When Tribes Shrink: The Melania Documentary & the Killing of Alex Pretti

Melania’s documentary is out… and the weird part isn’t the box office. The weird part is who paid for it and what that payment is actually buying. Because nobody drops that kind of money for “art.” They drop it for access. A seat at the table.

Then we pivot to the killing of Alex Pretti, and the detail that scrambled the usual alliances: the gun. When a person can be both “one of us” on a single sacred issue and the target of state force in the same moment, tribes start doing odd math. People who don’t normally share oxygen suddenly find themselves on the same side of a line.

And hovering over all of it is the bigger sensation this week: nothing stays a thing. Venezuela. Iran. Greenland. Crisis, evaporate, repeat. The news cycle behaves like it has object permanence issues—so the public does too.

Also: bourbon, propaganda-as-content, and why Greenland still doesn’t have penguins. Yet.