I guess this Jeffrey Epstein stuff has legs?
I should've listened to all you conspiracy theorists
Hello from the Hotel Chelsea, where a cappuccino cost me nine dollars this morning. Are we sure this is the same place where all those radicals and beatniks lived? I’ve been thinking about this piece by Mo_Diggs about post-bohemia, how everything is so expensive it’s impossible for there to be any physical neighborhood where artists and dissidents can gather, but maybe that’s what the internet is for. This paragraph stood out to me:
“Both Bushwick and Dimes Square were hyped to become the next “it” neighborhoods. Again, the rents got too high before anything organic and local could happen like it did in Williamsburg. Now Bushwick is a place to dance, snort K, maybe do some gay-ish stuff before riding home hung over, with the taste of Sweet Heat sauce burning at a low flame on your lips. Dimes Square, meanwhile, is a Thailand for a certain type of extremely online intellectual, hoping to maybe make some ironic jokes about race science. Like Thailand, nice place to visit, but only rich creeps actually live there.”
A bleak state of affairs!
Onto the news:
I’d like to apologize to every insane person on the internet for being skeptical that the Jeffrey Epstein stuff would ever amount to anything. Moving up summer recess to avoid having to do anything about the Epstein files is extremely funny; politicians only know how to not show up to work, avoid their constituents and lie. I think the House Republicans who are up in arms about this are secretly sick of Donald Trump’s shit but can’t say so openly, and pressing the administration to expedite the Epstein files is a covert way to take him down a peg without making their base mad. They’re pretending this is about holding Democrats accountable, but I don’t think they’re that stupid. Honestly, I support them—it’s a win-win situation for basically everybody in America, unless you’re in the black book, I suppose.
Omar Fateh, the democratic socialist candidate for mayor in Minneapolis, won the DFL endorsement last week. That doesn’t mean he’s won the election, which is on November 4th, but winning the state party’s endorsement commits their massive volunteer operation and resources towards his campaign, and it’s basically like winning a primary. I’ve been saying for a long time that if socialists actually get anywhere in this country it will be in New York and Minnesota first, and I love to be proven right over and over again. (Great reason to subscribe to this newsletter….I am often correct….) It’s still too early to make any specific predictions for 2026 but it seems obvious that a Democratic Tea Party is just getting started, no?
Get ready for everybody’s boyfriend to become addicted to election betting. Polymarket was technically blocked to US users, but of course people intent on wasting their money found a way around the ban. Now that they’ve acquired derivatives exchange QCX, the American market is a new frontier for them. Probably not great for democracy or your wallet.
Eric Adams announced Sunday that the city is now on the Citizen app to provide free real-time crime updates to users. It’s not just a public service—the NYPD will have access to videos shared by Citizen users. Are we sure we want the cops to have unfettered access to the app that once offered a $30,000 bounty to users to catch a man wrongfully accused of committing the 2021 Palisades brush fire? The app that was originally banned from the Apple Store for promoting vigilantism before rebranding? What are we doing here?
The White House is finalizing an executive order to allow 401k plans to invest in private equity. Experts are saying that’s a bad idea. Not to STEREOTYPE anybody but it does seem awfully like everything private equity touches turns to shit….wonder what that’s about…..
Trader Joe’s bags in London! “It’s such an American thing, which is weird because I feel like America is not cool at the moment.” I’m sorry but that will simply never be true. This empire could fall (and it should) and people around the world will still be watching Hollywood movies and wearing Yankees caps and romanticizing Manhattan and the Pacific Coast Highway. It is what it is! I agree the dark chocolate peanut butter cups are as much of a tourist draw as Mount Rushmore or Times Square.
Listened to the new Tyler the Creator album last night. Pretty good! Tyler has something to say about the bed rotting crisis; he wants you to get OFF your PHONE and DANCE. This Reddit user is prophetic, calling it now:
That’s all, folks!