The 2024 U.S. Postal Service stamps will make you want to vigorously shout "USA! USA! USA!" with your friends
Plus: If you search “Ron DeSantis” on social media, the results are pretty negative
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
The 2024 U.S. Postal Service stamps will make you want to vigorously shout "USA! USA! USA!" with your friends
If you search “Ron DeSantis” on social media, the results are pretty negative
Companies are reluctant to speak out on the Israel-Hamas war
Scroll to the end to see: what britneyspears dot com looked like in 1999.
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The 2024 U.S. Postal Service stamps will make you want to vigorously shout "USA! USA! USA!" with your friends
If you went back to 1776 and showed an American colonist the U.S. Postal Service’s 2024 stamps, they wouldn’t believe you.
The USPS announced the first of its new stamp designs for next year, with not one but four new flag stamps designed by USPS art director Ethel Kessler and illustrated by Laura Stutzman, who painted last year’s flag stamp based on a car dealership flag. The James Webb Space Telescope contributed images for two stamps, “Pillars of Creation” (below) and “Cosmic Cliffs.”
In “Radiant Star” (above), my personal favorite of the bunch, a blue star pops in two tones with radiating red and white stripes that would blind a Redcoat. The presorted standard stamp, by Carol Beehle, is intended for bulk mailers and will be sold in self-adhesive coils of 3,000 and 10,000, the Postal Service said.
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the First Continental Congress, where representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies (Georgia wasn’t there) denounced the Intolerable Acts and called for a boycott of British goods, USPS art director Antonio Alcalá designed the “First Continental Congress, 1774” stamp with 12 stars and a line from their petition to King George III, “We ask but for peace, liberty, and safety.”
Alcalá also designed a series of 10 stamps to commemorate the Underground Railroad, with portraits of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and others who either escaped slavery or helped others escape slavery. The stamp text reads, “BLACK/WHITE; COOPERATION; TRUST/DANGER; FLIGHT/FAITH; COURAGE/RISK; DEFIANCE/HOPE; UNDERGROUND RAILROAD/USA.” Amen. The series will come in a pane of 20 stamps with a map showing Underground Railroad routes and biographical information about the subjects.
The 2024 Love stamp is an original digital illustration of a bird carrying a pink envelope with a heart, by Katie Kirk, and the “Pinback Buttons” series features 10 typographic designs by 10 artists. Tré Seals, who released a typeface inspired by protest signs at the Tiananmen Square protests earlier this year, contributed the green smiling “hello!” stamp. Yes, they’re round.
“As always, our stamp program features a broad array of subjects and designs,” USPS Stamp Services director Lisa Bobb-Semple said in a statement announcing the new designs. “Stamps are miniature works of art and often tell a story that highlights our American culture, our people, or an important point in our history. Stamps also allow us to show what’s important to us as we carefully select which stamp adorns our mailpieces.”
You can see the full list of releases here. 💌
If you search “Ron DeSantis” on social media, the results are pretty negative
If you search “Ron DeSantis” on TikTok, among the related searches that pop up are “Ron DeSantis is the worst” and “Ron DeSantis cringe.” “Ron DeSantis the booger” is for videos including one that shows the Florida governor wipe his nose and then touch the back of a man’s shirt, and “Ron DeSantis heel,” for videos obsessing over his footwear.
The existence of negative TikTok videos isn’t in and of itself a sign of a doomed campaign, of course, but as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flounders behind former President Donald Trump in national polling averages while former Ambassador Nikki Haley nips at his heels everyone keeps talking about, I can’t help but notice all the memes about him are negative. It’s boogers and boots all the way down. Somebody get this man a water.
This is not how DeSantis’ team imagined his social media presence would look like when it held a meeting reported by the New York Times with about a dozen right-wing social media influencers at his pollster’s home in May before announcing his campaign.
The DeSantis campaign’s overtures to the too-online right in some cases backfired, though, and the candidate has since “lost the internet,” per the Times. His campaign’s content strategy, which has included faked images of Trump hugging Anthony Fauci, a video with symbolism associated with Nazis, and another video criticized as homophobic, has also turned off donors. Republican megadonor Robert Bigelow announced a pause on giving to the DeSantis-aligned Never Back Down super PAC in August and told Reuters, “Extremism isn't going to get you elected.”
DeSantis is attempting a course correction, dropping former campaign manager Generra Peck this summer, who claimed the campaign’s botched launch on what was then called Twitter Spaces had ~broke the internet~, and replacing her with James Uthmeier, a 35-year-old who told the Times he was “born in the wrong generation” because “I don’t even really know what meme wars are.” The campaign has also added more oversight to its social media operations, per the Times.
Companies are reluctant to speak out on the Israel-Hamas war
U.S. brands are facing pressure to stay out of current events, and companies’ muted responses following Hamas’ attack on Israel suggest that the trend towards depoliticization may well accelerate.
Nearly every one of the 100 largest companies in the S&P 500 issued a public statement condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, but as of last week, only about a fifth of the top 100 have released public statements about the Israel-Hamas war, according to a review from Bloomberg.
If companies are reluctant to speak out, internal communications at Nike, Instacart, and Procter & Gamble reviewed by Bloomberg might show why, as corporate leadership face internal blowback for their statements. One person in an Instacart group chat said the head of HR’s statement about “the extensive devastation and loss of life across the Middle East” was “both-sides bulls**t,” and at Nike, some in a Slack group for Jewish employees expressed disappointment with the company’s internal message about the conflict.
A letter sent to P&G leadership criticized the company’s lack of public statement as inconsistent with past statements on Black Lives Matter, Roe v. Wade, the war in Ukraine, and LGBTQ rights, and called it “a slap in the face to the Jewish employees.”
Taking a stand on international conflicts was among the lowest rated issues Americans say they believe businesses should speak out on in a recent Gallup survey, at 27%, which could also explain the hesitance to make public statements about the war.
Still, the precedent some companies set in the 2010s and early ‘20s by speaking out on current events means silence can be construed as a statement in and of itself. The conflict could convince some companies that, like Meta’s newsfeeds, politics is too much of a headache and they want out.
Have you seen this?
San Francisco is searching for its “I ❤️ NY” moment. Business leaders spent $4 million on an advertising campaign to shine up San Francisco’s tarnished image. But can a logo save a city? [Fast Company]
Here are 8 celebrities who are the spitting image of ancient sculptures. Now that you mention it, yes, Owen Wilson does kind of look like the Statue of Liberty. [Artnet News]
The fingerprints on a letter to Congress about A.I. Sy Damle, a Washington lawyer representing OpenAI in copyright lawsuits, covertly organized a letter from tech groups and academics urging Congress to avoid new laws on A.I. and copyright. [Politico]
Arizona Coyotes’ Travis Dermott uses Pride Tape after NHL’s ban. Dermott became the first NHL player to use Pride Tape on his stick in defiance of the NHL's ban of its use during warmups and games this season during the Coyotes' 2-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks Saturday. The Coyotes will be the first NHL team to hold a Pride Night this season when they host the Los Angeles Kings on Friday. [ESPN]
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The front page of britneyspears dot com in 1999. Please don’t talk to me right now unless it’s about Britney. I’m spending the day reading The Woman In Me, out today. 💿
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