I'm Just Here So I Don't Get Tabbed

Cybercrime extruded into meatspace yesterday like a rancid, Bitcoin-flavored sausage of villainy. Our nation’s largest meat pipe was shut down by a ransomware attack similar to the one that left the Colonial fuel pipeline unable to carry out essential capitalist operations last month. This morning, Brazil-based JBS S.A. reported that it expects its complete million-bladed Moloch of butchery to be back up to full capacity today, dealing bloody death and efficient dismemberment to sentient creatures again on a scale never seen in human history, and reliably gushing flesh into humanity’s unappeasable maw. At press time, a new ransomware attack struck the Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket ferry, stranding several whaleman a’shore and at risk of critical hypos.

Today in Yesterday: I said that no one could defend sports press conferences on actual journalistic grounds, but Louisa Thomas did in The New Yorker, writing that Naomi Osaka “was very good with the press—eloquent about social issues, smart about the game, disarmingly funny about the rest. Most of these exchanges have come in press conferences.” So, let the record show. A reader also reminded me of Marshawn Lynch’s incredible “I’m just here so I won’t get fined” press conferences. And the French Open had another withdrawal yesterday, 11th seed Petra Kvitova who injured her ankle “during her media obligations Sunday after her first-round victory over Greet Minnen.”

It’s Pride Month, and Krispy-Kreme is celebrating by planning to go public with the ticker symbol DNUT. You live your truth, girl! Bigots are celebrating by setting their own boat on fire and pooping their pants. I thought we agreed no kink? The city of Memphis is celebrating by exhuming the body of slaver and Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest and hopefully throwing it down a long-forgotten well. Pride month also means that corporations from Weyland-Yutani to Cyberdyne Systems are getting a snazzy rainbow makeover, to briefly acknowledge the existence of the gays in a sterile, brand-friendly manner. But all those extra rainbows have to come from somewhere, so it’s also the month of Brutalist Skittles. As we say in June: Sᴋɪᴛᴛʟᴇs. Tᴀsᴛᴇ Tʜᴇ Vᴏɪᴅ.

Someone at Warner Bros. bought a copy of Kai’s Power Tools and cranked out a sick new logo for the Warner Bros. / Discovery merger.

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I’m sure you’ve been asking yourself “what does British television have to do with mollusks?” Intern Linda Yu found out in:

I’m still waiting for the day I get caught for pretending to have a TV license to access iPlayer, but until then I have been obsessed with a BBC reality show called This is My House. The premise is that three actors and one homeowner each try to convince a panel of judges that they are the owner of a very nice house in a random part of England. Like many other British television shows, it sounds extremely stupid and very clearly has zero budget, but is actually incredible. It also led to this take on the recent Colin the Caterpillar lawsuits:

Anyway, after accidentally stepping on a snail (NIP, REP, nose), I joked that there should be an episode of the show with three slugs and one snail, each laying claim to a shell. Then I wondered whether snails could actually leave their shells. I was going to dig up a study on the topic to continue the bit, but ended up finding this very earnest nerd with a doctorate explaining it on video, and the answer is so much weirder than you think:

It turns out they can't without also getting disemboweled, since snail organs are attached to the inside of their shells. But slugs are evolved from snails, and have a shell on the inside! So slugs are basically inside-out snails. There's also a sort of non-binary gastropod (happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈) called a semi-slug that has a little useless shell it can't shrink back into, like one of those tiny backpacks from the 90’s which are apparently coming back. But when nature closes a shell, it opens the sky, so some of the semi-slugs can jump.

I learned so many unrelated things just now, y’all. It’s gonna take a while to digest all of that. If you learned something too, you can you can donate or subscribe at 20% off to help pay for Intern Linda, and join us again tomorrow to find out what a “one-by-two” is.

Today in Stonks: Elon Musk pumps Baby Shark, somehow. AMC rockets to the moon on free popcorn for shareholders. And it brings me no pleasure to report that everyone at Amazon who was involved in this social media war crime is in jail now.

Trump’s massively popular blog /desk has shut down after barely a month, as the ex-President streamlines his media offerings in preparation for a late-summer coup. Also I can’t believe we have to say this but: do not take heartworm medicine for Covid.

We previously had too few details on the Believer mag Zoom Dick Incident, now Anna Merlan and Tim Marchman bring us too many details. It seems like UNLV was trying to extract private communications from Believer staff on the pretext of responding to an open records request from Vice? This story is still confusing, but thankfully “images of [Shenk] showing his penis were neither sought nor provided.” Also today in Anna Merlan.

And finally, Eliza Smith’s excellent short story “You Owe Me” in The Cut tries to figure out how we could have gender equity without just replacing one class with another on top of the same shitty hierarchy.

Today’s Song: “Fuck Wit Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’)” Dr. Dre

~ sincerely yours, these muthafuckin tabs ~