Please Pardon the Oversight

The Facebook Oversight Board popped out of its hole and saw its shadow, so Donald Trump is banned for six more months. To its credit, the board mostly just told Facebook that if it wants to elevate forum drama to the level of international court proceedings, it will first have to write down some rules and then apply them, and to come back when it has. Mr. Trump, a blogger who previously worked for the United States government, is banned from all major social media platforms and thus could not immediately be located for comment. The Tabs weather desk predicts scattered takes, becoming heavy in the afternoon, but tapering to gags and rants by late evening.

Deorbit, Baby: After launching the first section of China’s space station last week, the overachieving Long March 5B rocket core that got it there also accidentally reached orbit instead of falling back to Earth downrange. Now it’s circling the globe every 90 minutes in a hot “will they or won’t they” flirtation with our atmosphere that is guaranteed to end in disaster, like the last season of Moonlighting.1 The Guardian quotes Harvard astrophysicist and advanced theoretical understatement researcher Jonathan McDowell: “It’s potentially not good.” U.S. Space Command estimates that between 4 and 8 metric tons of falling rocket may impact somewhere on earth, some time this weekend. So place your bets! Last year, when the same kind of rocket did the same thing, the debris dropped in Côte d’Ivoire, on the West coast of Africa, after passing over Los Angeles and New York.  

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Today in Beasts

Surely the second coming is nigh when not one, but two rough beasts slouch toward the timeline to be tabbed. First we have John Cox, aka @BeastJohnCox, a Republican who appears to be campaigning to replace CA Governor Gavin Newsom with an actual bear:

The bear, a Kodiak named Tag, was carted along with Cox from Sacramento to The French Laundry on Tuesday. This sounds like a sequel to Grizzly Man, and I for one would not blame Tag for anything he ordered off-menu in Yountville.

In the predictable sad twist that always comes along with animal performances, the bear is owned by a man named Steve Martin. Not the good Steve Martin. The bad Steve Martin. 

None of this is very distinguished, because if you want a fancy beast you need to add an honorific. Please call him MrBeast, a 22-year-old YouTube superstar profiled by Taylor Lorenz in the NY Times. In his human form, MrBeast is known as Jimmy Donaldson, and though he has nary a bear, he does own a business serving bear-style burgers (raw) and sounds scary to work with, so there’s that. 

It wouldn’t be fair to leave you with two bad beasts and the image of YouTuber tartare lingering in your mind, so let’s jog off into the sunset together with the Athleisure Camel:

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Speaking of unexpected leaks, Bloomberg has an excerpt from Brad Stone’s book “Amazon Unbound” about the time The Enquirer took a shot at Jeff Bezos and missed. It’s a pretty pro-Bezos version of the tale, but it did remind me of one of the best tabloid headlines of all time:

Reuters seems to have “vaporized all of its old blog content, including many years of my work, with no warning” says Felix Salmon. Tough, but fair. Serious Eats got a nice redesign, but still refuses to reveal if the eats are fungible. A wealthy Belorusian immigrant named Peter Belogour is buying a lot of property in southeastern Vermont, along with all the local newspapers. Maybe the NY Daily News should give him a call? Columnist Larry McShane pleads today for anyone other than private equity reavers Alden Global Capital to buy the paper. A woman in Mali reportedly gave birth to nine babies, instead of the expected seven. Every late night show will make a good joke about this so I probably don’t need to. And the Japanese town of Noto deserved its Covid relief funds because this giant squid statue is sick.

Today’s Song: Billie Eilish, “All the Good Girls go to Hell”