The Worst Person In the World: Azealia Banks, Julia Fox, or Elon Musk?

The girls are fiiiighting

So you saw that recent Kanye West ex Julia Fox and rapper Azealia Banks are fighting on Instagram, but you have no idea why or what started it. Well, you’ve come to the right place. The simple answer is that these are two women who were raised in Manhattan, and this kind of drama is just a day that ends in Y for a certain kind of performing-arts-adjacent New York native. The more complicated answer involves lots of Instagram stories, Kanye West, and allegations of drug use, sex work, and Coolsculpting. Let’s get into it, chronologically.

AZEALIA VS. KANYE

Banks has been beefing with West long before Fox entered the picture. In 2018, Banks slammed Kim Kardashian for defending West’s pro-Trump remarks. “Kanye will never be the president and you will never ever be the First Lady," she wrote on Instagram.

In 2020, Banks predicted that Kardashian would divorce West in 2026, so she was right but off by a few years.

A year later, Banks released a song called “Fuck Him All Night,” and the album art for the single featured nail art that spelled out “KANYE WEST.” Originally, the song was supposed to be titled after West, which Banks said in a Rolling Stone interview was because “Kanye trolled me a lot.” In the same interview, Banks said, “Listen to my music. Listen to the last five years of Kanye West’s music. I’m superior. I don’t have to talk about that which is beneath me. He’s been, I guess, selling sneakers and doing outrageous shit, everything but the music. When Kanye puts some music out that is important, then I guess we can have that conversation.”

For his part, West has never really commented on any of this.

This is good for traffic safety

Here’s a recent New York Post headline: “Elon Musk blames ‘fun police’ for Tesla recall over ‘fart horn’ feature.” The story attached details how Tesla, a company that loves recalls, did another recall last week — their 11th in three months! — for some 600,000 cars. The reason this time was the “Boombox” feature, an update from late last year that lets drivers swap out their car horn sounds for alternative honks, including “farts and goats.”

Per the Post:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined the feature could make it harder to hear a required “Pedestrian Warning System” sound. Musk seemed unhappy with the agency’s decision during a conversation with one of his Twitter followers, who asked the billionaire to explain his “rationale” for recalling the Boombox feature. “The fun police made us do it (sigh),” Musk tweeted.

We're cheering for you

According to Reuters, while greeting some Redcoat types at Windsor Castle today, the Queen entered a room by announcing, “Oh, I am here” chuckling and supporting herself with that loveable stick she’s been using as arm candy lately. Then, when asked how she was, the queen said, “Well, as you can see, I can’t move,” shuffling about. Reuters claimed she “quipped” this sentiment about her monarchical paralysis, but I’m not so sure — I don’t think Brits are particularly funny, except Ricky Gervais when he’s doing his tight 120 on the non-existence of god.

So the Queen “can’t move” but also “here”? It’s entirely possible that she has rigor mortis, or the stiffening of the joints after a body expires. Rigor mortis typically lasts for one to four days after a soul departs to that great white Albion in the sky where corgis roam free among wild horses, foxes, and her lecherous son’s teddies. This leaves the Queen plenty of time to make more headlines about the things that matter to her most: her stick, her jubbly, and her adorable grandchildren.

What a blessing for the Queen to keep ramrod straight (no other option) and carry on despite being dead.

Despite some dazzling performances, the film is ultimately uninterested in examining life

The hopelessly confused twenty-somethings of filmmakers Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt’s Olso Trilogy — an informally titled set of films created over two decades — are all too familiar with the trials of being young. In 2005, Reprise introduced two aspiring novelists wrestling with the impossibility of their literary dreams. Six years after, Oslo, August 31st followed an ex-addict struggling to come to terms with an existence that feels bearable only when he’s high. Now a decade later, Trier and Vogt have returned to conclude the Oslo Trilogy with The Worst Person in the World, which stole hearts at Cannes, and garnered two Academy Award nominations. Our lead, ever aimless, is Julie (Renate Reinsve), who may or may not be “the worst person in the world” — we’ll make our conclusion after following her through the film’s twelve novelistic chapters.

How could you not love Julie? At the film’s outset, she’s willful and dreamy. She wants to become everything — unfortunate in a world that demands she settle for something. As we meet her, Julie is already in the midst of changing both careers and hair color. She’s a star medical student, but couldn’t care less about cutting people open. So, Julie tries psychology — and pink hair — but neither is quite right. Finally, our brunette Julie settles upon photography, having always sensed she was a “visual person.” All the while, she fucks most everyone she meets, including Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), an artist whose comic books are largely — and suspiciously, we should note — adored by young men. Aksel, who has more than a decade on restless Julie, proposes that they should split. They’re in such different chapters of life, he explains. Instead, Julie falls in love.

What is the T R U T H ?

We all love to play games with words, either because they’re a fun way to waste time or because, according to a philosophy professor quoted by the New Yorker, they are “all about agency.” The gamers over at The New York Times HQ like a little polysemy as much as the next guy. So riddle me this: Did the Times lie about making changes to the viral word game sensation Wordle or were they just goofing around, like when they endorsed Amy Klobuchar for president? 

To catch you up: Wordle is a daily online game originally developed by Brooklyn Reddit engineer Josh Wardle for his girlfriend, which everyone online went nuts for, partly due to its visual simplicity, innate scarcity (you can only play once per day), and sharing capacities that make it easier to connect with distant older relatives. The New York Times bought it a few weeks ago for $1 million. This prompted agita over the fear that the formerly free game would eventually be paywalled, and that the Gray Lady might try to mess with success. The game officially transitioned to the Times’ website on Feb. 10, and grumbling began over whether it had suddenly become harder. The Times claimed it hadn’t. On Sunday, they told the Guardian: “Nothing has changed about the gameplay.”

Sick. By which I don’t mean nice but rather twisted in the head! Because here’s the thing: gameplay did change, if by gameplay you mean, “the specific way in which players interact with a game.” On Tuesday, avid Wordlers awoke to the worst day-after-Valentine’s gift they could imagine — two possible Wordle solutions, one of which was much harder than the other.