PicoBlog

For one thing, she was fun to hate. She was vain, spoiled, and secretly, we felt sure, full of malice. She mistook self-interest for moral righteousness, casting the pursuit of profit as feminism and conspicuous consumption as “self-care.” I’m talking, of course, about the girlboss, that much-maligned figure of female status and success. The girlboss, can be roughly defined as a stereotype—usually millennial, white, and straight—that represented women’s professional ambition. She rose to fraught prominence from 2016 to 2020, after Hilary Clinton’s election loss and before the pandemic.

Recently, a tech company called Cloudflare laid off 40 of its 1500 sales workers. Among them was 27-year-old Brittany Pietsch, who filmed her entire 10-minute layoff meeting with HR and then posted it to TikTok. Shit then hit the fan. The video went viral. The video inspired countless response videos. The video and various analyses of the video appeared in Buzzfeed and the Wall Street Journal. Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, issued a statement.

I’ve been asked to do this probably 20 times in the last 2-3 years, but either haven’t had the time or have straight-up forgotten to do it when I have had time. So, with the holiday weekend in full swing and a rare no-work Monday ahead, I figured I’d tackle this. This is broken down into five sections, starting with the equivalent of the suggested reading section and ending with the most esoteric/unexplored stuff that’s out there.

What do you think about when you think about the Post Office Tower? Is it the names – the Post Office Tower, the Telecom Tower or the BT Tower depending o your generation? Is it Smashing Time, the 1967 satire of Swinging London, where the revolving restaurant goes out of control? Or the 1966 Doctor Who story The War Machines, where a computer based in the building attempts to take over the world?

Chuck Klosterman has a new book out about the 1990s. Here he is in conversation with New York magazine's David Wallace-Wells: DWW: The editor Gavin Jacobson has called the ’90s an“age without qualities,” which I think describes a pretty common feeling about the decade — that it’s just kind of floating there in our memory, a bit undefined. What’s interesting about it to you? CK: It feels as though the 1990s weren’t just the last decade of the 20th century but sort of the last decade, period — the last decade with a fully formed and recognizable culture of its own.

Full disclosure: I have a stake in Twitter. Not a directly financial one so much as a personal one. I own no Twitter stock but as a freelance writer the social media platform has been very good to me. Since starting my Twitter account in 2012, I’ve gained a much larger audience. My Twitter presence is almost directly responsible for me getting two big jobs, at The New Republic and The Nation.

With the 100th pick, and the final pick of the third-round of the 2024 NFL Draft, the Washington Commanders selected wide receiver Luke McCaffrey out of Rice. McCaffrey is the younger brother of 49ers star running back Christian McCaffrey, who Commanders GM Adam Peters knows well. Luke is his own man though and Peters didn’t draft him as a favor to his brother. The Commanders drafted McCaffrey to boost their receiving room.

Hello readers! Welcome to the very first edition of a brand new series on my Substack ~ What Writers Read! In these Tuesday missives, you will hear from authors of my favorite new releases ~ all about their books and the books these writers love. I can’t wait to share these pieces with you. Today I am highlighting the fabulous Sarah Grunder Ruiz, who I ha… ncG1vNJzZmilmaOxp8HLpaCbqpGntqK6jaysm6uklrCsesKopGioX6y1osCMsKmirJWnwG6%2BxJqbZquRp66pecarrKeclad6s8HIsw%3D%3D

Take a moment and think of That Person Who Drives You Bananas. You know the one. The one that just makes your skin crawl. They are the tippiest-toppest level of obnoxious. They might be someone you see every week at Mass, or they might be someone who constantly comes across your YouTube algorithm. They might be blood related to you, or you may have never met. They might be me!