Pump and Dump

The Revolution Will Be Inflated

Every resistance movement starts with the first step. It’s all the better if that first step lands on a foot pump. Prior to the No Kings rallies, we heard a lot of hot air about violence, antifa, and protesters who hate America. The protesters who united in cities across don’t hate America. They are America. Well, America dressed as a giant inflatable chicken, anyway. Yes, a lot of the protests included humor. But that humor serves a serious function. “This humorous form of protest, known as tactical frivolity, shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants. In contravention of the Trump administration’s claims that the protesters were all Hamas agents or antifa interns, the protest in Chicago was wholesome, nonaggressive and almost shockingly middle-of-the-road. It’s hard to call an inflatable chicken dangerous.” The novelist Gary Shteyngart in the NYT (Gift Article): The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance. “Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”

+ “It’s a joke, but it’s not only a joke. At a time when the administration is seeking to portray its political opponents as seditious enemies—ones worthy of violence and prosecution—the injection of levity is a matter of strategy.” Slate (Gift Article): We Interviewed an Anti-Trump Inflatable Frog. It Made Some Great Points.

+ “Unable to get a precise crowd estimate, I tried instead to count inflatable frog costumes. I gave up on this about twenty minutes later: there were simply too many frogs.” Sarah Jeong reports from Portland. March of the frogs.

+ One of the key goals of authoritarianism is to exhaust the public and leave them in a state of apathy. Well, Saturday was the country’s largest single-day protest in history.

+ Photos of the protests from NPR and The Atlantic.

+ “Kenny Loggins has spoken out against Donald Trump using his song ‘Danger Zone’ in a bizarre AI video of the president in a fighter jet bombing No Kings protesters with what appears to be fecal matter.” (The obvious song choice was Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot. What can I say. Some people just can’t tell a joke...)

2

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

“Records and interviews with 20 people familiar with the route or the strikes, including current and former U.S. and international officials, contradict the administration’s claims. The passage, they said, is not ordinarily used to traffic synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, present in 69 percent of drug overdose deaths last year. Nor are the drugs typically headed for the United States.” WaPo (Gift Article): Officials, locals undercut Trump claims about Venezuela drug boats.

+ “President Gustavo Petro of Colombia accused the United States of murdering a fisherman in an attack on a boat that the American authorities claimed was carrying illicit drugs. President Trump responded on Sunday that he would slash assistance and impose new tariffs on the country.” NYT (Gift Article): Colombia’s Leader Accuses U.S. of Murder.

+ “Rather than holding them, the United States sent them back to their home countries.” The people on the small boats targeted by the US military are essentially given the death penalty. But, apparently, there’s not enough evidence to arrest them. In Trump’s drug war, prisoners may be too much of a legal headache, experts say. Congressman Jim Himes: “The attacks on the boats in the Caribbean have been illegal. If the survivors had appeared in either court or a military tribunal that would have instantly been made clear.”

3

Feed the Machine

The age of the machines vs humans is upon us. Well, the machines vs some humans. “When Microsoft opened a data center in central Mexico last year, nearby residents said power cuts became more frequent. Water outages, which once lasted days, stretched for weeks. The shortages led to school cancellations and the spread of stomach bugs in the town of Las Cenizas, said Dulce María Nicolás, a resident and mother of two. She has considered moving. Víctor Bárcenas, who runs a local health clinic, has stitched up children by flashlight. In December, he was unable to give oxygen to a 54-year-old farmer because the power went out. The patient was rushed to a hospital nearly an hour away. Their experiences are being echoed elsewhere, as an artificial intelligence building boom strains already fragile power and water infrastructures in communities around the world.” NYT(Gift Article): From Mexico to Ireland, Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy.

4

Entrapuccino

“Companies say they’re rewarding your devotion with points, discounts and perks. But behind the scenes, many are using these programs to monitor your behavior and build a profile — then charge you what they think you’ll pay.” WaPo (Gift Article): The hidden way using a rewards card can cost you more. “Starbucks tracked my every purchase -- then gave me fewer deals. It’s called surveillance pricing.”

5

Extra, Extra

Wiped Off the Map: In a tense meeting last week, Putin “tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal.” Oh wait, that wasn’t Putin. That was Trump. WaPo: In tense meeting, Trump told Zelensky to concede land, meet Putin’s demands.

+ We’ll All Go Down Together: “The services affected included WhatsApp, the British government’s website and tax services, the payment app Venmo, the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, games at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal’s website. Dozens of other companies and retailers — including Amazon, Venmo, Hulu, Snapchat, McDonald’s, Ring doorbells and the game Fortnite — also experienced interruptions.” When AWS has an outage, it takes a lot of services with it. Amazon Outage Forces Hundreds of Websites Offline for Hours.

+ Is There an ER for ERs? “Alabama is one of 10 states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Because many patients show up at emergency rooms without insurance, hospitals in Alabama deliver hundreds of millions annually in care that is uncompensated.” Alabama in danger of losing half of its rural hospitals. As I wrote last week, people are voting, and acting, against their own personal health and well being. Red, White, and Code Blue.

+ Jewel Case: “It was the most brazen — and possibly the most costly — theft ever staged at the Louvre, which houses the country’s most prized art collections. French politicians publicly mourned the loss and railed against those they deemed responsible, loudly demanding to know how such a thing could happen at the world’s most famous museum at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.” NYT (Gift Article): In Just 7 Brazen Minutes, Thieves Grab ‘Priceless’ Jewels From Louvre.

+ We Talkin’ Bout Practioner: A career path you may not have seen coming. The N.F.L. to Nursing Pipeline.

+ The Shohei Kid: “This is Beethoven at a piano. This is Shakespeare with a quill. This is Michael Jordan in the Finals. This is Tiger Woods in Sunday red. This is too good to be true with no reason to doubt it. This is the beginning of every baseball conversation and the end of the debate: Shohei Ohtani is the best baseball player who has ever played the game.” WaPo (Gift Article): Shohei Ohtani just played the greatest game in baseball history. (Let’s not let this otherworldly performance distract us from the fact that we hate the Dodgers.)

6

Bottom of the News

Charmin’s new toilet paper roll lasts a full month — and stretches as tall as the Washington Monument. (Your move, Costco.)

+ If you hate having plans, this SNL commercial sketch will speak to you.