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Bionicle: Mask of Light (2003)
Ahead of our Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori issue, you might want to give this movie a go. Don’t ask why, you’ll see. Whole thing’s on YouTube. It’s equal parts Power Rangers, LEGO and Lord of the Rings and if you don’t like even one of those things, don’t bother watching this. But if you haven’t seen it, and you do know what I’m talking about, it’s time to head back to Mata Nui. A new game drops early next year and next issue will have quite an extensive piece on Bionicle lore, so brush up on the Matoran journey before we get into it!
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SYSCA’s new newsletter ‘Culture Vulture’
Not to be confused with their existing podcast series ‘Culture Vulture’, Shit You Should Care About has debuted a new newsletter under the same name. The newsletter covers all things “pop culture, the internet, how we fuck with these things & how they fuck us right back”. So far, they’ve covered things like being a teenage girl in your 20s, how guys are “tay-baiting” on TikTok by pretending to be swifties for female attention, and the new era of ‘fandominance’ where celebs are getting shit thrown at them onstage more often and having their private lives swarmed both online and in-person.
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Rita Ora calling Taika Waititi “half a Sāmoan man”
I saw this on The Spinoff last week and was immediately floored. It’s an utterly bizarre moment, not unlike Judith Collins’ “tālofa” from last election year. Something about the polls really brings out the iconic Sāmoan quotes, huh? Mad Chapman has a great writeup on The Spinoff with a video alongside it. It’s genuinely one of the strangest things I’ve heard in ages because, if you didn’t know, Rita and Taika are married. And, as pointed out in the piece, the phrasing itself is incredibly weird. What does “half a Sāmoan man” even mean? Which half? Her favourite? What is going on here?
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Beam Me Up bagels
You know the drill. You’ve probably already been, but who cares? It’s time to go back. You know you want to. Either location works, but bonus points for going to the one in the NEV and then taking a leisurely stroll through the botans. Pro tip: if you go with a friend and you both can’t decide which bagel you want, get two different bagels and just swap halves. That way you get the best of both worlds. Bonus bonus points if you also get them to make the sandwiches with the top half of one bagel and the bottom half of another flavour, so you both end up with all the possible combinations of bagel. I’m sure this won’t be frustrating for them at all.
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San Francisco's road cone activists
Recently, the activist group Safe Street Rebel has been targeting self-driving cars that they feel are gumming up the city and are representative of an overall power imbalance between residents and corporate interests. They’ll wait until a self-driving car comes to a stop, then quickly run up to the car and place a traffic cone on its hood. This freaks out the car’s safety procedures, causing it to set off alarms and freeze until someone is dispatched to fix the problem. Recent news coverage has put them in the sights of law enforcement. Show our comrades that their efforts are not in vain, and put a road cone on someone’s bonnet to show your solidarity.
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People who say they’d prefer to find a nazi uniform over a gimp suit in their grandfather’s attic – yes, we’re talking to you
What the fuck, frankly. Someone recently asked me this question and I was gobsmacked to learn that there are actually some people in the world who would prefer to find a LITERAL NAZI UNIFORM in their grandfather’s attic than a gimp suit. Their argument against the gimp suit is apparently that they “don’t want to think about my granddad that way” - and, what, you’d be fine with your relative having been actively involved in attempted genocide? Are you joking? Grow up. Cancelled.