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🗞️ TSAR: Hm, that's odd

🗞️ TSAR: Hm, that's odd

Issue #123

Andrew Appleseed
July 31, 2022

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Mark Twain

GM ⛅

Welcome to the seventh edition of The Sunday Andrew Review ("TSAR"), our Sunday newsletter. They come out on, well, Sundays. What's the point? Choose one topic and go a bit deeper. I hope you like it. Suppose you don't? Well then, good, that's settled.

In classic AA🍎 fashion, this should still only take a few min to read.

On with the show...

Hm, that's odd

What is going on?

Man, these days I feel like these streets are riddled with clowns. The White House is twisting words to fit their agenda out in the open, three-letter agencies are telling us to eat bugs and kick rocks, top media outlets will vomit up anything to limit the risk of widespread panic, and countless layers of irony from content creators make it hard to discern what we should be laughing at or crying about. Below are some thing I have noticed recently that gives me pause to say the least:

Monkeypox cases in the US are climbing (per CDC). Even with a (for now) 98% survival rate, this virus: is easily transmissible; would put those infected out for 4+ weeks (more isolation, staffing issues, fatter, reintro of masks/gloves/bubble suits); has symptoms that visually look similar to vaccination side effects; has a horrible name that will freak people out on a visceral level more than "covid". San Francisco is under a state of emergency already. Early days but "never say never" applies to both the bullish and bearish cases of this outbreak.
Scientific American says eating too much protein renders our urine a climate pollutant. When this is coming from 'prestige media' like SA, you know it's just a matter of time before it hits normie papers/magazine/social media like USA Today (hi, grandma Joan) and NBC News with Lester Holt. The opportunism of these journalists is breathtaking, as if we are really concerned about pee as a pollutant, why aren't we talking about antibiotics, antidepressants, birth control, and pesticides - all of which end up in our bodily discharges?
The 'identity crisis' is a sight to behold. It is almost an obligation in 2022 to have a flag and/or pronouns in your bio. Your name is not enough! Tell me where you stand on increasingly esoteric political issues (come to think of it, is anything nonpolitical today?) and I will show you your friends. Ukraine flag = liberal who looks the other way when Zellensky is posing for the cover of Vogue (lol). USA flag = conservative who blows up like a birthday balloon in anger when he sees someone with a Ukraine flag in their bio. Trans flag = you already know. Sheesh. Nearly everyone plays this game, and loses.
May you use "recession" in a sentence, please? First it was the White House literally trying to redefine a well-known economic concept, then The Economist (again, prestige media) saying that a recession is a good thing, then NYT economist Paul Krugman shilling for his administration's mendacious ways, claiming inflation is not that bad for low-income citizens and much more. What happened to the ethic of "calling a spade a spade"? The spin zone today is more dizzying than ever before. Then Wikipedia went in, changed the definition of recession and swiftly locked the page from further editing in the name of "protecting vandalism." LMAO!!!! The thing is: this is all done out in the open. Anyone can see it.

All of these trap doors and magic tricks - some proving to be more insidious and unrelenting than others - will shape how the masses think about diet, the economy, the climate, and most of all each other. The main reason this all feels like we're drinking from the fire hose is that we have midterm elections in November, so everybody and their mother is plugging their cause from the highest mountaintop with the loudest speaker.

IDK what exactly is going on, but I'll be watching closely. You don't need to follow nerdy academics or math weenies to get a feel for what is happening. Your eyes and ears will do just fine, especially when people are losing their heads. Equipped with a clear mind, the truth is always stranger than fiction. A man cannot develop a story without an observation in the real world.