Oh also: bonus posts are free now
Friendmendations is no longer publishing regularly, but you can follow the Friendmendations Instagram to keep up with any one-off updates like this one. The Spotify playlist is still here. Follow me on Twitter or on TikTok if you really miss me.
I announced the end of my newsletter and felt so emotional about the whole thing that it took me like three days to remember that I totally forgot to include an important logistical update.
Bonus posts! Remember them? They were an incentive to join the paid tier of my newsletter, which no longer exists. So I'm just making most of them public. (The ones that were particularly personal or contain potentially identifying information, like the Nemesis List posts or Tinder updates, will stay hidden. I'm also choosing not to display a few that just feel too salty for public consumption. Once-paying subscribers, if you still have those emails in your inbox, cherish them.)
I've gone through and organized the friendmendations.com archives so you can easily catch up on any bonus posts you may have missed – just explore the "bonus post" tag for stuff like a deep dive on Taylor Swift's belated maturation, a bunch of joke tweets from fake accounts that several readers assumed were real, some guesses about Disney+ content, and ideas for shirts. You can now access the entire Fall Out Boy Music Club archives! If you want to!
Everything else is tagged by subject too, so go wild perusing the music or movies tags or whatever else tickles your fancy.
You know what? For old time's sake, here are some recs. Now that I'm not wasting all my time working on the newsletter, I'm finding so much good stuff for a newsletter. (I think I'll start throwing these on the Friendmendations Instagram stories? As little quick recs?)
- Dan Brooks writes so perfectly about the sanity-melting experience of being alive today, while the world collapses around you but society continues as if that's not happening. His Trump coverage was always a welcome, perfectly articulated balm, and his piece for Gawker, "The Joe Manchin Trolley Problem," exactly describes the level of despair I'm at constantly re: politics and climate change. Namely that I want to [redacted] a [redacted] and see if resorting to [redacted] could actually cause change. I don't know how to say that at Thanksgiving when asked about my political beliefs, but I also don't know how everyone's not thinking that always.
- I made these pumpkin muffins and they're one of the best and easiest muffin recipes I've ever tried; I'd use salted butter in the pecan streusel though
- Why Harvard’s Asian Student Arts Project decided to perform “Legally Blonde: The Musical” with an all-Asian cast – SUCH a good read on diversity and creativity in the theatre
- "Please Come And Be Fat" by S. Bear Bergman
- Andrea Long Chu is one of the best writers currently working, and her profile of Emily Ratajkowski is fascinating
- HIGHLY recommend "How Succession Makes Wealth Look Miserable" by Alison Herman for Ringer!!
Oh, Friendmendations, I just don't know how to quit you. I'm physically restraining myself from writing a thinkpiece about Red (Taylor's Version) but perhaps I'll finish my other writing goals for this week and indulge this terrible impulse. If not... uh.... happy Thanksgiving, and talk to you.... sometime.