happy rapture to all who celebrate

I recently had the pleasure of needing to take a six week grippy sock vacation, which meant I missed the hottest, most humid portion of NYC's newly-officially subtropical summer. Am I sad about having had to spend so much time indoors working on myself? Not as much as you'd think and yet also absolutely yes—given that I emerged to an even worse hellscape than the one I went in to escape—but hey, we live in the worst timeline, what did you expect?

Also part of me is hoping all the horrible people disappear today like they want to so we can work on fixing this world they broke when they're gone, but unfortunately I'm also an atheist so I know heaven doesn't exist, the rapture is a scam to keep believers terrified so they'll participate in their own oppression, and we're stuck with all these fuckers the email lady was absolutely right about.

skincare recommendation for my fellow damned

I've been getting constant compliments for my skin for the last ten years, which both tracks with how long I've been actually taking care of it and is extra flattering when you consider people in their 20s always assume I'm in my late 20s to mid30s and I'm halfway through 46.

Anyway, I made it through six weeks of the intense dry air plus hard water hospital combo with healthy, glowing skin thanks to using just one product out of my usual skincare regimen: Cosrx Advanced Snail 92 All in one Cream, which is currently 46% off on Amazon for $14.15 or from my favorite locally/Asian/women-owned skincare shop senti senti at full price, $25.99. It's 92% snail mucin (produced by snails, not made of snails okay), very gentle on the skin, completely scent-free, and so extremely moisturizing that for most of you reading this, it will change your skin within two or three days.

(If you want more skincare recommendations, email me or leave a comment—I'm writing down my current routine to share but am happy to make specific recommendations to your skin needs if you're looking to take better care of it. Most of my faves are below $20 but work just as well as expensive brands at Sephora or Blue Mercury.)

magnificent monsters

John Oliver extolling the virtues of his and my favorite show, which just started its latest season:

It is a masterpiece, it is prestige television. think of a show in your head right now—it’s better than that. (..) These women are the most magnificent monsters on television. Human hand grenades who will willfully pull their own and each other’s pins out for your entertainment.

If you've never seen the The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, stop being a snob and do yourself a favor, start watching it from the very beginning. One lady is married to her step-grandfather, two of them are ex-Mormons, another one gets arrested by the FBI while filming! If they were alive right now, Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters would be sitting on their couches each week to watch RHOSLC, biting their fists at how good it is.

a few other things

If you own a car, Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge makes a good argument for why your next car should be an electric cargo bike. I have two fancy carbon bicycles, sold over $1 million in bikes and accessories in three years working at a bike shop, and whenever anyone asked me what my next bike would be my answer was always electric cargo bike. Some options I quite like: Surly Big Easy, Specialized Globe Haul ST, Urban Arrow Family.

Uppity Negress on Cardi B and the gendered truths of parenting: "it’s about how deeply our culture is invested in punishing women for the means by which they choose to become mothers if it doesn’t pass their arbitrary standards of respectability." I neither want nor can I afford a child, so I got an IUD last year; Cardi is a multi-millionaire who can support more children if she wants them, period.

The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright has a thorough look at the brand new $90 million subterranean Alexander Calder museum in his hometown, Philly, designed by Swiss architects inspired by his use of negative space in his kinetic sculptures.

HUNTR/X's total banger Golden from Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters is on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for the sixth week in a row, making it the first soundtrack single to be number one for this long in over ten years, plus there's a new short film in the series on the way. If you haven't seen it yet because you're not into K-pop, you're missing out—it's one of the best animated movies of the last few years, not just for kids, and the music is incredible.

The Straw Hat Pirates flag from the long-running manga/anime series One Piece is popping up at anti-establishment rallies and protests in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines, right beside the Palestinian flag as a symbol of freedom and defiance.

Neal Agrawal's Prove You're Not A Robot is a series of increasingly difficult captchas—I started laughing at number four.

The New Yorker checks in with Mahmoud Kahlil, back in Brooklyn with his wife, new baby, and in-unit washer-dryer.

Speaking of Brooklyn, New York magazine's architecture critic Justin Davidson calls Downtown Brooklyn a "showcase of millenial architecture mediocrity (…) a perpetually coulda-been neighborhood, crowded yet hollow."

The National Weather Service and the Old Farmer's Almanac are disagreeing on what this fall is going to be like in the city: NWS says it's going to be warmer, the Almanac says cooler! I'm just going to bring a layer plus wear my EVA Birkenstock Arizonas out most of the time and not worry about my toes getting cold or wet.

Susan Rinkunas in Jezebel on why we need to quit listening to Ezra Klein already and stop running anti-abortion Democrats: "the cure for the GOP’s racist and xenophobic scapegoating over the economy is to clean up corruption and actually take care of people."

Matthew McConaughey would like you to know the secret to his 12-year marriage is sleeping in a queen bed instead of a king.

Thinking of getting a Covid booster/flu shot/RSV vaccine this fall? It's all gotten quite complicated, thanks to you-know-who.

song of the day

Mary Roos represented Germany twice at my favorite sporting event, Eurovision, and her cover of Cher's Believe (complete with autotune) is so perfect that I have no choice but to assume she is a massive gay icon over in Deutchland. Its title "leider liebich ich dich immer noch" translates to "unfortunately I still love you", which is coincidentally how I feel about dick.