Nun vs. Algorithm: Who Wins?!
Happy Mother's Day! Also: Jello Salads???
Happy Mother’s Day to all you wonderful moms out there!
This week, the family group chat has been gripped by a dessert-related controversy. We have this dessert from childhood we all know as “Poo Pie,” but we can’t figure out where we got the name. It’s basically, like, Oreo Pie?
[Aunt Jill’s recipe: “1/2 gallon of Blue Bell Vanilla, one regular size Cool Whip, one bag of Oreo cookies. Crush cookies in Ziploc bag (beat w something) to your liking, soften ice cream, mix all together, pour into 9x13, and freeze. To serve, set a piece of Oreo on top.”]
What do YOU call that dessert? Please tell me if you call it Poo Pie!! 💩
Speaking of childhood desserts, I was in Houston recently at Grandma’s house, doing a little bedtime reading, perusing a 1995 Christmas Edition of Southern Living. There, amongst the DIY spangled table runners and handmade nativity ornaments was a monstrosity unique to the mid-20th Century called simply the Lemon-Cream Salad:
My finding prompted us the next day to take a deliciously disgusting detour into the spiritually unsettling American tradition of “Jello Salads.” Please enjoy this article [inexplicably, from Business Insider!] rounding up the worst recipes from an old-timey Jell-O Cookbook. Prepare to be GAGGED, but not in a good way like the kids say! [“Ring Around the Tuna”!? You’re not ready!]
So, let’s hear about it, friends: What is the weirdest food you remember from your childhood?
In the News
Speaking of dessert controversies…
🍨 Is ice-cream good for you? I mean, aside from the obvious moral, social, emotional, and spiritual salvation it brings to all who taste it, it may also be physically beneficial? [Check out Derek Thompson’s podcast about it.] My family had ice cream after dinner every night, so I’ll be peddling this piece of nonsensical science till I die!
💧IS IT WATER? The latest TikTok trend/controversy: #WaterTok. Where people make videos of how they create drinks by adding 0-calorie, sugar-free flavor packets to water and call it things like Magical Mermaid Water or Mountain Dew Water. I don’t want to be a Water Truther but, y’all…That’s not water! The Spirit of God did not hover over the waters of creation for THIS!? Am I wrong????
📸 A new video of JLo and Ben Affleck is tearing the Internet apart. It’s a video of them — are you ready?? — getting. in. a car.
tHe sCAnDaL!!! Ben opens the door for Jen, takes a look at the paparazzi taking the video and mouths “I think you’ve got it,” then slams the door in a gesture that clearly says, “I wish I had Brittney’s umbrella right now.”
I bring this up for one reason: The Very Online Males must be stopped! I don’t have to tell you that Bad Boyfriends Around the World [aka B*rstool Sp*rts] are twittering MADLY about what a NUISANCE wives are, misreading Ben’s doorslam as a response to JLo—rather than to the fact people with cameras never leave him alone. I mean, you really have to have a laser focus on hating women to see it that way?? [Plus, Ben Affleck Has Resting B*tch Face is the first rule of culture.]
Tired: Uninventive misogynist trolls. Wired: JLo’s jeans in that video! Also Wired: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon running a production company with unique profit-sharing model supporting their workers! Nice!
🎬 Tough news for Severance, Stranger Things, Yellowjackets, Abbott Elementary, ETCETERA fans. That’s just a shortlist of the shows that have shut down because of the writer’s strike. [Which might not exist if Ben Affleck were in charge? I didn’t say it, but I also DID say it!] Although Severance had its own headaches already with two showrunners who apparently hate each other and weren’t speaking! Playground behavior!
🎷 The new season of Queer Eye is out and it’s set in the magical city of New Orleans. Like any human being with eyes and a heart, I j’adore the new Queer Eye Fab Five, but I did skip out some episodes seasons because it was all feeling a bit rote. I’ve heard they’ve recaptured the magic this time and can’t wait to see if it’s true!
Watching - Mrs. Davis on Peacock
“The world was broken, but the algorithm fixed it.”
(Chekhov’s “The Algorithm Fixed It”! A presage of disaster!)
I feel such loving feelings toward this show. I am grateful to this show for existing!
About 48 minutes into the third episode of this zany, bizarre, trippy comedy, I found myself CRYING openly and freely on an airplane! [Full disclosure, I had had a can of wine and something about Betty Gilpin in that moment reminded me of my mom.]
It’s wild how eerily timely the show is. It’s been in the works for years, we must assume, and yet it specifically pinpoints the angst of this exact moment and the ChatGPT Panic slide we’re all in.
I was using ChatGPT for work the other day and discovered it was cheerily fabricating dozens of lies and selling them as facts. It’s called “hallucinating” — which is fair enough since AI doesn’t have intention the way we do. But there’s no way around the fact that it lies to us, and no one can really figure out why it’s prone to do that, or how it gets from Point A to Point Hallucination.
Mrs. Davis is about a world run by such an Algorithm. War and pain are gone. The AI has fixed everything and is basically God. But, our main characters ask, Is it?? Or does the Algorithm simply lie and tell us what we want to hear? As any good stories about technology and religion are really about, it’s about who we are as humans. What makes us need a God figure? What makes us need each other? It’s about our desire to be accepted, to belong, our need to feel safe, and our need to prove we are worthy of love.
And it’s also very, very funny. And Betty Gilpin, as always, is very, very good. [She’s the hot mean friend in GLOW, one of the best shows of all time.]
Again, I cannot emphasize enough that it’s NUTS. [Also, the first episode is rated Mature for “Violence” AND “Bloody Violence,” so you’ve been warned!!] You have to be ready for inventiveness, magical realism, imagination. It’s creators are Damon Lindelof of Lost, Watchmen, and The Leftovers, and Tara Hernandez, a writer for The Big Bang Theory. [Which I don’t like, but I love Mrs. Davis!]
I’d compare it to The Boys, but like if Salvador Dali was in charge of the art department. Or maybe a dash of Tarantino with a big splash of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Or, Watchmen but more cheeky and fun?
Final note: Betty Gilpin’s nun outfit? With the PANTS!? Get me IN THAT. Like, right now! TODAY!
Reading - Savannah James’ Interview in The Cut (yes, THAT “James”)
Savannah James — LeBron’s wife — gave what is for her extremely rare: An interview!
What fascinates me most about this piece is less about what it is, and more about what it isn’t.
It isn’t a profile, where the writer interviews and shadows the subject, talks to other people who know them, and then crafts their own take on that person. They didn’t get access to her home or her contacts. It isn’t very revealing about Savannah James as a person — beyond what she is willing to say.
But that in itself is why I love it — and why I so massively respect Savannah James and the persona, privacy, and protection she has built for her family. That’s the version of Savannah we get in the interview. The one who is very careful, very curated, very boundaried. The one who isn’t a comment reader. The one who has never responded publicly to any rumors about her family.
I just BOW to the strength and focus it takes to NOT RESPOND TO THE HATERS!!! She is a living monument to the Beyoncé line, “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.”
Anyways, this interview was a good read! She is careful, yes, but still shares some fun anecdotes, a few of which Ben [the LeBron disciple] had never heard!
I don't remember a ton of weird childhood foods but I do remember that when we used to get oreos I would take like six of those bad boys, scoop out all the icing, give the cookies to my brother, roll all that icing together into a ball and eat it like an apple.