All the News That Doesn't Matter

You already know the news that matters. If you somehow don’t, then open up any publication or social media platform, except LinkedIn I guess. If you don’t even want to do that, Jack Mirkinson at Discourse summarized everything you’ll find there. After cycling through the stages of grief from “denial” to “googling Molotov cocktail recipes” and back, I’ve realized that I don’t have anything useful to add. Take care of your people, find a way to help in your community, and please, please, don’t do this:

But what I do have are a very particular set of tabs. Tabs I have acquired over a very long career. Tabs that make me an incredible source of:

News That Doesn’t Matter

Like the news that the relentless consumerist nightmare of TikTok is turning Kate Lindsay into a freegan. Or the news that Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot will release canned Chicago tap water under the brand name “Chicagwa.” Meanwhile here in Original Portland, a woman tried to drive her SUV down the stairs of police headquarters. “She said she was following her GPS instructions but responding officers felt it was her excessive blood alcohol level." The same night, “a man from out of state got his vehicle stuck on the train tracks.” We’re shutting down cars until we can figure out what’s going on.

And it’s interesting, although probably also doesn’t matter, that Jaya Saxena found out why American potato chip flavors are so boring:

Speaking of which…

Today in Crabs: Kate Mooney of the new local New York news site Hell Gate, in a transparent and ultimately successful bid for a Tabs mention, investigated the “New York City Crab Boil Boom.” And scorpions are the crabs of the desert,1 which is where Tabs pal and NY Times photographer Ash Ponders braved venomous snakes tasting their fear to get these pictures. Just look at this beautiful lad:

Also today in NY Times snake news, calling this a ”play date” gets increasingly indefensible as the story goes on. (CW: Anaconda don’t want none, gets way too much).

If you’d like to take a break from feeling bad for all American women to feel extra-bad for one specific American woman, part two of Evgenia Peretz’s Vanity Fair story about Grey’s Anatomy writer and compulsive liar Elisabeth Finch is here.

Facebook is out of the podcast business. Dianne Feinstein is out of the forming long-term memories business. Lake Mead’s water level is down to “revealing a dumped body from a 1980s mob murder,” which is disturbing on both climate change grounds and on wondering how many human bodies are in my own water supply grounds. Sara Fischer reports that Quartz sold to Herb/Co for “less than $10 million.” There are a lot of numbers that are less than ten million. I’m just saying.

And Finally: it’s the first day of Dracula Daily. Today Jonathan Harker sampled some exotic eastern European recipes and found them “very good but thirsty.”

That’s it, take care of yourselves and each other.

Today’s Song: Fugazi, “Dear Justice Letter”

~ it's all over i said, the last fair tab going down ~

On a scale of bad to really bad, how are you doing? Personally I’m too mad to even tweet, but I’m sure that too will pass. Chicagwa.