Intro / Preface / Extra Words
A radio DJ talk show type person we used to listen to but whose name escapes us used to harp on about the "Triple U's". In no particular order, these are unfunny, unoriginal, and another u-starting word that we've never been able to remember but is somewhere in the direction of unfunny and unoriginal.
The Triple U is when you ask the acquaintance named Michael Bolton if he likes the musician Michael Bolton. It is the joke that person has been hearing their entire life and the fact that you just thought of it and said it to him is an extraction of value from his soul to yours. "Oh hi Tim Cruise, are you any relation to Tom?" "Oh you work at the pharmacy, you must do a lot of drugs!".
It is saying "What?" really loud when someone tells you they can't hear.
It can also be the meme we as a society have collectively surfaced all in unison at a particular time. Our favorite at the moment is "the one year anniversary of 14 days to slow the spread". Which actually we should all keep saying because it perfectly captures the absurdist, morbid, monotonously terrifying eternal twilight of the last year. Sometimes the triple-U (or double-U if you can't remember the third U) serves to connect us to each other. And I think after a year of isolation we could use whatever we can get of that, even if it is unoriginal and unfunny (and un-something else).
We'd love to hear more examples of "triple-u's". Reply to this email with the ones you can think of and we'll give a shoutout to the best ones in a future iteration of this space.
Heavy Rotation
Song For My Father by Horace Silver
Thanks to Gerry for sharing an awesome album that has been jazzing up my workdays for the past week. -C
Veedeeohs
Badlands Chugs
Dude slams various soda pops and then unironically reviews their flavor. This channel is wild. The capacity of the internet to still deliver surprises continues for another day. -B
One time I used a calorie calculator on Taco Bell's website to figure out how many calories my favorite meal contained, I think it was a Cheesy Gordita Crunch $5 Box. I remember it being much higher than I expected, somewhere around 1200 calories. And that was without the drink. Once I added "Baja Blast" to the calculation it jumped by like 400 calories. All that to say, Mr. Chugs is blowing my mind with the liquid calorie consumption in these videos. -C
Food
Is That Calamari Or Pig Rectum?
At one point in my life I was tangentially related to sales of things to food processors. During that time I heard stated as fact what now appears to be an urban legend, that a significant portion of the calamari served to Americans is actually pig rectum. Finally, someone tries to get to the ummm, bottom of this. -B
Business Time
Gamestop
So probably everyone has heard something about Gamestop's stock drama in 2021. If you're still looking for a 'splainer here's a good one, along with a semi-related article about how you're getting screwed over if you are using Robinhood for trading. Just remember the internet truism: if you aren't paying for a service then you are the product. In this case you are being sold to high frequency traders of questionable ethical provenance. -B
TravelMASity
Why doesn't the US get to have high speed rail?
I love trains. I love traveling by trains. I love train stations. I love train naps. I love train cabins and train seats and train compartments and train bathrooms and train noises and train smells. I love movies that have train scenes. I've ridden the fastest trains in the world (Shanghai, Japan, Taiwan). I've ridden crowded old trains across eastern Europe. I've ridden trains from Paddington Station out into the Midlands. I've ridden Amtrak across the fruited plains. I've been attacked by a local in an Asian train station for being too big to shove around. I've succumbed to jet lag in a train on the Iberian peninsula and been astonished to wake up and not have missed my stop. One of my bucket list items is to take the Orient Express from Europe to Asia.
So why doesn't the US have a real train network? We're too big. We're not dense enough. We all have cars. And we're absolutely ineptly incompetent at infrastructure in general (these days).
Also here's a bonus link showing what it would be like to travel on the hyperloop (if that was a thing that had a chance to ever actually be built, which it doesn't). -B
Why the US doesn't get to have high speed rail
Why the California bullet train is failing
B, why you gotta crush my hyperloop dreams??? -C
You Fancy, Huh
Jackie Gleason's Spaceship-Like Retreat
For any of you Frank Lloyd Wright fans out there, this massive home was designed by one of his students. Hopefully whoever buys it decides to put it on Airbnb. Related: someone who is better at math should explain to me how long it would take and how much the nightly rate would be to make $12MM seem like a reasonable price. -C
A Multi-Purpose Field Tool: Fencing Pliers
Definitely need Santa to put one of these in my stocking next year. -B
Attention: JD. This looks right up your alley. They neglected to use the word "tactical" in their product description though... -C
Follytics
Our Illiberal Moment
Charles Cooke writes good things I often agree with. He's a UK transplant to Florida and has a very classically liberal / enlightenment set of principals. -B
I love technology (and science)
The UX on this Small Child Is Terrible - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Another well-researched and thought-provoking essay from McSweeney's. A preview:
It’s got unicorn print pants, a shirt that says THE FUTURE IS FEMALE, a llama sweater, three hairclips in three different colors, and a raincoat (also unicorns) in a region that’s experiencing crisis-level drought conditions. If you try to remove even one of these visual elements, the Small Child emits a high-pitched scream, and you’re right back to the troubleshooting issue that I’ve already described.
What really happened in Texas during the snow storm?
Beware the easy answer. When your tribe tells you its "the windmills" or "the politicians" or "the whatever" they're wrong. Don't succumb. Reality is messy and complicated and very few things are simple. -B
I understood 5% of what this person was explaining, but the graphs were helpful. Regardless, B is right on with the "very few things are simple" takeaway. But keep making fun of windmills if you feel so led. I wish I had a windmill. - C
Further Reading
Grey Lady Steel Man - Model Citizen
In the last issue we shared a Link that passionately proscribed the removal of the New York Times from your life. We also have shared a couple of links over the last few months to Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex (now renamed as Astral Ten Codex). Scott got embroiled in a bruhaha with the NYT and his community has a feud simmering with the author of the so-called "hit piece" on Scott, a writer named Cade Metz.
Here's a smart, humble and fair take laying out what this all must have looked like from Cade's perspective. Nothing is ever simple. People are complicated and we should all strive to see the world through the eyes of others. -B
Y'all may have picked up on this already, but the little issue previews we add to these issues are always pulled from one of the articles we share. This issue's preview was "rigorously consistent Bayesian updating", which I yanked from this article. I liked how absurd that phrase sounded to me, but it also sent me down a rabbit hole that landed me at this YouTube explainer of the Bayesian Belief Update. -C