Afternoon Tea 1.5.21 - Historical Context

As long as we're doomed and repeating it...

January 05, 2021

Trump called Kelly Karen, Karen darkened her opponent’s skin in an attack ad, SoulCycle instructors are crazier than you’d bet, and the leader of the Proud Boys was arrested for more than one flavor of crime. It’s Tuesday, January 5th 2021, and this is the Tea.

Arrested Proud Boys leader confessed to his crime on Parler (Daily Dot) The leader of the Proud Boys was arrested for burning the flag at a Black Church in DC a while ago, as he got off the plane for his ironic insurrectionary protest later on this week. And then they found two (empty) high capacity magazines in his bag. Which, even when empty, are still illegal to sell in DC. The guy’s mags were found when his bag was checked but the crime was actually admitted to on Parler. Between this and the volume of people spoofing GOP leaders to fundraise off idiots, that whole social network is just a swamp of grift and cruelty.

I assume this puts his little revolution on hold, and I wonder if the Proud Boy protest will even happen now.

Kelly Loeffler’s new Facebook ad darkens skin of Raphael Warnock (Salon) Happy Georgia Election Day! And I think the ad is still up, or has probably been put back up. In thanks for her support, Trump referred to her as “Karen” (for real), so I expect today to be a wild ride. If you thought this “supervillain in a movie where plucky kids have to save an orphanage with a golden retriever that can somehow play hockey” couldn’t sink any lower, you owe me 0.00001 BTC.

There’s No Such Thing as Ethical Grocery Shopping (The New Republic) As you read the review of “The Secret Life of Groceries,” you start to get a sense of what some leftists mean when they say there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. At least when it comes to shrimp it seems.

This Ohio Golf Course, Built Atop a Hopewell Earthwork, Is Now the Subject of Lawsuit (Smithsonian) They built a golf course on indigenous homes and a burial ground. You really can’t make this up. The Hopewell culture is a great read as well.

The Cult of SoulCycle Is Even Darker Than You Thought (The Cut) SoulCycle has its almost Hot Yoga moment. I really do think that people who make significant amounts of money from exercising or being attractive, need some kind of “Fit Therapy” to keep them from turning into weird Sex Nazi Cultists.

Bomb-grade journalism (Foreign Exchanges) Derek Davison is a must read if you’re into foreign policy, and this article is a great illustration of why. He dismantles the inherent bias and loaded language that the “Morning Defense Presented by Northrop Grumman” newsletter uses to discuss Iran. Yes, POLITICO allows the morning newsletter on national defense they send out to be sponsored by Northrop Grumman.

A Scary Amount of Nutrition Science Has Deep Ties to the Food Industry (ScienceAlert, Full Text) 13.4% of peer-reviewed articles in the Top 10 most cited nutrition & dietary journals reported food industry involvement. That means 1 out of 7 studies you read about dietary supplements, processed food, and dairy, that industry had their foot on the scale. And, to quote the study directly:

The proportion of articles with findings considered favourable to the food industry was substantially higher among those articles with food industry involvement (55.6%) compared to a random sample of those without (9.7%), with the difference even more marked where industry involvement in studies was more direct (author affiliations or direct funding for the study).

So you want to reform democracy (Civic Tech Thoughts) Also a five year old read, but Josh says what needs to be read by every neoliberal who thinks we can just throw big data or VC funding at the problem:

Tens of thousands of people are working intensely on problems related to governance, like access to information (my area), voter registration, conflicts of interest, lobbying, organizing, polling, procurement reform, campaigning, campaign finance reform, criminal justice reform, investigations of corruption, gerrymandering, etc etc etc. Foundations and venture capitalists have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on making government and policy-making better, and many tens of millions of that just on use of technology.

Here’s you right now:

You’re not the first to think government could be better with tech.

If you wonder why you don’t see your idea already out there in the world, it’s because your idea didn’t work the hundreds of other times someone tried it. 

Learn your history, learn your context, respect organizers and people who have been trying to solve a problem for longer than you’d known it exists.

Monopoly Was Designed to Teach the 99% About Income Inequality (Smithsonian) It’s a five year old read, but it seems to be necessary to remind people about regularly. You don’t hate Monopoly, you hate income inequality & the mortgage system.

5 Undeniable Long-Term Trends Shaping Society’s Future (Visual Capitalist) The world is getting older, clustered into cities that are getting stunningly large, on a planet getting hotter and more unequal. Happy New Year!

100 Tips for a Better Life (Less Wrong) I usually brush these lists off as low-level fodder, but this one has much better advice and a higher signal to noise ratio than I expected. As someone who works in SEO professionally, #1 is 100% correct. My favorite is #29:

29. You do not live in a video game. There are no pop-up warnings if you’re about to do something foolish, or if you’ve been going in the wrong direction for too long. You have to create your own warnings. 

Song of the Tea: My unofficial anthem for 2020, the “Coffin Dance” meme song was mashed up with one of the most depressing & soulful tracks The Weeknd has put out. It’s a reminder that bad decisions have irreversible consequences, but in one of the weirdest, most contextually impenetrable ways possible.

Some mistakes educate, others scar, while a select few break. Understanding the difference is one of the keys.

Yours,T