Favorites May 26 2021

Brooke Binkowski @brooklynmarie

Influencers say Russia-linked PR agency asked them to disparage Pfizer vaccine

theguardian.comInfluencers say Russia-linked PR agency asked them to disparage Pfizer vaccineFazze offered money to YouTubers and bloggers to falsely claim jab was responsible for hundreds of deaths

This is evil brilliance.

John Scalzi @scalzi

The last one ineffective at Red Lobster or indeed most of the state of Maine

Adam Sharp @AdamCSharp

Some international expressions used when bumping into someone in an unexpected place: 5. It’s a small world (English) 4. How round is the earth (Ukrainian) 3. The world is a village (German) 2. The world is a handkerchief (Spanish) 1. What an odd place to find a lobster (Irish)

Lobsters!

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

This week’s free SLOW BORING article is about the lab leak hypothesis, and specifically the shamefully bad coverage of Tom Cotton’s original effort to raise this possibility.

slowboring.comThe media’s lab leak fiascoA huge fuckup, with perhaps not-so-huge policy stakes

Lab leak is now a mainstream possibility, the Biden admin is pursuing it. This story about how we ignored it almost by accident is really good. It goes without saying that while Cotton said one non-stupid¹ thing, he is still a dumbass.

Nadine Batchelor-Hunt @nadinebh_

This is absolutely shocking - I knew it would be bad, but wow... The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom allegedly took the virus with so little seriousness he suggested being injected with Covid-19 live on TV by the Chief Medical Officer Unbelievably Trump-esque.

Boris Johnson is dumb, here's the story, but the tweet is the summary.

John Scalzi @scalzi

PALPATINE SOMEHOW CAME BACK wasn't planned? Shocked, shocked I am

Collider @Collider

J.J. Abrams acknowledges it probably would have been better if they had approached the #StarWars sequel trilogy with a plan: https://t.co/JDqlClZKHy

I'm still upset that Abrams made such a mess of those movies.

Patrick Collison @patrickc

The 6 new companies that we're purchasing carbon removal from: stripe.com/newsroom/news/…. Stripe is buying alongside 2,000+ Stripe Climate users. We want to make sure that we help nascent efforts get off the ground. To that end, Stripe is first customer of 4 of the 6 companies.

stripe.comStripe Newsroom: Stripe adds six new companies to its carbon removal portfolioOnline payment processing for internet businesses. Stripe is a suite of payment APIs that powers commerce for businesses of all sizes.

This is great, they’re talking about literally pulling carbon out of the air. Also california is planning offshore wind farms! There's even good news out of the fossil fuel sector:

Bill McKibben @billmckibben

An utterly crushing day for Big Oil 1) Chevron investors demand emission cuts 2) Dutch court tells Shell to cut emissions by half 3) Exxon shareholders buck the company and elect directors demanding climate action. Thanks to all who fight--you push long enough and dominoes tumble

Here's coverage of the chevron one.

Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal

Could get ugly.

Alex Macheras @AlexInAir

Breaking: Russia refused to allow today’s Air France flight from Paris to Moscow to fly into Russian airspace because the flight would have avoided Belarus airspace (— a new escalation in an aviation political war between Europe and Belarus. #Belarus) https://t.co/VQPQxYAjPN

Yikes, I don’t like where this Belarus sequence of events is going.

Damion Schubert, Zen Designer @ZenOfDesign

The recent Seth Rogen quote about offensive comedy made me reflect on comedy that's crossed boundaries. I think there are four categories of comics that do so. I expect there's some debate to be had about the divisions between them and whose in them.

This is an interesting thread if you want what seems to me like a useful framework for understanding boundary pushing in comedy, kicked off by Seth Rogen saying that comedians should accept that sometimes jokes age poorly.

Kyoto, 2018

1. A stopped clock is still right twice a day.