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Horny Jail Is Empty And All The Inmates Are Here
“Philharmonic? Don’t mind if we do!”
Friday was orgasm night at the L.A. Philharmonic’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, and only fans were in attendance.
“I saw the girl after it had happened, and I assume that she ... had an orgasm because she was heavily breathing, and her partner was smiling and looking at her — like in an effort to not shame her,” said [Molly] Grant, who works for a jewelry company and lives in Los Feliz. “It was quite beautiful.”
Of course someone got a recording of it. Honestly, good for them! For too long, orchestral performance has been no sex and all violins.
It feels like Spring finally hit this weekend, horny jail is empty and all the inmates are here. Puglia, Italy is in an uproar about its thicc mermaid, Sheera Frenkel got “skeets” into the New York Times (also the hellthread is already in Know Your Meme), and South Australia has a new tourism slogan:
Ok that last one’s a prank from a couple April Fool’s ago, but I needed three to make a trend. On one hand, skeet, skeet, motherfucker, but conversely “horniness levels, lowering.”
So that’s the good news. On the other hand, the June Atlantic cover is a doodle of Zelensky by Bono. Jeffery Goldberg explains:
Not long ago, [Bono] told me that he sometimes redesigned and reimagined Atlantic covers on his iPad. I was, as you might imagine, curious about this hobby, and I asked to see his sketches. They were very good. I suggested that he make an actual Atlantic cover.
Elahe Izadi has more about Bono’s extremely normal hobby in The Washington Post. “‘He just walks around with an iPad and sketches everything,’ Goldberg recalled.” Someone should study why Bono doing literally anything is automatically annoying, it’s remarkable. Anyone else could walk around sketching on an iPad and I’d be like “ok, seems fine.” But Bono? Absolutely not.
After a year in remission the semi-legendary Tabs Internship Program is back. I dug up the new intern intro doc in my Google Drive and was surprised to find that I make Interns write something every day? Seems like a lot, tbh. But joining us this month and apparently unafraid of the schedule is May Intern Camille Butera:
Hi everyone! It’s a bit wild to be on the writing side of things, instead of the reading side, but here goes:
For my MSc, I looked at social norms in subcommunities—basically, fandom drama on Twitter and how the design of the platform impacted the scope and form of interpersonal issues that arose. I'm fascinated by internet enigmas, weird niche rabbit holes, and whatever is going on with fandom. In my freelance work I've written about digital hauntings, online art competitions, and video games that have made me cry, and one time I interviewed Chuck Tingle.
My standard bio tagline is that I've always wanted to be an ornamental hermit, which describes how I exist online—deep in the thick of it, but probably not setting fires. I was told recently that I‘m too online when I started trying to explain the complexities and drama around poll brackets on Twitter, but I think it's important to capture. What is most of modern life but niche forum drama?
You can generally expect me to write about fandom lore, platform design’s impact on how we engage with social media, and my recent rabbit holes (lately I’ve been reading through Wiktionary pages of archaic words??).
Finally you can find me on Twitter, while it lasts, @hedgefruit!
—Camille Butera just will not leave those rabbits alone
Welcome to the class of ‘23, Intern Camille, and I know you’ll prove to be more than just ornamental. I know what she’s writing about tomorrow and it’s certainly… some kind of mental, anyway.
Monday Reads:
Erin Kissane wrote the best thing I’ve read about the difference between Bluesky and Mastodon, and why one feels like a fun time with pals and the other feels like “soysage and unsalted soup.” McKay Coppins profiled Kyrsten Sinema and found out the reason it doesn’t seem like she has any ideological through line to her votes:
I ask her if there’s any ideological through line at all that explains the various votes she’s taken in the Senate. She thinks about it before answering, “No.”
Neat! I’m so sorry that Gen X turned out like this. John Herrman is always worth reading but especially so on Ben Smith’s book and the latter day media’s persistent but mistaken belief that tech will save it, then via social traffic, now via AI. Tabs Senior Contributing Editor and Intern Emeritus Bijan Stephen wondered what social media even is now: is it social or are we just creating content? And in Defector David Roth wrote a much better response to the American Prospect Tucker Carlson story than TAP’s own response without even mentioning them, which is straight up disrespectful and I love it.
Misc.
Dark Brandon is real. Luke Winkie to Slate. Twitter is Going Great calls it quits after nearly 300 entries: Twitter Has Gone Great. May they get some well-deserved rest and cop a Bluesky invite soon. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife Jane “made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms” starting when her husband took his seat, reports Mattathias Schwartz in Insider. The conservatives of the Roberts court will go down as historically corrupt, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving gang of grifter scumbags. “I asked AI to reimagine all 32 NFL mascots and that may have been a serious mistake.”
Today’s Song: Poppy (feat. Grimes lol), “Play Destroy”
Everyone please follow Intern Camille but don’t be weird about it. If you’re here for the first time because Intern Camille said you should see her new writing gig, I’m very sorry. I would say it’s not always like this but that would be a lie. Finally, I picked the song today and Music Intern Sam would like to say that Poppy is “brilliant,” but “I don't care for Grimes.” Relatable! I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday.
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