Afternoon Tea 10.12.21 - Mayoral Mischief

Robots patrolling Singapore, the CIA planned to kill Assange, America’s soon-to-be-expanded wetlands, a Rikers Island guard smuggled a weapon in, what NFTs have to do with the first MMORPG, Crack in Paris, and Great Value Lurch owes NYC over $300,000. It’s Tuesday, October 12th 2021, and this is your Tea. Today’s vibe is a fresh, tight 30 minutes from Heimanu of NuRave, ElectroHouse, Wave, FutureBass, and other genres of music that involve fighting ninjas in space with lasers.

De Blasio Refuses to Pay $320K Running Bill for Presidential Campaign NYPD Security (TheCity) & DOI says mayor has to repay city for security costs related to presidential campaign (NY1) Great Value Lurch refuses to pay the tidy sum he rang up during his time tilting at windmills in Iowa. The Department of Investigation thinks that is adorable and eagerly awaits the money from Bizarro Big Bird.

How the Facebook outage crippled businesses and communication around the world (RestOfWorld) It’s almost as if private American companies shouldn’t be responsible for global B2B communications or critical support service infrastructure.

New robots patrolling for 'anti-social behaviour' causing unease in Singapore streets (EuroNews) Singapore needs to cool it with these robots. Between the Boston Dynamics dog telling people to mask up and these patrol bots, the people are starting to get nervous.

Deathly Silence: Journalists Who Mocked Assange Have Nothing to Say About CIA Plans to Kill Him (FAIR.org) “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” ~Joseph Heller

Flood-Threat Assessment Finds Danger Goes Far Beyond U.S. Homes (Bloomberg Green) We really don’t want to have to re-watch Waterworld. But we will.

Rikers Guard Faces Charges For Allegedly Smuggling Weapon To Detainee (Gothamist) At this point, between the jail boat, work stoppage, and rampant covidruption, the NYC jail system might as well be the place Kurt Russell flees from in Escape From New York.

This tech millionaire went from covid trial funder to misinformation superspreader (MIT Tech Review) We are never so wealthy or intelligent as to be immune from misinformation, marketing, and naked grift.

NFTs, Ultima Online, and player-run game economies (Mobile Dev Memo) To understand the true potential of NFTs, we have to go back. Way back, to the beginning of the MMORPG genre. The secret of NFTs lies in the economic/market system that Ultima Online settled into after years of digital carnage & scams.

How brands are getting tricked into advertising on The Daily Wire (Popular Info) & If Good Reporting Was In Any Way Useful to Conservatives, They'd Already Be Doing It (SplinterNews - 2018) Bad faith journalism, now joined by bad faith ad networks.

Crack in Paris: the Eole Gardens district on the verge of "cracking" (ParisMatch - French) French people freaking out at the possibility of crack in their cities is amusing as all get out.

Poem of the Tea: Continuing the “Facts as Poetry” series, this thread about how we all overload our dopa batteries, is exactly what you need to read today.

You’re doing better than you think.

Yours,