Evening Tea 2.23.2021 - Past the Deadline

NYC rents dropped in places where they were offensive, Bloombito screwed his campaign staff one last time, bugs in AZ prison software keep people locked up past their release dates, Clubhouse is fun because of the people on it, and a British Columbia man becomes my new hero by scolding a Lynx on Facebook. It’s Tuesday, February 23rd 2021, and this is the (Evening) Tea.

Report: Pandemic Rent Dip In NYC Hasn't Made Much Difference For Essential Workers (Gothamist) Importantly, the bigger the rent drop in NYC, the more likely it is that area was hyper-gentrified and the rents were over-inflated anyway. Working class neighborhoods saw almost no price movement, reminding us how little relief those essential workers have actually gotten (WHERE’S THE STIMMY BIDEN?)

Bloomberg’s 2020 aides got an unwelcome surprise in their tax forms (Politico) Did you think Bloombucks couldn’t fuck his workers over even a year after his the debate broadcast the Mount Everest of Earned Abuse, delivered by Elizabeth Warren? Think bigger.

Software 'Bug' Keeps Arizona Prisoners Behind Bars Past Release Dates (Gizmodo) Not only is corrections software messing up, keeping people locked up way improperly, but they’re now blocking employee access to the website. Round of applause for AZ, can’t wait to learn how much $$ was made on these glitches.

Forever War Culture War Forever (Wars of Future Past) & Defining Endless Wars (New America) & It Didn't Have to Be This Way (Foreign Exchanges) Kelsey Atherton & Derek Davison are two of the most important voices when it comes to foreign policy and the forever war. Defining Endless Wars is a critical text for anyone trying to understand the Forever War (Ghost in the Shell calls it Sustainable War), and maybe how to bring it to an end.

 A Father-To-Be Died In An Explosion Caused By A Gender-Reveal Device (BuzzFeedNews) Which have caused more deaths in the last 3-5 years? Airplane terrorists or gender reveal explosions?

France and the spectral menace of ‘Islamo-leftism’ (Washington Post) Remember that nonsense from yesterday? Here’s a great history tethering the dumbness with previous anti-Semitic dumbness. Same dumbness, different era it seems.

Al Jazeera to launch rightwing media platform targeting US conservatives (The Guardian) Can’t say I would pursue this particular demographic, though Alt AJZ should be just insane enough to be worth checking in on every so often.

How Black users are saving Clubhouse from becoming a drab hangout for tech bros (CNBC) Clubhouse is just iDiscord, Slack with rounded corners and a better audio conferencing interface than Zoom. What is making it the hot item of Silicon Valley is its users. I’ve seen rooms with hundreds of digital cannabis marketers, or tiktok beat flippers, and that’s just on the IG streams of people younger and cooler than I am. Of course I haven’t gotten an invite to Clubhouse, I haven’t been their core demographic for over a decade.

Lynx lectured by the scruff after killing several northern BC man’s chickens (PrinceGeorgeMatters) So Canadian he shames a Lynx. No seriously. He carries the Lynx over to the coop and scolds it while showing it the damage. As the lynx casually growls into the camera, you hear the most polite Canadian accent I’ve heard on the internet. Canadians, I fucking love you.

Where the internet was delivered by a donkey (RestOfWorld) Kyrgzstan did the right thing to move their teaching online. The only issue? No nationwide data network. At all. They literally needed a “science in a box,” a digital library with “500 books, 250 videos, and 4 million Wikipedia articles in Kyrgyz, Russian, and English.” And that meant transporting this tissue-sized mini-education system via donkey sometimes. Don’t ever complain about gaming or pr0n websites being blocked at school again kids.

Song of the Tea: Vanity, hubris, malevolence, all lead to suffering.

Let the spectral rainbow of kindness, mindfulness, and refuge be your shield in this trying time. The warmth has almost returned.

Yours,