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After timidly doffing my jersey for a shirts vs skins junior high basketball game, a blond, athletic, attractive, popular kid guarding me pointed to my pear-shaped midriff, laughed, and said, “Look, Pell’s got handles.” I was humiliated, but I also made a determined pledge to myself that no matter what, that basketball game would be the last time anyone ever made fun of my upper body physique. And I kept that promise for the rest of my life. By making sure, from that day on, I was always on the shirts team.
If I had come of age in a more recent era, I may have been convinced that my body type and lack of manly prowess meant I needed a testosterone boost. (I’m guessing I had such low T that I was probably closer on the sliding scale to having high U.) For many males, this era has become T time. “From the Trump administration to online influencers, the hormone is increasingly seen as the key to achieving a new male ideal.” Even people whose T isn’t low are joining the T party. “Prescriptions are rising most rapidly among men ages 35 to 44, powered in large part by a surge in direct-to-consumer online clinics often marketing testosterone as a lifestyle product rather than a treatment for disease. The American Urological Association reports that roughly a third of men who are prescribed the drug do not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of testosterone deficiency, leading some critics to argue that this has created a legal market for low-grade steroids.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): Why So Many Men Are Obsessed With Testosterone. “All of this prompts a question: If one of the defining stories of the 2024 election was that young men swung to Trump in part because they felt masculinity had been demonized, what does it mean that so many men now believe they need to take testosterone to feel more like men?” I worry most about today’s young men who are motivated by influencers and ignoramuses to take drugs or alter their bodies in ways that could trade short term gains for longterm health issues. Hopefully, they can learn from my story. You know that blond, athletic, attractive, popular kid who made fun of my body? Today, his newsletter has like four subscribers. What comes around goes around.
+ Of course, testosterone is just one of the roids that’s all the rage. Boys and men are increasingly going to extremes to improve their looks. “For as long as he can remember, Trevor Larcom wanted to look different ... That’s how he fell into the online world of looksmaxxing, where young men relentlessly pursue physical ideals. He dyed his eyebrows. He did neck exercises and chewed extra-firm gum that he’d seen looksmaxxers claim would help build the jawline’s masseter muscles. And after seeing numerous before-and-after transformations, he ordered a peptide ‘stack,’ or a combination of several peptides for supposed enhanced results. Unrealistic beauty standards have long saddled women and girls, from models to movie stars to the growing masses of GLP-1 users. Now men and boys are facing their own heightened images of perfection.” WSJ (Gift Article): Teen Boys and Young Men Are Injecting Peptides in Search of Perfection.
+ Meanwhile, whether it’s to get more buffed or just to offset the effect of GLP-1s, everyone is adding protein to everything. You may not have a protein deficiency, but society does. Protein powder shortage threatens America’s biggest food craze. And this shortage could last til the cows come home. Literally. Whey protein comes from dairy. (Full disclosure: While my shirt is on, I wrote that line with my pants off.)
2
The Court’s Jim Crowbar
“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for Alabama to eliminate one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year’s midterm elections, creating an opening for Republicans to gain an additional U.S. House seat in a partisan battle for control of the closely divided chamber.” Supreme Court halts order for Alabama to use US House map with 2 largely Black districts. (The midterms are shaping up to be a race between Trump’s sucking and Scotus’s cheating.)
3
NPCs Unite
“I have spent years reporting and living in both the United States and China and wrote a book chronicling the history and evolution of the Chinese internet. Moving between the two countries, I’ve been struck by how they have come to mirror and resemble each other. There is a shared sense of precarity that lies beneath the envy and distrust: the technological future is taking shape at vertiginous speed yet its promise is not shared by all.” Yi-Ling Liu with some interesting thoughts to keep in mind as Trump and Xi negotiate AI deals at this week’s summit: The Shared Feeling of Being Harvested by the Future. “A parallel set of memes has emerged to capture the sense of powerlessness. In the United States, the Silicon Valley tech elite identify as ‘high agency,’ while the rest of us are “bots” condemned to the “permanent underclass.” In China, ordinary workers describe themselves as shechu (“corporate cattle”) and jiabangou (“overtime dogs.”) These same workers have long used the viral term ‘involution’ to capture the feeling of being trapped in a cycle of meaningless competition. In both countries, those disaffected by A.I. identify with the gaming meme of the ‘NPC’ or ‘non-player character.’ They feel like the background role in someone else’s video game, existing only to fill the world but not to shape it.”
4
Hitting the Sack
“Once the domain of mellow Gen X-ers in the ’80s and ’90s, the hacky sack is experiencing a renaissance at the hands — well, the feet — of Gen Z. High school students around the country are freshly enthusiastic about the toys, crocheted bean bags that once hung in the air like the scent of marijuana. Parents and teachers mostly seem glad to watch young people be entranced by something other than their phones.” 2026 sucks so hard that teens are nostalgic for times they never even experienced. Hacky Sack Mounts a Comeback With Gen Z. (I’m just glad that hacky sack hasn’t evolved into a term that means you need a testosterone boost...)
5
Extra, Extra
Adjusted for Inflation: “The U.S. war with Iran has pushed inflation to its highest level in almost three years.” Most of the price hikes are related to energy costs.
+ Makary in a Coalmine: “He upset anti-abortion Republicans keen on having the FDA restrict telehealth prescription of the abortion pill mifepristone, was pressured by President Donald Trump to authorize flavored vapes after initially raising concern about the products and was criticized by biopharmaceutical companies who argued Makary’s agency was inconsistent in its review of their medicines.” Marty Makary’s time atop FDA over.
+ Betting the Starm: “Keir Starmer has told his cabinet he will fight on as prime minister, saying the threshold for a leadership challenge has not been met, as ministers began to rally around the embattled leader.” Starmer tells cabinet he will not quit without leadership challenge.
+ Call it a Warsh: “The vote was nearly uniform across party lines, with just one Democrat breaking ranks — Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania cast the sole crossover vote in support of Trump’s nominee, according to CNBC. The vote on Warsh’s chairmanship nomination was expected later this week.” Senate confirms Kevin Warsh as a Fed governor.
+ A Blank (Check) Canvas: One of the more worrisome things about the hacks for ransom attacks we’ve seen on health and education platforms is that they seem to work. Maker of Canvas Learning Platform Strikes Deal for Hackers to Return Data.
+ Bomb Balm: “Facilities tied to Coca-Cola, Cargill, Mondelez and others appear to have been deliberately hit. The Trump administration’s muted response has raised concerns.” Russia Keeps Attacking U.S. Firms in Ukraine. The White House Is Silent.
+ A Dilly of a Pickle: “Professional athletes aren’t supposed to lose to 12-year-olds. But most 12-year-olds weren’t like Anna Leigh Waters in 2019. Waters was in middle school when she turned pro in pickleball and quickly showed that she was headed for big things, to the shock of her much older opponents.” And she only got better. She’s the best female pickleball player ever. And only 19.
+ Clipped: “Whether you’re scrolling TikTok, Instagram, X, or YouTube, it’s hard to avoid the snappy videos being churned out by this army of clippers trying to exploit algorithms with a provocative moment, engaging music and maybe the right news cycle, that will send footage viral. Clippers often upload dozens of the same clips to multiple platforms hoping one of them hits the virality jackpot.”