Happy Friday!
The latest instalment of my reading diary was, thank god, less embarrassing than June’s effort, although I am beginning to contemplate a world where there are no more Agatha Christies left to conquer. What is the closest analogue—short page-turners with a strong central character? (I’ve read all the Peter Wimseys.)
Any suggestions welcome; I don’t really fancy any of those modern crime thrillers where the cover is a bloodied arm under a street lamp.
Helen
MrBeast’s Payday Loans
Certainly, I’m still in the hole. As I write this, I owe $359.96 to Cleo, $31.99 to Albert, $62.99 to Brigit, and $86.12 to Dave. I also, hauntingly, owe thirty bucks to MrBeast. Technically, I owe this money to Step, the payday loan app MrBeast acquired earlier this year to “give millions of young people the financial foundation I [MrBeast] never had.” Currently boasting seven million users, the app really does offer savings accounts for teens, but a quick look at its interface reveals this as a kind of front: “Step EarlyPay,” available to users of all ages, is clearly the core product here. As far as I can tell, MrBeast is the only celebrity to buy a digital lender outright, but it cannot be long before Clavicular, Woah Vicky, et al. are collectively skimming a sizable percentage of Americans’ paychecks.
Daniel Kolitz, author of the Harper’s “gooning” article, used to do SEO copywriting, but that got destroyed by ChatGPT. Now he relies on payday loan apps to survive between freelance payments.
They sound . . . utterly dystopian, something that is made worse by many of them having cutesy friendly names like Cleo and Albert. “The good news is that being an influencer isn’t the only job left: You can also write gags for Cleo. The company apparently employs no fewer than fifteen comedy writers to punch up the ‘roasts’ offered by its personal finance chatbot.” In no world do I wish to be roasted by a personal finance chatbot.
Quick Links
“Even before the changes, Prince Alois could veto legislation, dismiss the government, dissolve parliament, appoint judges and reject laws approved by referendum. In June, the Catholic prince said he would veto a citizens’ initiative to legalise abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, even if voters backed it.” Liechtenstein’s royal family have a lot more power than ours. Also their hereditary prince would be King of England if the Jacobite rebellion had succeeded. (Financial Times, £)
Please enjoy this Robin Ince poem about me, which manages to be cheerfully libellous (“The real worry ? / What if their racial supremacy / Crumbles with true diversity?”); factually inaccurate (Ian wasn’t even present for the Page 94 section on Jason Arday he’s complaining about); and, like Will Self, bafflingly angry that a woman might buy shoes with her salary from journalism. Given that Glinner hates me with equal ferocity from the opposite direction, I think I might be the apex predator of centrism. Like an orca, but with unexpectedly deep technical knowledge of the Equality Act.
“And then there are the increasing numbers of copycat covers, so that every cosy crime novel suddenly looks like Richard Osman’s bestsellers – cream background, coloured border, hand-lettering – and all heartwarming Japanese books have to feature a cat. (At his last publishing house, says Gwyn Jones, for Japanese fiction “there was this unspoken imperative to put a cat on the cover even if there wasn’t a major role for a cat in the book. It did seem to make a difference.”)” John Self on how publishers sell books (Guardian).
‘Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff who served as defense minister under Mr. Netanyahu until 2016, recently likened the ideology of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of World War II Germany. “What is Jewish supremacy?” Mr. Ya’alon, long considered a security hawk, recently said on Ynet, an Israeli news site. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, ‘Mein Kampf’ in reverse. The master race is us.”’ More and more people are speaking out on the extremism of the West Bank settlers, including several Israelis who are quoted here in such strong terms that they would violate the IHRA guidelines on antisemitism (New York Times, gift link).
That’s all for now, see you next time!
Robin’s poetry has a strong Titania McGrath vibe.
The hypocrisy of Ince continues to astound me. "Be nice! Support women! (Not those b1tches!)"