Week of September 27th, 2020

Howdy,

Somehow these weeks seem to be flying by at lightning speed, but at the same time, the first events of the week feel like they took place months ago. I hope you're doing well.

College COVID Recap

This might be the last of these for a while. Things are going better than I expected. We finally passed that 1000 number I had so feared, but we've done it so slowly that about 800 of them have already recovered. Of course, this could all go bad fast, but so far it hasn't gotten totally out of hand. I'll bring this section back if it does. This isn't exactly related, but did you hear about the otherwise healthy App State basketball player who died of COVID last week?

Election Recap

Welp. This week is the story of the White House getting Coronavirus. It all starts with the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. As I predicted in my last message, I was dead wrong about her. I still think it's odd she wasn't on that list, but it is what it is. I've read a bit more of her writing, and I'm not unsatisfied with the pick, though I have a lot more to read. With how quickly they're trying to confirm her, I don't know if I'll have the time to study her in full before she takes up the ninth seat. Her nomination was also quite possibly ground zero for the recent White House COVID breakout. Just look at this behavior at the event. Judge Barrett couldn't get it since she's already had it. But we'll get to all that later. As far as I can tell, she's got a very clean record. I've seen two strange attacks on her. The first is against her Catholic Charismatic religious group, the People of Praise. I've seen a lot of people who are very disturbed by this affiliation. Though I disagree with it, I can understand some of this fear. Members of the People of Praise must submit themselves to the church covenant and be subject to the organization's discipline and spiritual direction. I get how these words can sound very scary to those who aren't familiar with religious communities! David French wrote a great article about this issue which I highly recommend. But I see this fear manifesting as a sort of sick religious bigotry which secular people think they can get away with. There's a myth going around that the novel The Handmaid's Tale and the Hulu adaptation of it are based off of this community—a claim with no basis in reality. Liberals just really like that show. People call it a cult and suggest that Judge Barrett is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court because she's a crazy Christian who's pledged allegiance to a cult. I think some of this reaction is just rooted in “Charismatism weird.” Bill Maher was particularly shameless about this. On his show, he suggested she was unqualified for believing in speaking in tongues, a bog-standard Charismatic belief but one that's usually held by Protestant Charismatics, not Catholics like the majority of the People of Praise. Not only do these people have no understanding of religion, they do not even try to understand. While I certainly wouldn't want to be a Person of Praise myself, this kind of anti-religious fear-mongering pisses me off. The other insult relates to her black adopted children. I shit thee not, some folks have called the Judge racist for this. The funniest part is that Richard Spencer—who still has a Twitter account somehow—agrees wholeheartedly.

Then came the tax scandal. Headlines stated that President Trump paid only $750 annually in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017. Ten of the last fifteen years, he paid nothing. Understandably, people were pissed. It felt like this was the big secret the President was trying to hide all along by not disclosing his tax returns. Unfortunately, a lot of folks were pissed at the wrong people. The correct response to hearing that school teachers are taxed less than billionaires is to say that school teachers should be taxed far less, not to rage at the billionaires. The IRS is not a charity—though they do accept donations. Of course President Trump is going to pay as little in taxes as possible, as he should. Tax avoidance is one of the few cool things about President Donald Trump. It's appropriate to be angry at the President for not being transparent about his tax returns or for not doing enough to fix our federal budget and tax policy which allows the very wealthy to make everything they do look like a net loss, but it is ridiculous to be angry at him for paying as little tax as possible as a private individual. When President Trump manages to deduct $70,000 in hair styling expenses, I'm not angry; I'm impressed. Of course, he still paid a positive shitton in business taxes and property taxes as well as social security, medicare, etc. Many of the comparisons people are making aren't apples to apples. The bigger problem in this leak is the President's failing businesses, something which doesn't surprise me, but doesn't look great for his “businessman in the White House” pitch. The whole Times story is worth reading for all the details. Biden supporters celebrating being robbed by the Federal government as a mark of pride are embarrassing.

There was a debate! It was terrible! President Trump managed to dominate the event, which was clearly part of his plan, but he failed to do anything to save his ass. He tried to do what's worked for him in the past. He tried to make Joe Biden get in the mud with him, and Biden didn't fall for it. Sure he called the President a clown and told him to shut up, but otherwise he stayed on message and did a good job at communicating the kind of exasperation a lot of America is currently feeling. Also, as we already discussed, President Trump lost hard on race. Your average President Trump supporter isn't half as racist as the coastal liberals believe them to be, and they're deeply uncomfortable with President Trump on race. Anytime race is mentioned to a general, non-partisan audience, even if it includes rhetoric attacking rioters and looters, President Trump loses and Joe Biden wins. I saw a lot of folks point out that President Trump straw-manned Biden as a Socialist with some saying that it looked as if President Trump wanted to be debating Senator Sanders. I think that those pointing this out are missing one of the more successful parts of the President's debate strategy. He wanted to get Biden to disavow highly popular left-wing ideas such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and alienate the leftmost side of the Democratic party which isn't sure whether they want to vote for him. I don't think that it was enough to make a meaningful difference, but Biden took the bait here. If this sounds like 4D-chess bullshit to you, I think that these two tweets from the President make it a bit more obvious.

By far the most disturbing part of the debate was President Trump declining to disavow white supremacists, instead saying, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” I've seen some idiots on the right asking whether it matters that the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacy since it should be obvious. But, like, that's seriously in doubt right now! If I were asked in seriousness whether I would disavow murder by someone who honestly wasn't sure whether I was against it, of course I would disavow murder! And this kind of rhetoric does have a real-world effect. I saw Richard Spencer celebrating immediately after the debate. The Proud Boys have been bolstered. These are the people President Trump is enabling. I highly recommend watching this timely video interviewing many members to get a sense for the vibe of the group. Of course, a lot of other things were said during the debate, including Joe Biden making up total lies about US manufacturing, but you watched it, too, so I'll leave that here. Honestly, the most important detail from the debate is that President Trump didn't infect Joe Biden.

And that leads us to the biggest happening of the week. Yes, somehow I've talked about a Supreme Court nomination, a tax scandal, a Presidential debate in which a President refuses to denounce white supremacy, and I haven't even gotten to the biggest story: The President is in the hospital as I type this, reportedly having been on oxygen. And he's not the only one who's gotten sick. Take another look at this image from the Supreme Court nomination. How many more red circles do you think we'll get? How far has it spread? So far, we have the President and the First Lady—but notably not Baron—Bill Stepian, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway (more on her in a bit), Chris Christie, Senator Mike Lee (lol remember this video?), Senator Thom Tillis, Senator Ron Johnson, Ronna McDaniel, John Jenkins, and at least eleven staff from the first debate. It's a full-scale breakout. It seems like the D.C. Republicans have been outright irresponsible. Hope Hicks tested positive on Thursday morning, but it didn't stop the President from going mask-less to a fundraiser in New Jersey that same day. This stupid, conspiratorial tweet from Congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine is hilarious. Of course, many people on all sides are coming up with outlandish conspiracies about the infection. Also, many are celebrating the President's illness and praying for his death. You already know how I feel about this, so I won't waste keystrokes here. At his age and with his health, he has about a 94% chance of survival, which is wild for this stage in a Presidential election, but let's not dig the grave quite yet. We don't know much about the President's status, and Twitter has been arguing all day about HIPAA (or “HIPPA,” as they tend to call it) which no one on the site remotely understands but on which everyone considers themself an expert. The video President Trump posted last evening was strange to watch. He really wasn't looking great. I've never seen him look like this.

A Washington Post bot tweeted this at an inopportune time.

Alright, as a final, lighter bit of election-related news, I want to talk about how we learned that Kellyanne Conway caught COVID. Most people found out when she tweeted about it, however, the news first broke on TikTok. (By the way, if TikTok does get banned, I'll talk about it, but I've been holding off). Kellyanne Conway has an odd family life. Her husband George Conway is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, a conservative anti-Trump organization that's gained some traction. Her 15-year-old daughter Claudia is also vocally anti-Trump (and anti-Kellyanne for that matter), has accused her parents of abuse, and is trying to get emancipated to live on her own. Claudia Conway posted this highly irreverent TikTok (sound on) to share the news. Honestly, her whole TikTok is wild. She posted another immediately after which says, “im furious. wear your masks. dont listen to our idiot fucking president piece of shit.” I feel bad for this girl. I can't imagine being in her shoes.

Everything Else

Steve's in Smash. That's pretty weird. I like it. Also Minecraft is getting the cave update. I remember people asking for that when I was playing the game in middle school.

Cream of Wheat is removing the black chef from their packaging for no reason.

Hillary Clinton was more oppressed than President Obama because she was called “bitch” whereas Obama was rarely ever called “nigger.” There's some real white, liberal feminism going on here. I don't know how some of these people have stayed so online and yet so detached.

Terrible online magazine Queerty published this unbelievably cringy article calling Dr. Jill Biden a gay icon—you know, despite being married to Joe Biden. This article is absurd. It deserves a read. Why is every gay magazine like this?

After the President's Proud Boy shenanigan, some trans men started (or possibly continued, I'm not sure) using the term to refer to themselves just to fuck with the Proud Boys. George Takei apparently had a different idea: “I wonder if the BTS and TikTok kids can help LGBTs with this. What if gay guys took pictures of themselves making out with each other or doing very gay things, then tagged themselves with #ProudBoys. I bet it would mess them up real bad. #ReclaimingMyShine.” He's literally begging teenagers to produce softcore with a hashtag he can easily search for under the guise of owning the Orange Man. Every time I look at this guy's twitter, he's saying something super cursed. And there are a number of replies basically saying, “Haha, I'm totally straight, but we we should make out on camera to own Drumpf lol.”

Finally, here's a spectacular hour-long deep dive into a facet of the authorship of the infamously terrible 2006 Harry Potter fan-fiction My Immortal. I share this because it reminds me quite a lot of a movie I've wanted to write for some time now featuring a character who for no straightforward motive makes dozens of online accounts pretending to be different people who all talk to each other. I'm fascinated by this kind of internet history.

Thanks,

Jacob Morris

Week of August 23rd, 2020

I'm back, I think. I feel like I've woken up from a summer-long slumber and am now something approximating a real person again. Please lmk if these bore you or anything. I just find it to be a fun enough Saturday activity. I haven't done this is a damn long time, so forgive me if this is a clonker.

College COVID Update

I have a feeling this might be a running segment, though it probably won't be this long again until everything goes to shit. I have no faith in this institution to not become a hotbed of filth and disease. They've created harsher penalties for violating rules while on campus, but I don't think it's going to help. Most people are fine of course. I'd estimate that maybe 10% of people are a little lax on social distancing and 3% absolutely do not give a shit (of course that will skew toward freshmen who all live in dorms), but that's more than enough for hell to break loose. I've heard some real horror stories already

I've seen people celebrate this since there are fewer than 30 recorded cases in the first week. I'm old enough to remember a time when the White House celebrated double-digit COVID cases in the United States. This is definitely enough for things to go bad. I'm expecting a new update tomorrow, so it's a betting game to see what number 21 will turn into. That's secondary to the main betting game for this semester which is “How many weeks until they put everything online?”

The way this shook out, I have 3 classroom sessions a week, and I'm not too worried about those since they're so regulated that transmission chances are pretty damn low, despite the few horror stories we've seen.

Next week, there's a virtual event to introduce new students to our clubs so I'll be representing the atheists *tips fedora* and the filmmakers... who are really trying to figure out what to do. I'm really glad I wasn't the one elected president. Well, I can get around to finalizing some edits we never finished, and I suppose our film-making can get a little experimental. It depends on how many people actually want to attend a club introduction event over Zoom, really.

Since I don't need my laptop for any of my in-person classes, I have it set up under my desk sitting on its screen so it can ventilate hooked up to a monitor I got recently. Fortunately, I'm no longer craning my head to look at a small, old 720p monitor sitting on top of a fridge. Having a decently large screen and a mechanical keyboard is honestly a game-changer. I don't know how I survived for so long making big software projects on a laptop. I of course have my mic hooked up, and I also figured out how to use my phone as a webcam. My point is I probably have the absolute best Zoom setup in the university. I have contrast-y lighting on my face, I have an XLR mic with a pop filter in the shot and sound great. I have a pretty nice phone camera that's held up with a little stand I bought, so I'm in the left third of the shot a little below the camera's line of sight. And I do a little bit of set dressing too. Everyone else has a shitty laptop camera looking up at his or her chin and sounds like they're talking through the garbage disposal. It's a very silly thing to take pride in, but I gotta keep Zoom school life interesting somehow.

Thank God I have my full-time offer. I would not want to be going through the recruiting process this year.

Election Update

Well we just had the DNC and the RNC, so now's the right time to re-engage with politics, I guess. I wish I were writing emails during the height of the BLM protests, but political conventions it is. I won't say much about the DNC since that wasn't this week. It was boring as hell, and we all noticed that nearly every candidate except for Congresswoman Gabbard was invited to the convention. Andrew Yang jokingly mispronouncing Vice President Pence's name was extreme cringe, and Bill Clinton was invited for some reason, even though nearly everyone agrees he's probably a rapist at this point. That's really about it. I don't know if you watched the RNC, but on the other hand, that shit was insane. The Republican Party has become something really unsettling, and I think you'd have to be blind to not see it. The whole event was identity politics (some variant of “I'm a black Republican”), there was no policy to speak of (there isn't even a party platform anymore), and everyone fucking worshiped President Trump like he was God. I've watched RNCs before. It was not always like this. The party is transparently becoming more authoritarian with just a touch of lip service to the Tea Party holdouts, though there are very few of those left. I'm particularly disappointed in people like Senators Cruz, Rubio, and particularly Paul. I believed them when they said they thought Trump was unfit for office in 2015. Now they've all changed their tune even as Trump continues to degrade in office. For these people, it was never about principles, just political expediency, and though I still love Mitt Romney and a few others, I have to accept that I no longer really have any connection to the Republican party. I'm an unwitting Democrat. Cringe.

But if you could look past how terrifying it was, the RNC was pretty entertaining. They went all in on the patriotism vibes. Not a frame was missing an American flag. It actually got to the point of ridiculousness. Every speech ended with the exact same camera move as the speaker stood there awkwardly. People kept calling Joe Biden a Marxist. There were some fantastic speakers. I cannot believe they invited these people. It was wonderful.

I mean, every responsible gun owner knows these people suck, but I guess that doesn't matter anymore. I cheered when they showed up on screen. They also had the smirking MAGA kid.

I saw some people whining about him being relevant. I have zero sympathy for those people. The fact that a smiling boy in a MAGA hat was a news story is absurd. They really tried to destroy this kid's life. Not only that, they basically got the whole school closed down. Under different circumstances, that could easily have been the Academy. The lad did nothing wrong. Still, it's pretty funny that he was invited to discuss being “cancelled.”

If you missed Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It's particularly insane, and I think it's a pretty clear representation of what lies underneath the 2020 MAGA energy. It's my favorite speech of the whole convention. “Stand for an American president who believes in you who loves this country and will fight for her. President Trump is the leader who will rebuild the promise of America and ensure that every citizen can realize their American dream. Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom, liberty, and the American dream, the best is yet to come!”

The last thing I want to discuss here is Madison Cawthorn, the 25-year-old paraplegic running for Congress. It was particularly strange that he thought James Madison, his “favorite founding father,” signed the declaration of independence. But he's definitely going places. I think everyone who watched the RNC is going to remember who he is, if only for the “standing for the flag” stunt. It was strange to watch, but his speech was pretty much what I expected. What I didn't expect was the reaction of the Twitter Gays™ and a few others.

And apparently there's a whole group of dudes thirsting about him on Instagram. And just looking at his posts, it's not hard to figure out why. I swear this guy has to know he's thirst trapping for the gays. There are a lot of posts like this one.

I mean he is hot. Objectively. Using science. Apparently, they've been at this for a while.

I discovered this by typing “Madison Cawthorn” into Twitter search and the first suggestion was “Madison Cawthorn gay.” Congrats, Cawthorn, you've made it.

Moving on from the RNC, the next event we have to look forward to is the debate, but there's a chance it might not happen. This week, Speaker Pelosi suggested that Biden shouldn't participate in the debate, and honestly, it makes a lot of sense for him. I don't think I've updated you on this, but my prediction changed months ago. COVID fucked up Trump's chances for re-election. I think your average American is pretty pissed off about the whole thing. So I predict that Biden will win the election. The only real opportunity President Trump has to change that is the debates, where I don't think I have to tell you he is favored to win. There's absolutely nothing Biden has to gain from the debate, and at this point, I wouldn't be totally shocked if he manages to make it magically disappear. I'm certainly not celebrating this. Getting rid of our debates—as unproductive as they are—and not replacing them with something better would be damaging to our republic, and I really hope Biden doesn't follow Speaker Pelosi's suggestion. Plus, I really want to watch the debate. I don't have much else to look forward to politically.

Everything Else

I don't really have anything to say about this, but I have to mention the death of Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played Black Panther, at the age of 43. Apparently, he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016 and kept it private. Most of the movies he's most well-known for he did while undergoing chemotherapy, all while keeping himself in superhero shape.

Notch quit Twitter this week after a strange conversation with Mark Brown who runs the Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube channel which I follow and whose Patreon I support. I think this deal was probably for the best. It's pretty funny that Notch took such offence to complaining about President Trump re-election ads. Does anyone like those?

The only other thing I have this week is what happened to Jerry Falwell Jr. I don't know how much you know, so I'll try to tell the full story of what's gone down. In case you don't know Jerry Fallwel Jr. was the notorious president of Liberty University (which by the way, my father recommended that I attend despite knowing that I was secular) after his father. He's worth somewhere in the ballpark of $100 million. As I'm sure you know, Liberty U has some pretty strict “morality” rules violations of which can get you expelled. These include not drinking, wearing long pants, and abstaining from sex outside of marriage, even outside of the university. Well, turns out Falwell couldn't quite live up to these expectations. More specifically, Jerry Falwell Jr is a cuck. He and his wife were staying at Fontainebleau Miami Beach luxury hotel when they met 20-year-old pool boy Giancarlo Granda.

Granda and Becki Falwell had a sexual relationship. We first learned about this when Jerry Falwell Jr. published a statement to the Washington Examiner stating that his wife's former lover from an affair which he was unaware of at the time had been trying to extort their family. In this statement, he squarely places the blame for the relationship on his wife. He's the good guy. She's the bad guy. I think you can see where this is going.

Well, interestingly enough, Falwell started a business with this 20-year-old pool boy he met on vacation. With Falwell family money, Granda and Falwell's son Jerry Falwell III started a business together, the Alton Hostel (sometimes referred to as the Miami Hostel). This place was not exactly in accordance with Liberty University's Christian values, I'll just say. There was an attached liquor store, advertisements and affiliations with strip clubs, and a hopping LGBT crowd. It's a safe haven for every vice. A place with a sign on the front door reading NO SOLICITING FUNDRAISING POLITICS SALESMEN RELIGION. No religion in a Falwell establishment is strange. Even stranger is that the Hostel was built on land owned by Liberty University, I shit you not. Granda claims that he was not trying to blackmail the Falwells, he was only trying to dissolve their business partnership and sell his 25% stake in the Hostel back to the Falwells.

Granda has a different story to tell about his relationship with Becki Falwell. He claims that Jerry Falwell Jr. was fully aware of the relationship, actually soliciting the relationship, and well, enjoying it from the corner of the room or through video cameras. “He was aware from day one of our relationship and he did, in fact, watch,” says Granda. He claims this relationship continued for seven years, ending about a year ago. Though much of the proof has not been made public, Reuters claims that Granda was able to prove his claims through text messages, screenshots, and audio recordings. “She invited me to their hotel room. They offered me an equity partnership in a property venture. They brought me on multiple trips and vacations, including to their family farm in Virginia and as recently as last year, participated in video calls where Mrs. Falwell was naked and Jerry was watching.” If this really is true, and it certainly appears to be, it says a lot about Falwell's character, not only that he would violate the strict rules he forces students to abide by, but that when met with conflict, his first impulse was to throw his wife under the bus as some kind of whore. What a piece of shit.

Obviously, due to this and a few other things, such as this questionable photo taken with a woman who is not Becki Falwell:

(he claimed the drink he's holding was, and I quote, “black water”), he was forced to resign from Liberty University... or was he? He first took an “indefinite leave of absence.” Then Liberty basically said Falwell had been fired, which Falwell adamantly denied. But then not long after everything became official and this cretin was out. I'm pretty glad I didn't go to Liberty University. This story is absolutely ridiculous, and I have only scratched the very surface. Someone could write a whole book about the rise and fall of Jerry Falwell Jr. There are so many names involved and so many suspicious connections. It just feels pretty good watching this guy who has made so many people's lives worse fall apart by his own hand.

That's all I have. If I write an email next week, I doubt it will be this long. Again let me know if you don't want to read these; I just find it fun to put a recap together. Hope you're doing well.

Thanks,

Jacob Morris

Week of April 5th, 2020

Happy Easter!

I didn’t send anything last week because I didn’t have anything to say. I think these emails work when the news can be escaped, or at least not fully felt. It can be funny to watch a man rant and rave about things which don’t have immediate effects on him or the reader, but the same format is exhausting in the middle of a global crisis. These messages are cynical by design, but I don’t think that really works any more. People in power saying something dumb was funny. Now it’s scary. It’s no longer interesting to be angry. Everyone is angry. And I think I’ve really said my piece on COVID-19. You know my perspective. So I’m going to dial that back and let this newsletter find a new identity. At least, I’m going to try before I shoot the thing in the head. I’d ask what’s new, but if you’re anything like me, the answer is basically nothing. My parents keep telling Evan and I to journal to remember this strange time. I think they’re right, and I think that if I can make it entertaining (which believe it or not I always try to do), this can be my version of that—though, if you read far enough, there will be links, I promise. I usually try to avoid telling you too much about what’s happening in my life in these because I enjoy the tradition of catching up in person and having a whole lot to say, but in nationwide social isolation, it’s probably a mistake to delay social interaction, and I hope that I hear from you sometime. I’ll be happy once I get to see a human being not in my immediate family. It’s been a while. I’ve been blazing through audiobooks I get from the digital library when I exercise, and I just checked out Atlas Shrugged for purely educational reasons—regardless of its moral depravity, it’s got to be one of the most influential novels in our modern politics—but if I leave quarantine wearing a fedora, you’ll know why, and I give complete authority to shoot me on sight.

I don’t know if you knew this, but Evan has gotten very into Harry Potter—a bit late, I know. He read all the books in a feverish frenzy at the behest of his GF, and now is watching through all the movies. And since I want to know what he’s thinking about, I, too, am watching through the movies. As you know, for the most part, my interests have been esoteric or wacky and often both. I know that I’m not really interested in every facet of the zeitgeist, and I’m okay with that. But sometimes it really sucks to be out of the loop, particularly when you don’t instead belong to some particular subculture and are just a bit pop-culturally alienated, particularly when you cannot manage to convince yourself that your taste makes you better than other people. That’s why I try to keep up with the MCU more-or-less for example. So I don’t resent an opportunity to be culturally edified (if that’s what this is) after having totally missed the craze. After all, I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, a praised piece of children’s media, as an adult, and I loved it. But so far, all I can really think is how much Harry Potter really isn’t for me, which isn’t a complaint. I’m a 20-year-old man. I doubt there was any stage of my life when I would have gotten into this, and that’s kind of nice in a way. When I watched Avatar, all I could think was that a theoretical remembered child version of myself was missing out on this shit.

But all this has inspired Evan to write a novel, and I don’t mean that in the way that I frequently get inspired to write a novel. No, Evan’s actually writing one and at an absurd rate of speed. I think he’s bored of being stuck here, and he’s writing something like 5000 finished words a day after classes like it’s no big deal. It’s wild. It’s not his first attempt to do so either, but he’s taking this project much more seriously. Despite his odd penchant for reading children’s literature, he’s a pretty great reader, so I’m very curious to read it. For some reason, I think Evan could be a competent fiction writer, despite his abysmal AP Lang essays. Actually, maybe it’ll be good because of his terrible essays. I’ve always been a strong essayist and a terrible fiction writer. My characters are uncomplicated walking talking ideas who ramble at one another. Perhaps Evan has some untapped grasp on actual human behavior. If it’s really good, perhaps I can read it the way I consume Harry Potter media. “Hmm… I can see how this could be enjoyed by someone.”

As a side note, when I was a young lad, I was forbidden from reading those books due to witchcraft, even though I never really expressed interest, so I think it’s funny that my parents have loosened up. Eh, Evan can have a little witchcraft, as a treat.

For the most part, my college friends have disappeared from my life as if we never knew one another. I think this is a preview to what it will be like to graduate. All my friends, even those I have been with for years now, have been friends for a time, and I think they’ll vanish in the blink of an eye. It’s depressing to think about maybe, but it’s okay. It’s certainly not unique. The exception to that is my atheist club. I can’t type those two words and not laugh at myself. We’ve been meeting weekly on Zoom. I can’t say no because it’s gotten to the point where that’s really my only social interaction for the week. But they know my boisterous, irreverent personality, and I have to try to deliver that while also not being too loud or saying things which may offend overhearing family members. Because if I piss off my parents, where am I going to go? We’re all stuck in the house. I’m not sure how successful I’ve been, but I’m going to talk too loud on a call and out myself to my whole family. It’s a matter of time lol. When something happens, I’ll be sure to document the drama for your entertainment.

Okay, I do have one piece of actually personal news, which I have withheld until this point to avoid seeming self-aggrandizing—a hopeless pursuit which I can’t quite seem to give up. If you don’t make it this far, I guess that backfired, but since you’re reading this, you did make it this far, so I suppose I had nothing to worry about. I got offered a job, sorta. The summer internship at the company I CO-OPed with which I’d already lined up has put me on a special project. I’ll be working remotely—which is convenient since it seems that remote work would be necessary anyway—on a research project for a top-secret lab on which I would be the only developer. I can’t say a ton about the nature of the project, but it involves a lot of programming, math, and physics, so I’m pretty nervous. But, by agreeing to take on the project, they intend to take me on full-time once I graduate so long as I don’t fuck up catastrophically. Well, I looked up their office to figure how much they would probably offer me. The numbers are no joke.

Okay, here are links. Don’t be upset if I can’t bring myself to dial up my outrage at this point.

We need to do something about Medium. If you’ve read my previous emails, you know that it has been an utter misinformation crisis, and there have been more, this one posing as an academic study. I like the idea of people being able to publish their stories for the world to see, but I think Medium as is might be a mistake. To the untrained eye, medium posts really do look like news articles, and their writers really do like to pretend to be journalists. When people watch YouTube videos, it’s impossible to ignore that you’re just watching some guy say something, and those can still be dangerous. But I don’t think there exists any user-content platform which assigns more apparent legitimacy to its unqualified posters than Medium, and I refuse to give the website empty praise for free speech. A Medium Corp. needs to figure out a more responsible way to present articles written with no editorial oversight.

Senator Sanders dropped out, though only after waiting long enough to assemble crowds in Wisconsin after their Supreme Court decided that it was necessary that people vote in person because they are unable to adapt and care more about internal politics than human life oh goddamn it I got mad again my bad back to Senator Sanders. The tears online are overwhelming. People are not okay. Honestly, I don’t have much new stuff to say. The Presidential Election has utterly disappeared from the national consciousness. For kicks and giggles, I’ll hold to my original prediction, but I really have no idea how things shake out from here. President Trump is currently trying to recruit Senator Sanders supporters, and I find it rather amusing. I don’t think this is the most likely outcome, but if President Trump is re-elected after this, I think there is a chance that he will try to move toward socialized healthcare with a nationalist aesthetic. Patriot Care, if you will. I predict an upcoming Social Nationalist movement in the United States which will have to perpetually say, “Um, no, we’re not National Socialists. We’re Zi-nas, not Na-zis.”

In many areas, policing has gotten wildly overzealous, as totalitarians jump at any opportunity to throw people in jail, the last place you want to be during a pandemic. These pro-life sidewalk counselors followed all the rules and got arrested. There was a father who was arrested for being with his son in an empty baseball field. There are a lot of examples. Forgive me for not finding all of them.

In a weird turn for brand Twitter, Steak-Umm posted a long, insightful thread about propaganda.

President Trump has a new racist ad! Of his ads, this one is the most racist yet, which is really saying something. He accuses Joe Biden for being soft on China by being friendly with American Governor Gary Locke, who is Asian-American, suggesting that he a Chinese national. I’m not joking. This commercial doesn’t even pretend to be anything other than racist. It’s actually horrifying. Now is a good time to remember that Joe Biden was publicly skeptical of China’s response before President Trump. This is a great breakdown of why the ad is such vile bullshit.

Ken White made a great thread about how much of a clown Matt Walsh is.

Finally, our President discusses how Coronavirus brilliantly outsmarted our antibiotics by being a virus.

I hope you’re hanging in there, and I’d love to hear what’s going on.

Thanks,
Jacob Morris