Afternoon Tea 4.8.2021 - Reality Kicks Back On

That stuff you stopped paying attention to didn't go away.

April 08, 2021

Howard Dean goes full villain, a delightful story about how Trump basically destroyed GOP fundraising, New York legalized sports betting, good reads on Medium (dumpster fire) and NFTs (coal burning dumpster fire), and that thing everyone told Boris Johnson would happen is happening. It’s Thursday, April 8th 2021, and this is the Tea.

Bus torched in more Northern Ireland violence as British and Irish leaders call for calm (CNN World) Remember BREXIT? One of the impossible things to resolve is the Northern Ireland border with Ireland. And as predicted, the impossibility is now playing out in violence echoing the worst actions before the Good Friday Accords.

Howard Dean Pushes Biden to Oppose Generic COVID-19 Vaccines for Developing Countries (The Intercept) You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

New York Lawmakers Agree to Legalize Mobile Sports Betting (Wall Street Journal) The yawning budget gap is so bad we legalized weed and gambling. Next year’s fantasy league gonna be lit.

Let’s Cut Our Ridiculous Defense Budget (NYT - Opinion) Now that they published Peter Beinart’s piece on defense spending, I take back what I said yesterday about the NYT Opinion page.

The Mess At Medium (The Verge) This read and interview is the best explanation of why you’re reading this on Substack I’ve found so far.

Money for Nothing (Real Life Mag) I’ve been struggling to understand NFTs in the era of artists being omni-exploited, and this longform piece by Vicky Osterweil is the piece I’ll now be sharing when people ask me how I arrived at my thoughts on them. This quote is perfect:

Silicon Valley provides a technical way, via hardware and software, to seem to turn electricity into value, when in fact it merely uses electricity to redistribute costs and labor down social hierarchies.

Why do so many people get cancer at exactly age 65? (Welcome to Hell World - Full Text) It’s paywalled, but I find Luke O’Neil to be the most important non-fiction writer working on the “Americans are dying from late stage capitalism, please help” beat. To the point where his writing that I subscribe to is usually too painful for me to read.

UPS Bets on Electric Aircraft to Get Packages to the Hinterlands (Bloomberg) Helicopter Trucks! The future is designed differently than we expected.

Song of the Tea: You made it. The sunrise is here. Warm your tired bones, stretch your aching muscles, and rejuvenate your senses.

If colors fade and lights are faintThere's no need to be afraidThe sun is set and stars will shineTruth and dream will intertwineIf darkness drops, then night will fallWe will answer when it callsWhere you lose lucidityMorning light will be the key 

Yours,