These Tabs Should Be Beneath Whoever is Behind Them

If Tabs is about anything it’s about content, which means it’s about everything because everything is content. Murder is always content for someone, and in Input Jessica Lucas reports that meme shirt maker Eva Benefield decided that if her father’s murder was going to be content for Vanity Fair, it might as well be content for her instead. I feel several kinds of way about the idea of selling “It’s Corn!” sweatshirts via an eight part family trauma dump on TikTok, but you know what? All of the ways I feel are content, too. And rather than wait for Vanity Fair to make it content, Rebecca Lanis immediately posted to Reddit when her Q-pilled and spiraling father murdered her mother and dog and attempted to murder her sister. Everything viral on Reddit is made up, but unfortunately not this time.

That’s pretty dark, but try this: Dries Depoorter, the creator of the “Die With Me” chat app (which is not what you think) made content out of influencers making content with his new project “The Follower.”

And Kevin Smith, who only made new content twice in his life,1 made a third “Clerks” movie which is about about making the first Clerks movie, “but knowing that going in still won’t prepare you for how much of ‘Clerks III’ is spent literally reshooting scenes from the first film,” writes Sean Burns in a review that could also be described as: Sean burns. It looks dreadful.

Perhaps coincidentally, French nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard chose to end his life today at age 91, reports The New York Times, “having suffered from ‘multiple disabling pathologies.’” The French new wave was one of the first art movements to understand that everything is content, and the Times obit quotes Godard expressing this succinctly:

Ahh oui, oui, ouais. Tout est contenu. Hon hon hon.

But if everything is content, does that mean content is everything? Parker Molloy doesn’t think so, especially when it comes to grown ass racist adults losing their entire minds over Black Ariel in the upcoming live action “Little Mermaid” movie. One of them even claims he will use AI to convert Halle Bailey to “a ginger white girl” instead, but begs: “please do not misinterpret this in a racist way.” Well, in that case you can call me mister interpreting this in a racist way. 😉

Because it’s like, super racist, is what I’m saying. Could not be more blatantly racist.

Anyway the climate also struck a blow against content as the California heat wave took out one of Twitter’s three main data centers, leaving the hellsite in a “non-redundant state,” according to CNN. “If we lose one of those remaining datacenters [in Atlanta or Portland], we may not be able to serve traffic to all Twitter’s users.” Again those datacenters are in Atlanta, Georgia and Portland, Oregon. Just wanted you to know. No particular reason.

Remember last year when Fastly went down and The Verge was briefly a google doc that anyone could edit? Well apparently Nilay Patel, a True Poster, loved it so much that he made that experience (aka “blogging”) the foundational concept of the newly redesigned Verge homepage.

Nilay points out that by simply dropping a quick link offsite “we’ll get back hours upon hours of time,” and look: here’s Liz Lopatto blogging a Ronan Farrow story about someone fishing for dirt on former Twitter security head Peiter “Mudge” Zatko. I have to be honest, the Elon Musk vs. Twitter saga has gotten so legally abstruse that I’ve mostly stopped following it, but with this new Verge homepage no one involved in this paragraph had to read anything about it, including me. That does save time!

Ok, I admit I did read that Farrow story which is why I can call your attention to this incredible quote from Mudge: “These tactics should be beneath whoever is behind them.” Spectacular.

And speaking of Elon, the Verge relaunch also features this Loren Grush article and mini-documentary about SpaceX fanatics who moved to Brownsville, TX to be closer to their idol and their dream of escaping an Earth that doesn’t seem to offer them lives they are enjoying very much. It appears to have been reported back in April, and Grush is at Bloomberg now, so… that’s weird! Good story though.

The last and best content news I have for you today is that it’s pub day for Kate “Hark a Vagrant” / “Sexy Giles Corey” Beaton’s new illustrated memoir about her two years working in the Alberta oil sands, “Ducks.”2 She talked to Denise Balkissoon about it in The Narwhal, and Robert Ito in the Times. She has also talked to everyone else about it, which like, of course! She’s got a book to sell! But if you prefer some other general interest publication, chances are they interviewed Kate Beaton this week.

I was gonna skip the tabs entirely today and just write about Loab and Crungus but it looks like I’m out of ‘sletter so I guess not! Another time.

Today’s Song: Miya Folick, “Bad Thing”

~ and you better start swimming, or you'll sink like a stone for the tabs they are a-changing ~

[LMFAO voice] SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS SHIRTS EVERYBODY.