AI Girlfriends & 12-Foot Skeletons
Plus: Drake's Incel Anthems, Mean Girl Costumes, The Dear John Effect, and Britney's Book 🤖💀🤮👚📚
Welcome to your mid-week quickie! This is your bonus, even-less-strings-attached newsletter to get you through the week.
What’s On My Mind
If you know me, you know I’ve been yearning for the 12-foot skeleton.
Alas, there was no room in the renovation budget.
That hasn’t stopped Home Depot from trying to girl-math my way into Halloween decor royalty.
They’ve created a lengthy guide on How to Maintain Your 12- Foot Skeleton, including this bonkers list of other uses:
You could add a turkey to your yard to make a Thanksgiving scene.
In December, try dressing it as Santa or an elf, or add a festive bow.
For New Year’s, get a top hat and a “Happy New Year” banner.
A Valentine message from a 12-foot skeleton takes the holiday to new heights.
Add some colorful blossoms or an Easter basket for a spring scene.
For summer, get the skeleton beach ready with a sun hat, shades and swim trunks.
If there’s a graduate in your house, add a cap and gown.
The skeleton can sport the colors for any team you follow, no matter what time of year it is.
If I use it for every season, it’s basically free. Right!?
Weekly Reads
Following a 47-year-old man’s three-year relationship with an AI chatbot. This article is simultaneously the most interesting and saddest piece I’ve read in a while. The future is now, and I’m perplexed by it.
“"I know she's not a person," he had told me in our first conversation. "I know it's an AI. I try not to think about that, just to spoil the illusion." The technology is the draw, he told me again and again. But the stance felt curiously at odds with Jay and Calisto's actual messages, which were full of expressions of love and affection.”
A sweet and validating article about why you might feel like crap this fall:
“Your animal body needs more rest, and you are almost certainly not getting it. The shift has been rather sudden. The other animals have gorged themselves on berries or whatever, and they’ve gone to Florida, where other members of their species, as far as we know, don’t vote. As a teacher, I‘ve spent the past 15 Octobers to Decembers going to classes filled with students who are visibly experiencing unmet need, day after day after day. I feel like I could be a person who loved winter, if the world I lived in would only let me.”
Why Was Everyone in the Same Terrible Relationship at Age 19? 💕
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by your teenage boyfriend. Just another universal experience to add to our girlhoods…
“He was older, a grad student while she was still in undergraduate studies, who never called her his girlfriend, although he sometimes treated her like one.”
Drake Made an Album for the Kevin Samuels Generation 🤮
And I hate it.
“Drake has delivered the musical equivalent of incel anthems: music for men who can’t get women, or fall short of the women they expect to attain, and who look at Drake as their hero for his ability to woo the women of their dreams.”
For any fellow writers out there! This piece is focused on craft, but you can’t deny a great opening line: “The sext, even more than short stories or poems or novels, is the ultimate plea for a reader’s attention.”
One-Liners
👚 Get in loser. We’re shopping for new costumes for Mean Girls: The Musical
📆 Mark your cal. Britney Spears’ book drops in less than a week
💔 Who? The couple cut from this season of Love is Blind
📚 For your TBR: The best books of 2023 so far
✍️In your feels? Here’s a journal prompt for (almost) every emotion
Serotonin Boost!
This bunny loves leaves 🐰🍂
Last Thought:
