Under the Thousand Watchful Eyes of Big Potato

In August, a Hamilton, New Zealand couple dug up the world’s largest potato, a blobby 7.9 kilogram spud they named Doug. Incredibly Nick Perry from the AP appears to have gotten a quote from Doug himself:

If they change the story to attribute this quote to someone else by the time you see it, just know it’s because Big Potato (aka “Doug”) thinks you can’t handle the truth.

Isn’t that fun? New Zealand seems nice. In America our environmental regulatory agency has designated “sacrifice zones” euphemistically called “fence-line communities” where large polluters are allowed to poison children, report Lylla Younes, Ava Kofman, Al Shaw, Lisa Song, and Maya Miller for ProPublica. Here’s the map, if you want to see whether you’re being poisoned. But at least we have our freedom, and we don’t have to live under the thousand watchful eyes of… Doug.1 

In the metaverse your body can be anywhere and big corporations will only be allowed to poison your mind, if “one-man The Thick of It episode and Vice‑President for Global Affairs and Communications for Meta (née Facebook) Nick Clegg” has any say, according to Ryan Broderick in a Very Special Garbage Day Report from Web Summit in Portugal:

Ryan also did a thread about how a format-break post like this fits into a high quality ‘slettering experience for both readers and writers. Also from Web Summit: here’s Apple SVP Craig Federighi saying “Sideloading is a cyber criminal’s best friend” as if his company’s flagship mobile platform didn’t have a vulnerability where the “attack is just you’re walking along, the phone is in your pocket, and over Wi-Fi someone just worms in with some dodgy Wi-Fi packets” less than a year ago.

Tabs, But Not In Any Sense Today: Yesterday I attributed the line “What does it all mean?” to De La Soul in the subhed, because I know it best as a sample in their song “The Magic Number.” But the nerds in the Tabs Discord hunted it down through Double Dee & Steinski’s “Payoff Mix” (which De La Soul leaned on pretty heavily) and finally to this 1986 Robert Christgau article from the Village Voice which reveals that the full line, "And say, children—what does it all mean?" is spoken by none other than former NYC mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, reading Sunday comics on the radio during a 1945 newspaper delivery workers strike.

So what does it all mean? New York’s mayors have always been freaks, and according to Choire, the next mayor is:

Get ready for “between one to 16 years” of this:

I guess you can take your paycheck in Bitcoin if you don’t have to pay rent anywhere.

Hypepriests. Out of context Anaesthesia Blues (“people are saying Anaesthesia Blues is not a ‘real tv show’… do not believe their lies”). Jeffy’s rocket store lost its court case and cannibal sunspots menace Earth. Stack Overflow released the only keyboard a programmer needs. “70 people dressed as Despicable Me Minions cheer as Gru arrives.” “Instagram and Twitter finally make link previews work again” now that it’s been nine years and no one cares anymore. Defector’s Laura Wagner needed fewer than a thousand words to explain why the WSJ-hyped Punchbowl is “Just The Same Old Shit.” And the Daily Beast’s Tim Pool correspondent Robert Silverman reports that Pool got Covid:

Thoughts & prayers.

Finally: “Man eaten by piranhas after jumping into lake to escape bees.”

Today’s Song: Home is Where, “Long Distance Conjoined Twins”

~ criticizing tab shows you are out of order ~

Today was like hacking our way through a dark forest but I’m glad we made it to the other side together. And it’s the other side of the week too, so happy Tabs Friday. If you’d like to hear from me tomorrow or you’d like to join the outstanding community of nerds in the Discord, please subscribe. If not, peace and blessings! Tryna get the açaiiii, tryna get the pomegrandler, I will Tab at you next week, and thank you once again for loving yourself.