Friday Thread: So, what's your go-to when you get 'yippy'? 😂 Nothing like The Big Short!

Some GOOD Tariff News, Midlife Women Heal the World & TSA Vibrator Guidelines?

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

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Hello, Lovelies—

How the hell are you? Feeling a little yippy? The GOP sure is. Maybe it’s just me, but this latest round of trade absurdity feels like a Christie’s auction of a Cézanne that we are SO NOT going to win. All we can do is throw down our paddles and say, “Knock yourself out, pal—congrats on tanking the dollar!”

Oh, look! It’s China on the right!

But enough about the global economy. Can I tell you the very best news? Our little indie press is having a Lady Whistledown moment. We are officially in production! And best of all… (Cue swoon, fan flutter, fainting couch.)

And, speaking of fainting couches, I just got back from the most fabulous whirlwind in Chicago, where I was invited to an event hosted by the brilliant

Julie Fedeli

and

Pamela DeRose

of Midlife Upgrade. It was part documentary screening (The M-Factor, featuring the luminous Tamsen Fadal, Audra McDonald, and Dr. Sharon Malone), part electric, full-body goosebumps gathering of hundreds of wise, incandescent midlife women. You could feel it in the room—this quiet, sparkling conviction: Okay. Let’s go heal this f**ing world now.

Reader, I cried. And they STUFFED my swag bag with such reckless abandon!

Which led to a slightly tense moment at O’Hare. Because just as I was boarding—Group Nine Million, naturally—the gate agent stopped me. “We’re going to need to gate-check that. Are there any hazardous electronics inside?”

And here’s the thing: thanks to Julie and Pam, there was... a very complicated vibrator in my bag.

Do vibrators count as electronics? It’s rechargeable. It has features. It’s practically ChatGPT with a G-spot setting. (For a full list, go to PlusOne or myplusone.com.) But I suddenly found myself panicked: Can midlife desires crash a plane?

said vibrator, in all its 5G glory!

Spoiler alert: The plane did not crash. But I did spend most of the flight wondering whether a “USB-enabled wand of joy” constitutes a national security threat.

Now, let’s talk China.

Chump (still clinging to a 1980s fantasy that China only makes knock-offs and dim sum) doesn’t seem to realize they’ve built a 2,600-acre research campus that looks like the unholy love child of Disneyland and MIT. Huawei’s new HQ is a monorail-connected utopia of 104 science palaces, 35,000 researchers, 100 cafes, and zero shame about ambition. They built it in three years.

It’s impressive. It’s disturbing. And it’s a giant neon sign that says: The future used to visit America. Now it lives somewhere else.

China doesn’t need us. We need them. Because innovation is like tennis: you get better when you play people who scare the hell out of you.

Now, to play devil’s advocate, yes, China and other countries still see the U.S. as a piggy bank. They’ve been parking their cash in Treasury bonds forever—$3 trillion from China alone. This has propped up the dollar and let Washington borrow like a teenager with some Bro Bag’s Black Card.

But that same strong dollar is now pricing American products out of every market except, possibly, Mars.

And that’s what Trump’s trade war allegedly set out to fix: the so-called “Kiss My Ass Accord.” A bold plan to slap tariffs on everyone until they cried “uncle” and started deflating the dollar by selling off Treasury bonds and welcoming American exports. If they didn’t, the tariffs got nastier. The fees got steeper. The middle finger got pointier.

What we got instead? A hot mess of market manipulation and a level of economic improvisation that would make even jazz musicians say, “Too chaotic.”

And no, we’re not bringing manufacturing back. No one wants to make shirts anymore (unless they’re bespoke). No one wants to sweat in a blast furnace. And no CEO is rebuilding a factory just so it can be demolished again the next time someone gets ‘yippy’ on Truth Social.

So what do you do when you get yippy?

When the world is upside down, and the news is bleak, and Ottessa Moshfegh is hosting an art auction like it’s a recession indicator—do you scream into a shag throw pillow? Buy vintage silver on eBay? Watch Father Brown until your soul reboots?

I reach for pie. And BritBox. And sometimes, a Nile Rodgers groove to remind me that somewhere out there, joy is still possible.

Here’s a conversation with him to get you started.

And this…

Don’t you feel you better now?

Yours, in vibey TSA detentions and cozy murder mysteries - xoxo - gotham girl

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PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.