NextDraft will be off for Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah.
This is one of my favorite Steven Wright jokes: "In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, 'cut it out!'" You may not be aware of it, but the techno-finance-nerds flicking switches in small basements and massive server farms across the world could be on the way to dimming your lights too. Consider this: "The process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland." To erase that startling stat, either Bitcoin needs to use less energy, or Finland needs to use more. Or something like that. In the meantime, it's worth expending a little of your own energy to understand the relationship between money and power: NYT: Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible? "Cryptocurrencies have emerged as one of the most captivating, yet head-scratching, investments in the world. They soar in value. They crash. They'll change the world, their fans claim, by displacing traditional currencies like the dollar, rupee or ruble. They're named after dog memes. And in the process of simply existing, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, one of the most popular, use astonishing amounts of electricity."
2
IT'S LOCAL TIME
"I used to be in that camp myself. Who wants public officials or government bureaucrats interfering in news, I always felt. No, thanks. But having watched the grim consequences of local news's worsening decline over the past two decades, I think the Local Journalism Sustainability Act has real value." WaPo's excellent Margaret Sullivan: Congress may be about to help local news. It can't happen soon enough. (Gift article for ND readers.) This is an absolutely critical issue and we need to figure out some way to get it right. Local news creates community, and can act as a trusted source of information on life and death topics (floods, hurricanes, pandemics). And the vacuum created when they crater is often filled by nefarious national brands spreading overt lies about those very same life and death topics.
3
WEEKEND WHATS
What to Pod: As part of my couch-based pre-release book tour, I've been doing some podcast interviews. In this one, I shared some of my top internet follows and explained why you should follow them too. Check out Follow Friday: Florida Men, Apple Fanboys, Japanese Roller Coasters. (It never occurred to me that it could be fun talking about someone else.)
+ What to Doc: A dad on whom the Tony Soprano character may have been based bought his clownish 17 year-old son a professional hockey team. Enough said. Watch Untold: Crime & Penalties on Netflix.
+ What to Book: Enjoy an excellent short story from the excellent Dave Eggers: The Museum Of Rain. And as a bonus, check out Dave's (free) satire, The Captain and the Glory.
4
WHERE THE RIVERS SHOULDN'T MEET
"Police went door to door in search of more possible victims and drew up lists of the missing as the death toll rose to 49 on Friday in the catastrophic flooding set off across the Northeast by the remnants of Hurricane Ida." Police look for missing in wake of catastrophic Ida flooding.
+ "At least 11 people were found dead in basements after torrential rains flooded New York City — nearly as many as those killed by Hurricane Ida in Louisiana, where the storm made landfall." (People in NY never saw this coming because it had never come before. The new normal is here.) NYT: How the Storm Turned Basement Apartments Into Death Traps.
5
CARDINAL SIN
NPR: McCarrick — Once A Powerful Cardinal — Pleads Not Guilty To Sexual Assault Charges. "McCarrick, 91, wore a mask and entered suburban Boston's Dedham District Court hunched over a walker. "Shame on you!" a protester shouted. He did not speak during the hearing, at which the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, set bail at $5,000, and ordered him to stay away from the victim and have no contact with minors. McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, to ever be criminally charged with child sex crimes." (Just think about that last line.)
"Through all that — as Trump Tower has dealt with imploding tenants, political backlash and a broader, pandemic-related slump in Manhattan office leasing since last year — it has been able to count on one reliable, high-paying tenant: former president Donald Trump's own political operation ... Also, for several months, Trump's PAC paid the Trump Organization $3,000 per month to rent a retail kiosk in the tower's lobby — even though the lobby was closed." WaPo: Trump Tower's key tenants have fallen behind on rent and moved out. But Trump has one reliable customer: His own PAC.
8
TEXAS BACKWARDS
"The Texas voting law only impedes voting; it does not prevent it. The 2020 election showed that voter suppression can only do so much to protect a sufficiently unpopular incumbent." David Frum in The Atlantic: Texas Republicans Got What They Wanted. They Might Regret It. (But that may not hold true in the many states that will adopt Texas's restrictive law.)
9
KEYSER SOZE HIGH
"Bishop Sycamore High School, the supposed school in Columbus, Ohio, is not recognized by the Ohio High School Athletic Association, and the state's Department of Education lists no charter school with its name, according to local TV station WCMH. The school's official website, as of Wednesday, has been taken down for 'maintenance.'" People Are Wondering if an Ohio School Even Exists, After a 58-0 Football Blowout on ESPN.
+ After this weekend, people will wonder if the Dodgers exist. I hope. This weekend marks one of the truly great matchups between them and the Giants. Consider this: "The Giants are 85-49. The Dodgers are 85-49. The two rivals are 8-8 against each other. The run total in those games is 68-68."
+ South Lake Tahoe restaurant gave hundreds of burritos to fire crews before Caldor Fire evacuation. (Even better, the winds seem to have let up enough to save South Lake Tahoe. This time.)
+ Experience: I found the largest truffle in the world. "My friends and family were supportive of my decision. If I had sold it, it would never have had the same impact. I was like a hero in my community." (This dude sounds like he's on shrooms.)
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Opening Argument: Five YouTube Circuit-Breakers For Bad Days
I don't believe in hiding your head in the sand during bad news weeks, but I also don't believe in a 24-hour constant stream of uninterrupted panic, for the simple reason that I don't think your body and brain are meant to sustain that. I thought about that quite a bit this week, as a whole cascade of bad news -- we're still in a global pandemic that's nowhere near over, and it wasn't even the most upsetting thing that was on my mind -- threatened to swamp me. And as silly as it seems, it reminded me how helpful it can be just to have a few circuit-breakers handy. By circuit-breakers, I mean things that are just not connected to anything -- anything -- that worries me, and can interrupt the cycle of panic-Panic-PANIC-PANIC!! that really can get out of hand. So with no apologies, I give you five of my circuit-breakers from the category of "diverting YouTube channels."
1. The photographer Jessica Kobeissi does a couple of different things on her channel. She talks about taking pictures, and she talks about equipment, and she talks about working with clients, and she takes you through the process of editing photos. But she also does reaction videos to episodes of America's Next Top Model and points out, in short, that this is not how you would ever do a photo shoot and these are not things you would ever say to models.
2. The hair guru Brad Mondo starts every video coyly saying "Hi, beautiful," which is the kind of thing a lot of people can't stand about YouTube. I get it! But for some reason, I gradually became infatuated with his reaction videos where he watches the footage people for some reason choose to share with the public in which they attempt to bleach or color or cut their own hair at home. He's not afraid to congratulate people who are successful, and he gives actual concrete advice to people who aren't. He gave a lot of lessons during quarantine about how you can manage your own hair when you need to, and in general, I find him a delight.
3. I like a lot of food channels, but the one I've been into in the last couple of weeks is Food52. I'm particularly enamored of Erin McDowell's detailed, thorough baking demos, which can run upwards of an hour as she explains variations on pie crust or layer cakes. It's a restful but not soporific kind of watch, friendly but not wildly chipper. Food52 is also home to work from some of the chefs who left Bon Appetit's video operation in 2020, including Sohla El-Waylly and Rick Martinez. I also love the NYT Cooking channel, for the record.
4. How To Cake It is the home of baker Yolanda Gampp. If you've seen those videos where a thing that looks like a real thing turns out to be a cake? She makes that kind of cake. A sneaker, a mango, a burger, whatever. Gampp recently stopped putting out new cake videos (and took a break to be a judge on Crime Scene Kitchen), but there are years of incredible creations to check out.
5. Wired and GQ are both good channels, but what I love is a series that's very similar on both of them. Wired calls it Technique Critique and GQ calls it The Breakdown, and it features experts looking at scenes from movies and saying how realistic they are. (For example, on The Breakdown, Free Solo subject Alex Honnold talked about climbing scenes.) Over on Technique Critique, I'm a huge fan of surgeon Annie Onishi, whose dry wit brings a lot of flair to her opinionated takes on medical shows and films. The Breakdown also has medical stuff, though, including the wildly charming Dr. Italo Brown, who works in an ER, talking about movie injuries.
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We Recommend:
Sopranos expert and my pal Alan Sepinwall has started publishing coverage of the new film The Many Saints Of Newark over at Rolling Stone. Start with his big digital cover story.
I think there will be a lot of chatter about the FX series Impeachment: American Crime Story, which starts Tuesday night. Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp … it’s a whole thing. Reviews are mixed. We’ll be talking about it on PCHH. Check it out for yourself, prosthetics and all.
If you liked Michael Greyeyes on Rutherford Falls, seek out the new film Wild Indian, which is now streaming. It’s a thriller about the dangers of digging up the past, and while it’s not an easy watch, he’s terrific in it.
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