Various Small Disasters

Max Creeps broke up, what if Wikimedia were a DAO, and find the toenail.

When they began publishing, nobody was doing this kind of work. If you wanted to read a feminist response to pop culture, the best place to find that was in a Sociology of Gender course pack, chock-full of academic articles about TV shows from the 1960s. But Bitch was current and fun and I loved it, even its regular feature “Jane Petty Criticism Corner” devoted to hating my other favorite magazine, Jane. (We contain multitudes.)

Gilbert Gottfried died yesterday of complications from a rare type of muscular dystrophy, after tweeting this comprehensively cursed picture in January. Some people found out this way, which Gottfried probably would have liked. And even more bad news yesterday as Max Creeps, a band so punk it didn’t even exist, announced it’s breaking up. I think Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman put it most eloquently when he said: “Those bastards tried to sue me.” Fortunately you can pre-order the duo(?)‘s first and final album “NEIN” on vinyl or cassette tape, scheduled to drop May 27th.

Uno Moralez, “Summon Demons” (not entirely work safe, but amazing):

The Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit distributed autonomous organization that hosts Wikipedia and makes decisions via open debate and membership voting, decided to stop taking cryptocurrency donations. You already know what the web3 knuckleheads are gonna say right?

DAO? More like lmao. “What's that rumbling noise in the distance, slowly growing louder,” asks Molly White. “It is the stampede of crypto zealots who have never once donated to the wikimedia foundation, shouting ‘guess i'll take my money elsewhere!’” They won’t take their money to the long-promised proof-of-stake Ethereum blockchain though, which has been delayed yet again following a… successful test? It is now just six months away, where it has been since 2013. Maybe they’ll go buy some metaverse avatars from Genies, which just “raised $150 million at a valuation above $1 billion.” Does that sound like a lot of money? What if I told you it has “99% celebrity avatar market share?” Now it sounds like a lot of money with some bullshit added on.

Several More Minor Catastrophes:

Who doesn’t love a good real estate disaster? In Washingtonian, Marisa M. Kashino has a tale of two supposedly perfect, robot-built homes that ended up a nightmare of floods, sewage, interior mushrooms and near structural collapse. There’s even a crypto connection, although tenuous. Maybe in the end the real estate was… the friends they made along the way.

The horrific subway attack in Brooklyn yesterday was quickly followed by a catastrophic failure of journalism in the New York Times, reports Alec Karakatsanis. It was, as Tom Scocca wrote in Indignity, “the worst draft of history.”

For example, in August 2020, a group of workers in Commercial wrote a letter to Publisher Fred Ryan describing instances of racism, discrimination and inequality in their departments. It began: “Did you know that in the Accounting and Finance departments of The Washington Post, the commercial side of the organization is referred to as ‘The Plantation,’ because many of the workers are Black and being overseen by White bosses? Highly educated Black employees continue to be stuck in roles on ‘The Plantation’ for years with no hope of climbing up the ladder, while White employees are promoted into unadvertised positions unrelated to their current jobs.”

“The Plantation” was a phrase Black colleagues regularly used sardonically among themselves, a way to cope with an environment that they say has dismissed and undervalued them for decades.

“Bolsonaro faces stiff questioning over Brazilian army’s Viagra purchase” reports The Guardian’s Tom Phillips in a deep and probing look at the South American nation’s unusual military spending. Another story popped up today, as “Bolsonaro faces hard scrutiny over military’s purchase of penile implants.” Hospitalization aficionado Bolsonaro is up for election in October, and his main rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is clearly pumping up these scandals to emphasize the vast difference between the candidates.

Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner asks what is Jack Dorsey’s like, whole deal, man? Sam Dean wondered how the big can of AriZona iced tea is still only 99 cents. “An object from another star system crashed into Earth in 2014, the United States Space Command (USSC) confirmed in a newly-released memo,” which explains a lot. Herschel Walker, a Georgia Republican Senate candidate and liar (but I repeat myself), has been claiming he owns companies that don’t even exist. O.R.P. Substack is hunting for the revenue to justify its bloated valuation, reports Tiffany Hsu. I bet the app will do it, lol. I still don’t know what a DJ actually does but now I know the history of Donk thanks to Zach Tippitt. And choose your own angle: Queen Elizabeth either “reveals long Covid symptoms” or “is 96 years old.”

Oh, Just… One More Thing: In Wired Kate Knibbs roasted the indie film trend of “sad-voice sci-fi.” “Detachment in and of itself doesn’t make a character interesting, nor does repression alone make a world compelling.” Imagine how compelling our world would be if it did.

Today’s Song: Drugstore, “Accelerate”

~ It's a funny business baby, as we can see. But I keep my tabs wide open even when I'm asleep ~

Registered at the post office as “lifts your mood by like 400000%.” Accidentally going viral and regretting it @fka_tabs. Basically just posting links @TodayinTabs. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. Whenever there’s trouble we’re there on the double Mr. Bloodhound isn’t in.

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