🔥The Internet is Cooked: May 6, 2026

Good evening. Here's your dispatch from the corners of the internet still fighting slop: Marxist rap, the bipartisan war on marine mammals, a Toronto app that isn't owned by megacorps yet, and the cat-nocturnal microgenre — humans using their free will and the internet for good.

The algo gods are feeding us slop across not one but multiple streaming platforms, so we're starting with a shout-out to Big Mistakes by Dan Levy. The show is fire. Two wholly incompetent siblings in New Jersey— one a closeted gay priest, one his somewhat disaster sister — get blackmailed into a world of organized crime they have no business being in. The ingenuity, the storytelling, and the soundtrack Levy commissioned from Peaches are all magic.

Speaking of fighting the slop gods, a new app created in Toronto is going viral: Cinemap, built by a man named Sean in Toronto, Canada, lets you search across all your streaming providers at once and surfaces hidden gems instead of whatever the algo gods want you to rewatch. Game-changer for weekend movie finds. It's owned by the founder, not megacorps. Please, please, pleaseee don't let this one get enshittified.

REI workers are boycotting the co-op's anniversary sale. 70,000 co-op members have pledged not to shop the May 15–25 sale, in solidarity with the 11 unionized stores (out of REI's nearly 200). The company has been running a textbook union-busting playbook while workers organize for fair pay, sustainable scheduling, and basic working conditions — and is now unilaterally cutting benefits, starting wages, and raises in the unionized stores. None of which aligns with REI's stated values, its co-op members, or its workers. REI: where the "co-op" stops at the parking lot. A direct reminder: don't shop the sale!

The next book for our nightstand: Julián Delgado Lopera's new novel Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, out May 26th. Set in 1990s Bogotá against the backdrop of civil war, it follows widowed Ignacio, who's spiralling, and his teenage daughter Valentina, who's trying to pull him back. Drag, grief, self-discovery, and a window into Bogotá's underground queer scene. We're linking to bookshop.org as a healthy alternative to feeding Bozo Bezos, but the best move is to walk your lil leggies down to your local independent bookstore and buy it there.

Current Affairs on the bipartisan war on marine mammals: Trump's "God Squad" — yes that's the real nickname for the cabinet death panel that decides which species live — just unanimously voted to let oil drillers steamroll the last ~50 Rice's Whales in the Gulf, at Pete Hegseth's personal urging because national security apparently requires louder boats. Across the aisle, Washington Dem Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Gluey to her friends, if any) wants to literally shotgun sea lions for the crime of eating salmon she's decided belong to humans. And the Free Press, freshly Ellison-bought, is pitching Navy dolphins as Strait-of-Hormuz minesweepers — a plan that involves Velcro-muzzling them so they hunt mines for food or starve. Honestly, the only appropriate reaction here is: what the actual fuck?

As an antidote to the God Squad: the internet's microgenre of cat people clarifying that your cat is not, in fact, nocturnal — they're crepuscular, which is somehow funnier. Tbh we aren't cat people but this one cracked us up. Construction cats and musical cats — we love you, no matter what time you wake the humans. Take notes, God Squad.

Evening soundtrack: Ghais Guevara's Goyard & The Kayfabe Reveal. North Philly Marxist rap from a one-man-band whose own bio describes him playing "enormous venues, punk rock dive bars, and Marxist book stores," and whose tracklist includes "Fuck the Nordic Model" and "Kidnap Mark Cuban Then Hide Away In Cuba." "Prison Riot" is the entry point – this album goes well with either a fat blunt, or cookies and cold milk. (Just please don't drink Fairlife!)

Solidarity Forever,

The internet is cooked.