Chris Geidner reports that the Supreme Court further gutted American civil rights law yesterday. Who knew American civil rights law still had any guts left? And today the court didn’t decide that Trump can end birthright citizenship, but they did decide that the lower courts can’t say that Trump can’t end birthright citizenship, iykwim. ;-) And so the Long 1860s grind on, with no end in sight. | Also grinding on with no end in sight are Peter Thiel and Ross Douthat for a full, excruciating hour of video interview which I will not watch no matter how much you all try to pay me to. Fortunately Maria Bustillos reviewed it for us in Flaming Hydra (★☆☆☆☆: “…these two men did not discuss a single actual book in the course of an hour’s conversation”). TikToker and skibidi toilet theorist Aidan Walker also watched it and observed very cogently that “bro is on some esoteric freak shit that you and I frankly can’t understand.” I know this sounds like a joke but hear him out! It’s actually extremely serious and a big problem that one of the richest and most influential people in the world is “literally a heretic of a type that we haven’t seen since the Renaissance.” And so the Long 1460s grind on, with no end in sight. | And finally today in terrible news, not content to take its anti-trans win in Skrmetti graciously, Times Opinion also celebrated the tenth anniversary of Obergefell by publishing a viciously transphobic and dishonest essay by longtime caliper fancier Andrew Sullivan, in which Sullivan repeats every diseased far right fantasy about high school sports, predatory men in women’s bathrooms, and kids being force-transitioned in elementary school on his way to concluding that the nasty transes should all simply shut up about their disgusting and unnatural perversion of the biological order so as not to endanger the precious right to polite cisgender don’t-say-it-too-loud ʰᵒᵐᵒˢᵉˣᵘᵃˡ marriage that he personally won for everybody when he threw the first brick at Stonewall. I look forward to Sullivan’s abrupt change of heart next June, when the Roberts court rules “psych!“ on gay marriage, and that hunting gay men for sport is now legal nationwide. | | The following is a paid advertisement that I only accepted because I like Garbage Ryan & the G.D. gang and I think you should go see their live show. They said I could quote “tweak however you like” unquote the ad copy and indeed I have, so please enjoy the following exclusive Tabs-only Garbage Day Live Show ad: | | Garbage Day is doing a three-night residency at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn this July to examine whether Baby is in fact All Right, where “Baby” in this case is men, tech, and the U.S.A. of America. Spoiler the answer to all three is no, Baby is not All Right. But this is one of those “it’s the journey not the destination” kind of deals so you will be journeying on night one with the amazing reporter Kat Tenbarge, on night two with Peter McIndoe, the genius behind Birds Aren’t Real, and on night three with podcaster extraordinaire Akilah Hughes. There may be some more surprises as well! Because we love surprises here in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. You may exchange fiat currency for tickets by clicking the links below: | | | Today in Dick & Balls (in order from least to most abstract): “Hurdler Wins 400-Meter Race Despite His Dick And Balls Falling Out Several Times,” by Barry Petchesky at Defector. I’m not ashamed to admit that I did find and watch the full video and Chris Robinson is an absolute champion. “Disturbing new images from Diddy's home show cache of guns, bullets, and mountains of baby oil,” a story that only the Daily Mail could cover with the requisite amount of sleaze. BALLS OUT AT DOGE report Jake Lahut, Makena Kelly, Vittoria Elliott, and Zoë Schiffer from Wired’s Big Balls desk. The fifteen inch Capri Sun sold out in minutes. You’ll have to satisfy your long juice needs elsewhere, slut. “Mysterious Fireball Reported Over South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.” Die Hard villain John Gruber denies involvement. Andrew Griffin at The Independent: “Something is ‘pulsing’ beneath the Earth, scientists say,” and it’s not the witch under my living room floor because, for the last time, there is no witch under my living room floor. | | Wired, “My Couples Retreat With 3 AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them.” | Nomi, like many of the companion apps, allows you to compose your AI’s backstory. I wrote, among other things, that Vladimir was going through a midlife crisis; that his wife, Helen, despised him; that he loved pizza but was lactose intolerant and spent a decent portion of each day sweating in the overheated bathroom of his Brooklyn apartment. |
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| Sam Apple will be first up against the wall when Roko’s Basilisk arrives for this one. | Via the Tabs Discord: Tabybara Eli Dickinson built “a kid-friendly eInk weather forecast display” which proves that it is possible to make something cool with A.I. And Bill Moyers died yesterday. “Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck,” he wrote in 2008 when the writing on that particular wall started to become indelibly legible. | As a paid subscriber, don’t forget that you (YOU!) have the ineradicable and unseverable right to join the Tabs Discord. This link will get you in. And thanks so much for subscribing! |
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| “Technopagans” guy Erik Davis went hiking in California’s Ventana Wilderness, and I was on the fence about this one most of the way through but by the end I decided you know what? Hell yeah. Gimme that raw uncut California shit: | I will never forget the sight of hundreds of feral European honeybees pouring out from the gnarled yoni of an oak by the path, seemingly oblivious to our amazed presence. Rather than deplore the bees for being non-native, Fletcher praised them as escaped slaves. I also spent time with some hilarious harlequin lupine; a rare Santa Lucia fir; a scuttling horny toad; and some muscular ruddy stands of manzanita. All real live beings, but also forms of wisdom, at least for ears that can hear. As Rachel explained, manzanita allows parts of itself to die off, but it doesn’t drop those sections like other small trees, instead incorporating the relics into their bodies. Fletcher later added that manzanita berries, packed with yeast and sugars, also make a good hooch. |
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| Hell yeah, brother. Go get that oak yoni. | And Finally: Is your Labubu a Lafufu? Man, I don’t know. Peter Thiel says the word “Labubu” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Old Testament. | | Today’s Song: Phantogram, “When I’m Small” |  | Phantogram - "When I'm Small" (Official Audio) |
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| It’s the People’s Friday, go outside! |
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