What's IN/OUT this week

I spotted my first batch of out-of-town Lollapaloozers. I could tell because their outfits had a very club kid aesthetic — if your only exposure to clubbing is from TikTok videos of Charli xcx shows. Remember to hydrate!

IN: Italian volcano lemon juice! Each morning, after I brush my teeth, floss, and walk the dog, I drink a glass of warm water with lemon juice. Instead of blowing through bags of lemons, I started buying jars of 100% lemon juice (no, not this stuff) from the grocery store. I asked Dave to check if Costco carries any, and LO and behold… they do!!! What are volcano lemons, you ask? They’re lemons for beautiful women with explosive personalities. “You'll feel transported to the rolling hills of Sicily every time you open the bottle.” Like I said, this is for Italian women who like to shout. OUT: That other European heat. These wildfires in Europe are heartbreaking — as they are anywhere. But I have to ask myself why this feels like a distinctly American problem, because I’m struggling to put in a European context. The fires should be burning tract homes not chateaus. (They should not be burning any homes anywhere, of course. Please don’t cancel me because of my suburb opinions.)

IN: “People are tired of feeling like extras in someone else’s video.” Did I expect to side with the owner of a Nantucket antiques store this week? Not really. But he makes such a good and succinct point that The Cut made it the headline on its story, about how Nantucket has become overrun with content creators. The owner in question, John Sylvia, hung a sign in his store that reads “No Influencers.” One blogger explained the frustration being felt in Nantucket this way: “It’s been the preferred location for influencer marketing campaigns. Nantucket, as a concept, has gone viral.” The problem is not that the place is swarmed with tourists, it’s that these folks have been treating the town like a backdrop instead of a place to explore and experience. OUT: “[I]f you call yourself a feminist but proudly put up a ‘no influencers’ sign, it’s worth asking who you are attempting to delegitimize, and why.” This is a very bad take. Being bothered by people who only crowd your store or town “for the ‘gram” is not anti-women. People are bothered by the actions, which are self-centered — and every sex has proven its ability to do that.

IN: Music theory. A few years ago, I read Dilla Time, a book that’s one part J Dilla biography and one part music theory. I can’t say I was able to easily wrap my head around the musicology of Dilla’s off-grid beats (although I love to listen to ‘em!), but it’s very cool to see how a certain sound can reverberate across artists and genres. So in that same vein, I was fascinated by musician Carl Martin’s breakdown of what he calls the “Gen Alpha melody.” Nate Sloan, a musicologist at the University of Southern California, told The Washington Post that this repeating, four-note melody — found in a shocking number of songs since 2010 — seems to reflect the “endless scroll” of content younger generations have always known, which may be why it appeals to them. No wonder younger folks keep falling in love with older music, it’s not that same damn melody again. OUT: How bizarre it sounds. I highly recommend watching Martin’s video, which explains his theory and offers a range of examples. I’m not saying music is stuck, per se (we’ve seen patterns in music history before), but it’s pretty wild to think that perhaps globalization has made music across genres and countries sound almost identical.

IN: Another good reason not to be on Substack. The publishing platform announced it will be flagging AI-generated writing… which almost sounds like a good thing! Let the backlash commence: “Some Substack users who use AI to help them write or edit articles say the new policy unfairly discriminates against them,” reports 404 Media, “while other users who don’t use AI in their writing at all are worried that Substack will mistakenly flag their writing as being AI generated and tarnish their reputation.” An imperfect solution to a very big problem. OUT: AI slop. The problem, realistically, is that AI slop has infiltrated so many arenas — music streaming platforms, newsletters, etc. — that it’s almost impossible to solve it at this late stage. I’m all for transparency and knowing if what I’m consuming is real or not, but we are trying to staunch the flood long after the gates were flung open. Lucky for you, my writing is so bizarre and sometimes poorly edited (oops!) that you can be certain that a human idiot is writing it. 

Tell me what you hated this week!