What happens when you rent a billboard to ask people to date you
These are the best things I found on the internet this week!
Greetings from Chicago,
I’m halfway through a vacation/nostalgia tour through Chicago, the midwestern gem where I lived for a little over a year during grad school. It’s a magical place during the summertime.
But the weather is always warm and sunny on the internet (…right?). And I’ve have a few stories I couldn’t wait to share with you all. This is my usual roundup of the best, most interesting and most entertaining content on the internet in the past week. Please enjoy my “conversation starters.”
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!
After the pandemic, the country (and really the world) suffered from an unprecedented trend of public misbehavior — on planes, in stores and especially restaurants. New York Magazine’s Reeves Wiedeman (one of my season ticket writers) took the viral video of one lady throwing a Chipotle bowl at an employee, and interviewed both sides to figure out what could be behind the urge to act out in public. But, the story gets even better — as punishment, a judge sentenced the bowl-thrower to two months working in a fast food restaurant.
Dolce & Gabbana has introduced a new $108 fragrance … for dogs. "It’s a tender and embracing fragrance crafted for a playful beauty routine," the company says.
Real Life Rom-Coms: A 28-year-old man in Philadelphia rented a billboard and advertised himself: “Dave is single!” He can cook, has normal hobbies, has a cat named Peach, and now has 6,000 followers and several date requests in his inbox.
A new technology is shaking Major League Baseball — a pitching machine that uses a high-tech video board and a precise spin ball machine to give MLB hitters the exact look and feel of pitchers they are going to face. Pitchers are calling for the league to ban its use during the game between at-bats.
For years, we’ve been saying “politics is just professional wrestling.” But that may be giving way to a new phenomenon: “politics is just content.” Example A, a professional content creator is running for the Senate in Utah. And she’s likely to be the first of many.
In what may end up being a massive moment in the history of the internet, a judge ruled that Google has a monopoly over search engines (no duh). It may take years to sort out exactly what actions must be taken to break it up or sell it off, but it’s quite likely that the future of search on your phone or computer could look a whole lot different. For many people my age and younger, Google IS the internet.
Nothing this week made me laugh harder than this reaction video to an old (white) grandma walking the camera though a table full of collard greens, biscuits and mashed potatoes.
Of course, we’ve all dreamed of “adult gap years,” that extended time away from work where you can travel and do all the things you said you’d do one day. Well, leave it to Gen-Z and TikTok to make it an actual trend, one that sounds incredibly fun but comes with zero answers for the financial instability it will generate.
Thanks for reading and sharing! On Friday we’ve got a new movie from one of my favorite directors, which was way better than I thought it was going to be!