Honey, We're Out of Bucatini & Sperm
I don't have anything to say about the coup except: hahahahaha isn't everything so bad!
Featuring a CIA rebrand, a pandemic jumpsuit, and Ben Affleck’s unbreakable bond with Dunkin’
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Special Note
If you live in Philadelphia County, you can click on this link to “pre-commit” to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This will put you on a list so you will be contacted when you are eligible to receive the vaccine. There are other ways you could get the vaccine, but this is one way to get in line for it. Billy Penn link here.
P.S. It just feels like the ethical thing to do to send this out to the small but mighty listserv I have access to!
Talkin’ About Some Generation (The CIA Goes ✈️ Millennial Rebrand)
There’s been a lot of news in the past week, and I think one of the things that sort of slid through the cracks amidst last Wednesday’s coup was that the CIA has done what boils down to a millennial rebrand in order to attract “younger, more diverse” talent.
This Times link has all the pics you need to see of the trendy, underground music festival-themed new logo, as well as some fun history about the CIA:
Mr. Hu pointed out that the C.I.A. is no stranger to the tactical use of aesthetics; during the Cold War, the agency reportedly funded avant-garde American painters like Jackson Pollock in order to draw a contrast to the stifling intellectual atmosphere of the Soviet Union.
P.S. I do love the NYT going with the “graphic design is my passion” joke for this article’s headline.
A Less Serious Item (Pandemic Uniform)
Please enjoy this very harmless and fun human interest piece from Today about some Philly-based “Twitter influencers” who love a sweatsuit from Old Navy and have been tweeting about said sweatsuit from Old Navy for the entire pandemic.
This could be you and your friends if you all bought the same sweatsuit and then all got the vaccine and then went to an inside place!!
This Week’s Theme: More! Shortages!
The pandemic has highlighted people’s priorities in a strange way. The mysterious bucatini shortage of 2020 and the not-so-mysterious sperm shortage of 2020 are no exception to this. It turns out there’s big demand for pasta and even bigger demand for sperm.
On the lighter side of things, reporter Rachel Handler has delved into the great Bucatini shortage of 2020 (which I guess now has extended into 2021). Bucatini is a trendy kind of pasta, people like it (or so this article tells me) because it’s tubular and therefore has a hole that gives it “powerful sauce-absorption capabilities.” But of late, since March 2020, it has been very difficult to find bucatini at the store. There had been no prior reporting on this, and Handler goes deep to discover that probably someone in the pasta world has it out for the brand De Cecco, which is a big supplier of bucatini. Read the whole thing, if only because Rachel Handler is one of the most fun journalists we have right now, detailing how annoyed all these big wig pasta people are with her as she continues to try to get to the bottom of this bucatini shortage.
On the murkier side of things, the pandemic has spawned a sperm shortage. In this article, boldly titled “The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand,” which assigns “king” status to sperm donors, we learn not only that official and regulated sperm is in short supply, but that interest in having children across multiple reproductive resource centers is up. People want pandemic babies. So much so that unregulated Facebook groups have popped up allowing the titular “sperm kings” to roam free, giving their sperm to an unlimited number of people trying to have babies, baldly defying any FDA regulations that limit the number of children a sperm donor can father (usually the limit is 25-30 children). It would take too long for me to cover the entire scope of the legal risk, ethical dilemmas, and general strangeness created by these unregulated groups, so I implore you to just read the article because it’s fascinating. There are unregulated apps for sperm donors, “known sperm donor” influencers, and (in my opinion) most disturbingly, a lot of men who want to donate their sperm in order to ensure that their genes survive:
“I have a strong desire to know my genes have been passed on,” one donor recently wrote on Just a Baby. “Like many of us, I’m not in a position to do so at the moment nor do I foresee this is in the near future.”
One more thing: the sperm article is good in that it gives good insights into this crazy world, but I saw a few tweets pointing about that there is not a single mention of race in the article, which is certainly an enormous blind spot! Important grain of salt to keep with you, especially as you read that the author is sad to have missed out on a black-haired donor with blue eyes.
P.S. All of this feels crazy, considering these people seem to want babies when they’re not sure these kids will have school to go to or really even a society to live in, but I did want to highlight the fact that mass, official sperm recruiting usually happens at college:
“A lot of their recruiting goes on around fraternities, but fraternities aren’t getting together,” said Rosanna Hertz, chair of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College and co-author of “Random Families,” a book on donor conception. “People want college-educated sperm, so to speak.”
I understand it logistically, but having attended one of these “elite” colleges, I feel minor terror at the thought of any of the people I went to college with fathering children at the rate reported in this article:
College men are one of the most reliable groups to see the potential chaos of creating maybe 50 biological children around the world in exchange for about $4,000 over several months — and decide it is a good deal.
Politics (This Section Is Actually Just Gonna Be Blank This Week)
America feels more acutely like hell this week than usual. Here are a bunch of gifs of cute animals. Cheers to the last nine cursed days before Biden’s inauguration.
Well if it isn’t puppies licking Shaq!
Lemurs doing leap frog!
This looks like it’s from Happy Feet or something. I’ve never seen that movie! Sound off in the comments if you think I should watch that movie.
This is actually a gif of acclaimed film director Martin Scorcese laughing, but lately his image has been stimulating the same pleasure center in my brain as cute little animals!
And finally, from the Zoo of Berlin, I give you: seals tickling each other.
A Celebrity Thinger (Dunkin Donuts x Ben Affleck)
I do feel that this section is frequently about Ben Affleck, but it’s not my fault that Ben Affleck is frequently giving us the best celebrity news. This time, it was some glorious paparazzi photos of Affleck struggling to smuggle some Dunkin’ Donuts into his house on New Year’s. The photos are here. And an analysis from The Ringer about how the rehabbed image of Ben Affleck is intrinsically tied to his Boston Boy obsession with Dunkin’ Donuts is here. The photos are the best, but the analysis of Affleck as a hometown hero who runs on hometown java is pretty damn good. It includes quite the anecdote about how Affleck refused to wear a Yankees cap in the movie Gone Girl (for the deeply sports averse, the Yankees are the famous longtime rival of the Boston Red Sox), and a general kindly affection for the celebrity of Ben Affleck.
When they call Ben’s order at Dunkin’.
Would You Rather? (Hilaria Baldwin is Actually American Edition)
Would you rather be Boston-born Hilaria Baldwin forgetting how to say cucumber or Boston-born Hilaria Baldwin and husband Alec Baldwin having the words “somos un buen equipo” inscribed on their wedding rings?
A Recommendation (Time Is Meaningless!)
I know that Christmas already happened, but it doesn’t really feel like we’ve entered a New Year. To me, this means we can consume Christmas content looong past its due. The Netflix show Dash & Lily is a Christmas-themed romantic comedy TV series. There are eight 25ish minute episodes that go down like spiked egg nog on Christmas Eve. Its two leads, Rachel Midori and Austin Abrams, have pitch-perfect little teenager chemistry, and New York City is as much a character in this show as it is in any got damn Nora Ephron movie! I can’t recommend it enough, and I would probably pay like $200 to return to the sweet, pre-coup December weekend I spent watching all of it.
Rachel Midori playing the titular Lily dressed up as a Christmas tree. I mean: does it get any cuter than this?
Donation Corner! (For You to Ignore or Engage With As You Please!)
Hello! Welcome to the newly established Donation Corner of the Good Links! Which you are free to ignore or engage with as you please — it will live at the bottom of the newsletter!
Here are your donation opportunities for the month:
Puentes De Salud - a 501(c)(3) organization that promotes the health and wellness of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latinx immigrant population through high-quality health care, innovative educational programs, and community building.
Racial Justice Philly - a fledgling organization fighting for racial justice, which I am specifically suggesting this week because they’re doing fundraising for another “groceries for philly” event, which brings groceries to Philly communities in food deserts.
The Marian Anderson Historical Society in Philadelphia is on its last legs thanks to a devastating basement flood — they’ve been unable to qualify for COVID relief and one of its employees is trying to raise $40k to save it.
P.S. If you have an organization/mutual aid fund/individual in mind that you think would be good to highlight, feel free to email me directly with information about it!
P.P.S. Why three places each week?
The first donation opportunity will always be a a 501(c)3 organization that I have done some due diligence around to try and ensure they’re a real non-profit organization that 1) does good work and 2) is tax-deductible!
The second donation opportunity will be a mutual aid fund (s/o to the politics good link!), which FYI is probably not tax-deductible.
And the final donation opportunity will be an individual in need of funds who has a GoFundMe or a cashapp (or however the kids are accepting funds these days) where you can donate. Also likely not tax-deductible. Note: I’m going to do my best to share GoFundMes that have not yet reached their goals!
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