Don't Call It a Comeback
Don't Call It a Comeback
Martin Shkreli and polio have been here for years.
Things That Are Back:
Winamp “has released its first release candidate after four years in development.” Has it only been four years since Winamp? What… year is it right now? Bleeping Computer reports that:
the main goal of this release was to upgrade the code base from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019. Now that this has been completed, the team can add new features and capabilities to the media player.
Hopefully new features and capabilities like “Spotify?”
Polio is back in Rockland County, New York’s wastewater where “health officials… announced a confirmed case of the disease last month,” reports Reuters. In Ars Technica, Beth Mole adds that “Rockland County currently has a polio vaccination rate of just 60.5 percent among 2-year-olds, compared to the statewide average of 79 percent.” Coming back soon: the Iron Lung.
Martin Shkreli, who was a few years early for our current golden age of Ponzis, is out of jail and trying to make up for lost time with his “web3 drug discovery software platform,” but has meanwhile had to fall back on his only other skill, being publicly repulsive. In Daily Dot Jacob Seitz reports that Shkreli is circulating a “Date Martin Shkreli” Google sheet. It sure would be a shame if someone filled it with a lot of fanciful made-up applications.
Swords are back, and the CIA is apparently attaching them to drone-launched Hellfire missiles (™ Lockheed Martin UwU) to dice individual assassination targets such as Ayman al-Zawahri, who was drone-katanaed in his not-so-safehouse in Kabul this weekend:
The R9X is known colloquially to the small community of individuals who are familiar with its use as “the flying Ginsu,” for the blades that can cut through buildings or car roofs and kill the target. The nickname is a reference to the popular knives sold on TV infomercials in the late 1970s and early 1980s that showed them cutting through both tree branches and tomatoes. The weapon has also been referred to as the Ninja bomb.
😐
Maximalism in back for the kind of Zoomer who has both a home to decorate and the money to make it look like Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
The word of the day is “Kitchsy Alexander Calder!”
FT reports that Ben and Justin “No Relation” Smith’s long-simmering Soup “plans to promote reader trust by splitting… stories into separate sections, breaking apart the news from the reporter’s analysis. There will also be a section offering an opposing view, and a view from another region in the world.” Finally, a media startup has identified what’s missing from news stories today: sections. FT also notes that among the mononominal duo’s investors are Bahamian shorts model Sam Bankman-Fried and the founder of venture capital industry circular The Information, Jessica Lessin.
“Is Scott Galloway the Howard Stern of the Business World?” asks Christopher Beam, which I think is Timesian for “is Scott Galloway a center-left dude with generally progressive attitudes except for his pervasive misogyny?” and the answer appears to be yes.
Go Read Something Else:
There’s a heap of good stuff for you to read today so stop wasting your time here and get to it.
Jason Diamond: “The Seasonal Sea and Cake.”
Hot enough for ya? Cool off with “Maine’s ‘Ice Mermaids’.”
Architecture critic Edwin Heathcote roasted the early renders of Crown Prince Bonesaw’s pretend vanity city Neom:
It wears its mirror walls like the Aviators of a highway cop, impenetrable, expressionless, sinister. It purports to reflect the beauty of the landscape. The ultimate architectural cop-out — a dereliction of duty by designers unwilling to take responsibility for the aesthetics of a megacity.
Charlie Macquarie wrote some open-pit mine scene reports for Hypocrite Reader (mon semblable, mon frère): “Open Up This Pit.”
Adam Tismaneanu: “The Beginning of the End of the Bored Ape Yacht Club?” How many Nazi dog-whistles is too many to be a coincidence?
Evie Ebert: “How do you write and work and care for kids?”
In office jobs, as in most of life, Cs get degrees. Do you feel me? I do not put the kids to bed and then crack my laptop to write. The gates of my brain roll down at 7 p.m. like a mall food court Chik-Fil-A on Sunday. When I played sports, no coach ever lauded my “hustle” and nothing has changed in that regard. Evenings are for taking a third of an edible, watching survivalist reality shows and begging my husband to hammer the restless-leg-creepy-crawlies out of my calves with his fist.
Today’s Song: The Sea and Cake, “Polio”
~ once again, back is the incredible, the rhyme animal, the untabbable ~
I’m so sorry for that Saturn tweet. If you find it baffling, just… be glad? Do not under any circumstances, attempt to delve. Also yesterday’s email was full of typos, starting with the title. If you didn’t notice, great! If you did notice: so did I. Pound it. 👊