Afternoon Tea - Fly You Fools!

Torture, Flooding, Upper Sky (7.12.21)

July 12, 2021

Texas Democrats doing what needs to be done, essentially everyone getting COVID didn’t get the vaccine, Russia is working on race-based facial recognition, beavers might be the solution to wildfire risk, and Virgin Atmospheric made its debut. It’s Monday, July 12th 2021, and this is your Tea. (Source for the Baobab Tree picture below. Madagascar must be wild.)

Texas Democrats to flee state in effort to block GOP-backed voting restrictions (NBC News) This is what’s referred to as “Doing Stuff” and “Fighting Back” and every Democrat in the nation needs to be studying this while cheering them on.

Almost all new COVID-19 cases are among people who have not been vaccinated (CBS News) 99.7% of new cases are in the unvaccinated. If someone you know refuses to get vaccinated, you have my permission to print this out a dozen times, roll it up like a newspaper, and beat them about the nose. If they want to go out and play, they need to admit they’ve been a very bad dog and they need to shut up and get their shots.

White Boy Summer, Nazi Memes, and the Mainstreaming of White Supremacist Violence (Bellingcat) This is why there should be no difference between an ironic nazi and an earnest one in your minds. Meme magic is real, as those radicalized by 2016 say. We’re approaching a very bad place that smells greatly of Reconstruction.

Analysis: 'Racist' facial recognition sparks ethical concerns in Russia (Reuters) If you’re going to build race based facial recognition, at least lie to us and call it something else.

Saudi Arabia: New Details of Alleged Torture Leaked (Human Rights Watch) Hey Biden, we breaking with these radicals any minute now right? Anyone? Hello? Bueller?

Everything you need to know about Richard Branson going to space (CNN Business) To be very clear, he didn’t go to “Space,” he went to an altitude, 50 miles up, that we used rockets to get to in the 50s. It is wild that a single person has enough money to fund a 50’s Space Program, but I’m not sure that’s the takeaway message I was supposed to get from the weekend’s events.

Thursday’s Downpour Could Have Been Worse For The Subway System (Gothamist) I love how these stories are framed. It was disgusting, but…it can always be worse.

The Causal Effect of Heat on Violence: Social Implications of Unmitigated Heat Among the Incarcerated (National Bureau of Economic Research) Instead of lamenting how monstrous we are to each other, I’ll just quote the abstract:

Correctional facilities commonly lack climate control, producing a setting absent endogenous responses to hot weather like avoidance, adjustment, and mitigation. We study daily weather variation across the state of Mississippi, and show that high temperatures increase intense violence among the incarcerated. Days with unsafe heat index levels shift both the intensive and extensive margins of violence, raising daily violent interactions by 20%, and the probability of any violence by 18%. 

AI bot trolls politicians with how much time they're looking at phones (Mashable) Ok, this needs to be replicated with CSPAN and every other public access footage. This is a sweet as fuck bot, and frankly we need dozens more like them.

A dry California creek bed looked like a wildfire risk. Then the beavers went to work (Sacramento Bee) Just a lovely story. Beaver dams are great at dampening a forest area, and given that we’re about 24 minutes from some part of America just always being on fire, can we hire like…all the beavers ever?

Unopened Super Mario 64 game from 1996 sells for $1.56M (Associated Press) That sound you just heard was millions of millennials crying out in pain, then suddenly silenced at the thought of their parents throwing old video game stuff out or leaving it in the basement to rot.

Song of the Tea: VANA’s soaring lyrics shimmer along with MICA’s stupendous chord arpeggios. This feels both soulful, raw, and stunningly polished at the same time. I have no idea who MICA is, but their YouTube channel has 48 subscribers and this track has less than 30,000 views. Go change that right now.

yea, I’m speechlessgod I hope no one can see thistelling you all of my secretscan’t help but think that I need this

Yours,