Afternoon Tea 3.1.2021 - Rigorous Nuance

Chips are in short supply, people are waking up to Cuomo’s toxic foolishness, Navalny gets sent to Russian Oz, HSBC planning to stop using a bit of its office space, and using fire satellite data to track human rights abuses. It’s Monday, March 1st 2021, and this is the Tea. (Of course, here’s the original source photo set for the Snow Moon)

Carmakers have been hit hard by a global chip shortage - here’s why (CNBC) I’ve seen too many people post about this without understanding it. It’s not that Biden is bailing out video game console chip makers, it’s that these chips are in basically everything that made surviving the pandemic possible. Combined with the increasing computerization of cars, no one has the microchips they need to make stuff. It’s not just Sony, Apple, and Microsoft, it’s Ford, Honeywell, and Electrolux.

Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Sent to Notorious Prison Camp (Daily Beast) I really do not like this reboot of Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. May the Old Gods & the New protect Alexei.

HSBC plans to nearly halve office space over long term (Reuters) Remember that commercial real estate apocalypse America has been dealing with since the apex of malls? Yea, add a bunch offices never re-opening because work-from-home didn’t cause the insane productivity losses people who obsess over “collaborative environments” warned about.

How a Gas Company Spent 2020 Denying One of the Biggest Pipeline Spills in American History (New Republic) & Trial of US citizen charged with terrorism in Venezuela to begin (AJZ) I like to think I’m reasonably plugged in, more so than the average bear. And these two stories flew entirely under my radar, for so many months. One involving a burst pipeline, resulting in the leaking of 1.2 MILLION gallons of gasoline into North Carolina. The other being Venezuela caught an American outside oil refineries in possession of “specialized weaponry” and possible intelligence insignia. He’s being held at the headquarters of the Venezuelan equivalent of the CIA, and has pled not-guilty to terrorism charges. The MintPressNews is not a source I would take deep stock in, so when they list him being found with “a submachine gun, a grenade launcher, C4 explosives, a satellite phone and bricks of $20 bills,” I’ll wait on a secondary source for this info. Never forget, no matter how connected you are, with enough money or power, stories can be kept from you.

Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests (Scientific American) So, widescale social unrest during a pandemic, with hundreds of cases of brutality against journalists and legal observers, reduced police killings by 20%. As Jon Oliver would say, Cool. 

The Only Way Forward Is to Drain the Swamp and Lock Trump and His Gang Up (Daily Beast) We got Trump because Dubya & his ilk were never charged. We got Dubya because Reagan & his clown show were never charged. We got Reagan because Nixon was pardoned and no one was really punished. Break the cycle, punish the the nega-rainbow coalition of grifters, insurrectionists, seditionists, unlisted foreign agents, and fundamentalist accelerationists.

Healthcare groups, lobbyists padded Cuomo campaign coffers amid COVID-19 crisis (Daily News) & For Cuomo, hardball tactics, intimidation, and now allegations of harassment (Times Union) & Who is Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, first in line to succeed Gov. Cuomo? (NY Post) The extremely loud, provincial, and momentarily startled onion has been forced into a rare defensive crouch. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I hope $125,000 was worth several thousand needless deaths.

Visualizing Cyber Harassment (Erin Gallagher) Spectacular use of data, visualizations, and clean language to explain what activists, organizers, authors, LBGT voices, and women-on-twitter-with-opinions have experienced for years now. It really is a bit more complex than “lol just log off bro.”

New York Times Columnist David Brooks Blogged For Facebook’s Corporate Site (BuzzFeed.News) The post is part of a campaign to promote this report of “The Power of Virtual Communities” that NYU kicked out for Facebook after FB dropped $300k into their canteen account. The whole not disclosing that cash or the cash FB dropped into a thing Brooks runs called the Aspen Institute’s Weave Project, kinda underscores exactly why these disclosures need to be made.

Using VIIRS Fire Data for Human Rights Research (Amnesty International) Using fire data from satellites to track & verify human rights abuses. This is exactly my the intersection of technology & advocacy that I love to see.

Song of the Tea: While we’re a long way off from partying in the sun with a giant pile of vaccinated friends, here is two South Korean producers and a J-Pop vocalist giving you some upbeat, sunny flash to go with your gloom. Infectious with some glistening chord work.

Don’t get complacent, the temperature is about to drop. But keep going, the finish line is in sight.

Yours,