These people are as obvious as they are dangerously stupid. Remember that dumb Gallop poll which was released last week? Gallop polled Americans on the favorability of various world leaders and American politicians. Shockingly, Prince William came out ahead of Vladimir Putin and a serial sexual predator and white supremacist (Trump). I’m shocked that Americans have a vaguely more favorable opinion of William over Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler too. Even Omid Scobie was questioning the seriousness of the poll (he called it “so random and nonsensical”). Well, even more hilariously, the British media and royalist American media are still crowing about how America needs Emperor Peg. Please enjoy this undercover shady piece in the Daily Beast, in which Kate is referred to a perfect Barbie and they’re basically telling William that if he wants to remain popular, he can’t ever get a divorce. Some highlights:

What accounts for William’s favorable ranking? “Is it a testament to the wisdom of the British royal family’s policy of studiously ignoring and not responding to attacks on William and Kate and the rest of the family by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle? Or does it, perhaps, offer a glance at the enduring fascination the British royal family continues to exert on the American psyche? William’s office declined to comment on the poll results when contacted by The Daily Beast. However, a personal friend of William and Kate’s said: “They have been quietly getting on with the job, letting actions speak louder than words. With everything going on in the world, people appreciate that.”

Whether this is a direct comparison to the Sussexes: The friend said: “Harry and Meghan were not part of this survey so it’s not about comparing them. But maybe the days of everything William and Kate do being refracted through the lens of Harry and Meghan are coming to an end.”

Victoria Arbiter says proceed with caution. “America is so politically divided that I’m not surprised more people overall would approve of Prince William than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. But there is no question that there is a lingering respect for much of the monarchy across America, partly because it delivers a head of state who is politically neutral. There is huge affection for William because of Diana, and there is a sense that he is now living the happy ending that Diana never got—happily married and raising his children….I was in Boston for his last visit [also for the Earthshot Prize] and there were huge numbers of people there to see him. It wasn’t the Beatlemania we saw for Queen Elizabeth or Princess Diana, but people like him, and clearly this is a really great piece of polling for him ahead of his upcoming visit.”

Best of a bad lot: In Britain, however, people seem largely baffled by William’s elevated ranking in America. On hit daytime show This Morning news review panelist Isla Traquair said, “Most of them (Americans) don’t really know who he is…I think he’s inoffensive to them.” In the list of names offered to those polled, Traquair said, William “was the best of a bad lot.”

The Keens’ shrewd team: Historical irony may not be front-of-mind for William and Kate’s shrewd, media-savvy young team. They are instead likely to be pondering how they might leverage this evidence of William’s enduring popularity into fat contributions to the Earthshot Prize from rich American supporters.

Harry & Nacho’s shopping trip: Harry learn a little from the iron discipline that his former spinmasters at the Palace used to insist on. Let’s just say that you won’t catch William and Kate distracting from their core message by posting shopping selfies when they are in America next month.

Perfect Barbie Kate: Christopher Andersen, a bestselling writer whose latest book, The King, is a biography of Charles, told The Daily Beast: “Now that Charles is king, William is one step closer to the throne, and there is an element of gravitas attached to that. Kate obviously also accounts for a large part of William’s appeal. There is an almost unreal, practically perfect Barbie quality to Kate. If she has any flaws, Americans aren’t seeing them. Kate hasn’t put a foot wrong, and as a result she is as popular in the U.S. as she is in the U.K. All this redounds to William’s benefit. William and Kate represent strong family values, stability, devotion to duty, dignity, charm—all in strong contrast to the constantly complaining, seemingly self-obsessed Sussexes. The Cambridges seem to float above the chaos.”

Ah, fundraising: “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if William’s handlers wave the results of this poll under the noses of prospective U.S. donors to his Earthshot Prize,” Andersen told The Daily Beast. “There are plenty of rich Americans who will be jockeying for position when William and Kate visit the U.S. in mid-September anyway. But this just adds to William’s luster—who wouldn’t want to bask in the reflected glow of presumably the most popular man in the country?”

[From The Daily Beast]

As I said, this is all so stupid and they’re dumb enough to leave their fingerprints all over it. Kensington Palace spent money engineering a poll in Peg’s favor just ahead of his SOLO trip to New York. William’s advisors are telling him “you’ll be received so well, you’re so much more popular than your brother, you’ll own New York!” It’s all just so obvious and pathetic? The comments about Kate are fascinating too, because she’s not going to New York, but the royal reporters desperately want her to. That’s the actual story – they know no one actually gives a sh-t about William, and the only way his NYC trip will get any attention is if Kate is there. It’s also obvious that William is desperate for American money.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

The Duchess of Sussex was photographed in Montecito last week, wearing a great outfit and a NuCalm patch/disc. Comments were split between wanting to talk about California weather and whether it’s cold enough in Montecito to warrant a coat and shawl in August versus wanting to talk about this NuCalm disc. So, I honestly thought the disc was just, like, a sticker with some kind of pseudoscience literally and figuratively attached to it. I didn’t realize it was a whole-ass APP and there are signals being sent to the disc from a person’s phone. All of this and more was discussed in the Times of London, and they suggest that Meghan is soft-launching her a collaboration with NuCalm.

When the Duchess of Sussex stepped out last week wearing a $1,650 MaxMara coat, $1,380 Chanel goatskin slingback shoes and a $1,225 Hermès shawl, one element of her wardrobe appeared a comparative snip: her $4 NuCalm patch. Worn on her inner left wrist (three fingers’ length from its edge and under no circumstances to be placed on the right, per the site’s instructions), the blue disc promises to reduce stress using “neuroacoustics”.

Connected to a smartphone app that, its creators claim, “effectively turns your mobile device into a remote control for your brain,” the product’s intention is to slow function from higher beta frequencies — or “brainwaves” associated with alertness and stress — to lower alpha waves. Users put headphones on and choose from one of the app’s four programs: Edge, Peak, Sleepsuite or Core, which use music to “naturally guide your brain to different frequency states on demand” via “complex physics, mathematics, and algorithms built into a software that lies beneath music”.

Its website says that it is clinically proven to create a “physiological state change in your brain and body”; tantamount not to a revolution, a gentle voice purrs in one video, but “an evolution in the way we take care of ourselves”. Since patenting its technology in 2009, NuCalm has received attention from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website and the American uber-guru Tony Robbins’s website, while the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team have used it to enhance performance.

NuCalm says that more than two million general anaesthetics that would have been given in the dentist’s chair have been forgone in lieu of the app and a pair of headphones — although it appears to have been explored in only a small amount of published research. The patches — which can’t be worn for longer than a day, or be re-used — cost $80 for 20, and app plans begin at $29.99 for the first month, then $59.99 thereafter.

]Perhaps the Sussexes’] next turn will be as ambassadors for wellness wearables, an industry due to be worth £98 billion by 2028. It certainly speaks to their Silicon Valley-style mental health-first priorities — not to mention the lucrative opportunities that might come with (assuming the duchess’s outing this week wasn’t already artfully staged #sponsoredcontent).

NuCalm isn’t the Sussexes’ first foray into this sort of thing; Meghan has invested in Clevr Blends, which sells mushroom-based coffee powders that pledge “mind-clearing” and “mood-lifting”, while Prince Harry was spotted with an Oura ring on a royal tour of Australia in 2018. The device, which works as a sleep tracker-cum-stress-slasher, counts fans including (inevitably) Paltrow, Will Smith, Jennifer Aniston and Lance Armstrong. “Not since Sam carried Frodo on his back up that smoldering mountain has a ring caused so much commotion,” wrote the US website Vox at the time of what is essentially a finger Fitbit. The ring costs from$299, plus at least $5.99 a month for its smartphone-connected plans. Think copper bracelets and magnets, but for the smartphone age.

[From The Times]

The Times also correctly points out that this can’t be blamed on “California woo-woo” because the Windsors have always fussed around with alternative therapies and holistic medicine, especially King Charles. Charles probably has a NuCalm patch himself. While I’m a skeptic about NuCalm, I will say this – with issues like anxiety, whatever works for you is fine. So much of it is mental, so if this patch is a placebo which makes you feel better, go for it. If there’s some actual science to it, even better. I also think it would be smart for Harry and Meghan to actual get paid by one of these companies – The Times is right, it’s a HUGE industry and obviously, Meghan and Harry have shown that they can sell these products.

Meghan Markle wears anti-stress patch while Prince Harry is away in Asia https://t.co/97n0MTbQ2t pic.twitter.com/gvUIxKTsR9

— Page Six (@PageSix) August 12, 2023

Life can be unpredictable, Rescue is not. Daily use will reduce your stress, balance your hormones, help with your mood & allow your body to relax. Start your NuCalm journey today: https://t.co/HDUL3IWvFO pic.twitter.com/fN3B6QYQL0

— NuCalm (@NuCalm) June 9, 2023

Photos courtesy of Archwell and Vimeo.

On Thursday, the Duchess of Sussex stepped outside and ran some errands in Montecito. A paparazzo was there to document her errand-running, and Page Six bought the photos. These days, it’s either Page Six or the Daily Mail, they’re the two outlets who can afford the rare photos of Harry and Meghan. I’m including the tweet-embeds below.

Meghan Markle steps out in camel coat and cashmere shawl in 70-degree California weather https://t.co/cu8rSQA9f0 pic.twitter.com/Bl3Rp3aw9U

— Page Six (@PageSix) August 11, 2023

Page Six got two different stories out of these photos. The first was “omg, Meghan wore a COAT in California weather!” The second was “omg, Meghan has an anti-anxiety patch!” So, let’s discuss. First of all, her outfit is very rich-Montecito lady. Per Page Six: “a camel-colored $1,625 Max Mara Raspoli Coat — which is no longer available for purchase — a blue-and-tan printed $1,225 cashmere Hermès Rayures D’Ete Shawl and white pants.” Her shoes are Chanel ($1150) and her tote is Goyard ($1650). I cannot wait to see the Princess of Wales’s copykeen version of this outfit, I swear to god. Kate will really turn up at the memorial event for QEII in white jeggings, a camel blazer from Reiss and an Hermes scarf tied like a neckerchief. It’s going to be hilarious.

As for Meghan wearing a coat in August in Montecito…who knows, but I suspect Meghan is simply the kind of woman who runs cold and she probably brings or wears a coat or sweater almost everywhere. Especially since Americans are pretty aggressive with our air-conditioning in the summer. Plus, California girls are just like this – the temperature drops below 70 degrees one day and they’re pulling out their cashmere sweaters and posting autumn-girl memes.

As for Meg’s anti-stress patch – for hours, no one knew what it was, but now they’ve ID’d the brand and everything. It’s a “dark blue NuCalm biosignal processing disc.” Per Page Six, it “activates the parasympathetic nervous system [provoking a] rapid return to a functional state (motor skills, attention, and full cognition) with no lingering effects or mental lethargy.” Page Six also notes that “A pack of 20 discs costs $80, while a set of 100 discs retails for $400.” Is Meghan about to become the spokesperson for NuCalm? I hope she is, because I guarantee that company is about to see a sales bump.

Meghan Markle wears anti-stress patch while Prince Harry is away in Asia https://t.co/97n0MTbQ2t pic.twitter.com/gvUIxKTsR9

— Page Six (@PageSix) August 12, 2023

Screencaps courtesy of Vimeo.

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Prince Harry and Nacho Figueras led their two polo teams on Saturday in Singapore, and here are some of the photos from the event. People said that Nacho’s team won, but Sentebale’s social media says that the final score was 7-7. Which is why Nacho and Harry posed together with the trophy. Plus, it’s not like the winner wins anything but bragging rights. The important thing is that Nacho and Harry are beautiful, rich and well-endowed brothers who enjoy spending time together and raising money for charity. Speaking of, they raised over $1 million. From Sentebale’s social media:

What a day! The Duke of Sussex and Nacho Figueras battled it out on opposing teams in this year’s Sentebale ISPS Handa Polo Cup with the final score levelling at 7-7 with honours shared. The Duke of Sussex played on the Royal Salute Sentebale Team against the Singapore Polo Club Team captained by Nacho. This year’s Polo Cup has raised over $1million to help children & young people in southern Africa to feel empowered, healthy and confident.

With these funds, we will continue to deliver programmes that address mental health and wellbeing, promote youth leadership, and deliver skills training to improve individuals’ livelihoods to thousands more young people across Lesotho and Botswana.

Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Co-Founding Patron of Sentebale said, “Sentebale has remained a pillar of support in communities across southern Africa for almost two decades, ensuring future generations are well equipped to address the many challenges facing our world. Adaptability and nimbleness have been a defining factor in our work since Prince Seeiso and I founded the charity 17 years ago. Our work has remained rooted in our mission, and in honour of our late mothers, we wish to ensure all children and young people in southern Africa are empowered, healthy and able to pursue their ambitions and dreams.”

Nacho Figueras, Sentebale’s Ambassador said, “Although Prince Harry and I played on opposing teams this year, we are always united in our support for Sentebale and the life-changing work they do for young people in southern Africa. It’s a highlight every year to come together for this incredible charity, and I’m grateful to everyone who contributes to their work.”

[From Sentebale’s IG]

There were a bunch of familiar faces at the polo match too, familiar meaning “I recognize the same attractive rich people who attended Harry’s previous Sentebale polo events.” All in all, a wonderful trip and an opportunity for Harry to look tan, rich and handsome in Japan and Singapore. As you can imagine, the British media will be seething about this for the next two weeks.

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Photos courtesy of Getty and IG.

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Since the SAG-AFTRA strike started in July, only a few actors have stepped out of line or openly questioned the need to strike or the leadership of the union. Let me tell you, those people have been dealt with SWIFTLY. I have no idea if SAG-AFTRA employs mafia tactics to keep actors in line, but it certainly feels like any dissent or any social media grumble is dealt with in a matter of hours. Like, Sarah Silverman had legitimate questions about the union’s use of waivers for certain productions and within one day, the union’s leaders were on a personal call to Silverman and they got her to backtrack and soften her language.

So it is with Stephen Amell, one of few “high-profile” actors to openly criticize the strike itself. He’s also openly scabbed by promoting his show. In late July, Amell made some ridiculous comments about how striking is “myopic” and a “reductive negotiating tactic” and while he supports his union, he doesn’t support striking. The backlash was so immediate, he backtracked hard on social media. Now look at him – Amell was in New York on Friday at the big, star-studded strike/demonstration. Michael Shannon, Sam Rockwell, Leslie Bibb, Patricia Clarkson, Edward Norton, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Billy Crudup and many more were also in attendance. I wonder if Amell felt like the sh-t-talking fraud he is?

A lot of people are like “oh you know Fran Drescher called him personally to rip him a new one,” but I think it’s more like his manager frog-marched him to the strike, screamed at him until he put on the t-shirt (!!) and shoved the sign in his hand.

Oh, that phone call was NASTY https://t.co/Ttt3fyvwKo

— Alex Malcolm aka Lexx (@LexxMoves) August 11, 2023

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Sarah Snook is probably a shoo-in for the Best Actress Emmy for her work in Succession’s final season. Whenever the Emmys eventually happen, I think Succession will largely sweep all of the major awards anyway, but Snook does deserve special mention and special attention. The way she played Shiv Roy was a revelation – Shiv gets in her own way, sells out everyone, compromises her principles at the drop of a hat and she’s constantly getting screwed over. Currently, Snook is home in Australia with her newborn baby girl, but she chatted with Variety for a pre-strike conversation as part of her Emmy campaign. Snook talks a lot about what she thinks would have been next for Shiv, had Succession kept going.

Reading the last Succession script: “I arrived and was like, ‘That’s it. It’s done.’ And I walked in, and Matthew was like, ‘No, I don’t think so. I think that’s quite hopeful! The last handhold, maybe there’s potential for what’s going to happen with Tom as CEO.’”

Why Shiv couldn’t vote for Kendall: Yet at the company’s boardroom showdown, as the members vote, Shiv wavers, and can’t bring herself to go through with it. “It’s just pure instinct,” she says. “I think it’s trigger response.” According to Snook, Shiv turns on Kendall when she sees him putting his feet up on their late father’s desk in the lead-up to the vote. “There’s something in her that goes, ‘Ahhhhh!’ — sorry to swear, but — ‘Motherf–ker!’ I don’t think she’s decided in that moment when they’re in Dad’s office to say no. But once it gets down to it in the room, she just can’t physically bear to say yes.”

She doesn’t believe Shiv was trying to plan it out: “I never really considered that Tom becoming CEO is Shiv, by proxy, winning, For Shiv, that is so not a win! That is ‘I’m once again power adjacent. I’m not the winner.’” Snook doesn’t think about Shiv’s future much, but when she does, she sees her going into “quite a deep postpartum depression.” About Shiv’s resigned look in that conclusion, she says, “I think the baby thing is really about to hit in a way that is inescapable.”

Kendall’s disgusting shake: Shiv spat into with each take — “and he drank it every time, because he is Jeremy,” Snook says. It was “maybe the closest to all three of us in our playful selves as actors — as Kieran, Sarah and Jeremy, not just Shiv, Roman and Kendall,” she says. “And because of it being the last scene of the series, we may have leant into personal sort of actor celebration, and indulgence of what’s going on.”

She cried through the finale: “Because I was sad for Shiv. She just tried so f–king hard, and ended up where she is — in this kind of gilded cage, next to the thing that she wants. And the journey’s not over for her. It’s not over for any of them, but still, she’s in the orbit of the CEO, and that will be really painful for her.”

Shiv & Roman: “I feel like Shiv and Roman would reconcile in a way where he would be the shitty but great weird uncle for her kid, and there might be some sort of strange little family unit that gets splintered off.”

[From Variety]

I absolutely believe that Shiv and Roman would find a way back to each other as dysfunctional brother and sister. Like, with no more company to fight over, Shiv and Roman would be able to figure out a way to be in each other’s lives, 100%. I’m not so sure about Kendall though. Poor Ken. I read that one idea was for Ken to try to throw himself into the river in his final scene but they thought it would be too dark. But that is very Ken – self-destructive, self-defeating, too impulsive. I also agree that Shiv and Tom are about to be miserable together for a long time.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images. Cover courtesy of Variety.

Sydney Sweeney looked orange/gorgeous at the Variety Young Hollywood event on Thursday. Her dress is Mara Paris and it’s so Angelina Jolie-coded. [Just Jared]
Taylor Swift, Kaylor conspiracies and the “eye thing.” [LaineyGossip]
Men are salty that their companies offer abortion benefits. [Jezebel]
Dua Lipa is having a fashionable vacation. [RCFA]
I’m anti-AI, but I think AI did a good job with “Russian life” photos. [OMG Blog]
Meanwhile, here’s a good reason to be anti-AI. [Pajiba]
Lil Tay is not dead, it was all a hoax. [Socialite Life]
What’s your Holy Grail bra? Mine is a certain Bali model with underwire and just the right amount of minimizer. [Go Fug Yourself]
Wonder Woman 3 isn’t happening after all. [Seriously OMG]
Addison Rae’s Canadian Tuxedo Lite. [Egotastic]
Salary transparency is such an important issue, especially for women. [Buzzfeed]
Kuwait banned Barbie?!? [Towleroad]

I genuinely believe that Buckingham Palace courtiers were a toxic blend of bored and petty, and they decided to organize a little counterprogramming for Prince Harry’s trip to Japan and Singapore this week. Basically, as soon as Harry arrived in Japan, the British media was suddenly full of stories about how the Royal.uk webmaster had removed Harry’s HRH-style from his page of achievements. Given how disorganized and racist Royal.uk is, it seems notable that they only completed that particular task this week. Plus, that story was packaged with quotes from King Charles’s biographer Robert Jobson, who basically admitted that the king will continue to play these games but he’s not going to do anything real, like remove the Sussex ducal title. So, these rancid people had their “fun.” But it’s not enough for the Mail:

Buckingham Palace’s decision to quietly cut Prince Harry’s HRH title from his website profile page last week was a ‘petty’ and ‘trivial’ move, that avoids the ‘big changes’ that really need to be made.

That’s the view of the Daily Mail’s Diary Editor Richard Eden, who was speaking on our royal talk show Palace Confidential.‘They should be going much further,’ he tells the programme.

‘What actually matters is that he’s still in the line of succession. God forbid if something was to happen to the Royal Family, he would become our king. That should end, he should be removed from the line of succession and he is still one of those counsellors of state that can stand in for the king… why not remove him? It’s ridiculous to be doing petty things to the website – deal with the big things and make the big changes that matter.’

[From The Mail+]

People always say that it would take an act of Parliament to remove royal titles, but what would it take to remove a prince from the line of succession? Especially when the prince has not been accused of a crime or done anything heinous. Harry literally prioritized his wife, his children and his mental health and the lunatics running the asylum over there are still trying to devise even more punishments. While I don’t pretend to understand the will of the British people, I kind of think it would go over like a ton of bricks if the king removed his own son from the line of succession. It would be especially bad considering Harry would be a much better king than his father or his brother. But again, what do I know.

Meanwhile, Harry’s Spare is still the #1 book of the year all across the UK, minus Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, the #1 nonfiction book was a cookbook. But everywhere else on Salt Island, people were reading Spare. Therein lies the problem for the Windsors, and why they’re still so hellbent on diminishing Harry.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Instagram.

Maybe I’m not “smart” enough to “get” Grimes, but I honestly believe that she’s just one of those people who memorizes random cool/tech phrases and just repeats them in interviews to sound smart. She’s not a moron (Elon Musk is though) but she’s also not as smart as she thinks she is. Grimes covers the latest issue of Wired and the interview is ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as that Vanity Fair cover story, but still mind-numbingly idiotic. In the first half of the interview, she talks about music and how she’s pro-AI, and then the second half of the piece is about her personal life, her two children (X and Y) with Elon Musk, and what she learned from being with Musk. Some highlights:

What she learned from Elon Musk: “I’ve got NDAs. It’s hard to talk about things very explicitly without saying things about other people’s lives who are very private….I learned from him, like, the best internship ever. People don’t like talking about Elon, but it was incredible to be right there watching all that SpaceX stuff happen. That’s a master class in leadership and engineering and makes you understand how rare it is to have a leader of that quality.

Musk holds people to high standards: “I know, the stuff on Twitter doesn’t make it look like that. He didn’t build the culture there. And the cultural fit has obviously been very intense. He holds his people to really high standards. Watching him, I understand how difficult it is to be a great general and do something of that magnitude. Elon has an old-world kind of discipline I really respect. And I think it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. They don’t want to be in that hardcore zone. If you’re not consenting to being in that hardcore zone, I get it. But he’s challenged me a lot. I learned a lot about running my own team and my own life. I’m now way tougher and smarter than I used to be.

What Elon learned from her: “Maybe to have more fun. I try to soften him up, to build family culture. And he steals a lot of my memes.

Whether she worries about her kids’ privilege, being the children of the richest man in the world: “A little bit. I think their life is gonna be pretty intense. Being Elon’s kid is not the same as being anyone’s kid. In my house, at least, I want it to be more of a crazy warehouse situation and a cool art space.

Whether she was disturbed by Elon’s tweets: “I don’t want to talk about this too much. But take the trans thing. After that, we had a big, long conversation. I was like, “I want to dissect why you’re so stressed about this.” Getting to the heart of what Elon says helps me get to the heart of what other people’s issues are, because it’s this über guy situation. And it came down to pretty much every way that you transition can cause fertility issues. I was like, OK, you don’t hate trans people, you hate woke culture. I get that it can be annoying, and you have concerns about the fertility thing. So let’s figure it out, because there’s a lot of fertility tech that could be innovated that would help trans people have kids, which would be great and would solve a lot of problems. He’s just on Twitter, and he’s unhappy with woke people, and the arguments happened.

Whether or not she’s woke: “Probably not. I don’t know what the term means. I think we need to change the discourse. The more people you can convince that this dichotomy is silly, and an out-of-date fight, the better. The root cause of this is people not resolving mental health stuff the right way. And not educating people on screen time where they get hooked on dopamine spikes.

[From Wired]

I’m sorry??? “And it came down to pretty much every way that you transition can cause fertility issues. I was like, OK, you don’t hate trans people, you hate woke culture.” So Elon Musk joined the trans-bashing MAGA cult because he believes (and Grimes believes) that it’s all about “fertility,” and fertility issues in general or specific to transitioning are a “woke culture” issue. My head is spinning with the hurricane of fallacies here. First off: Elon’s need to make everything about procreation is really unsettling. Give a guy an emerald mine and suddenly he’s talking about how it’s every billionaire’s duty to populate the earth and dictate transgender people’s fertility levels. And “I don’t know what the term means”… lmao.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid and cover courtesy of Wired.

At this point, the standard operating procedure for royalists is to acknowledge, in a roundabout way, that Prince William is the problem, generally and specifically with regards to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. While King Charles is a dogs-t father and a horrendous grandfather, I buy that he is more than open to making some kind of peace with Harry and Meghan. Would he actually go out of his way to achieve peace? No. He wouldn’t. But he’s more conciliatory than William, who is full of rage. Speaking of, royal commentator Nick Bullen has some thoughts about the “entrenched” feelings between Harry and the Windsors. Even Bullen says, in that particularly roundabout way, that William is the problem.

On Harry’s trip to Asia: “I’m sure everybody managed those diaries to make sure there was no crossover whatsoever,” True Royalty TV co-founder Nick Bullen told Fox News Digital. “Harry hasn’t even been going to old friends’ weddings. So, those moments where they might bump into each other aren’t happening, let alone the choreographed moments.”

On Will & Kate’s summer plans: “William and [his wife] Kate [Middleton] are going to be spending time at Balmoral this summer,” said Bullen. “They’re going to be staying up in a cottage that was a favorite of the queen’s when she was alive. William and Kate have taken it over with their children for this summer. So, it’s nice to see the traditions are continuing.”

Charles is eager to make peace with the Sussexes: “I’m told that the king continues to reach out to Harry and Meghan and that the door is always open,” said Bullen. “I think, probably, he more than anybody, wants to repair the relationships. We all know things are still very tense between William and Harry, but I think the king does want to repair [things]. … There is probably an open invitation to visit the king whenever they can. And he would love to see them. Look, he’s the king. He’s not going to be able to make it to California very often. They don’t have official roles. They don’t appear to have a 9-to-5 job. So, I would say they’ve probably got the ability to make a visit to Scotland should they wish, and I’m sure the king would have them there.”

William & Harry’s beef: “I think there is so much water under the bridge between William and Harry that how they intend to find that common ground is beyond most royal commentators. I think there needs to be a brokerage from another person. There almost needs to be an intervention. It requires both parties to be willing to come to the table. But I think it’s going to be very difficult to see how this is going to happen. People have such entrenched views. [During] the coronation, the seating plan was carefully worked out [so] that they wouldn’t have to have an interaction. … I think it will require big apologies from both sides. But whether they’re going to come or not, I think it’s pretty unlikely.”

[From Fox News]

What continues to amuse me is that there’s this sense in the UK and among British commentators that some kind of rapprochement NEEDS to happen, that the brothers cannot simply hate each other forever, that some things are simply unforgivable and there’s no coming back. This entire industry and the entire monarchy institution simply bet everything on Harry crawling back to them at some point and agreeing to their terms. What is so unprecedented to them is that A) he doesn’t want to come back and B) he doesn’t need to come back. That’s why they’re still fussing over “what can be done, someone needs to stage an intervention!” I agree that William needs an intervention though.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.