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The internet was chaotic this week! Highlights: The Titan and The Titanic, orcas, SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the value in a quiet life, Kimora Lee Simons, Moriah Mills, Kesha, and Little Simz. 

YouTube: The Internet is Obsessed With This Missing Submarine

By far, the biggest story on the internet this week was that of Titan, a tourist submersible that imploded on a trip to visit the sunken Titanic. All five people aboard the Titan died. Everything about this story made it perfect internet fodder. Its DIY design skirted all safety regulations. The 250K price tag on the ticket. That the sub had to be bolted from the outside. Its control system was a video game controller. And, that there were, in fact, no windows to actually see the Titanic. 

The New York Times: The TikTok Search for the Titanic Sub

I, like many people, first heard about Titan via social media, and specifically memes. While I have read articles by reputable news sources, the most interesting people covering (or perhaps more accurately, reacting) to the story have been online influencers—many of whom include links to or screenshots of their sources. 

It is important to understand how the internet reacted to the event, why “the stepson of one of the passengers is now fighting with Cardi B online after she called him out for attending a Blink-182 concert during the search,” and the entertaining and predictable cycle of “the memes and jokes. The calls for empathy. The backlash to the calls for empathy. The backlash to the backlash. Even the self-proclaimed TikTok psychics weighing in.” My full thoughts are perfectly summed up by tayyy.jpeg because I do not understand why someone would pay 250k to be bolted inside a DIY deep sea vessel. 

Democracy Now! As Media Spotlights Titanic Sub, Hundreds of Migrants Who Died in Greek Shipwreck Get Scant Coverage

While the media spent days, and the coast guard spent countless resources searching for 5 rich people in the Titan, just a week prior an estimated 700 refugees died in a greek shipwreck. Now, “the Greek Coast Guard is facing backlash over its failure to help rescue passengers before the boat sank. Most of the migrants were women and children; many were from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine.” 

The disparity is not lost on anyone. These sorts of shipwrecks could become more common when “European countries have withheld the resources available for sea rescue,” and more and more people seek “refuge from war, poverty, climate change or any of the many other life-threatening crises that force people to flee their homes with little more than the clothes on their back.”

HuffPost: Orca Rams Into Yacht Near Scotland As Boat-Bashing Behavior Seems To Spread North

In addition to a bunch of rich people imploding at the bottom of the sea, orcas are continuing to attack boats, most of which seem to be privately owned. The behavior was first observed in Spain and Portugal in 2020, but was recently observed farther north in Scotland, prompting “One scientist [to suggest] the yacht-damaging fad might be “leapfrogging” from a southern killer whale population.” Dr. Alfredo López Fernandez also speculated that “the incidents originated with a female orca known to scientists as White Gladis. The theory goes that White Gladis had a traumatic encounter involving a boat and started to behave defensively against other boats, and her fellow orcas picked up the behavior.”

The novel behavior has many online rooting for the orcas, Jacob Stern declared that they are “not our friends” last week, writing that “humans have given orcas ample reason to retaliate for hundreds of years. We’ve invaded their waters, kidnapped their young, and murdered them in droves. And yet, there is not a single documented instance of orcas killing humans in the wild. Why would they react only now?” Maybe they are reacting now because they want to? Even though we will probably never get a definitive answer, I’m still going to root for the orcas. 

Orion: The Day the Lake Took the Edmund Fitzgerald

Growing up in Michigan, we all had to learn Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald at some point during elementary school. Once I got older, however, I started associating the 1975 wreck, which sunk  in Lake Superior while making a routine trip from Wisconsin to Michigan, with Great Lakes Brewery’s Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, a “robust and complex…bittersweet tribute to the legendary freighter’s fallen crew—taken too soon when the gales of November came early.” 

Much of the myth and legend Martha Lundin describes are well known amongst Michiganders, and her writing beautifully captures the shock and surprise coastal people, saltwater people, when we tell them the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and they begin to grasp the sheer mass of Lake Superior (which people from out of state often call an ocean). 

The Bitter Southerner: Obituary for a Quiet Life

In high school, my Russian Literature teacher had us all write an obituary for our lives as an assignment while we read The Death of Ivan Ilich. Until last year that was the only obituary I’d ever written. Then last year my aunt died, and I wrote her obituary for my mother. 

In that obituary, I never liberated myself from the template described by author Jeremy B. Jones, that “puts a particular pressure on what matters, on what should be remembered and praised.” However, when writing about his own grandfather, Jones found that this formula was insufficient. In this beautiful essay about his grandfather, Ray Harrell, he asks, “What does one say about a life that aimed to carry on in the background, that had no interest in a name in newsprint or an award on the mantel?”

The Cut: Kimora Lee Simmons Tells Russell Simmons ‘Enough Is Enough’

On Monday, model Kimora Lee Simmons opened up about her ex-husband, Russell Simmons, on an emotional Instagram live. In the video, Kimora “alleg[ed] that [Russell] verbally abused her and their daughters, Aoki and Ming Lee Simmons, over the years.” 

Kimora’s video came “after Ming, Russell and Kimora’s oldest daughter, wished her mother a happy Father’s Day in an Instagram Story on Sunday, Russell appeared to respond on his Instagram, sharing a graphic that read: ‘Stop telling fathers they should have fought harder to see their children & start asking mothers why he had to fight at all.’” 

Further, Russell and Kimora met when he was 35 and she 17. Although Russell has stated they did not start dating until she was 18, there has long been speculation that he groomed her. 

Russell has numerous accusations over the years of sexual abuse from multipule women (all of which he has denied). I hope Kimora and her children find peace. 

The Root: Twitter Ends Moriah Mills’ Scorched-Earth Rant Against Zion Williamson

Moriah Mills has (finally) had her Twitter account suspended after a weeks long rant against Zion Williamson, who plays for the New Orleans Pelicans in the NBA. The rant began when Williamson and an Instagram model announced that the two were expecting a child. 

Since then Mills, an adult film star, has been tweeting non-stop at Williamson in what some lawyers are describing as aggravated harassment, and we have all learned too much. “We get it. You allegedly had a relationship, you’re hurt, and you miss him. Now please move on, and rant about Zion in the peace of your own home.” Mills’ account was finally suspended after she threatened to release sextapes she and Williamson made together. 

RollingStone: Kesha, Dr. Luke Settle Defamation Lawsuit: ‘Only God Knows What Happened That Night’

After a nearly decades long legal battle, Kesha and Dr. Luke reached a resolution in their defamation lawsuit. In 2014, Kesha filed a suit against her former producer Dr. Luke “alleging an extended period of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and attempting to extricate herself from her contract.” 

Luke countersued that same year, but Kesha’s suit was dismissed in 2016 “largely on the grounds that they were too old, but Luke’s defamation suit continued until this point, despite several appeals.” Luke’s suit was set to go to trial in July, had a resolution not been reached. I have been reading about this case on and off for years, and I hope Kesha got the closure she needed. 

YouTube: Little Simz – Gorilla (Official Video)

Rapper Little Simz released the video for ‘Gorilla’ from her most recent album NO THANK YOU. Directed by Gabriel Moses, the two artists take us through layered escapist landscapes. Each scene acts as a formalist vignette, exploring scale, color, and gravity.  It is rigorously playful—perfect for Simz’s music.