Afternoon Tea w/ Honey (12.4.24)

We’re back! For a hot minute before things slow down for the holidays of course. Got a fun little Dispatch on the history of Hess trucks vis-a-vis cops & disaster on Friday. But for now, your Afternoon Tea, with 0.00% paywalls. My hope is that any link you click on here, will get you to the action, not a paywall rake to the face. Let’s see how it goes!

Six hours under martial law in Seoul (The Verge) Sarah Jeong was drunk in Seoul, when a coup happened. For The Verge, she details what happened better than anything else out there. For more history & context, this AJZ piece has you sorted, and Tim Shorrock out of DropSite delivers critical context on DC’s love of Seoul’s authoritarians.

Syria update: Dec 1 2024 (Foreign Exchanges) Over the weekend, Syrian rebels did what defense wonks have been hoping for since 2016, credibly advancing to Aleppo and beyond. While giving off strong vapors reminiscent of Wagner’s march to Moscow, Assad’s authoritarian apparatus doesn’t have strength in defenestration, so the rebels remain alive and not thrown out of windows.

Apple accused of silencing workers, spying on personal devices (Reuters) This is utterly unsurprising and will still shock a bunch of people in the Cult of Mac. Ask any ad guy or digital marketer, Apple used brand reputation to eat Meta’s lunch. They care as much about securing your data as any big tech company, they just signal so with rounded corners.

A Giant of Journalism Gets Half its Budget from the US Gov (DropSite) I’d been a huge fan of the OCCRP during my debate years. We should fund actual journalism, not just PR for the West.

A Chinese national, charged with fraud by the SEC, just sent Donald Trump $18M (Popular Info) Crypto is about to come back, replacing AI for the most enthusiastically hyped tech by the worst people you know. The $100+ Million in lobbying by the industry ensured that.

Breaking down the world’s tariffs against China’s tech industry (Rest of World) We’re not the only ones! Apparently when you use state money to subsidize prices of exported goods, you piss off a whole bunch of nations. Fun!

Flooding the Gap (IssueOne) Flooding the zone with shit, first a tactic used by Putin & Bannon, has become the defacto misinformation attack vector. IssueOne is trying to get a handle on it, so if you see this report covered elsewhere, click through to give them the impressions and views.

Uber’s big plan for India: buses (Rest of World) Uber did the meme folks. They realized Mumbai workers are never going to take UberBlack, so they made UberBus. I can’t wait for UberLuxBus, where they offer liquor and free-wifi on a spruced up Jitney van.

The Bible is a billion-dollar IP (Sherwood) This show is completely insane. And by that I mean compelling to a shocking number of Americans, and makes Left Behind look like an obscure anime favorite.

Quote of the week

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. 
~Erich Fromm

Poem of the week

The old masters have much to teach us if we would only listen.

Vibe of the week

Apashe dropped a new music video that blends fact, fiction, history, propaganda, and demagoguery to remind us just how bad cults can be. Don’t believe the hype, if someone is promising you the end of the world, they might just mean the end of YOUR world.

Don’t stop believin’ (in yourself),
tnh