Humanity's Flop Era
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“Money is a mass delusion, and so people’s confidence in it matters,” wrote Liz Lopatto in The Verge, summarizing her new beat. It may look like she’s covering crypto, but I think she’s actually working on a thesis that traditional finance and crypto are in many troubling ways the same. She goes on:
Economists have stuff like “consumer confidence indices,” which are not necessary for the study of real things. A tree’s existence, for example, does not depend on confidence.
Maybe crypto is just trad-fi’s flop era. According to Sabrina Imbler, humanity’s flop era can be traced back to “the Late Devonian, an enviously halcyon version of Earth in which the climate was pleasant and mild and the seas were full of fish.” A time when our proto-vertebrate ancestor Tiktaalik flopped out of the shallows to vibe on, or at least near, land. But Tiktaalik didn’t invent rent or W2’s.
Abhor the message, not the messenger, [Chicago grad student Ben] Otoo advises. “You don’t hate Tiktaalik,” they said, adding: “You hate capitalism.”
Bafflingly this is Imbler’s last story for the Times. They’re off to Defector to continue covering creatures and science in their own inimitable style. Imagine having Sabrina Imbler as an intern and not managing to keep them! It’s definitely someone’s flop era over there.
Netflix’s five alarm flop era spread to its secret content marketing site Tudum where editorial staff that were hired for as much as $300,000 a couple months ago are now out with just two weeks’ severance. David Mack wrote a postmortem in BuzzFeed which you should read carefully if you might ever need to know whether your publication is doomed. I’m just kidding, all publications are doomed because media is one big flop era in the form of an industry. Just look at Quartz, where Choire identified four distinct eras that were somehow all Quartz’s flop era.
Disgraced British MP Neil Parish just wanted to see something get plowed. Welcome to the Ohio Senate race, J.P. Mandell. Maine State Senator Chloe Maxmin and her campaign manager Canyon Woodward wrote a Guessay about how Democrats can win in rural districts, and David Remnick wrote that Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow’s extremely viral speech “made the case for decency and integrity in politics better than anything heard of late from a lectern in the District of Columbia.” Unfortunately the Democratic Party’s leadership also flopped out of the shallows in the Late Devonian era so I’m not sure they’ve evolved the ears to hear any of this yet.
Kermit Coming Out of His Well to Shame Mankind:
“Less than a month after I met my soulmate, I ended my 14-year marriage,” writes reverse Jonathan Safran Foer Amanda Trenfield in Shaking My Head dot com dot au. To find out what her new soulmate said, you’ll have to read her book, “When a Soulmate Says No.” Ah… well, uh, nevertheless.
Also Today in Mess: Vanity Fair’s Evgenia Peretz dropped part one of a cruelly serialized story about “Grey’s Anatomy” writer Elisabeth Finch who, it is strongly hinted but not quite reported yet, made up her battle with a rare and deadly form of cancer and a whole host of other traumatic personal experiences to land (and keep) her Shondaland writing job.
Peter “Birds Aren’t Real” McIndoe went on 60 Minutes so now your mom thinks birds aren’t real. Probably give her a call, she’s freaking out. Speaking of old things, Emily Temple wrote that “Apparently the Brontës all died so early because they spent their lives drinking graveyard water.” Yes, this story is from last year but can I resist a title that mentions “graveyard water?” I’m only human. Anyway the news is from 1850, what difference does one year make? Also old but good: Drinkify pairs your music choice with a deranged beverage.
Google emojismith Jennifer Daniel announces “Noto emoji, a new black and white emoji font.“
Today’s Song: Laura Les, “Haunted”
This week is my own flop era, I’m so glad you’re here to see it. Follow @fka_tabs for flop tweets, or @TodayinTabs for anodyne brand-safe content.