The week’s preoccupations
This week I’ve been reading far too much about the now endlessly impending downfall of Twitter, some of it interesting, some of it not. As of now, it appears Elon Musk’s attempt to seduce enough of his remaining employees to stay for the abusive work practices (otherwise known as “extremely hardcore”) backfired, and more people are heading out the door than he anticipated. It sounds like there are some essential teams that now have nobody in them. Good thing traffic to Twitter isn’t going to spike soon.
Oh.
The World Cup. Right.
I’ve been wrestling with the question of whether to watch or not, which of course long predated watching FIFA Uncovered. Viewing numbers may well go down this year, but if they do, it’ll be impossible to separate the effects that principled stances may have from the other variables affecting audience viewership. In much of the Northern hemisphere, it’s nearly winter, it’s too cold in many places for the beer gardens and barbecues that usually accompany a summer World Cup, and there’s considerably less leeway at our workplaces for us to be watching football all day long. We’re rolling into the holidays too, which means that my fellow Americans have more important football games to be watching on Thursday. (Even though I maintain that the US cares more about football/soccer than people realize, the Lions and Cowboys on Thanksgiving takes precedence. Incidentally, the Lions have been playing on Thanksgiving for nearly as long as the World Cup has existed.)
I’ve been interested as well in comments that it is hypocritical for Westerners to be criticizing Qatar so vociferously for its human rights record. There’s some merit here, not least because Russia was not treated in the same way either in 2018 or 2014. Or in the face of state-sponsored doping. Still, though, people died building those stadiums, and that’s hard to get around.
Related things to read
Musa Okwonga on the problems of this World Cup
Sports were some of the best things to experience on Twitter
Twitter as a sign of our times (with a lot of baseball talk)
It’s not news that some of these billionaires have some alarming beliefs, but this pronatalism business is grim
And finally, too many of these billionaires appear to be fans of longtermism, which is something I learned about for the first time this summer.
Unrelated things I’m listening to
Thanks to a friend and colleague who told me to watch Netflix’s Drive to Survive (for which I was already primed because another friend loves motorsports), I got heavily into Formula 1 this year. There will be much more about this new obsession to come, but this weekend is the last race of the 2022 season. F1 is now commandeering a whole lot of my weekends and also a whole lot of my podcast listening, but Quick Stop F1, recommended by the same friend who recommended DTS, is the best of the bunch. Unapologetically Black, unapologetically Team LH, and relentless in their commitment to spotlighting Black F1 content creators across the diaspora. Also, this past week’s episode was fire.
My cultural joy of the week, in two parts
Of course I start tiptoeing my way into BTS’s body of work right as they go on a prolonged, years-long, mostly military-service-mandated hiatus. Things happen. Anyway, I found my way to this delight this week, which tweaked all of my “in another life I’d have been a dancer” sensibilities.
I’ve watched this a lot in the last 36 hours. A lot. More than I normally would, and I couldn’t figure out why. Yes, even by exceptionally good pop choreography standards, this choreography really nails this groove. But it was compelling beyond that.
Then I learned Sienna Lalau choreographed it, and it all made sense. It has a lot of her hallmarks. Here’s my favorite of her videos from the pre-Covid heyday of the YouTube dance video genre. (A story for another day, that somehow involves a possible cult.)
Perfect track. Perfect vibes.