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plus greta thunberg’s big boss moment
We’ve officially entered spooky season, which is (in my humble opinion) one of the greatest times of year. 👻🎃 Eat as many candies and chocolates as you want, just don’t forget to brush ya teeth afterward or else they might fall out… and no one wants that. We got jack-o’-lanterns at home, ok?
With that PSA out of the way, we’ve got a collection of spicy stories in store. They’re all about politics (Trump’s war on the left included), culture (Bad Bunny’s SNL clapback went hard), social change (details from a leaked document about COP30!! scandal!!!), and tech news (Bitcoin is booming… yes, again), and much more!
Let’s go babyyyyy.
🍊 piecing together politics
US president Donald Trump is taking new, major steps to criminalise being anti-Trump in America. According to the orange blob, this involves opposing things like capitalism, Christianity, the US government, traditional American views on family, religion, or morality. It’s clear that, in Trump’s second term, the default position of the federal government is that any speech he and his minions do not appreciate can be classified as ‘pro-terrorism,’ or material support for such things. That said, targeting people based on their political viewpoint continues to be illegal under America’s first amendment protections for free speech and freedom of assembly. Despite pretending as if he’s the most anti-cancel culture / pro-free speech president in history, it’s hard not to see that Trump is keen to to shut down any person that criticises or disagrees with him.
A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it – guardian
In this essay Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization and daughter of two Palestinians, explains why the idea of a ‘two state solution’ and the negotiation processes around it has historically shielded from view Israel’s violent occupation of Palestine and entirely evaded Palestinian’s right to self-determination, while ignoring the Nakba – the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Buttu writes about her own involvement in striving for Palestinian statehood, and why renewed plans for forming one is veering dangerously close to repeating history by making the same mistake of not involving actual Palestinians in the process. As it stands, current plans allow Israel to control the parameters of Palestinian life and governance, ultimately allowing the occupation to continue, and blocking long-sought freedom and autonomy of the Palestinian people.
😎 culture corner
Fresh off the news that he’d be headlining the Super Bowl LX in February, Bad Bunny appeared as a guest on Saturday Night Live. In his monologue, Bad Bunny mocked the right-wing backlash around his set being performed almost entirely in Spanish. He pieced together critical clips from Fox News hosts so that they said ‘Bad Bunny. Is. My favourite. Musician. And he should be the next. President.’ After expressing that he’s very much looking forward to performing at the event in February, he sent a message of love and encouragement to the Latinos and Latinas everywhere, before signing off in English: ‘And if you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.’ Ha!
What is a ‘swag gap?’ – thred
Wake up babe, a new form of overthinking about love and relationships just dropped. It’s called the ‘swag gap’ – which refers to relationships in which one person makes significantly more effort to look good than the other, usually by way of their fashion choices. Prime examples offered are Hailey and Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez and her new husband Benny Blanco. On social media, the debate around ‘swag gap’ relationships is spreading like wildfire, with some saying that couples should definitely be on a similar level in terms of caring about their style and self-image. Others say that different approaches (or overall GAF level) to aesthetic can be healthy. Is the emergence of the ‘swag gap’ conversation indicative of Gen Z’s superficial mentality toward love, reflecting our obsession with personal branding, unfair expectations, and emphasis on surface-level traits? Or are couples aligned in their fashion and appearance consciousness more likely to last?
🌟 social change
According to a leaked document procured by Euronews, EU countries are preparing to double a 2019 payment for those countries most affected to adapt their economies to climate change at the upcoming COP30. The offer is expected to be one of the key negotiations at the UN climate summit in Brazil. This year’s event will see world leaders will discuss how to mitigate climate change more effectively, while hopeully formalising the Global Goal on Adaptation – an agreement by wealthy nations to share the financial burden of adapting to the impacts of a warmer world. The document states that EU leaders support tools to help weather a just transition to make up for lost jobs and disrupted communities due to the shift away from fossil fuels and high-carbon industries. Based on past COP events, we won’t get our hopes up too much, but the doubling of funding does sound good, even if Global South nations are pushing for a tripling of it.
Greta Thunberg gives first public speech since Israeli kidnapping – canary
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke publicly for the first time on Monday after being released from an Israeli prison and later deported, along with 171 others partaking in the Global Sumud Flotilla, an aid convoy bound for Gaza. Speaking to reporters, Thunberg said: ‘I could talk for a long time about the mistreatment and violations we faced in prison—believe me. But that is not the story. Let me be very clear: there is a genocide going on in front of our very eyes, a live-streamed genocide. No one has the privilege to say we are not aware of what’s happening. No one in the future will be able to say we did not know.’ She continued by saying that Israel is ‘continuing to worsen and escalate their genocide and mass destruction with genocide of intent, attempting to erase an entire population, an entire nation in front of you.’
