Afternoon Tea 3.24.21 - Tambourine Woman

Someone drew a gun on soldiers transporting vaccines in Texas, the retired NYPD spokeswoman who played a tambourine while sacking the Capitol was arrested, dolphins showed up in Greenpoint, and one of the largest ships ever built by man got stuck in the Suez Canal. It’s Wednesday, March 24th, 2021, and this is the Tea.

Suez Canal Snarled by Giant Ship Choking Key Trade Route (Bloomberg) & Suez Canal Blockage May Ripple Through Global Energy Market (Bloomberg) & Giant ship blocking Suez canal partially refloated (Guardian - HQ pictures) Ever Given, one of the largest cargo ships in the world, ran aground in the Suez Canal. With an internal capacity over 219,000 tons, it’s like trying to move Snorlax after he went to sleep, in a canal. A modern “Butterfly Wings felt around the world” moment, if the butterfly was the size of a suburban office park.

Tugboats, dirt loaders, and the world’s pluckiest excavator have managed to partially refloat this behemoth, but lots of work remains to be done. The rubbernecking has created a backlog of over 60 ships waiting at some point in the canal journey, with another 15 not having left their port until the all clear from Suez is given.

A Cargo Ship Drew a Giant Dick Pic in the Ocean Then Got Stuck in the Suez (VICE World News) The coverage has started to roll in, and with it, so have the jokes. Know that as badly as you screwed up this week, you didn’t cause oil prices to jump 3% and draw a dick pick on satellite trackers with a ship that’s the size of four football fields.

National Guard Troops ambushed at gunpoint while transporting coronavirus vaccine, police say (Washington Post) Highwaymen run motorized stagecoach driven by soldiers carrying precious medicines off the road. Attempting to deliver vaccines to Matador, TX, they were ordered out of their vehicle by a man who later said he believed the soldiers to be involved in the kidnapping of a mother and child. I’m not sure what is more worrying, that it’s because he thought QAnon sex trafficking stuff was happening, or because he legitimately wanted to destroy vaccine supplies.

Tambourine-shaking former NYPD officer arrested for her musical role in Capitol riots (NY Daily News) I don’t usually get opportunities like this, so here we go, my Top 5 jokes, in countdown order:

1. Remember those Revolutionary paintings of the five, drum, and flag peoples? Who had Tambourine before DJ decks?

2. Never tell me Bards aren’t viable in real combat situations.

3. Spokeswoman for the NYPD in the 1990s you say? Someone should ask her thoughts on the drunk, racist cop riot Rudy started back when Dinkins was mayor.

4. She was ratted out by a relative?! What happened to the Thin Blue Line? Oh right, the murder.

5. HEY MRS TAMBOURINE MAN, PLAY A SONG FOR ME!

US deploys Green Berets to defeat ISIS-linked insurgents accused of beheading children on a new front in Southern Africa. (Yahoo! News) We’re sending our Special Forces to Mozambique. I doubt I could pick that country out on a map without labels on the first try. I always felt sorry for the kids that rolled the Africa map in the “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” game show, felt like hard mode before I knew what that was.

The Greater the Disaster, the Greater the Profits (TomDispatch) You can actually see the creation of the new border-defense industrial complex in real time if you squint.

WHO: Vaccine inequity becomes ‘more grotesque every day’ (UPI) While I can’t say the WHO has been remotely blameless through all of this, the point remains. That frontline/essential Healthcare workers in developing nations do not have access to the vaccine, while rich nations are expanding availability, is inequity. And to prevent that from being rectified in the name of profit, is greed.

The government’s lawyers saw a Google monopoly coming. Their bosses refused to sue (Politico) This lies squarely at the feet of Obama-era regulators who were trying to cozy up to the cute new money. And now, it’ll be that much more difficult to put the cat back in the bag. As the cat knows my last purchase, every email I’ve sent since 2004, and how many times I’ve left the state in the last month.

Shetland electric cars can now be fueled purely by the power of the sea (BBC News) This is a great example of how to solve the problem of “power generation” vs. “power use” in alternative fuels and electric vehicles. It’s not like they can call Aquaman to jump on a Peleton when your Tesla needs a jump.

Three Dolphins Spotted Frolicking in East River Near Greenpoint (Gothamist) Looks like tourists are returning after all.

Song of the Tea: Tambourines? Tugboats? Boats messing with world trade? Someone tell Janis. The future is wild, but it rhymes with the past.

Everything you do is important. Even the stuff that feels so tiny it couldn’t possibly help.

Yours,