Don't Call It a Comeback

Things That Are Back:

• Winamp “has released its first release candidate after four years in development.” Has it only been four years since Winamp? What… year is it right now? Bleeping Computer reports that: Hopefully new features and capabilities like “Spotify?”

• Polio is back in Rockland County, New York’s wastewater where “health officials… announced a confirmed case of the disease last month,” reports Reuters. In Ars Technica, Beth Mole adds that “Rockland County currently has a polio vaccination rate of just 60.5 percent among 2-year-olds, compared to the statewide average of 79 percent.” Coming back soon: the Iron Lung.

• Martin Shkreli, who was a few years early for our current golden age of Ponzis, is out of jail and trying to make up for lost time with his “web3 drug discovery software platform,” but has meanwhile had to fall back on his only other skill, being publicly repulsive. In Daily Dot Jacob Seitz reports that Shkreli is circulating a “Date Martin Shkreli” Google sheet. It sure would be a shame if someone filled it with a lot of fanciful made-up applications.

• Swords are back, and the CIA is apparently attaching them to drone-launched Hellfire missiles (™ Lockheed Martin UwU) to dice individual assassination targets such as Ayman al-Zawahri, who was drone-katanaed in his not-so-safehouse in Kabul this weekend:😐

• Maximalism in back for the kind of Zoomer who has both a home to decorate and the money to make it look like Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

FT reports that Ben and Justin “No Relation” Smith’s long-simmering Soup “plans to promote reader trust by splitting… stories into separate sections, breaking apart the news from the reporter’s analysis. There will also be a section offering an opposing view, and a view from another region in the world.” Finally, a media startup has identified what’s missing from news stories today: sections. FT also notes that among the mononominal duo’s investors are Bahamian shorts model Sam Bankman-Fried and the founder of venture capital industry circular The Information, Jessica Lessin.

“Is Scott Galloway the Howard Stern of the Business World?” asks Christopher Beam, which I think is Timesian for “is Scott Galloway a center-left dude with generally progressive attitudes except for his pervasive misogyny?” and the answer appears to be yes.

Go Read Something Else:

There’s a heap of good stuff for you to read today so stop wasting your time here and get to it.

• Jason Diamond: “The Seasonal Sea and Cake.”

• Hot enough for ya? Cool off with “Maine’s ‘Ice Mermaids’.”

• Architecture critic Edwin Heathcote roasted the early renders of Crown Prince Bonesaw’s pretend vanity city Neom:

• Charlie Macquarie wrote some open-pit mine scene reports for Hypocrite Reader (mon semblable, mon frère): “Open Up This Pit.”

• Adam Tismaneanu: “The Beginning of the End of the Bored Ape Yacht Club?” How many Nazi dog-whistles is too many to be a coincidence?

• Evie Ebert: “How do you write and work and care for kids?”

Today’s Song: The Sea and Cake, “Polio”

~ once again, back is the incredible, the rhyme animal, the untabbable ~

I’m so sorry for that Saturn tweet. If you find it baffling, just… be glad? Do not under any circumstances, attempt to delve. Also yesterday’s email was full of typos, starting with the title. If you didn’t notice, great! If you did notice: so did I. Pound it. 👊