Season Six Finale

This gyre? Well it isn’t NOT widening, pal.

Aug 4, 2022

For the season finales of both seasons Four and Five I did a whole recap, but unless I can find an archivist who desperately needs a new job, that seems a lot of work that I already did by writing Tabs every day. Also, creating the recap makes me feel deranged and reading it makes you feel deranged, and we’re all pretty close to the edge already. So for a full recap please see the archive. Instead, what I want to do today is just highlight a few favorites.

Season Six in Politics

Putin on the Blitz: The season started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a posting day so bad it probably killed the Take Tree.

The Take Tree and his boy crushed under a heap of terrible Takes, including “the rest of the world should enjoy the apocalypse vibes,” ”Apes together strong,” Seth Abramson shilling his dumb book, “We’ll trade you Texas and Florida for Ukraine,” “Putin is Emperor Palpatine,” “Ireland is worse than Russia,” and more but I have to stop looking at them, this is physically harming me.

Bad News About Henry Kissinger: He’s still alive.

Big Ben Bongs for Boris: A British government Tabs that has no American equivalent.

The Environmental Powerlessness Agency: “Grandpa President Joe Biden said: ‘Gee I wish those fellas hadn’t’a done that! They’re good boys though, got their whole lives ahead of them.’ It is unclear who or what he was referring to.”

Season Six in Cyberbullying

Adam Mosseri's Minion Era: I made fun of Adam Mosseri and it worked!

A still from Adam Mosseri’s instagram video where he wears a minion-yellow sweater and leans forward with hands together earnestly. His eyes are replaced by Minion goggle eyes, and the subtitle reads: “banana.”

Season Six in Trends

The Atlantic Goes Goblin Mode: Goblin was the mode of season, and this was where it first hit the big time.

Morbin’ Monday: The whole orb was Morbin’.

Sentience? In This Economy? AI was everywhere this season, and maybe she wasn’t sentient but my, she was yar.

Humanity's Flop Era: I tried to write a new joke here but failed.

Season Six in Crypto

Stablecoins: Neither Stable nor Coins: I put on my hyper-realistic latex Matt Levine mask and explained what an algorithmic stablecoin is, so you could understand why the Terra collapse was “some of the darkest comedy available right now.”

Season Six in Literary References

All Across the Alien Nation: April?…

“NOW that’s what I call THE CRUELLEST MONTH” graphic, with a blingee’d-out T.S. Eliot wearing “deal with it” pixelated shades. Graphics by the incomparable Alison Headley.

The Elonphant and the Snake: A whole Tabs about Elon Musk buying Twitter in the form of an extended riff on “The Little Prince” for reasons that escape me now.

The Little Prince’s drawing number two: the outline of the snake, but inside is Elon Musk wearing his all-denim Canadian tuxedo and his big dumb cowboy hat, looking like a giant tryhard dork. (gfx by Alison Headley)

All Quiet On The Great Gatsby: “This gyre? Well it isn’t NOT widening, pal.”

Season Six in Crabs

The Lottery: Today in Crabs scuttled sideways into the spotlight this season, but I think this was the best one. Also it’s a good literary reference/Today in Crabs crossover post.

A picture of “Lamarckdromia beagle,” a crab covered with fluffy tan fur that has a sponge on its head that looks something like a jaunty brown beret, the kind you’d find on a secondhand shore.

Season Six in Puns

KHAN HEIR: Joe Khan was named the new Times editor in chief, giving us the best pun this season.

Season Six in Tragedy

What Are You Willing To Do? After the massacres in Buffalo, Laguna Woods, and most of all Uvalde, I wondered what any of us can do about it. I still don’t know what to do.

Season Six in Paywalls

A Walk in the Woods: I took subscribers on a walk in the woods with Sammy.

The Gang Learns About Digital Security for Activists: Reader and Discord member @Here_Max ran a live workshop on personal digital security, which we later posted outside the paywall.

What Was Your Worst Idea? An old man reminisced about the ‘90s.

An actual photograph of my 1985 Plymouth Caravelle parked behind some bushes in the power lines on the Cape, below a depthless slate blue sky fading to white at the edges. Behind it my friend Bill squats next to a blue cooler, which probably has melted ice and a couple of rapidly warming steaks in it.

That’s It

I’m gonna stop there because I can feel the gravitational pull of all the other things that happened this season trying to lure me into writing a full recap, but like my boy J.-P., je refuse.

Thanks to Tabs Senior Managing Editor for Graphics Alison Headley for nearly all of the fine photoshop work you see above and in the rest of the posts. Thanks to everyone in the subscriber Discord for sharing their tabs and for being the best newsletter themed community that exists, and thanks to you for reading. See you in a few weeks for Season Seven!

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