Digestif #24: January 13th
Landman, Elon Musk, good cold-brew, and the greatest quote of 2025 (yes, already)
Out late so I could get more links in but here we are!
Quick Thoughts
Coffee Treat in London: Super recommend the ‘Tiramisu Cold Brew’ from Redemption Roasters. They have a wonderful mission and equally good coffee, and this addition of sweet creaminess and cocoa to their cold brew is superb.
Everyone’s on Ozempic: A new implicit spokesman for the drug is the latest online skinny-bitch, Alex Jones.
Yawn. I saw Babygirl, starring Nicole Kidman, and boy, was I bored. It's about sex but isn't sexy; puts faux hyper-naturalism over seduction; and isn't that racy or provocative. Wow, Nicole Kidman is a girlboss who's also into submission? Shocking! I would write a scathing review if the brilliant Caitlin Flanagan hadn't already beaten me to it. Kidman and Dickinson give strong (and broad) lead performances, but where Reijn's previous film, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, skewers new youth politics in a light-hearted, detached way, here she tries to merge classic sexual power dynamics/infidelity risk with new consent culture, and it doesn't work. It's too in its head, too direct, too grimy, too clinical, and ultimately too dull. It's nice to see an erotic thriller from a female perspective, but this doesn't work; and Challengers is ultimately the smarter, sexier, more stylish, and more entertaining film.
Musk’s Wonderful Decisions P.1: Musk got negative attention from his own side for the first time and was like, “Wow, this platform is too negative!” so he announced he’s pushing out an “algorithm tweak” to “promote more informational/entertaining content.” This could be a change for the good, but it’s his decisions that have made Twitter the bleakest platform this side of 4Chan; which they did this to juice engagement metrics, with no bar too low, hoping this would win back advertisers. It didn’t, and just made the platform less pleasant. Also, lmao
Musk’s Wonderful Decisions P.2: Twitter started blocking links to Jacqueline Sweet’s article showing that the Adrian Dittmann account was not Musk, but instead, a man named Adrian Dittmann. They then suspended her account. The reason why? Because Elon. Here’s Matt McDonald’s summary of the situation.
Musk’s Wonderful Decisions P.3: Unsatisfied with owning a Presidency, Musk has sought to buy a UK political party, offering to toss a light 100 mil toward Reform, the anti-immigration party founded and run by Nigel Farage. Farage is an American media figure who occasionally returns to his home country to appear on GB News and muse about becoming Prime Minister. That will never happen, and he knows that, but Musk seems utterly ignorant of British politics, so Farage was happy to burn Musk’s millions because it at least would get him more attention. However, Farage’s plan went tits up when he found out that he was slightly too moderate for Musk, who has become a big fan of the violent grifter thug, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (who uses the stage name ‘Tommy Robinson’). Yaxley-Lennon is in jail (for good reason), and Farage wouldn’t call for his freedom, so Musk called for Reform to chuck out Farage. Good work everyone.
Musk’s Wonderful Decisions P.4: Musk has been boasting on podcasts like Joe Rogan that he’s a top-20 player worldwide in Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2; two difficult, grindy games that take hundreds of hours to master. For a while, I thought he was boasting, despite his gaming record being incompatible with his supposed work hours. It turns out — courtesy of his recent livestream of POE2 on Twitter — that he has clearly never played the game and instead had paid a random Asian gamer to pilot Musk’s account up to a high score. Such a blatant, pointless, bad lie.
Greatest quote of 2025: Nothing will beat this:
Health stats: 3 strength training sessions over 5 hours. Been a little under the weather, so I skipped two sessions, but I will be back to it next week. Down 0.5kg this week.
My Articles
My big piece of the week was my review in The Spectator of Taylor Sheridan’s Landman; a show with a fantastic premise, a hilarious, charismatic lead performance from Billy Bob Thorton, and then a whole lot of dumb wheel-spinning. TLDR: watch a “best moments” compilation of Thorton’s best lines and skip the show.
At the New York Sun, I had my usual flurry of pieces, on all things from Timberland boots, a cool failed electric truck startup, a less cool electric car, Lil Yachty’s underrated Nike Air Force 1, a forgotten cool Reebok collaboration, Aaron Levine’s menswear brand, an amazing coffee machine, annoying battery saving methods, and how the European Union is ruining charging cables. My App of the Week was Cold Turkey.
I also helped out Blocked & Reported with research on the grooming gang scandal. Reading through all the key government reports was probably the darkest work I’ve ever done, and you can listen to the full episode here:
My Recommendation
Actors on Actors is a facially pleasant but fundamentally terrible product. In the past, celebrities had to have some scrutiny from journalists in exchange for getting coverage, but publicists don’t want to put up with it, and entertainment publications don’t care about journalism, so Actors on Actors is where that leads. They’re interviews without hard questions, where publications don’t have to do anything, yet get twice the celebrity appeal, and the publicists don’t have anything to worry about.
I hate them.
And yet — this is pure gold. Both men are overflowing with charisma, and their chemistry is perfect. It’s a fun listen, and genuinely insightful into their acting processes, and definitely worth your time.