I found out that there’s a chance, perhaps even a very good chance, that Vanessa Carlton’s song “A Thousand Miles” (“'Cause you know I'D walk a thousand miles if I could just … see … you … tonight…”) was written about Glenn Howerton (Dennis from “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”). This Twitter/X thread explains the theory.
The internet jokesters over at Friday Beers continue to up their game with legitimately well-produced short films like this one, about two friends who meet during a happy hour bender.
In this fascinating slice of internet history from The Verge, learn about how a single text file has for the last 30 years kept order across the whole internet, and how now the AI revolution is disrupting the fragile equilibrium.
China’s one-child policy, in effect from 1980-2015, was one of the biggest social experiments in history. Now the country is backpedaling as fast as it can after troubling new statistics show an aging and shrinking population in China, which could threaten to hold back economic growth. Considering its importance to the world economy, this The Wall Street Journal story points to big effects this could have on the rest of us.
If you love garlic as much as I love garlic, you may be drooling like I was over this NYT Cooking video from J. Kenji López-Alt making a Vietnamese-inspired garlic noodles with 20 cloves (!!) in four servings.
Thanks for reading and sharing! Stay tuned for a special mid-week edition of the newsletter before our usual movie talk on Friday!