All Quiet On The Great Gatsby

An original title I just made up from my own brain imagination.

Purveyor of food poisoning at a gun-themed restaurant turned purveyor of democracy poisoning at a gun-themed legislature Lauren Boebert elevated the AR-15 above Jesus Christ in divinity last weekend. Pause for laugher… pause… gesture for laughter… pause more… Georgia Representative Barry Loudermilk, a Republican named after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, is in trouble for conducting reconnaissance tours of the Capitol on January 5th. And by “in trouble” I mean “not actually in trouble.” Loudermilk is attempting to tweet through it by wishing happy birthday to his friend, U.S. Army. Mayra Flores of Qanon is headed to Congress from South Texas, with Elon Musk’s enthusiastic approval. I expect Musk will announce the Tesla Model Q any day now, in his ongoing program of what Max Read quoting Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou called “sowing chaos to reap power.”

The discourse is a shambles today. The vibe is “gazing numbly at the pile of sticks where my house used to be after the tornado passed.” This gyre? Well it isn’t NOT widening, pal.

In The Daily Beast, Alan Halaly reports that Florida man Ernesto Cruz Graveran, wanted for $4 million in Medicare fraud, loaded up a jet ski with food, water, and extra fuel to make a desperate last-ditch 90 mile run for Cuba, but was caught by Border Patrol just 90 miles short of his destination. It was a good effort, and he almost made it out the door.

Bitcoin is not so much flirting with $20,000 as kissing $20,000 with tongue. Merit Circle, a gaming DAO, voted to refund an early investor because the vibe was off. Unilaterally “refunding” an investor is definitely not a thing, but presented with an offer to buy out their $175,000 investment for $1.75 million, in this economy, the investor, Yield Guild Games, was like “I guess?” And $USDD, a new algorithmic unstablecoin, is doing a Terra speed run just a few weeks after it launched. Who wore it best?

Don’t get too in your heads about this survey, it’s an Oxford project that was like “hey we’ll make a survey for you” and I was like “ok cool.” I’m not doing marketing here. That said:

Paul Ford wrote that the fundamental question of the web is: “Why wasn't I consulted?” so in an effort to stop failing to consult you I’m working with the Oxford Internet Institute in a study exploring newsletter audiences. We have a survey for you! it’s anonymous and your responses will only be shared with me, to improve Today in Tabs and/or devise more fiendish ways to annoy you, and with the researchers at Oxford, to help them understand “the ecosystem of email news” whatever that means. If you haven’t yet, please fill it out, I swear it’s not a gag or a bit.1 

It took a while but according to his Bumble profile, punching Richard Spencer knocked the Nazi right out of him, reports Laura Bassett. N=1 though, so more research is needed. T_H_E__M_A_C_H_I_N_E_S stopped by Indignity to discuss [THE TEXTURE OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE]. “We Should Build Jurassic Park” writes Matt Yglesias, who would absolutely die on the toilet in act one. Internet Explorer is dead, and say what you will, you can’t deny that it sucked and no one will miss it. And Dean Baquet is off to spend more time on his den banquette, having saved us all from Hillary Clinton’s emails. Keith Olbermann saluted him with a fond “good riddance.” His replacement as New York Times executive editor, Harvard University, is already at it. In order not to plagiarize myself I just reviewed what I wrote when Joe Kahn was selected to replace Baquet and you know what? It was pretty good. Australian novelist John Hughes should have spent more time reviewing what he wrote in his novel “The Dogs,” because according to The Guardian’s Anna Verney, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Erich Maria Remarque wrote a bunch of it. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, as I wrote just now for the first time.

Hey… what?

Levy is a fastidious archivist of her own myth. She even shares with me a 19-page Google doc of everything anyone has ever said about her on the internet called ​“I heard everything you said about me”, which, surely, is an oppressive library to have to maintain. It’s a compilation of testimonies such as: ​“When I see Honor Levy, a dubstep remix of Simon and Garfunkel plays in my heart. She’s Elliot Smith nightcore. She makes me happy and sad, but mostly happy to be sad” or ​“Honor Levy is a whirling malfunctioning cyborg churning out the present.”

…what?

“We discovered how the movement of the flag in the wind took on a new beauty and significance with each frame. No two frames were the same. The wind, the flag – they danced together, moving like a breathing organism. From one work, we are now giving birth to thousands of unique NFTs. This is very modern. This is a very Aquarian Age.”

…what?

Today’s Song: Yeah Yeah Yeahs (ft. Perfume Genius), Spitting Off the Edge of the World

~ In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some tabs that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since ~

Look I’m sorry about how often this newsletter gets cut off in Gmail. It’s because Our Regrettable Platform decided to make every link 570kb of totally unnecessary click tracking garbage. I have asked them to stop but they don’t seem to care. If you subscribe, almost all the money goes to me. It’s not in any way a vote of confidence in Substack.

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