(Early) Friday Five: Friday the Fifth of December!
Friday Five on a Five in Twenty Twenty-Five
Greetings, Consumers! I’m weirdly excited that this Friday Five is coming to you on Friday the Fifth. Technically, it’s arriving slightly earlier because there’s a special full moon you all should see, and I needed to time this newsletter accordingly.
I’m writing this from the couch with my LED mask on (fwiw: 20% off instead of the usual 10% with the code ROYA for the next few days!) looking at the Christmas tree, imagining that the red, blue, and green LED lights on it have some beneficial impact on the tree (they don’t). think I’m spent from a whirlwind week, but all for good reasons. Anyway, let’s get into your Friday Five—your roundup of joyful, cathartic content and news you might be able to use.
The Last Supermoon is Upon Us: Today’s full moon will be the last of 2025! December full moons are called ‘Cold Moons’ and there’s something chic and dramatic about that… until you learn that January’s full moon happens on the 3rd, is another supermoon, and is called the “Wolf Moon.” Here’s the Farmer’s Almanac moon calendar by month — aspirationally I’m a Strawberry Moon, but realistically, I’m a Corn Moon.
Moody Music Video: Brandy’s Full Moon is the perfect soundtrack for this supermoon moment. This music video made me want to own a telescope and gaze longingly out of it — it’s a shame it came out in the pre-sponcon era; some telescope company could’ve worked something lucrative out. Also, my goodness, this song might be flawless? This song came on years ago while my friend Jason and I were sitting at a bar in Williamsburg. Slowly but surely, our feet started tapping, our heads began bobbing, and two minutes later, we were singing ad-libs and riffs. When I finally buy a DJ controller and start practising, this song will be part of my sets (I mean that menacingly).
Relatedly, while we are on nostalgic faves: sam verdile sent this to me on Instagram, followed by a text that simply said: “just sent u something so important on ig.” Imagine seeing that in a work meeting and having to wait. It was worth the two hour delay to see this brilliant tribute to Britney Spears, who celebrated her birthday this week. I can’t even pick out a favorite bit, but the reminder that we used to call crop tops ‘bellyshirts’ really makes me want to bring that back.
Remember last week’s bit of joyful internet content around the eye doctor? Well, lovely consumer Tricia shared this newsletter in the comments and it is all-consuming. kate wagner, the writer that you are!
Here’s one particularly resonant bit:
“I seek the optometrist because all my life I have wanted interpretation stripped from me. Since childhood, I have longed for a situation in which I am relieved of the burden of what is most important to me, the ability to make things known, by way of reducing it to a mechanism. Such a mechanism would free me in so many ways, would, through the simplest processes of objectification, remove from me the burdens of uniqueness, performance, and adjudication — and through this mechanism I would finally find relief from doing, being, and obeying.”
Joyful Internet Content:
The 'wisdom of waiting’ hit me like a ton of bricks and might be a bit of a motto for me next year:
I want to live inside this drawing:
I have never seen Dance Mom’s but I can’t stop thinking about this woman from the show facetuning the hell out of Neil Patrick Harris in this carousel, alongside unretouched celebs:
Facetuning a celebrity,
Roya
I WAS BORN 2 MAKE U HAPPY