free pizza #1
Welcome to FREE PIZZA. Free pizza is a nice, unexpected thing in a strange world. Every other week, I will share some free pizza with you in the form of things that I am reading, watching and thinking about that you may like too.
This newsletter is obviously in its earliest stage, so please send any feedback! Would love to hear what you like/don’t like/want to see/don’t want to see.
thanks for reading! 🍕
- SOPHIA
1. the bold type 🖥
💡 if you like rose gold, guys that are cute in a relatable way, unexpectedly tearing up during a great closing song w/ shots of skylines
I can’t stop watching this mindless/fun Freeform show (the network of Pretty Little Liars) about three girls living in NYC working at a fictional magazine that’s like Cosmo meets Vogue meets Man Repeller. It has relatable storylines like layoffs by the mag’s parent company! Not getting paid enough to survive! The sacrifices women have to make in their careers! Two girls sharing a 1-bedroom apt, which there’s always a bed in the living room in every scene! also about queerness! race! body positivity!
2. downloading your facebook photos 💻
💡 if you’ve already: synced your photos, deleted your unused contacts and cleaned out your pantry
As of 2018, 1 in 4 people had deleted Facebook, at least according to this Forbes survey This is a good thing.
But if you’re a masochist like me and enjoy the occasional emotional quest of scrolling through every photo you were tagged in since 2007, this also means those photos are disappearing.
This, too, is a good thing. You probably shouldn’t read through the entire Facebook Messenger transcript of you and your ex, nor do the grandparents need a 245-photo album of you of you at a Sound of Music cast party.
see—who isn’t glad I now have this gem saved forever?!
But you might want it one day.
Since digital archiving is, as it turns out, far less reliable than print, you might one day need to show your kids that you were once cool. Download some pcis and throw them in some deep-buried folder on your desktop. (This is a great double-screen activity to do while watching The Bold Type.)
3. this article about entering your 30s 📖
💡 if you have been feeling like you want to do molly a few more times before “it becomes concerning” (just me? no? yes?)
I was freaking out about turning 27 and then came across this piece in the reprint of Chloe Caldwell’s Legs Get Led Astray. It’s a book about being in your 20s, falling apart and enjoying it.
(The book actually wasn’t that good, but I do recommend Chloe’s novella WOMEN, which is about falling in love with a woman for the first time. Also: You can read it in a day.)
This essay called “Your Adventures Change” that made me immediately text six people and stay awake in bed until 3am.
It’s about exiting your 20s, and it’s about entering your 30s. Those are different things, and the essay treats them as such, both grieving the end of the 20s and celebrating the beginning of the 30s. Here are two of my favorite sections:
12.
What should we do with our lives! we yell, drunk, in our twenties.
Are these really our lives? we ask each other, drunk, quietly, over wine in our thirties.
AND
14.
“Sure, my boobs were a bit perkier at 25, but I didn’t have the right bra.”
—Karly Slutever“I used to do cocaine and go running, now I just go running.”
—Elizabeth Wurtzel“I used to do heroin and go to yoga, now I just go to yoga.”
—me
4. shiba inus 🐕
💡 if you need a hug
I can’t stop looking up shiba inus on Instagram !!!! My entire Explore page is little half-asleep Japanese dogs in sweaters. I have found four different adoption agencies in a 100-mile radius from me! I have no idea how to take care of a dog, but these little guys (which are apparently a lot like cats!) have been a delightful new development in the life of me and my phone! Maybe I just need a soft friend?
5. iNaturalist 🌿
💡if you want to be more connected with the world without being less connected from your phone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
iNaturalist is an app where you take photos of plants and the app identifies them.
now I know it’s a juniper tree!
I first read about iNaturalist in Jenny O’Dell’s amazing, dense-but-worth-it book How To Do Nothing. (You can read the talk she gave that became the foundation for the book here, on Medium. It’s basically the book in tiny form.)
In it, she talks about iNaturalist as a way to connect with your local ecology.
You can take photos and upload them, or browse identifications users have already made. I tested it out in NYC and got the most ridiculous results (parasitic lice? ew wtf), but for everywhere else, it’s surprisingly soothing to know the plants and animals you see every day. It makes you slow down a little.
iNaturalist in nyc vs. portland L O L
🍕 Thank you for reading! I’ll see you again in two weeks. In the meantime, tell your friends and tell me what you think.
This newsletter is fully funded by Atlas Media group