Many Such Takes: Anti-Food House, Knicks Trash Can, Trump's Algae, Usha Vance's Dress and More

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free

Welcome to Many Such Takes, my occasional (monthly? bimonthly?) roundup of Internet drama, funny tweets, and current events too obscure (and in some cases, stupid) to put on the news.

Free Articles

This week was a bit unusual—I published not one, but two free articles! In case you missed it, catch up below:

Surveys to Take

This week, I’d like you to fill out my super short anonymous sex survey mostly focused on hypotheticals (no experience required.)

Anti-Food House

This week, a particularly relatable tweet hit the TL. An instant viral classic, in a good way. Who amongst us hasn’t been in this situation:

My grandparents were like this. The only food they had in their house was tapenade and crackers. I recall my parents rushing out to the grocery store after a day of their nonsense. I’ve also been in other houses which were subtler versions of the anti-food house, which I’ll call the “picking around” houses. These are houses where nobody has plans for any meals, nobody seems particularly hungry, there’s no urgency about eating, but then when you say you’re hungry, you are instructed to “pick around” and then the options for picking around are technically things that could fill you up, but still sucky and with questionable expiration dates.

Some people shockingly came out in support of the anti-food house:

It’s me, I’m baby:

This user describes an odd variant of the anti-food house, where they still try to be good hosts by cooking for you but then still don’t cook enough food:

The horrors abound:

Trump’s Algae

When I think about Donald Trump, I generally don’t think about any green plants, but that’s changed, because Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool apparently involves an infestation of algae.

Back in May, Trump, now on middle-last name basis with Barack Obama, posted on Truth Social that “Hussein Obama” had allowed the algae to run wild in the reflecting pool but that he would, well, drain the swamp.

This says a lot about society:

Trump seems to believe that the algae was “put there” by vandals who infected the pool with fertilizer:

Conspiracy theories abound that various liberal villains conspired to fill the pool with algae—and while some liberal protestors have been seen cheering on the algae by the reflecting pool, although it looks likely that algae is more or less inevitable in the reflecting pool without inordinate expense.

Some Twitter users have suspected that Trump is now understanding plant life in a new way since he was caught musing about grass’s right to life on the White House lawn:

Knicks Trash Can

By far the main character of the past two weeks has been the New York woman who was filmed upturning a Knicks-themed garbage can full of trash, only to abscond with it.

In a moment that probably had the New York Post frothing at the mouth, it was discovered that the woman worked at JP Morgan…as an executive…in DEI, and lost her job after the incident:

And of course, some callbacks to the “fish head wife doesn’t have my cannons” JP Morgan exec:

Usha Vance’s Dress

Does anyone remember when Erika Kirk got ridiculed for wearing an “old lady” designer dress and failing to have a fashion insider who could procure cool vintage drops? Presumably, Usha Vance (or her publicity team) saw this happening and attempted a different strategy for drumming up dress-related controversy: buy a $9 maternity dress from Old Navy to wear to a Father’s Day appearance with her husband.

The New York Times focused on the “intentional choice” for her to display her pregnancy like this—not hiding the bump—to indoctrinate the country with a pronatalist message, which…not to body-shame here, but she’s kind of at the point in pregnancy where she has no choice but to display it, no? Are we going to start putting her behind large plants like she’s in a sitcom?

What’s more intentional (in my humble opinion) than displaying a bump that couldn’t be concealed anyway is the fact that she leveraged her publicity as an opportunity to show that not only does she shop at Old Navy, but she used a promo to save $3:

Given how previous women in politics have been hounded for wearing clothes that cost too much and therefore make them “less relatable,” my read is that buying a dress at Old Navy was an especially deliberate choice, presumably to help bolster her husband’s reputation as a relatable everyday American despite the degree from Yale. (Now might also be a good time for him to start re-circulating the couch rumors.)

The real controversy here, however, is the humblebrag:

And let us not forget that this was probably what got Usha Vance randy enough to conceive the baby in the first place:

Overall the dress “scandal” probably made Usha Vance look better as opposed to worse, but I’m not sure it’s doing much for her husband’s chances at a Presidential win in 2028. As of now, the betting markets believe there is only an 11% chance that Trump will endorse him before the end of the year. Perhaps once the algae has been resolved:

Part of a data partnership with Polymarket

In case you missed it…