Roll That Beautiful Big Boy Boat Footage

It’s Thursday, assistant secretary for health Dr. Rachel Levine is the United States’s first Senate-confirmed openly transgender official, and we’ve finally got some dramatic Big Boy Boat footage:

Look at the size of that lad! Majestic. Sean O'Kane helps us all rubberneck. Bloomberg has more on the salvage operations, and the fun detail that “the best chance for freeing the ship may not come until Sunday or Monday, when the tide will reach a peak.” Even that may be optimistic, as salvors have begun to use the word “weeks.” I hope it never ends, and I’m not the only one who ‘ships Ever Given / Suez. Tabs Senior Maritime Salvage Witch Jessie Guy-Ryan suggests we simply cut a big hole in the boat and let the other boats drive through it. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has an idea:

Also Today in Oopsies: 

• Shrimp cereal guy has reached the next phase of Twitter main characterhood. As Vulture’s Rebecca Alter put it: “Since Jensen Karp’s post went viral, multiple women have come forward on Twitter accusing him of emotionally abusive and manipulative behavior both in relationships and as an employer.”

• Slack apologized for the poor, abuse-prone design of its new Connect DMs feature yesterday, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports in Motherboard. They could have saved some trouble by just bundling the apology in with the announcement.

• Hyper-Boomer Jay Leno sort of apologized for all the racist jokes he’s told about Asians over his long and lucrative career, while still managing to half-defend them, saying “there was a ring of truth to them.” He also took the opportunity to complain about “cancel culture” and insist that “in my heart I knew it was wrong.” “Classic case of heart vs. racist bone” says Cat Ferguson.

• Axios’s Dan Primack and Kia Kokalitcheva have more detail on Spark Capital dumping Dispo. And Morgan Sung used Dispo founder/albatross David Dobrik’s second attempt at an apology as the news peg for a delightful look at the whole floor-apology genre.

• Platform-reporting machine Casey Newton interviewed 14 current and former Medium employees to dig up an incredible opening anecdote involving President Biden and “step sister taboo erotica,” and also the detail that Ev Williams can’t make a media company work with 700,000 subscribers and over $35 million in revenue.

• Amazon is getting stressed about the Bessemer, AL union vote, which ends Monday, and last night the pressure broke in the form of some wild tweets. First Amazon Consumer CEO and algorithmically-generated Smarmy White Business Guy Dave Clark claimed “I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers.” Then Amazon PR’s @amazonnews account asked Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” Yes, we absolutely believe it, but either way if you’re tweeting defensively about whether your employees are forced to pee in bottles, you’re not winning the PR battle.

uNForTunately: Both of the New Yorks Time had NFT columns yesterday. News’s tech columnist Kevin Roose did basically the same “buy this column” stunt as Quartz, but it does have one of the clearest descriptions I’ve seen of how an NFT is minted. It sold for over $500,000. Good lord, do I have to mint a Tabs? For my kids’ future? Stay tuned. Meanwhile Opinion’s tech columnist Charlie Warzel’s “What Are You Paying for When You Buy a GIF for $25,000?” has a little more of that distinctive “Opinion desk editing a tech story” flavor. Today the Verge’s Jacob Kastrenakes points out one of the core problems with what is supposedly a distributed, zero-trust proof of ownership scheme: “NFTs are fundamentally built on trust.” Create your own incredibly valuable digital art with the Beeple Generator.

Today in Substack: Grace Lavery got a Pro deal: “Graham Linehan Should Be Kicked Off Substack.” My own personal view is: Graham Linehan should be kicked off Substack. Also Pro: Ashley Feinberg. Staying: Aminatou Sow. Leaving: Emily Gould. Incoming: everyone from MEL Magazine, probably.

Leslie Jones live-tweeted the Snyder Cut, and it is much better than watching the Snyder Cut. The horny emergency continues: “Horny folks told Insider they're ready for "ho phases," no underwear in public, and spontaneous dates.” Bloomberg News call me. 📞

Today’s Stream: Uighur lofi hip hop chill music (thx Ryan Broderick!)

~ Tab news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step ~

That’s it, the content is closed for the week! Subscribe if you haven’t yet and join us tomorrow for the subscriber open thread. Subject: “How will we fix the boat?” This is your daily reminder that whatever you’re going through right now is not being caused by the moon.