grass touching privilege

i know it sounds really funny and like a joke

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by your best friend erin griffith

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Friends, hi! Some random fun stuff:

🌿🌿🌿 There’s a new app called Touch Grass, which is designed to help people with “content overdose.” It works by blocking your most distracting other apps until you show proof of your hand literally touching a real life patch of grass. (You can pay for skips.)

It’s a cute idea, and potentially more effective in reminding people of why they wanted to turn on such a self-control system anyway. As far as I can tell most people just override Apple’s built-in timers till they eventually become annoyed, give up and remove them.

We have all wanted to tell a too-online person to go touch some grass. Now you can tell yourself! But please keep in mind this all-timer tweet from last year.

Before you reach down and feel those soft green blades, could you please check your “being able to go anywhere” privilege?

While we’re on grass, if anyone knows of a solid dupe for the 1990’s Gap Grass candles (NOT the garbage 2021 re-issue), please share. Bottles of the body spray are going for $250 on eBay.

📚📚📚 I read Careless People in roughly 24 hours with my jaw on the ground. The author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook for seven years (2011-2017), rising to become the director of global public policy. She accuses the company’s leaders of lying, including to Congress and the world. A lot of the most astonishing whistleblower-y revelations related to Facebook’s role in the genocide in Myanmar and its attempts to get into China have been reported on in various forms over the years. It’s easy to forget or file away these stories and assume they got resolved. Reading it all in one place from an insider’s point of view is striking. There are also lots of very juicy and gossipy details from Mark and Sheryl’s private jets, etc. (I enjoyed a subplot featuring my favorite board game, Ticket to Ride.)

For its part, Meta has said a bunch of the stuff in the book is false and also got a judge to put a gag order to stop the author from promoting it, based on violations of her NDA. That naturally Streisand-effected me into checking it out. Looks like I’m not alone!

Steven Levy at Wired also had a smart take on the book, Meta’s response to it, and the general idea of fact-checking.

Next up: Me, But Better by one of my favorite writers at the Atlantic, Olga Khazan.

🤖🤖🤖 Finally, an AI meme from Shalini Singh:

Commenters noted she forgot DeepSeek:

Important Business Matters

Startup everyone’s into: “Apps?”

Startup everyone’s over: SpaceX?

Reason to go on living: The New Yorker staff’s support for the diaeresis is “overwhelming.”

Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: The news is forbidden.

Latest crush: The next iPhone will be the “Air, which reminds me too much of the iPod Invisa.

Latest heartbreak: An egg & cheese is now $8 in NYC.

Latest cope: Cybertruck owners.

Latest thing the kids are into: Gambling on illegal prediction markets! A great profile of Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan.

Latest thing the olds are into: Flip-flopping on crypto.

a dall-e summary of this newsletter:

guys i think the AI missed the point of touching grass

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