Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

Sorry it’s mostly YouTube because I have been really exhausted lately and reading only extremely long books people absolutely won’t read and watching movies.

>Number One<

Thrifting and Capitalism in the Modern Age

I’ve been thinking about clothes lately for a myriad of reasons so when I saw Shanspeare‘s video about thrifting it gave me some food for thought about the nature of the modern clothing industry during this time of the rising popularity of the thrift store. I grew up getting all my clothes from the thrift store (and outlet malls) and it’s been really interesting to see the shift in culture from something that I definitely got mocked for as a kid to something that teens today do to be cool.

>Number Two<

White Bread, Darling Devil of the Food World

White bread is a really interesting case study into how foods are often on a cycle in our lives if they’re in fashion or not. It can be really difficult to talk about food and its cultural impact but Andong does a pretty great job of it without getting too into the weeds with the nutrition or dietary value. His next video is a recipe for a (mostly) whole wheat version of sandwich bread if that’s more your speed.

>Number Three<

The Productivity Machine

I think productivity has probably been on everyone’s mind during this pandemic. For people who are working outside the home its how stress affects your productivity, for people working from home it might be how to maintain productivity in an environment that isn’t designed for it, and for people without jobs or school it might be worrying about how to maximize this time to improve yourself. Well clear it all off the table because this entire concept of “productivity” is not doing you any favors and hustle culture is slowly destroying your (or at least my) life. If you struggle with personal meaning and wanting to be a person who doesn’t need work to make you happy this video will probably make you cry – it made me cry at least.

>Number Four<

The 90s, Daria, and Generational Discord

As a person a little bit younger than Ian Danskin I started off kind of miffed at this video but if you just hang in the entire way it comes back around and then is really fantastic. It’s kind of about Daria and its kind of about how they wanted to do a Daria reboot (because mining nostalgia is a great way to make money these days) but its also kind of about how much the world has and hasn’t changed since Daria. I think it’s just really great and I’ve gone back and watched it again because I find it both really sad and comforting.

Full disclosure: I have rewatched Daria in the past few years and while some of it is good, it largely doesn’t really hold up for me. There are a few touching and interesting points but I kind of regretted putting energy into it rewatching the whole thing because it gets pretty bland pretty quickly though it does highlight that eras *vibe* really well.

>Number Five<

How to Be Hopeless.

This one hits like a truck so try and be in a good space when you watch it. Otherwise Carlos Maza said himself that this was basically his (current) magnum opus and that if he passes away they should just play it at his funeral. I kind of want this to be played at my funeral at this point. Like many people I have been struggling with the hopelessness of it all, not just because of the pandemic (though that is certainly not helping) but my own hopelessness internally in the form of mental illness and the external understanding that things in this world, no matter how hard we try, may never get better. There are a myriad of answers and ideas surrounding that feeling and you may even reject it and find hope and certainty in the world but this video was great in articulating something inside of me and it made me feel less alone in a way few things do.

Alright folks, that’s it for this month, see you next month!