Lost in the Dr. B Hole

We’re going to have to start today with Danny Lavery’s Press Conference About What Happened To This Morning Where I Was Going To Get So Much Done because it’s 2:00 right now and, while investigations are ongoing, at this point all I can say is that mistakes were made. An investigation that’s no longer ongoing is Diana Budds’s Curbed investigation into “Who Made That Ear-Shaped Mirror That’s All Over Instagram?” If you look into this thing at exactly midnight, you can see Natalie endlessly brushing her hair and weeping blood out of empty eye sockets. Or, as Budds quotes Rae Occhipinti: “The energy of the vanity and the mirror is insane… It has such a strong presence … I cover [the mirror] when I go to sleep at night and I will have wild dreams when I don’t.”

MIT Tech Review’s Mia Sato tried and failed to find a single person who got a Covid vaccine dose through the much-shared Dr. B extra dose waitlist, which now appears to have been either an abject failure or a pure scam. Everyone Sato talked to signed up months ago but found themselves in a Dr. B-hole until recently, now that the vaccine is plentiful and available to everyone. The company refused to say how many users it had connected with doses, if any. TurboVax called it from the start. Needles up for the real Dr. B, Becca Laurie, who has gotten more than 80 people vaccinated so far 💉💉💉. Anyway, RIP Threatbutt.

Pride is this weekend, which means this is the traditional No Kink At Pride argument week. Master Chief will not be attending. Carlos Maza wondered if the discourse this time feels a little… rote? Are banks kink? And if so, how many? Is “no kissing on the Pakistani airliner” part of the global “no kink at Pride” argument family? A YouTube beardo named Vaush tried to inject some energy into things by saying that Pride should be a “a cool, queer-friendly block party,” and there were dunks galore but here’s the real planet-obliterating truth asteroid:

Insider’s Grace Panetta managed to tie a Congressional redistricting story to pop star Olivia Rodrigo, a trick she also pulled off with J. Lo and Ben Affleck earlier this month, while consistently filing three or four stories a day, so I hope this counts as an impact point.1 The NYT is “in talks to buy The Athletic” reports Sara Fischer in the apparently jilted Axios. “The Athletic and Axios are no longer in talks for a potential merger via SPAC, and… The Athletic viewed The Times as a better contender for a merger.” Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that memo about me.

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I assumed the idea that vaccinated people are emitting microchip particles or flamin’ hot protein dust or something was so fringy that we could all ignore it, but freewheeling conspiracy doctor and “if the” Naomi “be” Wolf has opened my eyes to how mainstream this stupid belief has become.

Fear of Vax Cooties must be spreading across the nation, because Charlie Warzel stumbled into a tense exchange with the proprietors of an Airbnb in Montana who won’t let vaccinated guests into their cabin. The listing was later removed by Airbnb, and of course the claim that people who got their shots are “shedding proteins” like a gym bro that doesn’t wash his hands enough has been debunked pretty much everywhere, but nothing proves a conspiracy more solidly than everyone agreeing it’s nonsense. At least we’ll get a lot of interesting threads about which family member got their proteins all over the Thanksgiving turkey, impregnating Grandma with the Moderna Antichrist. 

And now it’s time for a palate cleanser 🍋 🍨 🌈! Choose your fighter:

I’m Timothy Hutton, and I’m sorry for what I did. If you’re not old, don’t worry, help is available at this hotline (800) WHO-1987. 

Today in Platforms: Rebecca Jennings’s “The influencers are burned out, too,” is a shorter and much more readable gloss on Barrett Swanson’s extremely Harper’s TikTok story for anyone who would like the information without the self-indulgent Harper’s writer-er-ing. Also: Noah Smith on Twitter’s “Status Anxiety as a Service.”

Paperholm (via Chappell Ellison). Use Github actions to automatically package your Twine game. Doom running on AO3. The new Dolezal dropped. Is Wikipedia actually “swimming in money?” Dystopia intensifies. Today in Crabs:

Today’s Song: Olivia Rodrigo, “brutal”

~ All I did was try my best, this the kind of tabs I get? ~

Today’s Tabs was almost entirely a pretext to post “RIP Threatbutt,” which I absolutely can’t get out of my head. Everything else in my head ends up on Twitter eventually @fka_tabs. If the Intern be Tess, you’re getting the best. Now it’s 3:43 so that’s how long this takes to write I guess!