Scarcity? In THIS Economy?

Bloomberg says that we suddenly have a shortage of everything, but the shortages are all based on predicting the future in what Vox’s Emily Stewart points out is a chaos economy that no one understands during unprecedented social and political upheaval. Paul Ford looked at a book of predictions from 1980 and learned that we are bad at predicting the future even when it seems easy, like sports writer Martin Abramson’s no-brainer “that by 2030 a 3,000-pound fish would be caught in Alaska with a rod.” We’ve got 9 years, that one still seems like a lock to me.

But are there really shortages, in a seis leches world? Zero Day’s Kim Zetter reported, and CNN later confirmed, that the Colonial Pipeline was shut down not for lack of gas or an inability to control it, but because Colonial’s billing system was down, so it couldn’t charge for the gas it could easily have delivered. The City of Philadelphia has such a surplus of “‘partial bone fragments’ or perhaps teeth” that it keeps finding more human remains from that time it bombed a house full of innocent people, in 1985. The Canadian province of New Brunswick has an abundance of unexplained neurodegenerative disease, similar to but not the same as CJD. In Input, Brendan Bures profiled “King Pokémon” Gary Haase, who “owns over 120 Gem Mint–graded Charizard cards,” and if you don’t think that’s a plenitude of Gem Mint-graded Charizard cards, buddy, I have no idea what a Gem Mint-graded Charizard card even is. We’ll never have a shortage of Takes, like everyone’s new most-hated term “the Geriatric Millennial.” And as Can Duruk writes, and the B20 scamcoin backed by Beeple’s “art” helps prove, the 2020s are absolutely boom years for grift.

Intern Tess Lynch looked for a shortage of lies, but found very much the opposite.

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Richard Montañez is a former Frito-Lay’s janitor who has made a second career of claiming to have invented the freakishly addictive Flamin’ Hot Cheeto. But the LA Times’s Sam Dean exposed what’s really on fire: Montañez’s pants. In the “liar, liar” sense. No, not… listen, let’s just move on. This is bad news for flamin’ hot Eva Longoria, who had planned to feature Montañez’s story in her directorial debut, but it’s good news for the actual flamin’ hot genius behind FHC, Lynne Greenfeld. Now she can finally receive her share of blame for my hungover college mornings, groggily trying to wash the red dust off my hands like a Lady Macbeth who had just murdered Mars. 

Meanwhile, over in Cantitoe Corners and several edibles up, Martha Stewart took the New York Post to task for misstating the number of peacocks that live on her farm. The article has since been corrected, because Martha’s fanbase is vast and ferocious (I am part of it, so I know). I’d say that Eva Longoria should pivot to developing this story, but it looks like it’s already been made into a tense psychological thriller. 

Surprisingly not true: it wasn’t really Rod Stewart at the Instagram grifter’s sweet sixteen. Let’s just say it’s true: the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart may have invented the term YOLO. Past lies of the future: the Moon Hoax. (No, not that one). Future lies of the past: Brian David Johnson in 2013’s Slate: “As we move into a future in which we have more devices and smarter algorithms, how do we design a future that can detect harmful deception while at the same time allowing us to be the lovely lying humans we all love?” Uhhh, not sure, let’s loop back to this later. And finally: the truth is out there. 👽🛸

Listen, are Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg hooking up? I just Googled and it autocompleted the whole question when I got to “are M” because I have looked for this information so many times. I really want them to be, it just seems like they dig each other so much. Anyway, here’s Rob Perez with Sports:

Alexander Chee wrote about his Dad for GQ, and Choung Tai “Charlie” Chee sounds like a real one. Emily Zhou is writing a biweekly fiction newsletter called anecdata. Here’s the first one: “intimacies.” This human eyeball webcam is the future David Cronenberg promised us. New Session is “a collection of queer and trans works, only accessible via telnet.” <telnet issue1.anewsession.com> if you’re old like me.

Here’s a very good IGN post with several ways to help the Palestinians who are currently being massacred, which the gaming media company later took down and replaced with this weak-ass both-sidesey bullshit. Similar posts by GameSpot and Kotaku remain up, at press time. If there is a shortage of anything right now, maybe it’s moral clarity.

Today’s Song: Bad Religion, “Don’t Pray on Me”

~ For beauty and glory, For money, tabs and country ~

I’m Rusty, and not just because I haven’t done this in almost a week. I cosplay as a media brand @TodayinTabs. Intern Tess is @mrtesslynch. I haven’t really been pushing you to subscribe so if you have appreciated that, please subscribe.