Afternoon Tea 5.19.21 - Useful Idiots

I know words. I have the best words.

May 19, 2021

QAnon Shaman’s lawyer certainly said some words, Fox pretends it had a duty to say other words, a roomba does things better than words about Tesla out of Elon Musk’s mouth, and the best takedown of terrible words “take time if you need it” that you’ve seen. It's Wednesday, May 19th 2021, and this is your Tea. (Source on the spectacular new pictures of Jupiter below)

“They’re all fucking short bus people”: Capitol Riot Attorney Manages to Insult at Least Three Different Groups While Defending 1/6 Actions (Vanity Fair) Remember QAnon Shaman? It’s actually hard to be this ignorantly hateful to this many people at once, but here we are. His lawyer literally said: “A lot of these defendants—and I’m going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully—but they’re all fucking short-bus people. These are people with brain damage, they’re fucking retarded, they’re on the goddamn spectrum.” So yea, I assume that trial is going to go swimmingly.

Fox Responds to Suit Saying It Was Only Reporting News on Trump Election Fraud Claims (Bloomberg) Fox saying they have a constitutional responsibility to message force multiply Trump’s lie bile is peak Fox, especially given their lawyers also claim that no serious person should take Tucker Carlson as news. 

The Army Reveals the Range of Its New Hypersonic Weapon: 1,725 Miles (Popular Mechanics) The new Hypersonic missile not only expands our non-ICBM nuclear response reach significantly, it can be launched from a truck.

Banks Always Backed Fossil Fuel Over Green Projects - Until This Year (Bloomberg Green) In the same way the world believed in climate change when the military & insurance industries started adding it into their long-term projections, when banks start recognizing these as bad bets, this change will accelerate.

Lumber Futures’ Rout Deepens to 27%, Hinting at Rally’s End (Bloomberg) Those jokes about lumber being more expensive than homes and PS5s might be coming to an end.

Abolish the Debt Ceiling - by Raising It to One Googolplex Dollars (New Republic) Since we can’t end the debt ceiling debate permanently, if we raise it to some absurd amount, we don’t have to worry about the GOP holding the Federal workers hostage every few months/years.

Five Things My Roomba Does Better Than My Tesla (TheDrive) Alex Roy dismantles a lot of the myth about automated cars and self driving using a lovely metaphor the massively non-tech people can get.

City pays $350,000 after suing “hackers” for opening Dropbox link it sent them (Ars Technica) Firstly, don’t use Dropbox, it’s terrible. Secondly, this is an example of what can happen when you use Dropbox, or any software you don’t entirely understand how to use. Thirdly, fucking lol. You send people access to a folder then sue them for clicking on it? Amazing.

Against “Feel Free To Take Some Time If You Need It" (Culture Study) I’m just going to grab the pull quote from the article instead of wasting your time:

Whatever shit the world throws at you, the work endures. It’s not that you want to be a heartless robot; it’s that the market is hostile to those who aren’t, no matter what your manager assures you. The manager’s crisis refrain of “feel free to take some time, if you need it” is fundamentally a sorting question: are you someone who needs it or are you someone who can ignore that you do?

Even Animals Go to Jail (History of Yesterday) A brown bear named Katya “served” 15 years in a penal colony that housed human inmates. Apparently we’ve sent animals to Jail a few times, not just the pigeon spy stuff we’d reported on previously? Man, humans are wild.

Song of the Tea: It’s in the mid-80s today here in NYC. Hot human summer is heating up quick. Here is some sunny drum & bass to match.

Yours,

P.S. No Tea tomorrow, we’ve managed to lose a few of the writers to the sunny wilderness. We’ll be back on Monday, May 24th.