Afternoon Tea 3.10.2021 - Freezer Burn

(Editor’s Note: No Afternoon Tea tomorrow as our writer will be deposed by the West Palm Beach prosecutor’s office to provide educational testimony on Google, YouTube, and Instagram’s algorithms. We’ll be back on the Ides of March.) A Song of Ice Then Fire comes for Texas, Piers gets what’s coming to him, India’s farmers continue to fight for what is coming to them, endocannabinoids not endorphins are getting your runner friends high, and they’re making a movie out of Cocaine Bear. It’s Wednesday, March 10th 2021, and this is the Tea.

Weather-Battered Texas Faces Wildfire Threat Weeks After Freeze (Bloomberg) 2.1 million Texans face critical wildfire conditions, including those in El Paso who managed to avoid the Deep Freeze due to their grid being part of the Western Interconnection. Any time Cruz wants to admit shit is getting Biblical, I’ll be here.

India: Farmers mark 100th day of protest, block highway (AJZ) Remember that Indian farmer protest I’d mentioned occasionally? 248 deaths and 100 days later Still going on y’all. They didn’t block a highway for 20 minutes until the cops showed up, they blocked a 6 lane highway for five fucking hours.

How Scientists Scrambled to Stop Donald Trump’s EPA From Wiping Out Climate Data (TheVerge) Just as infuriating as you’d guess. The fact that “data rescue” and “guerrilla archiving” had to be things shows how tenuously balanced on the knife’s edge we really were during the rule of Emperor Tang.

NY Elections Board Makes It Harder for Journalists to Follow the Money (Real Sludge) What people don’t want printed is journalism, everything else us public relations.

Piers Morgan to leave ‘Good Morning Britain’ after 41,000 complaints over Meghan remarks (NBC News) Apparently this dude went on a date with Meghan years ago, and struck out so hard he still whines about it to this day. Holy crap man, just go on Tinder, there are plenty of women for you to make inappropriate feet comments about.

NYT Columnist David Brooks Resigns From Nonprofit After More Evidence Of Conflicts Emerges (BuzzFeed.News) & David Brooks and the Endless Grift of the Conservative Commentariat (New Republic) Given that this guy’s perspective has always been as smugly self-satisfied as it has been surprisingly stupid, this kind of news is frustratingly expected. Spare me the cancel culture twaddle while Brooks is out here hawking Facebook Groups without mentioning who is cutting him checks.

The Usefulness of Our Delusions (Behavioral Scientist) It’s easy to blame people who are conned or tricked, but the more you stop and think about what people get out cons & scams, the more useful delusions, lying to ourselves, and general self-deception can be to certain people who are suffering.

Getting to the Bottom of the Runner’s High (NYTimes - Full Text) So…it’s not endorphins that give you a runner’s high, it’s actually more likely to be endocannabinoids? Huh, today I learned…

Elizabeth Banks to Direct ‘Cocaine' Bear’ Thriller for Phil Lord, Chris Miller (Hollywood Reporter) In 1985, a black bear got into a duffle bag that fell from a plane being used by a drug smuggler, carrying 70 pounds of cocaine. Before this bear’s heart exploded from the largest stimulant overdose in the history of cardiovascular systems, the internet refers to him as the Most Apex Predator in the history of Apex Predators.

Song of the Tea: Remixes of “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka are a rare treat, and this lo fi rework from lando! might help you melt the ice…  

The light isn’t back permanently yet, but it will be before you know it. You’re almost there.

Yours,