Afternoon Tea 1.26.2021 - Progress & Caveats

More slid into poverty in the last 4 months than any time other than the 1960s, Indonesia seized oil tankers, Smokey Eye Lies is going to run for governor, Biden is attempting to end the use of private prisons at the federal level, and the evidence this wasn’t all just earnest patriots getting carried away continues to grow and coagulate. It’s Tuesday, January 26th 2021, and this is the Tea.

Indonesia seizes Iran, Panama-flagged tankers over alleged illegal oil transfer (Reuters) Credit where credit is due, to Indonesia seizing two oil tankers, Iranian & Panamanian, for attempting to perform an illegal oil transfer in their national waters. Iranian tankers have been known to turn their transponders off, precisely to pull shit like this. Because it was actually leading to an oil spill this time the tankers tried it.

Joe Biden Is Aiming To End The Federal Use of Private Prisons (BuzzFeedNews) & Fact-checking 7 statistical claims from Biden’s (quite factual) economic speech (CNN Politics) While the contracts still need to be ended/not-reupped behind the scenes, and there are some nuances to the numbers Biden quoted in his speech last week, holy crap is this night and day from the daily firehose of trauma and Gish Galloping. Daniel Dale is one of my go-to fact checkers and when he’s impressed, I’m impressed.

US Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years (Bloomberg) & It Seems Money Does Buy Happiness After All (Bloomberg - Study Full Text) Kahneman & Deaton’s oft cited “Money doesn’t buy more happiness after 75-90k” doesn’t seem to be true. I feel like broke people (of which we saw the sharpest increase in since the 1960s) could have told you that. Also maybe the DeVos’ family, if you correctly identify which yacht they’re on.

Ex-Trump spokeswoman Sanders running for Arkansas governor (ABC13 - WBKO) Smokey Eye running for governor! I hope we can all remember her for her lies, and not be distracted about how famously bad of a politician she could be.

DeBlasio’s $1 Million Flood Plan Shelved and Hidden From High-Risk East Harlem (TheCity) Great reporting from TheCity on this. After spending $1mill, even FOIL requests result in fully redacted information on the report, given what was in it. Great job deBlasio & the Parks Department, way to transparently prove you don’t give a fuck about flooding risks in East Harlem.

Weak American Democracy Lends Strength to Trump’s Insurgent Right (Spectre) Feds: Evidence shows well-laid plan by some Capitol Insurrectionists (Politico) & Meet Trump’s Pro-Insurrection “Intellectuals” (The Bulwark) & Trump Really Meant to Become the American Erdogan. That’s Clearer By the Day. (Esquire) & Violence is Mainstream Republican Politics Now (Slate) “Mainstream Republicans” aren’t going to stop this. If anyone you know is still debating that 1/6 was accidental, fringe, or something that wasn’t already in play before the election and will be in play long after, this quintet of links might help. This was a boundary test, and if people associated with it aren’t punished, what we all witnessed will become the best recruitment video in history. The Insurrection Caucus is real and it’s not going away until it’s forced to.

News media outlets vary widely in how they cover preprint, new research finds (Journalist’s Resource - Study Full Text) If you ever read an article and it refers to a study in “pre-print,” you can safely bin the article and finding. And if you’re watching the news and the report mentions the article is in “pre-print,” you can change the channel.

NYPD Finds Dozens Drinking Inside Club With ‘Heavily Fortified’ Door; Owner Arrested (NBC4) & Man caught on video starting fire inside his own Queens restaurant arrested (1010 WINS) I said parties needed to stop getting heat, so clearly, people gonna make me look foolish. If people had died of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, because of poorly vented illegal pandemic parties, this would be karmically perfect, instead of just depressing as fuck.

Police Mistake Pensioners Queueing for Vaccine for an Illegal Rave (Mixmag) This however, from Essex, is hilarious. How much of a Karen do you have to be to call a the cops on the line of old folks.

Meet YInMn, the First New Shade of Blue in Two Centuries New Blue just dropped. (HyperAllergic) For real. We made a new shade of the color blue accidentally in 2009, but it’s commercially available for your Eiffel65-related purposes.

Song of the Tea: Seems like a great time to remind everyone this song by Arkasia exists. “The Great Dictator” was self-financed mostly by Chaplin, because Hollywood was afraid of the Germans.

Snow falling, teasing.Stealing my focus in the Best possible way.

Yours,T