Hello s*o*m*e*bodies,
When I started this project in 2020, I named it “some newsletter” because I felt there was already a glut of newsletters, and mine was just another drop in the bucket.
Like so many other times in my life, I called it way too early. It is clear that we are NOW, in 2024, at the newsletter zenith, specifically here on Substack. Just look at the awful bloat of features they’ve added in the last six months. I’m not terribly confident in the long-term (decade-plus) success of Substack, Pateron, and this model of idea-sharing where we all trade each other five dollars back and forth forever, but that’s an essay for another time.
My original concept for s*o*m*e* newsletter, hatched in the dog days of lockdown summer 2020, was to break out of algorithmic recommendations and get some human taste going again. I wasn’t the only person with this idea… A vast swath of today’s Substack landscape is “recommendation” newsletters, the fraternal twin equally popular “shopping” newsletters.
I felt dumb, and I gave up. I didn’t go hard enough on my vision, per usual, and other people did it better. But when it doesn’t feel exciting, it can’t be done. It just can’t!
I don’t know what the future of this little newsletter will be, but I’m done overthinking it. I feel creative and free for the first time in a long time. This week, s*o*m*e* newsletter is a return to form, being random with my oomfies.
𝒮𝒾𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓁𝓎,
Nicola
Romanticize your screen time in grayscale
Ooooh don’t hate me too much, but I can not stand conversations about being helpless to phone addiction because I simply do not find it that difficult to moderate my screen time. Did you know that you can turn your phone off and put it in a drawer?
My whole thing is: I really don’t want to be pudding-brained, socially inept, in cosmetic medical debt, and whatever else excessive phone/social media use does to one over decades of exposure. (This is pretty much what Attention Recession, my podcast with Jaz, is all about.)
We all know the apps have been designed to be as engaging as possible so that we’ll spend as much time on them as possible — one way to turn down the stimulation is with grayscale, which also has the benefit of making all of your screen time look very chic. Here is how to do it on the iPhone:
Settings → Accessibility → Display → Color Filters → Toggle this on and select Grayscale
To make it really easy to turn on and off, you can add the accessibility shortcut to the control center:
Settings → Control Center → Drag “Accessibility Shortcuts” to “Included Controls”
Welcome to the gorgeous life!
Brow wax with Stephanie at Skkn Esthetics
Skkn Esthetics, a Bushwick nail/brow/lashes salon, opened at the foot of the Kosciusko J not long after Kim Kardashian debuted Skkn by Kim. I grinned big when I saw the glossy white storefront with gold SKKN lettering, my imagination conjuring a world where Ms. Kardashian sourced this unlikely location on the Bushwick/Bed Stuy border as a testing ground for Skkn by Kim’s brick-and-mortar retail efforts or, even better, spa treatments.
Of course, it’s just a regular neighborhood nail salon, but there is at least one star at Skkn Bushwick, and it is Stephanie. I went in for a $15 brow wax, expecting to be indiscriminately spackled and stripped, out the door. Stephanie took her time mapping, trimming, waxing, and tweezing my brows at a level of service I’ve had very few times before and paid, like, $50–$100 for. I will be going to her religiously for as long as she’s in the neighborhood. Book here.
Natal Chart Reading with Apis Astrology
Hours before my transformative wax with Steph, I had a transformative chart reading with an astrologer I’d recently found on X*. It was far from my first chart reading — I was in Los Angeles for years, darling — but it was a special one. It’s hard to describe why without being too vague or too personal. But I feel like I got all new ideas about how to work with what I got, and that’s pretty big. Book here.
*Mom said it’s “out” in 2024 to refer to X by its dead name because it lost that brand recognition when it changed its name — so true. She also said stirrup leggings are “in” for 2024 and I’ve already seen murmurs on Twitter; I’m sure The Cut or something will have a trend piece soon.
Cold Burger
“After I’ve had a bowl of cereal as ‘real’ breakfast, I wait for the first pangs of elevenses to roll in, reliable as the tide. Because I prepared and because I sacrificed, I have cold burger as my reward. I almost always consume my cold burger standing at the kitchen counter where the sun comes in before noon, though I have taken cold burger outside to sit on the deck in the sun if the weather is right.” — Ask Chef Emily: Cold Burger, Edible Long Island [via Andru of course]
Well, it’s time to go to a bar and talk about the earthquake. Have a great weekend, everyone.