Carrot Cake is BetterHelp Cold

Yale’s secret societies have gone woke.

Meltdown May struck again yesterday when Alison Roman sent out a newsletter that looks destined to become a classic. In “Carrot Cake Is Better Cold,” Roman presents a cold carrot cake recipe along with two different versions of the prefatory essay required to wrap the recipe in copyrightable intellectual property: first a normal one, where she tells you this carrot cake tastes good cold, then a Meltdown May remix where she tells you she’s having an “existential crisis” about “how tired I am of talking about myself and the things I do,” and also that the carrot cake tastes good cold.

I was nodding right along, because who hasn’t felt that tension between just wanting to sell your product or creative work, but being required by the inexorable demands of the attention economy to also sell yourself? Then I hit the kicker:

Screenshot from the newsletter: “Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this week’s episode of Home Movies. Let BetterHelp connect you to a therapist who can support you—all from the comfort of your own home. Visit https://betterhelp.com/alison, or choose Alison Roman during sign up, and enjoy a special discount on your first month.”

Got ‘em. Alison Roman, you’re the best to ever do it and don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise.

Also Today in Meltdown May: Terrence Howard went on Joe Rogan and reinvented the four dimensional time cube. New Joe BernsteinLook at These Weirdos: Israel-Palestine Conflict Edition” dropped, and apparently Yale’s secret societies have gone woke. The majority of Americans believe in the exact opposite of a whole array of current economic facts. And John Herrman argues that “The Scarlett Johansson Incident Makes OpenAI Look Desperate.”

illumi posted: “thank you google ai, very cool” above a screenshot of the AI answer to a google search for “which us president went to uw-madison” which claims, among others, that Andrew Johnson earned 14 degrees there between 1947 and 2012, and JFK graduated six times, between 1930 and 1993.

I am legit losing my mind about the Google AI answers.

Jason Diamond went for a walk in Brooklyn in the general vicinity of “The Bear” actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach. I’m gonna need a fact check on this lede that claims someone was selling coke in person in Cobble Hill Park circa 2004.

In the New York Times Kirsten Grind profiled RFK Jr.’s running mate Nicole Shanahan, who appears to somehow be the horniest person in a presidential race that already included Donald Trump.

At [a Miami] party, Elon Musk and Ms. Shanahan took ketamine, a popular party drug that is legal with a prescription, and disappeared together for several hours, according to four people briefed on the event and documents related to it. Ms. Shanahan later told Mr. Brin that she had had sex with Mr. Musk, three of the people said. She also relayed the details to friends, family and advisers.

“Advisers?” Girl, wyd. Meanwhile RFK Jr. aped into Gamestonk in a shameless play for some of the lowest hanging fruit left on the idiot tree.

Humane, maker of one of the two recent disappointing AI wearable pins, thinks it can find someone to buy it for a billion dollars. Hardware that doesn’t work and no one liked using, and A.I. rented from OpenAI? Sure, that could be worth anything. Let’s just say numbers. One squillion. Whee, this is fun.

Max Tani tweeted that Washington Post CEO Will Lewis said “the paper lost $77 million over the past year.” At this rate, Jeff Bezos can only afford to fund it for another two thousand six hundred years. Obviously the answer is to have “AI everywhere in our newsroom.“

Brendel posted “*everyone posting screengrabs of them asking AI who the President of France is and getting a recipe for spaghetti made with bleach in return* Person in charge of the Washington Post: this gives me a great idea for journalism”

Vivek Ramaswamy Acquires Activist Stake in BuzzFeed.” Who cares. Mayor Adams did some more weird and crooked stuff. Yawn. “Large amount of meat dumped on Ohio road.” Now THAT is interesting news. The Columbus Dispatch’s Mariyam Muhammad is On It: “Meat pile dumped on the side of the road in Washington County, Ohio. Here's what we know.” Stay tuned for Ohio Meat Pile updates on the hour.

Until then, here’s…

Today’s Song: 2070, “Lagan”

I scrolled back a ways in the DMs from Music Intern Sam and discovered this Slint-esque gem, which currently has twenty seven views on YouTube. I have no idea how he finds these things.

Tabs will be off until Tuesday! And then it’s our last week! I am low-key freaking out. Please use the long weekend to practice not having Tabs anymore at all for the rest of the year, while I hike.