FD Afternoon Tea 9.30.20 - Crosstalk

Cloned Dinosaurs, Stand down & Stand By, and bread too sugary to be bread.

September 30, 2020

My congratulations to anyone who stuck it out. I made it about halfway, so I missed the shit-talking of a Vice President’s dead son or his other son’s drug use. The Proud Boys stand up & stand by, Palantir’s IPO today dodges ICE partnership questions, Ireland says Subway is too sugary to be a sandwich, and nobody wants to fuck Luigi. It’s Wednesday, September 30th 2020, and this is the Tea.

Presidential debate: How the world's media reacted (BBC) Reads about as well as you’d expect. Reactions span from horrified and depressed to snidely confident. My favorite is China’s response:

The state-run Global Times called it "the most chaotic presidential debate ever" and noted that Mr Trump had taken "aim at China by blaming [it] for the raging Covid-19 epidemic and US economic woes".

Editor-in-chief Hu Xijin wrote on Twitter that the debate reflected "division, anxiety of US society and the accelerating loss of advantages of the US political system".

I mean, he’s a state agitprop leader, but game recognize game? Honestly, as the Discourse Blog puts it, “What Did you Expect?” Instead of substantive in-depth discussions of domestic & foreign policy, we get two minute mouth sprints that bamboozle and deify. A bunch of trash gurgled up from the Proud Boy end of the internet last night in response to Trump not disavowing them.

But incoherence, rule breaking, and bad faith baiting ruled the night. Just in case you didn’t find it incoherent enough, I’ll leave you with the completely insane way it was served up to a country like Japan:

As a Woman (Current Affairs) A gut-wrenching read from a progressive on living and voting as a woman in America. Men, I challenge you to understand this, even if it offends your sensibilities.

QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic (The New Republic) Everything old is new again.

Nobody wants to fuck Luigi (AV Club) Pornhub did a study of Mario/Nintendo related searches and determined that Luigi couldn’t get a date to save his life. Maybe that’s why he’s so pissed in double dash.

Palantir Admits to Helping ICE Deport Immigrants While Trying to Prove It Doesn’t (VICE) Palantir had an IPO today! It detailed the negative effects of working with ICE as a massive risk in going public. Just thought you should know.

2020 is so wild that people actually believe a baby dinosaur was cloned (Daily Dot) Animatronic Dinosaur from Jurassic World exhibition gets called a cloned dinosaur by the internet.

Want to Learn How the Pentagon Works? Then Play This Board Game (Foreign Policy) Hedgemony! The perfect gift for your board game obsessed friend who spends all day arguing on Facebook.

Sandwiches in Subway 'too sugary to meet legal definition of being bread' (Independent.ie) This is my favorite story of the day, Subway’s bread is too sugary for its sandwiches to be deemed sandwiches:

The court ruled that with a high sugar content, the sandwich could not be deemed a staple food which attracts a zero VAT rate. It rejected arguments by a Subway franchisee that it was not liable for VAT on some of its takeaway products, including teas, coffees and heated filled sandwiches.

Song of the Tea: Jamie xx reminds us nothing lasts forever, using the UK hardcore scene…

You’re over the hump, and the sun is still out. For a little while anyway.

Yours,T