Photo by Ian Beckley from Pexels
Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism begins with renewable energy. Once we have an abundance of clean energy and the millions of annual deaths from air pollution become a thing of the past, large scale human organization will be in an abundance phase such as we’ve never seen before. Until then, wind turbines are made using trees cut down in the Amazon. That is, not grown by the online book-seller gone rogue-behemoth-monopoly, literally the Balsa tree of the Amazon. The name comes from the Spanish word for raft and the wood is both light and very stiff, so it’s often used in between layers of fiberglass to build wind-turbine blades, if you can freaking believe it. There are synthetic alternatives which will hopefully prove more scalable than ransacking what’s left of the rainforest; though some plantations provide a comparatively well managed supply chain as opposed to just chopping down whatever can be found along river banks. The world’s largest exporter is Ecuador, responsible for 95% of commercial Balsa, where about 60% of the wood is grown on plantations for about 6 to 10 years until it reaches optimal maturity for use in all sorts of commercial applications. So before we get to flying cars, we’ll turn wood into wind power.
The World
Let’s Go Out for “Ice Cream”
Imagine a well known little white lie that isn’t being utilized to distract the kids from the family dog being put down but is instead helping to lure you in for a vaccination. A mall in Moscow’s famous Red Square is tempting folks in with free ice cream on the condition that they also get vaccinated.
The Sputnik V vaccine was not the 5th first man made satellite but instead one of the first vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 to be rolled out in production, with the exception of one China had been poking members of their armed forces with. The international community was originally skeptical about the efficacy and safety of the Russian vaccine since the Ruskies had the confidence to ‘approve’ it before the final trial data had been published (in mother Russia, vaccine approves regulatory body). Though this confidence appears to have been well placed as the final results from a “randomised double-blind, placebo controlled trial” (sidenote: possible substitute for this text: understanding these words is a requirement for being a ‘vaccine skeptic’ otherwise you’re just a twat) published in the Lancet bear out it’s efficacy and safety.
Also in credit to the Eastern bear both Lebanon and Myanmar have recently approved use of the vaccine and at $10 per shot it’s a pretty viable contender for helping eradicate the novel coronavirus globally, not just for a few million people in the West.
Coup D’Etat
The National League for Democracy of Myanmar has been overthrown by the military after a short stint (of ostensibly being) in power, in a bloodless coup. Usually truly democratic things don’t have the word Democracy in them, since it’s a bit on the nose. Which might go some way to explaining why news coverage of the coup kept referring to the ‘remarkable’ events etc. where the unfortunate reality is that military rule has been the status quo for Myanmar in recent decades.
In an almost unbelievable series of events a local fitness instructor, who has frequented a particular roundabout in the eerily quiet capital, was filming a workout video as the coup visibly progresses in the background. To add another layer here the viral Indonesian Jam she’s bopping along to (and it truly is a jam, have a look and listen) is about power struggles and includes the lyrics “I can see them coming one by one scrambling for the throne I don’t want to say names, they know who I’m referring to”.
Smile and Wave Boys
Fresh off the back of last week’s news that Beijing has started to use anal-swabs for coronavirus testing, authorities were this week compelled to deny that the test will not in fact make you “waddle like a penguin”. The statement followed the release of a video purporting to show tens of test subjects waddling straight-legged away from a test center. (We haven’t linked the video as we could only find it on MailOnline and we won’t provide fuel to that filth-ridden dumpster fire by sending traffic there, but it’s exactly how you imagine it so you’re not missing much.)
The US
How does he sleep at night?
Time now for this week’s instalment of ‘How does he sleep at night?’, our recurring segment about Mike ‘crack-addict-turned-pillow-CEO’ Lindell.
On Friday Lindell released his hastily produced docu-movie ‘Absolute Proof’, which consisted of an extended ramble providing absolutely no proof regarding Lindell’s deeply-held belief that Trump won the election, alongside interviews with all your favorite debunked nutcases, such as Mellissa ‘drunk-Karen’ Carone (check out the eyebrows at 1:22). In the interest of full-disclosure, What Just Happened?! haven’t watched Absolute Proof, despite it thankfully only being two hours long (rather than the three hours promised in a particularly batshit Newsmax interview), partly because the authors have lives, partly because others have already watched it for us, and partly because it was immediately removed from virtually all platforms onto which it was uploaded. It could well find at least one major venue for its broadcast, as Dominion Voting Systems has asked YouTube to preserve a copy for use in its upcoming legal actions against Lindell, so… it’s coming to a court near you.
We suppose making a fiery, bullshit propaganda movie is at least a way to burn through some of those sweet, sweet pillow dollars; Lindell astonishingly has an estimated net worth of $300m, likely making him wealthier than Trump, which makes one think rather than working hard one should probably go hit the crack pipe to find some pillowy inspiration.
Also entering the pillow business is one of Lindell’s most prominent nemeses: David Hogg. If you can count amongst your nemeses school-shooting survivors turned gun-control activists, you should probably go have a long, hard look at yourself in MyMirror, followed by a lie-down on MyMattress and a weep into your MyPillow, before snorting a line of MyCoke and settling down to your MyMicrowaveDinner for one.
Hogg is genuinely setting up a company to manufacture sustainable pillows using union labour, alongside a promise that the business would “not attempt a white supremacist overthrow of the United States government”. His business partner William LeGate describes himself as “The Elon Musk of Pillows”.
The Internet
AT&T-Whooping
A 90-year-old man named Aaron Epstein went to the glorious bother this week of taking out a quarter page ad in the Wall Street Journal to give the CEO of telecoms company AT&T a piece of his damn mind. Epstein uses the space to berate John Starkey for the woeful connection of speeds of 3Mbps which are the fastest available to his North Hollywood property.
On the off-chance anyone from BT reads WJH: fair warning this is what I’ll do to you next if you don’t action the ten m*****f*****g contracts I signed with you more than 6 goddam months ago! Why are telecoms providers all cretins?
Not THAT kind of Technocracy
The Nevadans are considering allowing technology companies the legal right to set up their own local governments. While technology companies tend not to be limited to local geographies in virtue of, you know, that whole internet thing, it wouldn’t be the first time Nevada let people make up their own rules. We’re talking here about a state that basically gave the mob it’s own city.
The UK
Goating Mad
If your co-workers children/pets bursting in on Zoom meetings dressed as pirates isn’t quite annoying or disruptive enough for your team, a farm in Lancashire has a new solution. For the premium-adult-chatline price of £5.99 for 5 minutes, you too can have a goat in your meeting.
I would recommend a few minutes on the entrepreneurial farm’s website perusing the outstanding descriptions of each of their goats.
Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week, get in touch with the authors Will Marshall and Alistair Simmonds on Twitter and let us know what you did and didn’t like.
What Just Happened? 