May Your Bagging Area Objects Always Be Identified.
Hello darlings! Apologies for my absence yesterday, I was on a plane to D.C. and made the amateur mistake of assuming that the wifi I had paid for would work for the entirety of the fight. And this is where I feel dumb that I’m complaining about not being able to curate a list of internet stuff and send it to you from heights to which even birds cannot ascend, because technology is still miraculous and shouldn't we just be happy for what we have and oh no, I've entered a personal snark guilt spiral, HALP.
Sigh. Complaints in the future are weird. But speaking of future complaints! I’m with Vox on this: Self-checkout is terrible. It will never get better. It should die. And not just since no one knows how to use it! The Goods does a deep dive on the history (wooo!) of the technology, the failed companies that tried to make it a thing for the past thirty years, and the psychology of why getting yelled at by a robot because of an unidentified object in the bagging area really cuts to 2019’s nihilist core.
Read Isaac Chotiner’s New Yorker interview of Bret Easton Ellis, if only to witness an interviewer masterfully using an interviewee’s own book to illuminate said interviewee’s petulant hypocrisy. This interview raised my blood pressure so many times, including but certainly not limited to the times he said Ellis said he didn’t care when pressed to clarify one of his own statements, and when he admonishes Chotiner by saying “I think you are leading me into things I am not particularly that interested in,” and when he ends the promotional interview he has sat for to sell his book of political essays by saying, “I am not that political, and so, when we have this conversation, and you confront me with certain things like this, I really am, I have to say, at a loss.” Excuse me while I scream like a banshee and melt into the sea.
And finally, the greatest headline I’ve read this morning: A Library Had To Tell Disappointed Teens That Their Anti-Prom Event Will Have No "Snakes" — Just Snacks. There Was A Typo. (subhead: "There was a typo in a local paper that said we will have snakes. We will have snacks. Snacks is what we will have," the Pflugerville Public Library told community members.)
You’re all lovely. Be kind to each other, and don't forget the snacks.
Xoxo Amy