Random Chaos Voting

The NYC mayoral ”race was thrown into chaos” yesterday, reports New York Magazine’s David Freedlander. “Ahhh,” growled the mayoral race, brutally pummeling New York City’s Democratic voters in the kidneys and hurling them down a flight of iron stairs, “I was not thrown into chaos. I was born in it… molded by it.” Voting finished on the 22nd, and after a week of careful TKTK???, the Board of Elections released ranked choice results showing that “Adams maintained a tight two-point lead over Garcia after 11 rounds of balloting, while Maya Wiley, who came in second place on Election Night, would be eliminated in the tenth round.” These results quickly disappeared, however, and the BOE tweeted a Notes app apology promising it has “taken immediate [sic] to ensure the most accurate results are reported”, which was itself deleted and replaced with a corrected Notes app apology that explained they had, in the extremely technical parlance of election science, “done a big old whoopsie in the vote boxes lmao.”

Turns out the Board of Elections, which is primarily staffed by failsons and dope smoking legacy nephews, managed to include 135,000 test votes in the ranked choice tabulations, which is (again sorry for the elections jargon here) a whole grip of fake votes. The Garcia campaign released a statement which said “if I were already mayor this wouldn’t be such a clownshow,” (I am paraphrasing) and even the clownshow’s current ringmaster, Bill de Blasio, seized the chance to appear more competent than someone. The NY Post has a thorough and gleeful rundown of every mistake the BOE has made recently, if you want to know what kind of incompetence could top de Blasio’s, but it’s a #longread. Reached for comment on its way to a football game, the mayoral race snarled: “I was wondering what would break first… the voters’ spirits, or their patience.”

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Ikea dropped Pride couches, and the main question they raised was “is this a hate crime?” Other questions included: “Did we need a bisexual sofa?” “What is up with… the hands?” “Can a corporation be asexual on main?” and “Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball!”

Louise Benson collected a list of indy culture newsletters for Elephant, including this one that you’re presently reading, but also Tabs pals Dirt and Rave New World, so clearly the taste level is elevated. But they somehow missed Blackbird Spyplane, so the recon is not quite mach 3+. If you’re in the market for a new `sletter or two, I recently added a list of my own favorites on the Tabs homepage.

The staff union at The Appeal (previously: toxic leadership, unionized staff, layoffs, layoffs paused, general chaos) announced that the law and justice publication will shut down today, but will also relaunch as a worker-owned collective. Laura Wagner at Defector continues to own coverage of this saga.

I have been instructed to make it clear that Intern Linda Yu is not responsible for the title of today’s Intern Tab.

Recently I was in St. James’s Park—not to be mistaken for the differently punctuated St. James' Park—and saw a man holding out a peanut. Presently there was a flutter of green wings and a ring-necked parakeet settled onto his hand. Flocks of parakeets are a common sight in London, and Nick Hunt writes that their settling in England has been attributed to everything from Jimi Hendrix on a drug bender to the Great Storm of 1987. Most likely they’re the descendants of escaped pets; Christopher J. Butler et al. studied the nest sites of these birds and found that they prefer cavities with “substantial shrub and tree cover surrounding them,” which does sound better than your average London rental opportunity. (DOI: 10.1080/00063657.2013.836154)

I find these birds delightful, but the aptly-named Hannah L. Peck et al. found that their presence negatively impacts the behaviour of native birds. (DOI: 10.1093/beheco/aru025) So, of course, this has turned parakeets into a metaphor for immigration, because we always want to anthropomorphize science problems and scientize human prejudice. Here in the UK, an 11-year-old was recently reported to the allegedly counter-terror “Prevent” scheme for saying he wanted to give alms to the oppressed. Fahid Qurashi writes that this program, which operates under the pretext of stopping terrorism, has created an asymmetric surveillance infrastructure in Muslim communities and a “strong culture of suspicion and fear.” (DOI: 10.1057/s41599-017-0061-9) 

My parents are immigrants, and I'm considering making the leap myself, so I've always been intensely aware of the politics around migration. In some ways, I can understand people's worries. For instance, in Wales, there has been a problem of English-speaker migration weakening their already threatened minority language. But Abraham Somers Cocks writes that the issue isn't immigration, but a need for policies for promoting Welsh speaking and learning. After all, we aren't parakeets. We can find solutions that aren't the product of fear, and face problems that are more complex than peanut or no peanut. There are better ways for parakeets to tell the future than as a clunky anti-immigration metaphor. —by Linda Yu

Serial failure and current holder of Silicon Valley’s Bag of Infinite Chances Sam Altman wants to scan your eyeball in exchange for Bitcoin or something.

Here’s some feedback on the process: This is genuinely the stupidest thing I’ve heard all year, and I hear stupid things for a living.

Twitter almost saved us from ourselves. Peter Bradshaw’s “Black Widow” review in The Guardian has some real “Penelope Cruz Fucks a Steak” energy, reports Alex Noble. Evan Ratliff’s Bloomberg feature about Instagram “billionaire Gucci master” Hushpuppi’s rise and fall in the world of “business email compromise” scams is long but totally absorbing. Marisa Iati on the creepy phone calls from the collapsed Florida condo building. For sale: the Versailles of Bloomingdale, Illinois. Allez back home vite: The woman who instigated the Tour de France massacre on Saturday has apparently fled.

Today’s Song: Gaye Su Akyol, “Rebellion Manifesto”

~ The fog comes / on little tab feet ~

“Failson and The Dope Smoking Legacy Nephews” is another good band name. I play bass @fka_tabs. The brand is on the drums @TodayinTabs. Intern Linda Yu wails on the sax in the Tabs Subscriber Discord. Lead vocals by “the frenetic energy of having 30-plus tabs open in a browser at any one time.” Merch is on the table at the back.