Afternoon Tea 6.21.21 - Volcano Secret Sauce

Global shipping remains in disarray, the Wuhan Lab Leak theory is junk science, anti-vaccination fugitives are a thing now, Edgar Allen Poe’s best selling book during his life was about seashells, and Bytedance might be down to rent out its secret sauce to you, for the right price. It’s Monday, June 21st 2021, and this is your Tea.

How 'Chaos' In The Shipping Industry Is Choking The Economy (NPR) It’s not just the lack of micro processors that is messing with the global economy. Pent up demand combined with the increased pressures on the shipping container industry didn’t need the Suez EverGreen screw up to make a bad situation worse. And this from Amazon UK where they’ve been caught destroying unused electronics, probably isn't helping.

The Lab Leak Theory Doesn’t Hold Up (Foreign Policy) & The COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory is a Tale of Weaponized Uncertainty (Wired) Y’all, I know we should investigate these things, but a lot of the recent writing on this “leak” is more speculation than detail. We need to remember that a 3000 word piece that only talks to people about their skepticism and concerns, but doesn’t provide any real evidence of a bio-weapon, does nothing but stoke fear and confusion. Get me some evidence, vetted by respectful immunologists & virologists, that aren’t making $$ from the content.

Body found of armed Belgian anti-vaccine fugitive, suicide suspected (Reuters) Because without that standard, shit like this happens.

How China’s ‘Xinjiang Mode’ draws from US, British, and Israeli counterinsurgency strategy (Lausan.HK & Made In China) This is why your smart lefty friends said that mainstreaming the ideas proposed by the Bush administration during the War on Terror would come back to bite us in the ass.

Americans Are More Generous on Foreign Aid Than They Realize (World Politics Review) You’ve heard umpteen arguments about foreign aid and philanthropic giving, but you probably don’t realize how many checks we cut across the globe.

ByteDance launches Volcano Engine brand to offer its “secret” to businesses (Reuters) I might be reading this wrong, but it feels like the company that owns TikTok is saying that they’ll juice their algorithms for you if you pay them. No big tech firm has offered the secret sauce before, to my knowledge. Google, Facebook, any social network I can think of, all offer to help you understand the black box from the outside, but they never tell them they will adjust the black box internally for you.

‘As Long as the Party Embraces Trump, It’s Going to Have Trouble’ (Politico) I’m not sure I believe the conclusions this piece is reaching, but it is amazing to watch non-stupid GOP strongholds wither & die in the fact-free light of Trump leading that party.

Protecting cancer victims from ad tech: Medical targeting should be illegal (BOKonAds) As someone who did SEO for a health site that showed ads & did sponsored content, Health pays some of the largest margins on the planet for this kind of access, and can be invasive & gross. This narrative, related to a 15 year ad tech industry veteran sleuthing out who still isn’t sure who is tracking him, helps explain why.

Owen Wilson Apparently Has a Daughter He’s Never Met (Distractify) Owen Wilson has three or four year old daughter he’s never met, and demanded a paternity test to prove her identity. How powerful is Disney PR such that I’ve watched Loki along with 2.5 million households a week, and I’ve never heard this mentioned.

Newsletters were supposed to be the Wild West. Enter Sheriff Google. (LA Times) This is absolutely true by the way. The best way you can help me keep writing this thing is making sure it’s not in your Promotions, Social, or Spam folder. Moving it to inbox, making it “priority,” marking it as “not spam,” all of those things get evaluated at scale by Gmail to ensure your inbox isn’t awash with garbage.

Poe’s Best-Selling Book During His Lifetime Was a Guide to Seashells (Atlas Obscura) Keep toiling, especially in darkness and obscurity. Even the greatest among us were rarely recognized as such in our time. Earn a better tier of hater.

Song of the Tea: As the genre has existed for more than five minutes, wave has now undergone various Eevee-like mutations, building up to viability slowly. Chillbass, Future House, Hardwave, and now, Wave Trap. The community of creators hit critical mass, so true artists that know how to produce tracks, not just cool noises, have begun to bubble up.

Yours,