giant cuttlefish mating season is upon us!
did you know it's fall in australia right now?
Hello dear squidstack readers! It is me again. Thanks for being here! This stack is about giant cuttlefish mating and white lotus season 3. The White Lotus part got so long, that the email won’t fit in gmail inboxes. Don’t fret, it is at the end and very skippable/skimmable. And as always, leave a comment or send me a reaction! I love to hear that people are reading this important news I share semi-regularly. - 🦑💛
Spring is springing in Minnesota and Fall is starting to fall in Australia. While April showers bring May flowers, the Autumn breeze1 brings thousands of Giant cuttlefish to South Australia for the mating event of the year/their short lives.
From late May to early August, thousands of giant cuttlefish migrate to Black Point in Whyalla, South Australia. At the height of Giant Cuttlefish mating season, there are as many as 1 cuttlefish per square meter over 150 acres. Scientists do not know exactly why the cuttlefish come to this shallow, rocky reef, but they return year after year.
Giant Cuttlefish (Sepia apama), or Yaryardloo to the Barngarla the region’s original stewards, are the world’s largest cuttlefish species. They weigh up 10.5kg and can grow over 50cm in mantle length—if you include tentacles they can be as long as 1m. Their range spans the subtropical and temperate waters of Australia, from Brisbane, Queensland to the east, Shark Bay to the west, and Tasmania to the south. They live in rocky reefs, seagrass beds, and on the seafloor, at depths down to 100m. Like their more humble relatives, they have 8 arms, 2 tentacles, lifespans of 1-2 years, and, of course, they change color.2
When these giant cuttles gather in Whyalla, it is a real-life squid party complete with flirting, competition, fighting, and sex! Especially competition. Males outnumber females between 4 and 11 to 13! But don’t think the females are taking it easy—they “lay one large egg at a time (5-39 per day) and mate up to 17 times with 2-8 males daily.” Females are still the ultimate deciders, and they end up rejecting 70% of mating attempts—if this were an Atlantic article, I’d say ”yes queen… but what about young men and their self-esteem?” I digress—some ecological phenomena are best left as they are instead of being converted into strained metaphors about human behavior.
You might be wondering, squidstack, how do males compete? One way is by literally fighting each other, arm and beak for the privilege of depositing sperm into the head of a female mate. Physical confrontation is rate though. Generally, these fights take 1 minute and 46.0 seconds and consist solely of changing color and assuming threatening positions—very arrested development hot cops of them.4
Small males, knowing their odds of beating “big meat heads” in a physical fight is low, take a different strategy. Instead of trying to look threatening, he instead adopts the pattern, body language, and shape of a female. While a big boy is guarding his chosen mate from others, the puny guy sneaks in, gets close to the female, re-assumes his male look, and tries to mate.
In a 2005 study, Naud et al. found that sneaker males were able to get close to their chosen female 30 out of 62 times. Notably, other males tried to mate with the little guys 41 times—25 attempts by big guys, 14 attempts by small guys, and 2 attempts by other sneaker males. It’s clear these cuttlefish don’t quite know what’s happening, or that they are a species with “keen vision but poor social recognition.”5
Now, please enjoy this graphic description of Giant Cuttlefish mating:
“A male typically initiates mating by approaching a female from the side, spreading his arms and grasping her head. If the female accepts the mating, she will open her buccal cavity and wrap her arms around the male's arms, facilitating the transfer of spermatophores from the male's hectocotylized left fourth arm to the sperm receptacle and buccal lining below the female's beak [25,26]. Females may also reject the mating attempt through direct resisting such as squirming, inking or jetting and also through the display of a non-receptive signal: a white lateral stripe along the base of the fin towards the male [25,27].” (5)
Shortly after mating, the males die. After accepting sperm, the female fertilizes her eggs and attaches them to rocky substrate. She cleans and guards them until they hatch, and then she dies. Fin.
Do you want to be an ecotourist in Whyalla now6? I am not a big “bucket list” person, but this does seem like an opportunity of a lifetime. The waters are so shallow that you can see the cuttlefish while snorkeling, to get a closer look you can SCUBA (or free dive if you very cool and talented). Tickets from Minneapolis to Whyalla run around ~$2,000 USD. The trip includes 3 layovers, 24 hours of travel, and a 14.5 hour time change. I believe this is the ideal location for a destination wedding. If you do it, remember to credit me for this great idea in your vows.
recs
Minnesota Strike. Did you know Minnesota has a professional ultimate frisbee team? And that I’m on it? Come Cheer on the Strike in one of three home games. Enjoy the Thai food truck, and say hi to me after the game. We play at Seafoam Stadium in St. Paul (281 Hamline Ave N). I have a weird run and the best fans! Buy tickets here!
Game schedule: Saturday 5/3 at 5pm v. NY • Saturday 5/31 at 5pm v. Philadelphia • Sunday 6/8 at 1pm v. Nashville. Tickets are $15-25, and I promise every dollar means the world to us.
Costco kimbap is an absolute lifesaver when hunger strikes but you are at the bottom of a deep pit of despair. While they take up a lot of freezer room, they are tasty and ready to eat in minutes. They will scorch your tongue though if you aren’t patient.7
“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is at the Minneapolis Institute of Art! I went in knowing nothing except that my collage class was DJ-ing. Such beauty I was treated to—including literally giant art! I felt feelings and awe and gratitude. This special exhibit is here until July 23rd, 2025.
PS. Noticing tender heels or tight arches? Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be a months/years long saga. Take early action! Roll out your feet, get good insoles (like superfeet!), and sleep in a night splint like the strassburg sock™. Cultivate mindfulness towards your foot. Even when you are frustrated, try positive self-talk—my foot is my self and my self is my foot. Our whole lives are opportunities to heal ;)
media
And just like that, another season of White Lotus is in the books, this time with a 90-minute finale. Generally, I try to bring as much “writer-director-Mike-White-sucks” energy as possible, but 35% of the way through 2025, my cup of hater energy runeth dry. And I actually liked the season 3 finale.
My forever bone to pick with Mike White Lotus is his belief that people are selfish.8 And that there aren’t many other ways to be. We are already experts on the selfishness of the ruling elite, the billionaire class, and people who eat the last cookie (jk Minnesotans should get over this). Do I want to watch another story about how people suck? No. But I do it anyway!
I watch White Lotus because I enjoy parts of it. Jennifer Coolidge as Tanya and Parker Posey as Victoria Ratliff are treasured female role models of mine. I resonate with aspiring Buddhist daughter Piper Ratliff, Harper (Aubrey Plaza), and Tanya’s annoying personal assistant Portia—all wanting to live values-aligned lives while also being insufferable and loving bougie things.
I am drawn in by the humor, the rich cinematography, and the feeling that Mike White will critically examine tourism and wealth. The slow plot and haunting scenes of ceramic heads trick me into thinking that there is something profound going on, something beyond pure entertainment value. But after careful consideration, I have determined there is not, no matter how much I want it to say something more.
I complain about White Lotus because I think it is overhyped. I don’t think it is as “brainy” or even “perverse” (footnote) as the mainstream discourse claims. Instead of writing an incoherent essay, I submit to you a list. Skim it and let me know what you think! I won’t write about White Lotus again.
season highlights
“White Lotus is the First Great Post-’woke’ Piece of Art”
brand partnerships
Mike White is only good at writing (mike) white people
Gay people are perverts!
Frank’s (Sam Rockwell) sex monologue
season highlights: Parker Posey’s fucked up monologues; Carrie Coon’s depressing monologue; Timothy Ratliff’s spiritual journey that went through attempted familial murder-suicide; Piper’s rich girl acceptance speech; hopelessly confused Lochlan explaining how he is a “pleaser.”
“White Lotus is the First Great Post-’woke’ Piece of Art”: Overhyped! This is what I mean. Is this a prestige television9? An insightful sadcom masterpiece? Not to me! But...
*“Viewers crave yachts, and hot people, and terrible mistakes, and hot people making terrible mistakes on yachts. Give them that, and underneath you can smuggle the message that it’s all incredibly hollow and unfulfilling.” - Atlantic
“Mike White is known for inserting subtle commentary about the extractive nature of tourists and their often problematic relationship to the country they are visiting” - Them. (squidstack asks, is he?)
Perhaps White Lotus is the kind of fun and inviting show, with enough problematic characters and dialogue to beat the “woke” charges, that might shift the cultural tide and rally people around wealth redistribution. I am the un-fun leftist ruining all things for everyone. And yet, White Lotus season 3 was designed in step with Luxury brands, giving viewers ways to feel like White Lotus guests, even at home.
Brand partnerships. Amidst the messages that wealth is hollow and unfulfilling or that tourism is extractive, HBO gives you many opportunities to live into your aspirations and join those shallow monsters. There are White Lotus Four Season packages (20 days starting at $188k), White Lotus x Banana Republic outfits ($300 silk dresses), and White Lotus hotel furniture at CB2 ($2.6k bed frame). Anecdotally, friends of friends considered planning a “Wife Lotus” bachelorette weekend that included a visit to a club with a $1,000 cover—per person, no drinks included.
The opportunity White Lotus might have to change hearts and minds and disavow the billionaire class is muddied by 1. how marketable it is and 2. how much Americans want to be rich too. Instead of dreaming of ways we could feel whole and human, we fantasize about being ultra rich too—44% of Americans and 76% of Gen Z Americans think they will be wealthy someday. Maybe we believe that when it is our turn, we will be better. Wealth will make us spiritually, sexually, and relationally fulfilled, even if it didn’t work for Tanya.
Mike White is only good at writing (mike) white people. Mike White pokes fun at himself in White Lotus—he’s gay, he owns a house in Maui, he found buddhism to cope hollywood stress. I’m sure Mike White also knows at least a few kooky heiresses, white collar criminals, and closeted gay men (including his father). He writes them well.
In this era, it would be suspect if he wrote a show about tourism without including any staff or locals as main (or main-ish) characters. And many of those staff and locals are people of color—actually the only people of color. The way they are written though is so thin and often boring, especially compared to the wealthy guests.
Mike White has said he loves writing because, unlike acting where he is always physically himself, writing let’s him get inside other people’s heads. On Gay™ conservative Andrew Sullivan’s podcast, Mike White shared that writing allow[s] him to explore the way that “we’re all monkeys, first of all—we’re all apes—and we also share so much.” He delights in “transgressing boundaries of identity10”. Unfortunately, I think he is not good at it—at least when it comes to characters of color.
While I do care for Belinda, in the first season, she serves a selfless, moral guidepost, counterbalancing the selfishness of Tanya. In season 3, she gets another dimension—she loosens her strict morals, partners with Tanya’s murderous Husband, and she gets her bag. In the process, she quotes Tanya almost word for word as she dashes Thai wellness professional Pornchai’s entrepreneurial dreams. To equate Tanya and Belinda says less to me about the ways money corrupts and more about Mike White. Belinda getting $5M from a murderer to keep her silence is nothing compared to Tanya, a lifelong heiress who had $500M in assets. Sure, I think Belinda could have given Pornchai some money, but damn. They knew each other for less than a week!
Gaitok and Mook’s storyline was largely superfluous and boring. Gaitok, previously a pacifist, shots an unarmed man in the back for a promotion and for attention from a hot girl. See! Thai people and staff low on the hierarchy can be bad too! Yawn. Feels Obligatory.
I do think Mike White would be heavily criticized if he wrote POC characters who were as horrible as his white characters, largely because he is white writer. But the space he lands in with POC characters is so uninspired. This is my vote for him to get a writer’s room.
Gay people are perverts! And perversion knows no gender, sexuality, or religion. Finally, Mike White and I agree. ****Mel White, Mike’s dad, was evangelical Christian and writer for the Christian Right who came out in his 50s. Ever since, he has tried to prove that gay people can be righteous too. In a Zeus-defeats-Cronus (but good spirited) father-son thing, Mike White writes as many evil gays (men) as he can. However, White described his season 3 gay plot line “truly satanic.” That’s a little dramatic if you ask me. At least since Sophocles dropped Oedipus Rex in 429 BC, people have been thinking about incest. In 2024, MILF was the second most searched pornhub term while stepmom was 11th.(2) So what? Now HBO adds brother to the list.11
The state of human relationships is indeed bad. The three ladies were the first new relationship dynamic in this season of White Lotus. After a week of gossiping behind each other’s backs, re-visiting painful childhood dynamics, and judging each other’s choices, they reach an inflection point. Laurie (Carrie Coon), the most relatable to me member of the group, delivers a chilling monologue that concludes with: ”I’m glad you have a beautiful face. I’m glad you have a beautiful life. And I’m just happy to be at the table.” Watch it here.
A squidstack reader shared her hopes for Laurie: “I thought [she] was gonna end her reflection with ‘and I don’t really need to be close with y’all anymore bye.’” If only! Laurie loves her mean friends. Laurie can be a mean friend. Their relationships are meaningful not because they see each other (literally or emotionally), trust each other, or even want the best for each other, but because they have known each other for a long time. They end their backstabby vacation, snuggled up together, laughing and crying. After their trip, I bet they don’t talk again or see each other again for years (not pictured, however).
It has been depressing to see how resonant these female friendships have been with the internet people. NickySix, Pajiba commenter says, “their dynamic is SO REAL. I had to show my bff the scene of the women comparing their biometric scores because we absolutely have a Jaclyn in our group who would react exactly the same way if she couldn't lord her excellent hydration levels over the rest of us in a similar situation, lol.” Lol is right! We deserve so much better from our friends and from ourselves. I liked this White Lotus storyline, and I am sending NickySix all my best.
Frank’s (Sam Rockwell) sex monologue. It was 4 minutes long, and it’s hard to know where to start. If you didn’t watch, this is an article about it. Below is a description, and some other people’s thoughts.
He explained that he moved to the country because he "always had a thing for Asian girls," and when he got there, he had as much sex as possible, but after a while, realized that "maybe what I really want is to be one of these Asian girls."
He then proceeded to explain how he started by letting ladyboys have sex with him, but soon started to hire white men who looked like him to have sex with him while he "put on some lingerie and perfume, made myself look like one of these girls," and did that over and over again.
"Are we our forms? Am I a middle-aged white guy on the inside too? Or inside, could I be an Asian girl?" he mused. "I don't know. Guess I was trying to fuck my way to the answer. Then I realized I gotta stop the drugs, the girls, trying to be a girl, I got into Buddhism which is all about spirit versus form, detaching from self, getting off the never ending carousel of lust and suffering." - Out
“Some people think he deserves an Emmy for that monologue” - someone I’m in a group chat with
“[White Lotus] has this very clever tone, it’s funny, sharp, but also deeply human…I know that the idea of ‘ladyboy’ in Thailand has often been seen by Western audiences as something exotic, funny, or overly simplified. It’s something people joke about without always understanding the full picture. But in this season, even though there’s no actual ladyboy character…I was really touched that Mike White chose to bring up the topic in such a thoughtful and emotional way.” - Nalin Satearrujikanon, founder of The Future Is Ladyboy campaign, in a Them. article.
“here's mike white (creator and sole writer/director of the white lotus) coming out to dogwhistle to terfs about sam rockwell's autogynephilia monologue and the two genders on andrew sullivan's racist, transphobic podcast” - little lord fuckleroy (@_aetheling) April 2, 2025 on X
Given that Mike White cut carrie coon’s nonbinary child due to vibe shift, his inclusion of this rich TERF-material also gestures at this same vibe shift.
The climate in Whyalla, cuttlefish capital of the world, is mild. Summer temperatures (fahrenheit) range from high 60s to high 80s, averaging 75, while the winter is a gentle high 40s - low 60s, averaging 55. https://en.climate-data.org/oceania/australia/south-australia/whyalla-3048/
“This is a squidstack but cuttlefish aren’t squid,” you say to me, aghast. In Japanese, the word for squid and cuttlefish is the same, ika 烏賊! Cuttlefish and squids are taxonomically distinct though, both belonging to the same superorder, decadiformes but diverging from there. Cuttlefish belong to order Sepiida, while laypeople’s squid belong to the order Teuthida. https://academic.oup.com/mollus/article/83/2/133/2967092
Schnell Alexandra K., Jozet-Alves Christelle, Hall Karina C., Radday Léa and Hanlon Roger T. 2019 Fighting and mating success in giant Australian cuttlefish is influenced by behavioural lateralization. Proc. R. Soc. B.28620182507, http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2507
Alexandra K. Schnell, Carolynn L. Smith, Roger T. Hanlon, Robert Harcourt, Giant Australian cuttlefish use mutual assessment to resolve male-male contests, Animal Behaviour, Volume 107, 2015, Pages 31-40, ISSN 0003-3472, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.05.026. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215002237)
Hanlon, R., Naud, MJ., Shaw, P. et al. Transient sexual mimicry leads to fertilization. Nature 433, 212 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/433212a, https://www.nature.com/articles/433212a#:~:text=Get shareable-,link
https://www.pir.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/469412/2024-giant-Australian-cuttlefish-population-estimate.pdf cuttlefish biomass is… inconsistent. I’m concerned!
I have been wondering about how often basic tasks feel impossible for gen Xers, boomers, and silent generationers. Millennial burnout was the hot topic of 2019 (the original + more perspectives), but in 2025, is any generation feeling energized and well? I think I never recovered from playing 150 hours of animal crossing in March 2020.
Like here in the original white lotus squidstack and the recent sequel.
Prestige TV. Unlike TV that is “just for fun” (read: unserious, “trashy”), prestige TV is thought-provoking art. Normal TV is Danielle Steele. Prestige TV is Faulkner. Prestige TV is full of complex narratives, beloved anti-heroes, beautiful visuals, and high production values (read: HBO). Each episode is not a self-contained story, but a chapter taking us closer to deep understanding.
Mike White New Yorker profile: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/02/17/mike-white-profile-white-lotus
In manosphere and trad wife adjacent news, Pornhub reports that searches for “modesty” increased 77%, while the term “modest milf” was up 45%. “Dr. Laurie Betito, who serves as the director of Pornhub’s Sexual Wellness Center, said of the trend: “It seems people may be pining for a simpler time — looking for things that are less complicated and maybe seeking out more meaningful experiences.””
"My forever bone to pick with Mike White Lotus is his belief that people are selfish. And that there aren’t many other ways to be:" yes, well put, I think that when White Lotus gets boring (which it did more and more for me this season), this is exactly what makes it boring! But, I will always watch anything that loves Jennifer Coolidge or Parker Posey as much as I do. And also I liked "Enlightened" so much that I keep wanting White to do better.
Also I'm not sure what I was expecting the Strassburg sock to look like, but ... whoa.