Afternoon Tea 12.10.2020 - Spite-Watch

If you do this, get help. The McRib is not help.

December 10, 2020

Rudy got 1 of 108 doses of the monoclonal antibody, Johnny Depp destroyed his universe with malevolence, the Swamp expands, Wall Street retreats, and Spite-Watching might actually be worse than Doom-Scrolling. It’s Thursday, December 10th 2020, and this is the Tea.

A miserable New Hobby: Move for a Better Deal, Then Spite-Watch the Falling Rent on Your Old Place (Curbed) This breaks records for wasting time, inflicting emotional harm on yourself, and poisoning interactions with others. There’s a big difference between grazing on Zillow and letting your old landlord live rent free in your head.

Trump and Friends Got Coronavirus Care Many Others Couldn’t (NY Times) Three old dudes clearly at the K2 Apex of human health, Rudy, Christie, and Donny, got treatments you & I had a 0.00% chance of getting. You have to wonder how many of these bloated fascists would have survived their bout with ‘rona without literally priceless experimental therapies. And I’m not saying “literally” because I’m a teen girl, it’s because DC only got 108 doses, and Rudy somehow qualified for one.

Sen. David Perdue Sold His Home to a Finance Industry Official Whose Organization Was Lobbying the Senate (ProPublica) & Trump administration helped GOP donors get Syria oil deal (Responsible Statecraft) The opposite of #DrainTheSwamp is #RestoreTheWetlands, which is what that whole crew have been doing for years. I’m no fan of the Clinton Foundation, but this is a whole different level.

Wall Street, political left agree on debt, MMT, economy (Business Insider - Opinion) Why Modern Finance Is Ruining the World (Institutional Investor) & America Has Central Planners - We Just Call Them ‘VCs’ (Intelligencer) A new generation of Wall Street citizens are starting to read the writing on the wall. Smart, very smart.

Closing the racial wealth gap requires heavy, progressive taxation of wealth (Brookings) The Brookings Institute consistently impresses me with their dedication to nonpartisan research and complex problems. Some of these findings are eye-watering. My favorite call out:

Indeed, if the wealth gap were completely eliminated for all but the richest 10% of households, the total racial wealth gap would still be more than $8 trillion, 80% of the total wealth gap that exists today.

The Essex Boys: How Nine Traders Hit a Gusher With Negative Oil (Bloomberg) Remember back in the spring, oil was selling for negative dollars a barrel? And we all thought, huh, wonder who is making money on this absurdity? Turns out it was eight dudes from Essex led by a guy called Cuddles, and they made $660 million.

Humpback whale spotted in New York Harbor near Statue of Liberty (NBC News) A whale saw there weren’t any lines for the Statue of Liberty and spent the day taking in the sights.

“He’s Radioactive” - Inside Johnny Depp’s Self-Made Implosion (Hollywood Reporter) The oral history of how a person who went from the #1 Hollywood actor in the world, to persona non-grata, and deserved every bit of it. If you ever wanted a lesson in how to blow up your life, this is a master study in what not to become.

The White Men Who Threaten Me With Their Own Suicide (Gen) Ijeoma Oluo has been fighting for equality for so long that the death threats don’t really bother her. The threats of self-harm or suicide that old racist men send her are a different story. (The above picture came from one of the first visualizations to attempt to capture the scope of police brutality at BLM protests this year.)

Song of the Tea: Because most dystopian fiction is outdated, for the release of Cyberpunk 2077, I gotta go with a track off Drink the Sea, the spectacular album by The Glitch Mob, featuring silky vocals by Swan.

Build the future you desire, nothing is etched in stone. Even hard drives die.

Yours,T