of astronomers and cancelations

a culture recap

I’m still working on my Portugal travel diary, but what we’re doing today is a little recap of the last week or so, including cultural happenings and media I’ve consumed. Mostly, I didn’t want to dedicate an entire newsletter to the Astronomer cheating thing, and there were a couple of other little tidbits (the Colbert situation and recent movies) I wanted to spend some time on.

And why not? It’s my time, after all, and hopefully a bit of yours. Let’s dive in.

Of scandals

Of course I was going to write about the Astronomer CEO and his head of HR and Chris Martin's penchant for situational comedy. You think I wasn't??? I run a culture newsletter and in my previous life, regularly posted skits around public figures publicly misbehaving. Like, the material was there. It was.

Like, 153 million views is crazy work.

But then I thought about part of the reason why I stopped doing my little skits, which was the impulse, nearly impossible to shut off, to react immediately to things that were, frankly, at the end of the day, none of my business. This is something I still go back and forth on, to be clear, and I don't mean to sound like I've cracked the code somehow. Oh, look, I finally know what I’m supposed to care about now, ethically-speaking. No. Because Culture™ is so broadly defined, isn't it? How does one decide when something is relevant to and worth discussing re cultural trends and when it is simply an individual's private business? Slopes, slippery, etc.

Obviously I think someone who leads a billion-dollar company and decides to cheat on his spouse with his head of hu-man-re-sourc-es at a Coldplay concert in Boston is taking nonchalance to a level that goes against the public good. I do think that. And yes, I, too, shared and liked the memes. There were so many memes, and life can be so tedious. But—and this is where distinctions come in—do I think it worthwhile to encourage this sort of constant policing and surveilling of each other's private behavior, to tune into multiple video angles and old footage and Facebook profiles and private addresses? Isn’t it odd to behave in this way?

Please do not misunderstand: I do not want to suppress Chris Martin's buoyant MC qualities, in fact I think they should be actively fostered, but at what cost to the upholding of a modicum of privacy in society?

Because no, I'm not defending these two people specifically, largely because never have I seen two people react more poorly to a bad situation, but I think it's very strange that half the world now feels free to involve ourselves in an affair between two strangers, all because they were caught on camera. The Astronomer CEO is not the head of a nation state, after all. And yes, his board should—and did—respond accordingly to his unprofessional behavior given who he was having an affair with, but must we get involved? I like having fun as much as the next person, fun that for me, personally, thank you very much, does not involve cheating on significant others, and the idea that one day I will be filmed with nary a hint of context and have to deal not just with the personal repercussions but that of the internet's and its many uninformed conclusions? It's scary. I don't love the pull toward surveillance. (

Tell the Bees

wrote about this quite artfully yesterday.)

This has been reported and studied ad nauseam and I won’t have anything new to say, but we can’t bemoan Gen Z’s inability (and unwillingness) to have fun in public one moment and turn around to eagerly and widely mock two strangers’ systemically insignificant personal failings the next. We can’t be out here acting like factors are mere correlations when we know damn well they’re causations.

The thing is, we’re all going to fuck up at some point. Some of us will do so outside of the confines of our homes. Why should we also have to worry about how these inevitable mistakes will be perceived and judged by complete and utter strangers? It’s madness.

Unrelated photo but I took it last week on one of my many little walks and isn’t the light nice?

Of cancelations

Sure, I preferred Stephen Colbert back when he was doing his satirical Report on Comedy Central, but—but—that doesn't matter. It should not matter. Some of you are missing the forest for the trees, I fear. It is insane that days after he called out CBS' parent company Paramount's $16 million settlement to Donald Trump as little more than a bribe to the current administration, CBS has announced that his show, one of the most popular late night iterations judging by a variety of metrics including how often my parents bring him up, is canceled. Like, I don't care for the purity tests people seem to be running re Colbert—yeah, he could be a lot better on issues such as Palestine; we can and should and will keep calling that out—when it looks like one of late night's most popular figures is getting punished by his network's owner for criticizing their complicity in this administration's corruption. That's not a great sign for the state of our democracy, babes. It's fine to be unequivocal about that.

Interrupted my usual cereal/pasta/sandwiches rotation to have this gorgeous little pizza last week.

Of films

I watched a couple of new films recently: Köln 75 and Superman, both (2025). The former is the story of how Keith Jarrett’s famous solo concert in Cologne in 1975 (get it?) came to be. As someone who knew maybe embarrassingly little about Jarrett, this film served as an introduction to a longer, deeper dive on the jazz musician, his life, and his artistic output. I’ll admit: for a second—a significant second—I was confused sitting in my little movie theater seat watching this movie, because the actor playing Jarrett was Greta Lee’s husband in Past Lives (John Magaro, if you’re actually looking for a name), and I had been under the impression that Jarrett was a Black man. Well. Well. He was, apparently, famously not.

‘You have to be black,’ free saxophonist Ornette Coleman once told him. To which Keith Jarrett, whose parents were white, replied, ‘I know, I know, I’m working on it.’ (Pan African Music)

Deeply unfortunate misconception on my account, because it took me out of the narrative during the second half of the movie, which was honestly quite nice! A bit all over the place, sure, but I can almost believe that was intentional—the sort of pleasant cacophony of free jazz, the kind Jarrett played, that forces you to pay attention.

Köln 75 (2025).

I’m a sucker, though, for history-of-the-moment films: did any of you watch The Concert (2009), a Russo-French movie about a (fictional) concert put on by long-fired, former (and endearingly mischievous) Bolshoi classical musicians in Paris, starring Mélanie Laurent before we all knew who she was? I saw it in theaters with my brother, grandma, and uncle in Uruguay on a very grey and very chilly weekday afternoon and every few months my brother or I will go like, “remember that random movie no one else has ever seen but us?” And we’ll Google it to make sure it ever existed at all.¹

Superman … was fine! After the last twenty-odd years of Marvel, I’ve generally reached a bit of a superhero saturation point, but I’d heard good things about this iteration of Clark Kent, and if there’s one thing I’m gonna do, it’s go to the movies and take part in The Discourse™. Silly not to, really. Was this film slightly disjointed? Yes. Is David Corenswet one of the best casting choices I’ve seen in recent history? Yes. Does the chemistry between Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan sizzle? Deeply, unequivocally, yes. Is Nick Hoult continuing to cement himself as a generational talent with each film he takes part in? Undeniably. Ultimately, these things are important things to me.

I find the “Superman is too woke” conversation very funny. Go read the news. Make yourself pasta. Add too much parmesan cheese. Stare at your reflection in the mirror and sound out the words “Superman is too woke” and realize how silly you look. Jesus.

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1. (It did.)