The Audacious Roundup
It’s the holidays and Masterclass is offering a two-for-one deal. If you’re interested in taking my masterclass on writing for social change, now might be a good time to sign up for Masterclass AND gift a membership.
Keep up with the Joel Gay Creative Fellows, Jet Toomer, Jesus Rodriguez, and Elspeth Michaels.
The January selection for the Audacious Book Club is Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor. We will be in conversation with Deepti on January 25th at 5 pm EST/2pm PST. Registration is now open!
I am reading submissions to The Audacity’s Emerging Writer Series. Read the guidelines and submit your best writing. Submissions will be open until I have 24 essays.
Don’t Forget: Why Design Matters by Debbie Millman.
Debbie also has a new project, The Remarkable Life Deck, if you want to think through what the next decade of your life could look like. The cards are really beautiful and this is such a valuable exercise for looking ahead and taking stock of where you are. I don’t say that lightly. Normally, this isn’t my kind of thing but The Remarkable Life Deck is excellent.
If you’re looking for a nice notebook, check out my new Draft Writing Journal from Baron Fig. It’s pretty swank if I do say so myself AND back in stock.
Twitter remains chaotic. Every day there is a new policy change or owner tantrum. He’s at the World Cup but angry about the account sharing publicly available information about his jet. His mom is defending him which, YIKES. There was some on again/off again thing with Bari Weiss. Twitter’s former head of safety had to leave his home because of death threats which is so out of control. A journalist asked him a question in a Twitter Spaces he showed up in and LOL he deleted Spaces. Like, he made the entire feature disappear. And he has stopped paying rent to like, save money. I did not know that was an available option. Twitter owner is no longer the richest person in the world. The most delicious thing is that Chappelle brought him onstage and he was booed, loudly, for ten minutes. Let’s read a couple more pieces about it. Just constant humiliation (clearly his kink). You cannot make this stuff up.
Pour one out for a real one.
The World Cup has ended. Argentina won but France played an amazing game, especially Mbappé.
Cecily Strong is leaving SNL!
Avatar Deux is out and it seems pretty boring but James Cameron is excited about all the technology it took to make the movie. Some people are really hyped for the movie, though. Bless their hearts. This reviewer REALLY hated the movie.
Harrison Ford is doing television again in the Taylor Sheridan Cinematic Universe (TSCU), starring in 1923. I enjoy Sheridan’s shows, understand them for what they are but thus far 1923 is ridiculous. It covers all kind of ground, like it’s trying to offer a brief history of the United States, one hour at a time. So far, it’s kind of boring and all the characters blur together and if you don’t watch Yellowstone AND 1883, very little will make sense.
Raggedy Tory Lanez is on trial for shooting Megan THEE Stallion and the discourse is even more misogynistic than you might expect. A woman was literally shot and people are caping so hard for this man.
The New York Times made a feature about twelve children who lost their lives to gun violence.
Brittney Griner has released her first statement since being released from a Russian prison camp and she intends to play ball for the Phoenix Mercury this coming season. In a workout, she did a dunk.
The Oxford dictionary’s word of the year is “goblin mode.”
This jam STILL hits.
RIP Stephen Boss aka tWitch. This one hit me hard. He was only forty years old and I watched the dance videos he and his wife made, all the time. Devastating.
The former president (the worst one), had a “big announcement” this past week and it was that he was releasing digital training cards of bad photoshop of his head on the bodies of people in his fantasy careers. Again, you cannot make this up.
The Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan is out now. I wrote about it for The Times. There aren’t many new revelations and it feels like they were being circumspect and still protecting the royal family. But like, truly, let these lovebirds live in peace and walk around their estate barefoot. Also, Tyler Perry is their daughter’s godfather.
Claudine Gay is the 30th president of a little school called Harvard. NBD. We’re cousins so I think this is pretty cool.
Ugly house alert! But really, this is about HGTV trying to figure out where to go next, aesthetically (and much more).
Merrily We Roll Along is transferring to Broadway.
A big aquarium in Berlin cracked and well, what you expected would happen happened!
Pro Publica has a deeply researched feature on night raids in Afghanistan that no one has yet answered for.
At 538, how white backlash is its own kind of racial reckoning.
Why are we so obsessed with time?
A French man is DONE with mandatory work fun and the French courts have backed him up. Praise Beyoncé.
You can get free COVID tests again from the government so we should probably be bolstering mask supplies, too.
Henry Cavill was back as Superman and now he isn’t.
Purdue is gonna Purdue.
The protests in China have been led by women.
Looks like State Farm has been doing racisms. Sigh. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once.
Once again, the Golden Globes doesn’t seem to know that women direct movies, too.
One of my favorite libraries is hiring!
3M dumped chemicals in some water and many young people in the area have gotten cancer. SMH.
SBF has been arrested.
An interview with Lizzo.
Sarah Smarsh offers a brief meditation on the music of Tracy Chapman and love.
The last confederate statue in Richmond has been taken down.
What does it take to make the NYT bestseller list? Who knows?
Going to a bridal expo as a queer person.
The NYC MTA is trying to do something about soiled elevators in the subway but they aren’t doing the obvious thing which would be to have clean, attended public bathrooms in stations.
Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, will receive $2 million from the city of Louisville and it is not nearly enough.
The Broadway musical KPOP closed way too early.
Tech companies are breaking promises about their diversity initiatives. And Black women are bearing the brunt of layoffs.
Jesmyn Ward on Octavia Butler.
"He withers" is the shit I am manifesting for 2023.
I just...the public bathroom sitch in NYC is infuriating. There's some talk happening thanks to that amazing potty mapping Insta, but hello it's obviously part of the problem. Less cops in train stations, more attendants in bathrooms. More treating everyone like they are fully functioning living beings.