Afternoon Tea 12.6.21 - Digital Toll Roads

Supersonic Trebuchets, Belly Vape Dancing, Border Misunderstandings

December 06, 2021

Iran & Afghanistan stopped their squabbling, Trump keeps getting worse, Amazon’s complex of monopoly is truly jaw-dropping, Web3 done two ways, and someone created a trebuchet that can launch things a touch faster than its classical counterpart. It’s Monday, December 6th 2021, and this is your Tea. Today’s vibe is a reconceptualization of what power looks like in places you might not consider. Plus it’s an absolute banger.

Clashes over Iran-Afghanistan's 'border misunderstanding' ended (Reuters) For the family members who still Islam is a monoculture, border clashes between Iran & Afghanistan settled down. Because, those are a thing.

Amazon’s Toll Road (Institute for Local Reliance - PDF) & The Amazon Empire Strikes Back (Stratechery) Two exceptionally detailed and insightful analyses Amazon. The first, on the costs Amazon is able to extract from the vendors on its Marketplace product, the second documenting how vendors are running from the instability of the global supply chain, directly into Amazon’s arms.

Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new book (Guardian) & Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons—and He Never Registered as a Lobbyist (Daily Beast) What was the phrase? “There is no bottom?” May Americans be forgiven for the malevolent grift & needless suffering, wholly self-inflicted.

TCEQ listens to corporate polluters, not communities. That has to change. (One Breath Houston) This is so bad we’re just going to quote the report verbatim:

This pollution joined the other toxics and volatile organic compounds leaking from the dozens of chemical plants on the east side of the city, the harmful emissions from Port Houston’s operations and cargo-handling equipment and the incessant diesel exhaust from third-party companies’ drayage trucks, creating an environment where children living within two miles of the Ship Channel are 56 percent more likely to develop a specific kind of leukemia than children living at least 10 miles away. Cancer rates in Manchester on the other side of Highway 225 are 22 percent higher than the city overall.

Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It) (SlashFilm) Actually useful, non-gimmick or bait piece about things besides Tenet.

Is web3 bullshit? (Max Read) & Web3 is Bullshit (Stephen Diehl) We’re still not sure how we feel about this, so we’re going to keep digging up well sourced & reasoned pieces for your review.

The Music Plays Again In Mosul (New Lines Magazine) Gorgeous photo essay documenting the revival of music performance in Mosul, Iraq. The hope we all might need right now.

How Agent Provocateurs Harm Our Movements (International Center on Nonviolent Conflict) So, not only are Agent Provocateurs (cops/extremists who act violent during protests, allowing other law enforcement to “justifiably clamp down) a thing, but we have research on how their fuckery holds us back.

Supersonic Projectile Exceeds Engineers’ Dreams: The Supersonic Trebuchet (HackADay) Now this is is a project dear to our hearts. If they yell Trebuchet! while it launches, even better.

Poem of the Tea: Hala Alyan is good at words. Definitely earned this place in the New Yorker.

As the weather trends toward the absurd, what stilling influences are you adding to your universe?

Yours,