Afternoon Tea 9.21.21 - Prebunking

Even child care workers are walking out, a mass shooting in Russia & a gun battle at a baby shower in PA, evidence was found of a meteor destroying what might have been Sodom, social media might be as corrosively addictive as alcohol, and we’ve now lost more to COVID-19 than we did to the 1918 Pandemic. It is Tuesday, September 21st, 2021, and this is your Tea. Your vibe is of course, Earth Wind & Fire, but their official 2020 remix.

COVID-19 Toll in U.S. Surpasses 1918 Pandemic Deaths (Bloomberg) & COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu did (AP) May we be forgiven for our sins, by the Old Gods & the New. Pour one out tonight for all those we lost because of lessons we refused to learn.

Three shot as family fight over gifts at Pa. baby shower erupts into gunfire (Yahoo! News) & Shooting at Russian university leaves 6 dead, 28 hurt (AP) One expected gun fight (put the monogrammed diapers down and nobody gets hurt!) and one unexpected one (who knew there were mass shootings in Russia?).

‘The pay is absolute crap’: Child-care workers are quitting rapidly, a red flag for the economy (Washington Post) Capital refuses to acknowledge the stat that started this Tea, and how that affects labor markets. Childcare & Eldercare jobs suck, to be diplomatic. They don’t come with insurance, benefits, or any of the niche benefits even being a copywriter at a tech start-up gives you. Why would anyone risk COVID for subsistence wages and the privilege of being crapped on?

"Trapped": Migrants collecting food try to evade law enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border (Reuters) What century is this? What era are these photos from?

A guide to prebunking: a promising way to inoculate against misinformation (First Draft News) & Prebunking the California Recall Election Worked (Melissa Ryan) The idea of debunking a lie before it spreads, might actually be robust enough to work in the fight against misinformation at scale. At least, if this pattern can be repeated.

Blizzard Turned Game Developers Into Rock Stars. Misbehavior Followed (Bloomberg) Given the thousands of hours put into Blizzard games by our writing staff, this development is sad but totally expected. This type of incel, gropey, exploitative behavior just is not allowed anymore, and the more successful the company, the longer the look back window for this behavior becomes.

Social Media Is Attention Alcohol (The Atlantic) & Facebook's Growth Team Is a Magnet for Regulators (Bloomberg Opinion) & Facebook’s algorithms fueled massive foreign propaganda campaigns during the 2020 election (The Conversation) With one of our writers working on a Growth Team, we can verify these departments run the gamut from regimented & defensible to, Wolf of Margin Call Street.

How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors (WSJ) & Mental health: TikTok rolls out support to combat suicide searches (BBC News) The new belle of the ball is not blameless herself. TikTok has hit scale where fiefdoms of sex, drugs, and dubstep are now large enough that the youth can be beguiled. Also, as it is a platform of a certain size, it now has to moderate out the bilge associated with 4chan suicide streaming and NSFL (Not Safe For Life) content that comes with its success.

A giant space rock demolished an ancient Middle Eastern city and everyone in it – possibly inspiring the Biblical story of Sodom (Yahoo! News) This is one of those stories that is, if true, a perfect example of survivorship bias. “Welp, if the town where they do x flavor of stuff got nuked from orbit, don’t do x flavor of stuff” is how the Aztecs ended up with human sacrifice.

A Very, Very Crypto Insider-Trading Scandal (Intelligencer) Watching the crypto markets stumble towards a modern financial regulatory framework, one catastrophic grift at a time, is almost poetic.

Poem of the Tea: Ominous Positivity from Michaela Coel

Yours,