Over The Hump [DOT 13/7/22]

13/7/22 MegMegMcGee 26

Hi Deadsplinters! Hope everyone is doing alright.

As the title suggests, I’m getting over the hump…of Covid. After having avoided it this whole time, it looks like the BA.5 done got me.

Let’s see what else is happening…

I’m not alone.

Biden administration announces new strategy to tackle Covid subvariant
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/12/biden-covid-ba5-subvariant-strategy

Stonks!

Wall Street tumbles at close as worries mount ahead of CPI report
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/recession-worries-keep-futures-under-pressure-2022-07-12/

This is my shocked face :/

Trump tried to contact committee witness, an effort referred to Justice Department, Cheney says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/12/jan-6-committee-hearings-live-updates-day-7/

I’m sure the lawyers are salivating!

Twitter sues Elon Musk, setting stage for epic legal battle
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/12/twitter-elon-musk-lawsuit/

Neato!

Nasa publishes flurry of images from James Webb space telescope
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/12/nasa-publishes-flurry-of-images-from-james-webb-space-telescope

[imagine a cute tweet here because I couldn’t find anything before the Nyquil kicked in.]

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26 Comments

  1. This morning, as I doing my own pre-DOT news roundup, I came across two startling stories I thought I’d share:

    1. Mayor Adams seems to think we will not have a Hot Girl Summer but rather a Cold War one:

    A commenter on another site observed, “Mayor Adams, I’m much more likely to survive a direct nuclear hit than I am a walk through Midtown in broad daylight. Could you devote some attention to that?” An exaggeration, but I saw the point.

    2. Here’s a very bizarre story about Delia “Where the Crawdads Sing” Owens. She may be an accomplice in a homicide carried out by her husband, which is interesting enough, but this took place under very interesting circumstances. I have no desire to see the upcoming movie of Where the Crawdads Sing, but I would definitely watch this one, especially if Meredith Vieira gets a cameo:

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/delia-mark-christopher-owens-zambia-poacher-death-investigation_n_62cd626fe4b06e3d9bba9a19

  2. Oh, PS, I hope you get better soon, Meg. We, too, have never had Covid that we know of, and another startling story I read, I think last week, was that my small neighborhood has the highest infection rate in Manhattan, and one of the highest in the city. A commenter on that story pointed out it’s probably not true, it just means that my neighbors don’t have the means to get at-home Covid tests, or don’t know you can get them for free, so they were more likely to go to public testing sites.

  5. Aww, Meg, hope you feel better soon. I might be hitting double-bingo on Covid myself; had it in May (as did my son) for the first time, but last night, he and my wife both tested positive. I was negative, but I find it hard to believe I’ll escape it for long.

  7. Holy shit. The sentient potato outlined the whole plan in a recording. No wonder he’s desperate to testify. He needs all the cooperation credit he can get.

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/leaked-audio-steve-bannon-trump-2020-election-declare-victory/

    What is it with these idiots? Do they have no conception of how video/audio recordings work? Do they think there’s a little bird inside there chiseling pictures onto a stone tablet like something from The Flintstones?

    Rhetorical question. The answer is they didn’t fucking care. They were going to put themselves in charge forever.

    • Bannon has been extremely good at gaslighting the press for years.

      His latest stunt of pretending he would cooperate with the January 6 Committee is a fantastic example — there was zero reason to believe it was a good faith offer, but he got a lot of reporters to treat it as real, even though he was transparently trying to screw up a looming ruling on his contempt trial.

      He is one of the top background sources in DC. Reporters always take his calls and often use his framing, despite the fact they constantly get burned in the long run.

      He has gotten away with it for so long that it’s not surprising he thought he could explain it away. A lot of reporters still are open to him.

  10. That Twitter article, like so many others, buries the lede.

    “Some legal experts think the most likely outcome is for the two sides to reach some sort of settlement agreement, either one that allows Musk to buy Twitter for a lower price or that requires him to pay a higher breakup fee to Twitter. ”

    Musk isn’t going to buy Twitter, at least in a conventional sense. In the end he may be a figurehead of a bigger investment group and he kicks in a small fraction of the total. Or he may just settle on the breakup fee.

    Twitter is probably hoping that some group of suckers will offer some partial piece of the old Musk offer (which also included a big chunk of outside funding before it fell apart). They are thinking (or hoping) that they can pressure Musk into believing that he’s better off committing a few billion as a part of a joint purchase and theoretically get something of value. If he just pays the breakup fee, he gets nothing.

    They figure that by churning up a belief that Musk is still putting significant dollars into a deal, it will be easier to get other investors. But I’m skeptical that any big players will do it except in a smoke a mirrors way.

    Musk is probably trying to figure out how long he can string out Twitter and bargain down a breakup fee, or else con Twitter into giving him a sweetheart deal on a “purchase” that turns the relatively minimal amount he commits into risk free vapor.

    The problem is reporters keep buying the PR spin and can’t put together a halfway decent account of what’s going on. So they keep defaulting to the Musk-man Buy Twitter narrative they bought months ago without understanding anything.

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