Everything Is So Embarrassing

🤦🏼

January 19th, 2022

Bono is reportedly “so embarrassed” by U2, which makes it everyone. Boris Johnson should be embarrassed that he spent Prime Minister’s Questions today “trying to convince the great British public that he’s actually stupid rather than dishonest,” when he wasn’t having Oliver Cromwell quoted at him by his own party. Unfortunately Boris Johnson is both an idiot and a liar, so the new Prime Minister of the U.K. is the 😂 emoji.

Jason M. Barr guessayed that Manhattan should grow an embarrassing pandemic beard by constructing 1,760 new acres of flood-prone landfill in New York harbor. The perfect solution to both the housing crisis and the climate crisis is to build a human seawall, apparently. “Two birds with one stone!” raves Jonathan Swift. The Biden administration is not nearly embarrassed enough at offering Americans just four (4) Covid tests per household, which is “quite literally, too little, too late for the highly transmissible Omicron variant” wrote Susan Rinkunas in Jezebel. And now slightly ahead of schedule the administration is also promising that they’ll give us N95 masks, only the week after an official “mocked the idea.” Jen Psaki please make a snide comment about forgiving student loan debt, I am begging you.

Everything about crypto is embarrassing:

Cryptoland failed to buy its island, and SpiceDAO failed to understand even one thing about intellectual property. Crypto.com halted withdrawals for part of Monday but “CEO Kris Marszalek insisted that all funds were ‘safe,’ without admitting the company had been hacked” even as fifteen million dollars worth of stolen ETH was transferred out through the Tornado Cash mixer to hide its ultimate destination, reported Matt Novak. Of course “Tornado Cash’s TORN token is up almost 9%” because a dedicated money laundering token is basically a futures contract on crime, and that market is booming.

GIFs are embarrassing unless you’re a boomer. Our Embarrassing Platform is about to learn why you never let just one polite Nazi into the bar. Joss Whedon doesn’t seem nearly embarrassed enough, maybe he needs another quick trip to the loo? But big shout to our new cultural Cassandra, the manager at Kinko’s in Van Nuys circa 2006. And while he explains that there is no coin shortage, Choire maybe under-emphasizes how embarrassed the entire U.S. government and population should be that we put Maya Angelou on a coin with a slaver.

Today in Crabs:

Is Anything Not Embarrassing?

Fortunately, yes! Danielle Tcholakian wrote a beautiful essay about getting sober and piecing together a community and a survivable life in the middle of the pandemic, for Jezebel.

Getting sober in a pandemic meant I had a long runway to taxi before I really had to negotiate sober social interactions. Most of the new people I met were in Zoom rooms online and were predisposed to be kind to me, because we were both trying to stay sober and both acutely aware of how steep that uphill often felt. And then early in 2021, Sylvia and Eric, some friends who had moved out of the city and knew I’d been yearning to do the same, suggested I come up and stay with them for a spell. A month or two, maybe. I could bring my cat. We joked that it would be the first inaugural writers’ retreat—ironic for a writer who happened to not be writing, and wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to again…

Almost immediately I began joking: Wouldn’t it be so funny if I just didn’t leave? Sylvia’s mother came over and immediately upon meeting me and said, “Well, you have to stay for the summer!” I snuck a look at my friends, and they were smiling.

Today’s Song: U2, “Dirty Day”

~ you have sat there too long for all the tabs you have done ~

I was off so long that I forgot how to write. Don’t worry, this always happens, it’ll pass. I also forgot how to tweet so follow @fka_tabs and @TodayinTabs to watch me re-learn.

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