Hello, good evening, happy Friday. I am tremendously excited about the new Taylor Swift album. Also the Super Bowl, I guess.
Fan accounts for the win
I actually follow this account and, can confirm, it’s a banger:
If you are a person seeking breathless, nearly incessant updates on the comings and goings, triumphs and travails of one Taylor Alison Swift, there’s no shortage of places to look and, in fact, very few left to hide. On X alone, a platform otherwise captured by porn bots and crypto bros, a cadre of powerful Swiftie accounts (@swiftnyc, @theswiftsociety, the quasi-official @taylornation, and recently @tayvisnation, to name a few) do a brisk trade in Taylor sightings, micro-developments in her romance with Travis Kelce, and the meticulous deciphering of Easter eggs, both real and imagined.
Doing the right thing
Is always possible, if you’re brave enough:
New legislation in Springfield backed by Gov. JB Pritzker would require a lawyer for young people under 18 during a police interrogation, an expansion of juvenile rights after video obtained by WBEZ showed a suburban Chicago detective extracting a teen’s false confession to a shooting.
The bill, introduced this week by state Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, applies to any public official’s questioning of a child in custody about any crime. It would also bar kids from waiving their right to counsel. Under the measure, any statement by a minor without a lawyer’s presence would be inadmissible as evidence against the child in any juvenile or criminal proceeding.
Give us the movie or the roadrunner gets it
I actually extremely want to see this movie:
In early January, “Coyote vs. Acme” producer Chris DeFaria got a startling phone call from a Warner Bros. executive. “They just want to get this behind them,” the executive told DeFaria. “They want to close the books.”
In the words of the Roadrunner: Meep.
The movie, a live-action/animated hybrid that stars Will Forte and the “Looney Tunes” gang, had been earmarked for demolition on Nov. 9. But following the announcement that the movie would be canceled, a firestorm of outrage and indignation erupted. It was heightened by a friends-and-family screening that had already been planned before the cancellation announcement was made. The screening brought more goodwill and an even louder public outcry.
Nightcrawler
Yeah, uh, what the fuck:
The anonymous author of the notorious Hollywood gossip blog Crazy Days and Nights inadvertently revealed his identity to a Florida court last year in the fallout of a messy extramarital affair that wouldn’t be out of place in one of his website’s famed “blind items.”
Crazy Days and Nights (often abbreviated as CDaN) is infamous for publishing sensational and inflammatory claims about unnamed celebrities with little regard for accuracy. In fact, the blog admits in a disclaimer that some material might be “products of the author’s imagination” and last year settled a defamation lawsuit with Diana Jenkins of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Collateral damage
I mean I understand the conflict, but it sucks to see this stuff hurt in the process:
Patrick Hicks has amassed nearly half a million followers on TikTok telling stories about musicians, the industry, and record labels. The conceit of his videos, which are often several minutes long, is that he’ll share little-known tidbits, and play clips from songs, without telling you the names of the artists involved until the very end, allowing listeners to guess along the way.
A tale about a “uniquely Midwestern” rap group is revealed to be about the St. Lunatics, and how they launched the career of the singsongy melodic stylist Nelly. When a hip-hop producer linked up with a folk singer it led to … Beck’s breakout 1993 hit “Loser.” A story about the nature of practice, hard work, and obsessive perfectionism was, of course, about jazz legend John Coltrane.
Suffer, rinse, repeat
They call it post-Dash clarity: that horrible feeling when you’ve consumed a disgusting and lukewarm meal from McDonald’s, or Taco Bell, or your local pizza place, or wherever, and you’re sitting on your couch surrounded by wrappers and packaging and realize what you’ve just done.
Boring fascists
These people are decidedly not “traditional,” we all know the olden days were absolutely chock full of drugs:
A MAJORITY OF states have already legalized cannabis to some degree, and only some 10 percent of Americans believe it should remain prohibited in every form. Yet some Republicans have continued to oppose a decades-long effort to remove the drug from the federal list of Schedule I drugs — those considered to have “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” And lately, we’ve started to see exactly which voters support this intransigence: religious “trad life” influencers.
You deserve some good animal content
https://twitter.com/CapybaraCountry/status/1756021403470664138
https://twitter.com/CapybaraCountry/status/1755267120219472091
https://twitter.com/docno1r/status/1755827328972624191
https://twitter.com/raccoonhourly/status/1756143471537070093
https://twitter.com/RedPandaEveryHr/status/1756136022004400329
https://twitter.com/mischiefanimals/status/1756083784082936286
https://twitter.com/mischiefanimals/status/1756082476496072790
https://twitter.com/hopes_revenge/status/1756067746448896141
https://twitter.com/OregonZoo/status/1756009795038138468
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
Ghana artifacts that were looted 150 years ago by British forces have been returned by a US museum. This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language. Former top TikTok executive sues company for allegedly requiring women to ‘remain quiet and humble at all times.’ Elon Musk Is Going to Make People Pay $8 If They Want to Call Him. US supreme court justices have strange views on whether Trump is disqualified. Employers can now match student loan payments as 401(k) contributions. Here’s what that means.