The Try Guys Blow Up a Pipeline

Wednesday is the Laggard’s Tuesday, and nothing new is legally allowed to happen today, so let’s see if we can get caught up on what’s happened so far this week.

If you’re like most of Twitter, you spent yesterday performatively pretending you don’t know who The Try Guys are. I was around in the teens too, I get it, everything from 2010 to 2020 is embarrassing. If you really don’t know, I take no pleasure in telling you that The Try Guys are some guys who try things on YouTube. I remember when I found out so I know it doesn’t feel good, but we’ll get through this together. I’m here for you in these trying times.1 They have 7.84 million subscribers on Youtube, which means if all their subscribers lived in one city, it would be the second biggest city in America, and nearly twice as populous as the new third biggest, Los Angeles. Wow that feels pretty bad too, huh?

Anyway, one of the Guys Try’ed too close to the sun and had an affair with a producer. He was the team’s Wife Guy,2 and his name is literally Ned, so this was all pretty overdetermined in the post-Mulaney era, but here we are. The Try Guys spun off from BuzzFeed in 2018, although the inevitable BuzzFeed writeup of all this notes that “BuzzFeed Inc. has a financial stake in [the Guys’ new media company] 2nd Try LLC,” because you only ever “spin off” from BuzzFeed like a yo-yo.

All of that is funny and/or depressing but I still haven’t really explained it, have I? Here’s Luke Winkie, literally filing from vacation in Italy like a True Poster, to do a far better job explaining it than I can, should, must, or will:

What’s up with the Nord Stream gas pipelines? Via a Q&A in Reuters:

Ok, but then Bloomberg’s Anton Wilen reported that:

And then E.U. high representative for foreign affairs and security and Beastie Boy manqué Josep Borrell Fontelles put out a statement that said listen all y’all, it’s sabotage. But sabotage by whoms’t? Jen Kirby rounded up the usual suspects in Vox, reporting that “unofficially, many in Europe are accusing Russia of the sabotage,” and obliquely mentioning that Little Lord Fishstick thinks it was Joe Biden, which is probably more evidence for Russia’s guilt. Whoever is responsible, the EU is promising a “robust response.” A rich, full-bodied response, but a balanced response. Not a response that tips over into bitterness or acidity. A response that can stand up to either milk or lemon, or be enjoyed on its own. Basically they’re very mad but until they know exactly who they’re mad at, no one’s willing to make any specific threats.

Meanwhile the pipelines will bubble raw methane through the Baltic Sea and into the atmosphere like Satan’s bong hit until Sunday, and the gas released will ultimately “be equal to about 32% of Denmark’s annual greenhouse-gas discharges.” Also the U.S. embassy in Moscow told Americans to leave Russia immediately, and “Japan says Russia 'blindfolded and restrained' its consul in Vladivostok,” so I guess we can say “tensions are high.”

All of this is happening against the backdrop of gradual Russian defeat in Ukraine, and Henry Foy, Sam Joiner, Sam Learner and Caroline Nevitt put together a very good FT package on how that war is going. As usual if you don’t have an FT subscription, you have to Google the title of the article and click through from there. This one’s called “The 90km journey that changed the course of the war in Ukraine.” If any generous FT staffer wants to comp a subscription to a humble newsletterer, my DMs are open.

Updates In Brief: Former Tabs syndicator Fast Company got hacked and the hacker used their Apple News notification channel to send out a nasty alert to lots of iPhone users. The hack was so bad that the Fast Company website is entirely down. Hot moose in your region are waiting to meet you. Churches excavate new low. You can always quit. The New York Times has some more good images of the Space Boop. The Magnus Carlsen meltdown has reached the “getting rocked by Chess dot com on Twitter” phase. Magical bookstore discovered. Why does everyone hate Maggie Haberman so much? Every Gen Xer Sells Out, Vol. MCMXLIV: Soy un perdedor. Alex Mashinsky, who promised that his crypto “bank” was safer than actual banks, tries to resign from the wreckage of his fraud. And, in a peek slightly further into Mashinsky’s likely future, Do Kwon is still “totally not on the run” and just “writing code in my living room hbu.” Interpol and South Korean proecutors would like to know exactly what country that living room is in, but Kwon isn’t saying.

Here are some more Tabs:

Finally: If you didn’t have time to read all the foregoing, spend a few minutes on the Endless Doomscroller instead. It’s basically the same experience.

Today’s Song: Interpol, “Say Hello to the Angels”

~ Neither a Try Guy nor a Wife Guy be, for Wife Guy oft loses both wife and guy, and Try dulls the edge of husbandry. ~

Happy Laggard’s Tuesday! I’ll see you in the Discord if you’re a subscriber, and if not I’ll see you in your inbox tomorrow for Gentleman’s Friday, and if we stick with it, eventually we’ll winnow the days of the week down to just one. I leave you with an important message from Tabs Photography Intern Ash Ponders: