Afternoon Tea 10.6.2020 - Military Exposure

Joint Chiefs enter quarantine while the White House refuses to contact trace.

October 06, 2020

The Vice Commandant of the US Coast Guard tests positive for COVID-19, the White House refuses to contact trace their super spreader event, the FDA sticks with guidance the on vaccines the White House tried to block, Amazon admitted to 20,000 of its workers testing positive for COVID-19, the former content policy head of TikTok was a diplomat for China in Iran, and anguish as a healthy response to adversity. It’s Tuesday, October 6th 2020, and this is the Tea.

Senior Pentagon leadership quarantining after exposure to coronavirus (CNN) Military leadership are isolating after one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tested positive.

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Taking a Stroll, Gun in Hand, on Fifth Avenue (TomsDispatch) Remember when Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and he wouldn’t lose any votes? Now that we’re approaching 215,000, anyone else wish he just went GTA instead?

FDA says it's sticking to vaccine guidelines blocked by White House (Politico) Nothing to see here, just the FDA digging in against the White House’s wishes, and stating coronavirus vaccine developers must adhere to stricter standards to meet emergency authorization.

Former Chinese government official ran TikTok’s content policy as app went global (Financial Times) Not a huge story, but news that Cai Zheng was diplomat in China’s embassy in Tehran before joining TikTok’s owner ByteDance probably won’t make American hawks relax at all. Also, see Hank Green’s delightful analysis of the Radical Egalitarianism of how TikTok compensates its creators.

Amazon Says Almost 20,000 Workers Had Covid-19 in 6 Months (Bloomberg) As John Oliver would say, Cool.

Covid-19 Sparks New East-West Divide in Germany - 30 Years After Reunification (Wall Street Journal) You guessed it, East Germany is having a harder time managing the pandemic than West Germany, for reasons the MPA-possessing among us have already started working out. Income inequality, lack of generational wealth, less educated/healthy populace, etc. etc.

Changing Tides: The Evolution of Women Musicians in Mainstream Coverage (She Shreds) Powerful look at the last 100 year’s of music and the cycles of erasure that stripped many women of the deep recognition they deserved for their contributions to music. Below is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who very much shreds:

Substack Rhymes With Medium (NapkinMath) Things Substack can do to make sure it doesn’t become Medium. I certainly hope they do.

Most anguish isn’t an illness but an evolved response to adversity (Psyche) Say it again for the people in the back!

In diverse cultures, people seeking the services of shamans and other local healers often complain of somatic problems, such as physical pain and weakness, but it’s revealing that in many cases they are dealing with social stress and showing classic signs of what Western psychiatry would view as anxiety and depression. In North African and Middle Eastern trance and possession cults, such as Zär in Sudan and Stambali in Tunisia, women and low-status men experiencing social stress – including conflicts with spouses or parents – exhibit somatic and depressive symptoms that are interpreted as possessions. The pattern across all this varied global research is the same: difficult emotional experiences that are pathologised by Western psychiatry tend to occur in response to environmental stressors that threaten the ability to survive and reproduce.

Cool thing of the Tea: “De-oldifying” ancient footage is getting better all the time. Just look at the guy on the bike eating it after getting pasted with dozens of snowballs.

Song of the Tea: Existential meditations on death from early 90’s Alice in Chains for your Tuesday.

The chills are coming, have you sealed your cracks?

Yours,T