Just Say NO to the Damn 'YES MEN'! And hello? đ¤ˇââď¸
What is the Democratsâ version of Project 2025? What is the strategy here, people?
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Hello, Lovelies, How the hell are you? Not great? I feel you.
Greetings from my secret adventure⌠where it is cloudy and cool, and if Iâm honest, where I am still reeling from the stunning display of bad judgment the other night.
Knowing⌠after years spent in the branding world, testing the impressionability of consumers, and reading report after report how easy it is to get people to vote against their own interests, to buy scads of products that are completely deleterious to their wellbeing. Itâs like being the writer/director of a slow-motion play gone terribly wrongâwith no way to pull down the curtain, no way to cut away to commercial⌠and knowing all the world is so easily swayed, their minds will have been made up in less than six seconds. Alors, Iâm likeâŚ
Iâm sure there will be many who disagree with me and insist that even a good president can have a bad night. But itâs more than that. We need a Democratic counter-strategy to the GOPâs Project 2025⌠Cue the mean-ass McKinsey-types. I want SWOT analyses and Porterâs Five Forces competitive strategies up the wazoo. If not that, how about some philosophers? Theyâre always handy in a conundrum and this surely qualifies, no?
At the Institute for Womenâs Futuresâweâve been focused on serving midlife women across party linesâwe all need state-of-the-art healthcare, socioeconomic stability, and cultural visibility, regardless of party affiliation, but if those very things become impossible under an autocratic regime, itâs frightening as hell for all women.
So how to distract from this impending sense of doom? Iâve managed to rework a garbagy, overwritten TV pilot into one that is fast and funny.
It did not begin that way. My work always starts as a random pile of notes and fragments. It evolves into a clunky scrap heap of Sanford and Son-style burnt-out, shoddy appliances, strewn along a labyrinthine path. It is everything but the kitchen sink and then there is the exercise of stripping down, welding, tinkering, and improvising a last makeshift partâso that all the burners light. What excites me most about this show is that adult neurodivergent audiences deserve more love stories.
Writing kidâs slang, however, has proven especially tricky in this one. Our youngest generationâs language paints such a vivid picture of their current worldview. They've crafted a unique vernacular for a society where institutions crumble and shared meaning fades, both online and off. This week, it defied all their terms.
Take âmid.â It nails those things that are just okay or slightly meh. You can't really gripe, but they don't excite either. Often, it's the result of market research fine-tuning products to be juuust acceptable enough, nothing more. Starbucks? Mid. Airports? Total mid-fest. It's a razor-sharp term for a consumer landscape of mild letdowns.
âGlazedâ is another gem. It captures that fake-positive sheen plastered all over social media. Not quite lying, but definitely BS.
Then there's âsus,â which we can all glean is short for suspectâwhen something's just not right on a gut level. Of course, the entire world is âsusâ right now.
But the crown jewel? "Based." As in, grounded in reality. What a perfect word for those rare moments of truth in our sea of misinformation. When so much is mid, glazed, or straight-up sus, it's a relief to encounter someone or something that's simply... based.
Doofus of the Week!
Bidenâs âYes-Menâ Advisors
Yes, you can argue he was having a bad night. But he had one job to doâbring the power⌠because people will vote for âUnite with Mightâ over âStrong and Wrongâ. And when the advisors saw that he couldnât bring itâthey had a duty to democracy and our nation to pull the effing plug. But what did they do? They let it run like a 30 Rock sketch gone so wrong. They Pete Hornbergered America.
Theyâre the governmentâwe have two active wars and an opponent with multiple legal scandalsâINVENT A CRISIS to a) buy some time to get his act together, or b) set your backup plan in motion, i.e., orchestrate an emergency call to get you out of that bad dinner date, or c) both⌠And hello? Thereâs no set-in-stone reason he even had to debate that boiled hotdog skin of a felon to begin with.
After Bidenâs dismal performance, his camp â with a rush of speaking events and private calls with donors and lawmakers â embarked on a multiday damage-control effort. Some major donors hoped Biden would withdraw of his own accord, however, many have come to terms with the unlikelihood of that as an alternative.
Thereâs still time to flip the script, but not with these chuckleheadsâthese doofuses are responsible for the inexorable fall of democracy.
In the parlance of todayâs youth, they are not even midâlet alone basedâthey are dangerously yessed.
To flip this script, you need all-new writers and a new showrunner who will tell you which lines suck, and exercise better judgment about whether your performer is ready for primetime.
And now for some marvelsâŚ
Secret Pirate Radio
My brain is toast⌠I canât remember who sent me this, but oh-la-la!
If this is your first time hearing it, I am so, so jealous of you.
Is ChatGPT a better parent than you?
The artwork is a marvelâ the story feels more like terror...
The other day a colleague set his six-year-old daughter up for a conversation with ChatGPT, which now has a freely available voice function. Their chat lasted 10 or 15 minutes, he told her, and he didnât have to intervene once. They had a chattty gossip about this and that, the way little girls do. ChatGPT understood everything she was saying, started its replies with a little word of appreciation, and concluded with a question for her to reply to. In the end, the colleague, though quite the technophile, put an end to this girl-machine infatuation. It was being too nice, he felt: polite, even-tempered, attentive, kind. Your best friend couldnât even talk to you like that for more than five minutes.
At first, my techno GenX instincts, drawn from a childhood of Atari, War Games, Frankenstein, and The Matrix, kicked in. The machines are prevailing, I lamented. Our children are their prey. But after a little yogic breathing my EEG lady taught me, I had a more irksome thought: What if ChatGPT is already a better parent than we are? I used to speak sternly to my children when theyâd bicker, spout over 800 strongly-worded directives a day, and chase them out of the house in the morning as if to escape a wildebeest to get to school on time.
I once even pranked them with operaâNessun Dorma to get them up and out of bed.
Am I an annoying mother or what?
When Iâd get home after a long day, Iâd be asked hundreds of questions: âDid you know that butterflies poop on the roof?â âDo dogs go to heaven?â âWhy isnât a shadow a color?â Itâs hard to see how Iâd be better equipped to handle this barrage than a limitlessly patient chatbot. But then our colleagueâs son asked ChatGPT: âWhatâs stronger, my head or a lightsabre?â And the AI gave a simple factual answer (lightsabre, obviously) followed by a full disquisition on the merits of avoiding conflictâa totally idiotic conclusion. Parents might shout too much and make lame jokes to get everyone where they need to be, but at least we have a sense of humor.
The Only Summer Frock You NeedâŚ
From La Ligne. Endlessly wearable.
Curious Codes!
Phaidon has released a new version of their classic The Art Book for Children. Aimed at kids aged 7-12, the new version includes a selection of contemporary artists alongside familiar favorites.
This single volume features 60 artists through a wide range of large-scale, full-page reproductions of their artworks, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, prints, and installations from across time and space. Each page showcases defining artworks by the artists, combined with an interactive and informative conversation, giving relatable and memorable contexts for children, and inspiring curiosity and appreciation for the Visual Arts that will continue into adulthood. We need more of this⌠we all need a visual vocabulary beyond the screen.
Lastly, my dad always played a Bossa Nova version of this when I was a child and I stumbled across it the other day. I thought of it watching all the rains we had this week here and crazy thunderâŚ
OK, stay safe, Lovelies, and know that Iâm thinking of you while we figure out WTF weâre going to do with this 30 Rock of a nation of ours. â xoxo, gotham girl
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"When so much is mid, glazed, or straight-up sus, it's a relief to encounter someone or something that's simply... based." - Haha! I love that.
This was so chock full of goodness in so many ways. Too many to call out, but I will say that âThey Pete Hornbergered Americaâ killed me.