Welcome to Today in Tabs, a newsletter where I, a man living in Maine, share my witty one-sentence comments about the day's news stories. But my trademark sardonic quips and drolleries will have to wait because…
It’s Release Day!
It’s release day for Sabrina Imbler’s “How Far the Light Reaches,” which I may have mentioned once or twice before, who knows. Here, for a more or less random example of the critical response, is Ilana Masad praising it in The Washington Post. My own soul is a burned out husk contemplating William Gibson’s ever more obviously impending Jackpot in the form of the tripledemic, climate collapse, the global resurgence of fascism, and the coming AI singularity and even I’m still touched by Sabrina’s writing. Probably pick this one up.
It’s also release day for what is likely Cormac McCarthy’s last pre-posthumously published novel, “Stella Maris.” Justin Taylor hated it, in his BookForum review of both new CMC joints that I am linking to again in case you skipped it before because it’s the best tab I read all year. Dwight Garner liked it, but he closes with a quote from “The Road,” so I don’t know how seriously to take his opinion. Graeme Wood liked both the new books, but he does say that:
…as a pair, The Passenger and Stella Maris are an achievement greater than Blood Meridian, his best earlier work, or The Road, his best recent one.
I don’t know how to make sense of the phrase “his best recent one” unless Wood means “his only recent one” because “The Road” is McCarthy’s worst book by a wide margin. Anyway you probably already know whether you’ll like it or not without needing any reviews, so today you can either buy it or not.
It’s release day for Dwarf Fortress on Steam, which I wouldn’t care about at all if it weren’t for this Polygon story by Grayson Morley about one depressed master dwarf artisan named Rakust Locuntun.
I worry over a future in which Rakust dies, leaving behind her masterwork goods for future generations to admire and enjoy, their beauty plain to behold, but the pain that went into their creation nowhere to be found.
And it’s launch day for our planet-smashing asteroids, beltalowda, and the day of our freedom from da tyranny of da inners. Neal dot Fun built an asteroid launcher so you can channel your own Marco Inaros and see how far the light reaches when the light is a fireball centered on the Earthly location of your choice.
Good news! Kevin Roose took a quick look at ChatGPT and the future is gonna be amazing. Probably as good as NFTs turned out. “Intelligencer Staff” dropped an incredible roast of their parent publication: “That AI Chatbot Wrote a Pretty Decent New York Article.” Should college professors be panicking about AI? In Inside Higher Ed John Warner argued that pedagogy that can be tricked by a large language model wasn’t very good in the first place.
The Verge gets into comics with Matt Huynh: “How to Replace the Sky.”
Rackspace is having an all-time bad incident, as apparently its whole hosted Microsoft Exchange service got ransomware’d.
Rebecca Jennings requested a year of extremely online discourse, and she got it.
“My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I’m a writer.” Ephron in the chat to pay respects. Also don’t bother looking up the boyfriend, it’s just some guy, you won’t care.
Finally: In Insider, Vicki Bryan got very in the weeds of Tesla’s finances to estimate how long Elon can drain his one successful company to prop up the flaming shell of Twitter.
Tesla's nearly $600 billion market share is still two to three times the value of its largest competitors combined, despite contributing only 2% to 3% of global sales. With its dominance in EV markets shrinking compared to aggressive competitors already outpacing its dated models, it's clear Tesla has room to fall further.
Ah, well, nevertheless.
Today’s Song: Alvvays “Belinda Says” (Pitchfork’s song of the year! Pretty good choice imo.)
~ The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of tabs ~
Registered at the post office as “congratulations, you’re an adult.” Holiday scheduling note: taking Ryan’s advice to take more vacations, Tabs will publish through December 16th and then be off for the holidays until the new year. Also my EMT final exam is tomorrow (wish me luck!), which means I get twenty hours of my week back, so get ready for some fun stuff in 2023. Also the incredible Tabs Senior Discord Moderation Intern (i.e. @jane) just rearranged and expanded our discord channels, so if you haven’t already, subscribe and come check it out.