The Singapore flag crashed into the headlines in the worst possible way and insurance claims will be a doozy, Stargate supercomputer is becoming a reality, Singapore’s UV index reached extreme levels twice in the last four days and it’s only going to get hotter in April and May, and have you heard this wild but true story about the 3 Body Problem Netflix production (h/t my partner)?
A Season for Controversy
With the arrival of northern spring and southern autumn, we get… controversy? A rash of them appeared on popular media last week.
Fortune Hunters
They’re still called gold diggers, but what’s the term for a younger woman who prioritises financial stability in much older men and seeks them out accordingly? In another age, before freedom of choice, that might simply have been marriage as a contract. Nothing about this is new or surprising, but in this day and age it is more about the social media chatter that surrounds an article than the article itself (which is essentially a paean to dating older men). I present to you its Twitter discourse without further comment.
Homemakers
That’s what stay-at-home mothers who ran the household whilst their husbands worked outside were called in my day. Social media has leveraged a rebrand and they’re now “trad wives”, similar to “stay-at-home girlfriends” except they have a wedding ring and may have children or children on the way. Why any of this should be controversial comes down to, once again, online discourse – vehemently for or against, and sheer indifference. More remarkably, the TradWife has had a rise and fall, according to the New Yorker, to the extent that you should turn to that publication as an arbiter of online goings-on.
Bro’s A Player
Another so what, what’s new kind of exposé? Rockstar geek (in his own universe) goes on podcast as guest and becomes that micro-niche of influencer, podcast guest for hire. He’s a Yuval Harari in that he completed a PhD about eye stuff (Neural activity and axon guidance cue regulation of eye-specific retinogeniculate development to be exact) and now pontificates about everything from the green juice you drink to the habits you should form – a specialist who fancies himself a generalist now that he has a dedicated audience. The thing about cults, dear readers, having grown up in one, is that Dear Leader is as human and as fallible as the rest of us. That Huberman is a player and knows how to use his considerable skills to manipulate, deceive and thwart should be no surprise. What continues to surprise is the human capacity for belief and devotion in the wrong hands.
Burn Baby Burn
A wealthy heir to an American media fortune wants to destroy the very thing that made him wealthy in the first place. Dramedy plot or real life? Meet Fergie Chambers, the protest-marching, activist-funding, jet-setting heir who wants to destroy the US of A. The multiple layers of cognitive dissonance wrapped up in one meatbag is what’s most fascinating to me.
Death by another other name
Did the late, endearingly nicknamed Swampy (John Barnett) actually take his own life, or is something more sinister at play? According a long-time ex-Boeing executive, “there is a principle in American law that there is no such thing as an accidental death during the commission of a felony. Let’s say you rob a bank and while traveling at high speed in the getaway you run down a pedestrian and kill them. That’s second-degree murder at the very least.” Yowza.