The Helicopter Fiasca

In Spring, a man built a pillar. In Summer, another. Throughout Autumn they held. But in Winter, one fell.

March 21st, 2023

Is discourse returning to Twitter? On Sunday, Steve Pikelny tweeted a thread of pages from an edgy alleged children’s book he wrote and Haus of Decline illustrated called “You Are Not Special.”

Unfortunately this turned out to be incorrect. “You ever make a joke that lands so poorly you become discourse? Would not recommend,” Haus wrote yesterday. Today they apologized for both illustrating the book and attempting to defend it. “You Are Not Special” already has a Know Your Meme page, and some of the parodies are pretty good. Also on Sunday @madison_tayt accidentally reignited what some scholars believe is one of the oldest continuously active discourses, “tipping in America vs. Europe.”

Tipping Discourse is believed to trace its earliest roots back to a 1777 letter from Ben Franklin to George Washington shortly after the former’s appointment as the first American Ambassador to France, in which Franklin wrote:

I have observ’d with astonishment the Custom of these Parisian Publick-House Keepers to pay their Serving Wenches and Pâtissiers a fix’d Wage, upon which one might subsist in Comfort, tho’ not o’ermuch Luxury; a Practice we may yet Entice upon the Ale-Masters and Tavernsmiths of our new birth’d Nation.

In the margin, Washington appears to have scrawled the single word “bullshyte.” And after 250 years and 8,000 quote tweets, we haven’t really gotten any farther than that.

Also Today in Discourse: Sofia Coppola’s daughter learns about alliums. I regret to inform the Sofia Coppola family that your daughter is already a star.

And Today in Apologies: The tourism board of the capital city of Northest Dakota, Regina in the Canadian province Saskatchewan, “is apologizing for two [new] slogans—‘Show us your Regina’ and ‘The city that rhymes with fun’,” reports Alexander Quon for CBC News. If you’re uncertain how to pronounce “Regina,” no you’re not. Experience Regina renamed itself last week after a satirical 2008 YouTube video, so it’s clear someone over there is high as hell and I love that for them. Meanwhile, in New York City.

In The Verge Ian Frisch has a whole-ass Pacific Northwest Coen Brothers x Twin Peaks of a story about a “32-year-old technology entrepreneur and self-proclaimed multimillionaire” with somewhere between zero and two existing girlfriends/threesome partners who nevertheless went on Tinder looking for more and got himself catfished into a carjacking, and that is just the opening act. Everyone in this story is completely unhinged, and you won’t regret reading it.

The Hot Take podcast’s cofounders, Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt announced the end of their project and didn’t pull any punches about the terrible experience they had with Crooked Media. Westervelt wrote about both of her two bad experiences working with Crooked, because:

As a media criticism newsletter and podcast focused on climate, we didn’t feel like we could see what we saw and not talk about it all, so we turned down a payout in favor of telling it like it is.

And Heglar observed that:

…Amy and I were far, far to the left of just about every show I’ve heard in the Crooked Universe. You kinda have to be if you take climate change—and especially climate justice—seriously. You can’t just take the talking points from Uncle Joe as gospel cause it ain’t. If neoliberalism was going to save us, it would have done it already.

On the opposite end of the podcast business spectrum, Jesse Thorn is stepping down from Maximum Fun and the network will become an employee-owned coöp. Fun fact: this is the only ethical business structure! Good for them.

Feel your eternal spirit depart the dusty remnants of your ancient mortal flesh as Ed Niedermeyer laments the long-lost good old days of SXSW—specifically: “the bottomless optimism of 2019.” Thrill to prize doofus German Lopez complaining that the IPCC doesn’t put out its reports in Fahrenheit for the sake of the U.S. and “just a few countries that still use Fahrenheit temperatures,” which are: the Cayman Islands and Liberia, end of list. Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got, I’m still JPMorgan from the block. Danny Lavery: Questions People Have Had For Me Now That A Third Dog Is Here. “Q: Is it correct to say there are three of them? A: Yes, quite correct.”

Today’s Song: “That Girl” by Emei

Today in Tabs paid subscribers are automatically That Girl. Coming tomorrow: a new ██████ ██ ███████ ██████████! So get ready for that.

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