Ain't No Rule Says A Dog Can't Be Speaker Of The House

Last night the scuttlebutt around Congress was that shirt-sleeved blowhard Jim Jordan was perhaps only six votes shy of Speakership, but when the roll was called today that speculative six expanded into twenty Republican votes against him. Fourteen “no” votes is a lot to overlook but to be fair, it’s less than the forty eight sexually abused wrestlers Jordan overlooked when he worked at Ohio State University. Jamelle Bouie is already imagining the even worse Speaker who might arrive after Jordan’s inevitable failure, but what if this is actually it? What if the party that doesn’t want a democratic government simply accepts that it has succeeded, and doesn’t elect a Speaker at all? The economy may collapse, the remaining tatters of the social safety net could fray into nothing, America’s credit rating could crater, but at least we’d be comforted by a full year of watching Jim Jordan get repeatedly humiliated live on CSPAN.

Also Today in Jobs: DJ D-Sol turned off the turntables last year, according to FT. Shock update on that Epic Games Bandcamp acquisition and rapid resale: it’s a disaster. In an all-time classic Ask a Manager, the questioner writes: “My new manager is someone I slept with years ago … and he doesn’t know we have a child.” In Rest of World, Viola Zhou and Caiwei Chen reported on the steep decline of one of late capitalism’s most dystopian professions, livestream sales. Yoel Roth simulator Trust & Safety Tycoon: “You will be tasked with growing the Trust & Safety team at a social media startup and navigating a series of difficult dilemmas.” It’s wild to see managers that you just know are Millennials complaining to Business Insider that Gen Z can’t write a professional email. Luckily Outlook’s AI assistant will help them craft AI quality emails for their managers to read AI summaries of until all of them lose their jobs in the ongoing House Speaker Crisis of 2024 and they have to go to work mining sandstone blocks under that TikTok lady’s suburban house. Could someone please profile her? We need to get to the bottom of this. So to speak.

Every time you see the word “Scholastic” your brain starts playing Cypress Hill’s “I ain’t going out like that,” right? ….No? Just me? Ok. Well if you wanna get drastic you might not wanna pull out your plastic for the next Scholastic Book Fair. Intern Meggie is here to tell us why.

Scholastic Book Fair is the latest to show their cowardice in the ongoing culture war against kids reading. In a statement released October 13th, the formerly beloved childhood staple addressed pending legislation in 30+ states attempting to prohibit books with queer or racial narratives. Scholastic outlined a tepid, lukewarm program entitled Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice that relies on approval from states ahead of time to roll out inclusive books. Because I’m sure Texas is jumping at the chance to advertise "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.” Scholastic stated that “these topics and this collection have been part of many planning calls that happen in advance of shipping a fair.” A very “our hands are tied, what can you do?” approach from a company who has helped schools across America raise millions in cash and educational resources. Don’t downplay your worth queen! Let him chase you!

Putting on over 120,000 book fairs around the world that give affordable access to books for more than 35 million students and families should be an indicator of who Scholastic serves, but somewhere along the line, the company forgot their ideals. Librarians, alongside Twitter users, have been up in arms the past few days over the company’s choice to cave in the fight against inclusivity, stating this gives schools the option to hit the “bigot button” whenever they want.

Turns out Scholastic, like every company, is beholden to profit and not my wonderful third grade memories.

—Meggie Gates wonders why we even have that button.

One time in maybe fifth grade I ordered a book from Scholastic that due to the microscopic cover images in that stupid catalogue I thought was just called “Earth” but it turned out to be “XB7 Comes to Earth” which was a picture book for little kids, and way below my reading level. No one ever said anything and as far as I know no one else noticed at all, but I was so embarrassed and I’m apparently still carrying around a surprising amount of shame about that which crops up every time I see the phrase “Scholastic Book Fair.”

[TURN TO CAMERA 2] One person who should be carrying around a surprising amount of shame but doesn’t seem to be is Sam Bankman-Fried, who Liz Lopatto argues was the bad business friend.1 I know I said we were done with reviews of the Michael Lewis book but that was before David Roth wrote one! So now we’re definitely done, unless someone else I like23 writes one.

An Edinburgh couple’s £60,000 Tesla stopped working because they drove it in the rain.

Also today in EVs, “This Butt Plug Will Allow Toyota To Build 900-Mile EVs” by Collin Woodard (not that one). UPDATE: “The design is 100% practical and the fact that it looks exactly like a butt plug is unrelated to that practical design.” And why were you even looking in Toyota’s bedside table anyway?

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, redacted by Ben Grosser.

Today’s Song: Hamdi ft. Princess Superstar, “Counting”

This newsletter needs one more embedded post but I couldn’t find the right one, so I leave that as an exercise for you, the reader. Thanks to Music Intern Sam who also suggested this new Danny Brown today and it’s good but I would describe the beat as “challenging” so you may or may not be into it. Please subscribe to make sure I can keep making fun of Jim Jordan as our collapsing society rots away. Here’s a real tough read by Rob Delaney ok see you tomorrow.