Dispatch From the Chip Wars

Programming Note: Tabs will be off next week so I can take care of some non-Tabs stuff and have a bit of a break, and honestly today’s newsletter is kind of thin. Ideally I wouldn’t have put these two things so close together but that’s just how it happened. If you’re a subscriber I’ll see you in the Open Thread tomorrow, and if not, have a nice third week of November and Tabs will return on the 22nd.

LIVERPOOL — The chip wars rage on today, as Wetherspoons customer Harry Tayler, 22, clings to the nearly hopeless position that his alleged 13.4 inch “biggest chip I’ve ever seen” is real, under a withering barrage of scorn from assembled anti-chipista forces. Just weeks after the Mumford massacre, which saw punter Sam Mumford’s supposed “18.5in-long monster” also “rubbished by angry sceptics,” the streets of Liverpool continue to run brown with chip fat, and there’s no sign of peace in sight.

Unfortunately the chip war is not the only war. Reuters’ Poppy McPherson and Shoon Naing have an incredible report from inside the resistance in Myanmar, where regular Instagram-posting 20-somethings are heading to jungle training camps to fight the military junta.

Facebook patented turning all nouns into advertising. Crypto is haram in Indonesia. How do you know if a crowd is about to kill you? Kyle Rittenhouse is gonna go free because his lawyer said “logarithms.” Universal Music Group wonders “what if Gorillaz, but awful?” Like him or not, you can’t deny that Tim Robinson keeps yelling bad things into existence, so coffin flops are real now I guess. Luke Winkie explains that “men lack the emotional availability, social contract and the freedom of spirit to establish new friendships in the wild,” and the only answer is podcasts. Mailchimp employees shocked at how screwed they are, part XXIV:

Never trust a capitalist. Or a cop, as this shocking update from Houston demonstrates:

I guess narcan also works if you overdose on knuckles? More research is needed.

Ben Smith and Ben Protess report that Ozy is under federal investigation. In Vice, Tim Marchman wrote about Smith’s continuing conflicts of interest involving BuzzFeed and the News Guild. As usual, Smith refers questions to the Times and the Times refuses to say anything.

Something Awful founder Richard “lowtax” Kyanka has died. Here’s the news on Slashdot, where no one seems to know who he was anymore. In 2020, following allegations of domestic abuse, he sold the bulletin board he had founded in 1999 and was subsequently banned from it. His work was influential in internet culture, which is now just “culture,” in bad ways as well as very bad ways. I didn’t know him or spend any time at SA, so I will leave it to the Goons themselves to express how they feel.

It’s Veteran’s Day, and here’s a Canadian project selling the names of Canada’s war dead as NFTs. I think that’s my signal to wrap it up! Matt Levine wrote about Elon Musk selling stock, the Trump SPAC, and Ozy, so if you have the whole day off you might be able to get through it.

Today’s Song: Sega Bodega, “I Need Nothing From You”

Hey if you subscribe, you get an invite to the Tabs Discord, which honestly rules. Before it’s in Tabs it’s almost always in the Discord. Plus there’s more Clay Shirky than you were probably expecting. If you miss me next week, I’m either in the Discord or @fka_tabs. One of those is free but it’s also accurately called “the Hellsite” so only you can say what the best choice is for yourself.