Cultural Consumption Digest

This edition of Croning is about some stuff I like right now. Maybe you will like it, too. This is a free issue, so please share!

I haven’t watched the Hulu adaptation of Nightbitch and I probably won’t—I am guessing the fantastic elements just won’t work for me on the screen—but I freaking loved this book. Rachel Yoder does a terrific job of capturing the ways in which caring for a baby can be dehumanizing. Her solution? Going fully feral. Like motherhood itself, this book is weird, funny, and emotionally complicated.

Bonus! My Favorite Reads of 2024

Taylor Lorenz’s “Why Democrats won't build their own Joe Rogan” is one of the best rebuttals to a suggestion we heard over and over and over again during the last election. She comes at it from an economic and structural angle, but I think there’s a cultural argument to be made as well and that argument is this: There cannot be a “liberal Joe Rogan,” if “liberal” includes things like respect for expertise, critical thinking, the capacity to learn from new information, and, you know, belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings. All of these things are antithetical to Joe Rogan’s whole schtick and therein lies his appeal. He’s a “do your own research” guy. He's a “just asking questions” guy. He is a kneejerk contrarian who thinks that automatically disagreeing with anything “woke” makes him a smart guy and offending the “woke” is proof that he’s right. Asking for a liberal Joe Rogan is like asking for a liberal Ben Shapiro or a liberal Alex Jones or a liberal Andrew Tate.

The opposite of Joe Rogan is someone like Michael Hobbes. Yes, he’s a debunker, but he is a debunker of people who serve up stupid takes dressed up as smart takes. He's also a self-described “data queen” whose idea of a good time is a day spent on Google Scholar. Or the hosts of 5 - 4, “the podcast about why the Supreme Court sucks.” They are actual lawyers who spend an hour and some change dissecting shitty rulings and explaining in great detail why they suck. They are contrarians in that they have zero respect for what was, until recently, one of the last American institutions people actually respected, but they bring receipts.

If people who listened to Joe Rogan listened to Maintenance Phase or 5 - 4 or If Books Could Kill or Culture Study or whatever, they would not be Joe Rogan listeners—or at least they wouldn’t be Joe Rogan believers. But there is no easy, sophomoric, “do your own research,” “just asking questions” way of explaining, for example, why trans girls should be playing on girls’ sports teams—the example I use because I have, myself, had to walk a few liberal and progressive friends step-by-step through this one. And, of course, the “do your own research,” “just asking questions” people—and also the “it’s just common sense” people and the homophobes—are the reason why we have to explain why trans girls should be on girls’ sports teams in the first place.

Bonus! The New Yorker’s candidate for a liberal Joe Rogan is another good argument for why such a creature cannot exist. This piece is almost a parody of a New Yorker piece.

True story: I touched Perry Farrell’s foot when Jane’s Addiction played Peabody’s Down Under in the Flats1 on December 7, 1988. Another true story: Perry Farrell stepped on Croning contributor Kate’s head when she saw them play during the same tour in Portland. This was the year before we would both go to Bryn Mawr and become BFFs.

Anyway, Perry Farrell’s recent difficulties inspired me to listen to the band for the first time in a long time and, damn, Nothing’s Shocking is a good record. I had somehow forgotten how heavy they are. I was most assuredly not a Led Zeppelin fan in high school–like Rush, they were for boys who read Ayn Rand–but I sure do hear Zepp now, as well as The Doors, in addition to the obvious punk influences. Also, if you would have asked me a few weeks ago if there were horns on this album I would have laughed, but there they are on “Idiots Rule.” (I had not forgotten about the steel drums on “Jane Says.”)

Bonus! As is so often the case, there is a woman hidden in the background, and that woman is Casey Niccoli. Last summer, she wrote about her erasure when the sculpture she created with Farrell for the cover of Ritual de lo Habitual was unearthed from a storage facility.

Have you seen this? If you haven’t, it’s definitely worth 5 minutes of your time. In making his pitch for “free speech,” Mark Zuckerberg singles out gender as one of two topics where Meta’s content policies are “out of touch with mainstream discourse.” As of today, Meta has made it explicit that it’s cool with attacks on queer people. Referring to women as property is also fine.

It blows my mind that anyone would use Twitter as a business model, but I don’t think this is about money. I think that social media is becoming a loss leader for people like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. If inciting violence against women and LGBTQ folks is the cost of securing some sweet, sweet federal contracts, well… Maybe this is what we should have expected from a guy who got his start making a site to rate women and someone who’s trans daughter has disowned him. Anyway, I am currently planning my exodus from Facebook.

Bonus! Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah had a conversation with Meta’s “Black AI character.” It did not go well.

My good buddy and brewing mentor Bob just took a trip to New Mexico and brought me back a souvenir: a can of Scenic West Hazy IPA from Bow & Arrow Brewing Company. Bob knows I love an IPA. He also knew that I would really love drinking a beer from a brewing founded and owned by an Indigenous woman. I don’t know how to talk about beer like real beer people talk about beer and I am still learning about which hops taste like what, but it’s the hint of pine needles that sets this apart for me.

Bonus! As Michigan winter sets in for real, I find that the occasional hot toddy in the evening really hits the spot. My approach is extremely simple: Hot water, a splash of whiskey, and the juice of half a lemon. However, I have discovered that a dollop of Spicy Ginger Syrup from Portland Syrups is a lovely addition, and tasty enough that the whiskey becomes optional.