Money Diary: Unknown Knowns

Not me eating breakfast at Dimes!

May 18th, 2022

A good Money Diary offers two distinct tab-related pleasures. The first, obviously, is gawking at the wild ways people act with their money (not me though, I’m normal). The second, subtler joy is the way other readers will inadvertently reveal what they think everyone believes with their responses to the wild ways people act with their money. These posts are an X-ray machine for what Slavoj Žižek, completing Donald Rumsfeld’s epistemology, called “unknown knowns—the things you don’t know that you know.” With that in mind, the tale of this well paid and trust-funded investigative journalist and the toxic financial relationship she has with her slacker husband should prove as enlightening when shared with your group chats as it did making the rounds of media twitter yesterday. How much should a freelance reporter make? Is $12.13 for pastries important enough to Venmo your literal spouse? What’s a normal amount to spend on a pyramid scheme (if all your friends are talking about it)? Toss this, Eris like, into your conversational circles and then sit back and enjoy the revelations.

Taylor Lorenz reports that the Department of Homeland Security’s new disinformation response group has been put on hold due to a disinformation campaign against it. Last night was not terrible for candidates from the far left of America’s center-right Democratic Party. Hill Heat’s Brad Johnson posted the climate candidate score card and Ryan Grim called it a “STINGING REBUKE TO PARTY’S MANCHIN-SINEMA WING” aka “the party’s mainstream.” And Sadison Flawthorn was successfully whacked by Republican leadership. He looks forward to spending more time with his gun.

Women hate him and men never want to be him. He’s...

The so-called Intellectual Dark Web isn’t so much “dark” as “dim,” demonstrated yesterday by disgraced former Evergreen State College professor turned professional podcast guest and horse-paste gourmand Bret Weinstein, who dropped this classic Justine Sacco takeoff tweet:

After ten hours of salty dry-roasting and an equal amount of open eugenics-posting by his pals in the Unintelligible Dim Web Weinstein finally landed and issued a correction regarding peanuts and people with severe allergies, that you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta force it on them:"

With the true Bari Weiss acolyte’s inability to apologize for being stupid and leave it at that, Weinstein followed up to clarify that he definitely still sucks:

Of course, everyone assumed that his tweet was born of both ignorance and callousness. And everyone was right.

Grubhub rocketed from New York’s least used food delivery app to New York’s most hated food delivery app yesterday by offering the whole city a free lunch in a three hour time window without warning any of its partner restaurants. Chaos ensued, New Yorkers hangry, etc. In Hell Gate, Winnie the Pooh’s pal Christopher Robbins noticed that a sunny spring day in New York is “a beautiful day to get your own fucking lunch.” And apparently the “Mayor of Dimes Square” is a 25-year-old who has lived there for seven years, which seems more like the Foursquare Mayor of Dimes Square? Anyway Emily Sundberg covered the state of the scene for Curbed and it’s a lot.

The “techno heads, Blazer Soundsystem boys, Kiki Kudo, and the Loft-adjacent 30-somethings sitting in Seward Park” were eclipsed entirely, she says, by “students, rich kids, and overly intellectual internet incels.” She knew when she moved in that she “was walking into an already broken-in shoe, but a very different one than it is now. The tone was similar, but the crowd was older and less aware of themselves. Mission Chinese was diner vibes, and no one was walking around saying, ‘Not me eating breakfast at Dimes!’” Performer Annie Hamilton lived in the area from February 2021 until February 2022. “When I got there,” she says, “the pandemic was raging and people were partying, and I loved that about it. But it was already a watered-down freak show. I got there late.”

Did they discover the cause of SIDS? No, writes Benjamin Mazer. Are the immunocompromised “looking at extinction” from decreased Covid precautions? In Medpage Today Gabrielle Bauer finds that the science so far says “the level of risk may not warrant such a broad, catastrophizing narrative.”

Julia Fox believes it should be socially acceptable for her to go grocery shopping in her underwear, but I think society is already as pro-Julia-Fox-in-her-underwear as it can be. Not sure we’re ready to embrace the “jurse” though. “USDTea: The first stablecoin backed by cans of AriZona Iced Tea.” Finally crypto comes up with something useful. Grub Street: Increased Kitchen Commerce in Concupiscent Cakes. Remaining Reply All hosts Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi leave, putting the show indefinitely on hold. Two VPs and the head of data science leave Twitter, while the company appears ready to force Elon Musk to overpay for it. Do not trifle with the birthplace of the sowing/reaping tweet.

And finally, speaking of tweets, The author, Séamas O'Reilly told the story of the “Icelandic Fish Festival" in a thread yesterday and it’s worth your time:

Today’s Song: (The new!) My Chemical Romance, “The Foundations of Decay“

~ I am tired of earth. These tabs. ~

Thanks today to Wallace Stevens and A. A. Milne. When I was a young boy my father took me into the city to see a marching band. He said, "Son, won’t you check out that tuba, lol it goes oompa oompa, oom oompa oompa oomp.” Weird guy. @fka_tabs, @TodayinTabs, and you can always email me by hitting reply.

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