Hello, good evening, happy Friday. This week was the last Deep Woods release of the season, which is both sad and happy. I’m sad that we’re through for the season (barring any surprise summer releases, which seem like they may have become a tradition), but I’m happy that this year’s releases were so stellar across the board. And I’ll crack open my first Apple Brandy Ryeway shortly after writing this newsletter, and it’ll be very good.
Also this week was the release of Hitman 3, finishing the trilogy of the series reboot. I played the entire campaign already (it’s not very long), I enjoyed it very much, I highly recommend it. Every level is intricate and engaging, the story was tremendous, the ending was thoroughly satisfying.
Also, it is very pretty:
That is an actual screenshot I captured, not a promotional image.
Oh and we have a new President! Finally! I am pleased as peaches about it. I mean just look at this, it’s lovely:
Smile!
Imagine you are watching a heist movie and the main characters are like, “okay, we are going to siege the capitol, and we are going to do it in broad daylight and livestream it all across the internet at the same time.” You would be understandably extremely confused, because that is a stupid fucking plan with a predictable outcome of everyone who participates getting fucking owned. Indeed:
As supporters of President Donald Trump took part in a violent riot at the Capitol, users of the social media service Parler posted videos of themselves and others joining the fray. ProPublica reviewed thousands of videos uploaded publicly to the service that were archived by a programmer before Parler was taken offline by its web host. Below is a collection of more than 500 videos that ProPublica determined were taken during the events of Jan. 6 and were relevant and newsworthy. Taken together, they provide one of the most comprehensive records of a dark event in American history through the eyes of those who took part. Read more: Why We Published Hundreds of Videos Taken by Parler Users of the Capitol Riots | Inside the Capitol Riot: What the Parler Videos Reveal
Videos are ordered by the time they were taken. Scroll down to start watching or click on the timeline to jump to any point in the day.
What were the people who did this thinking? Nothing, I guess. Anyway, here’s all the video. It’s amazing, both because they documented all their crimes and because their attitudes in the video are absolutely wild.
Haha crypto go brrrr
In 2008, people bought five houses and a condo and the market crashed because everyone was over-leveraged and the banks were doing a lot of fraud. Go watch The Big Short or something, I’m not an expert, they can explain it better.
Anyway, in 2021, lots of people are buying cryptocurrency because it’s climbed exponentially in an absurdly short period and they want to ride the wave. Bitcoin specifically went from $10k in September 2020 to $41k on January 7th.
But waves crash and bubbles pop. Especially when they’re built on fraud:
There are things in crypto right now called Tethers. To simplify a bit, Tethers are issued by a crypto company called Tether Ltd. — meaning that if Tether Ltd. says you own a Tether, then you do.
Tether Ltd. also says one Tether is worth exactly one US dollar. Can they do that? Well they say they can, because they hold $1 worth of assets for each Tether. But are those assets actual dollars? No, they are not. So what if the assets go down in value? Don’t worry; they will not. Okay, but can we at least see the assets? No, you may not.
Who in their right mind would use something like Tether? Well, the short answer is that many people use Tethers to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The long answer, though, is astounding — but more on that later.
Because Tether sounds exactly like a currency fraud, it may not surprise you to learn that Tether Ltd. is currently under investigation by the Office of the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York. That investigation was announced to the public on April 25th, 2019.
Tether being a fraud isn’t new, but the scope and scale of the fraud has not been super cleanly analyzed until now. The post is long, but it is very well-written and very interesting, you should read it.
A clear and present danger
I love John Mulaney. I loved it when he gave his monologue when he hosted SNL in February of 2020:
He told a joke in that bit that attracted the attention of the secret service:
“Leap year began in the year 45 BC under Julius Caesar. This is true. He started the leap year in order to correct the calendar, and we still do it to this day. Another thing that happened under Julius Caesar was that he was such a powerful maniac that all the Senators grabbed knives, and they stabbed him to death! And that would be an interesting thing, if we brought that back now. I asked my lawyer if I could make that joke, and he said let me call another lawyer, and that lawyer said yes.”
Specifically the secret service got involved because someone sent them Fox News and Breitbart articles about the joke, which is just… perfect, to me. You can tell that they had to get several people involved in this process and that none of them were very happy about it at all. The report even says that they don’t think there is any actual danger here, they are just filling out the paperwork because of “interest.” Also they describe the joke as “inappropriate.” Fuck you! It’s hilarious.
Also he told a story about the secret service interviewing him on Jimmy Kimmel which is similarly very funny. There is a kicker to the story that I do not want to spoil.
Horse in the hospital pt. 2
I mean okay, we got the horse out of the hospital, yes. But what are we going to do about the rest of the zoo? Specifically:
US Capitol Police are investigating an incident in which a Republican lawmaker was stopped from bringing a concealed gun onto the House floor on Thursday, sources told CNN, the first time a member of Congress has been discovered with a firearm by the metal detectors now set up outside the legislative chamber.
Rep. Andy Harris, of Maryland, set off a metal detector outside the House floor on Thursday and an officer soon discovered it was because he was carrying a concealed gun on his side, a Capitol official told CNN.
Come on, what the fuck. The entire building was just sieged by terrorists and now there are metal detectors specifically to prevent this kind of thing, what the fuck are you doing?!
This attitude is pervasive, not just in republican lawmakers but across the country. I have said repeatedly that the insurrection would not be the end of this bullshit, and I mean it, we are just constantly sitting on the edge of more right-wing extremism boiling over into violence.
Lies, damn lies, and the paralympics
You may remember that the Republicans elected a Nazi who visited Hitler’s retreat to Congress in North Carolina, which is already wild. And you may have heard that he lied about being accepted to the Naval Academy. But like, in case that wasn’t enough to make you think he’s a shitty person, he also lied repeatedly and egregiously about something even scummier:
Before January 6, 25-year-old Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) was known for being the youngest member of Congress, an ardent Trump supporter, and one of the few wheelchair users in elected office. Now he is in the headlines for giving a speech at the “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the insurrection at the Capitol that left five people dead. Throughout his short but meteoric political career, Cawthorn has used his disability to tell a story of overcoming: Despite great adversity, he claims to have achieved excellence through grit and physical strength. Many of his campaign ads featured images of Cawthorn intubated and hospitalized alongside videos of him lifting weights and hurtling forward in a racing wheelchair. But his claims of sporting success—like his accounts of education and business acumen—have often been misleading.
Cawthorn became disabled after a 2014 car crash left him paralyzed from the waist down. By Cawthorn’s own telling, he was a successful business owner headed to the Naval Academy before his injury tragically reordered his life. As it turns out, neither claim is true. The Asheville Watchdog reported that Cawthorn had already been rejected from the Naval Academy before his accident. And Cawthorn’s real-estate investment firm, SPQR Holdings LLC, which he only formed in August 2019, reported no income on its tax documents, and Cawthorn was the sole employee.
But he has not only styled himself as Naval Academy material with a head for real estate. Multiple outlets reported that before he ran for office, Cawthorn was training for the 2020 Paralympic Games. There is little detail, but according to Micah Bock, Cawthorn’s campaign communications director, he intended to compete in the 400-meter dash at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. It would have been an incredible footnote in a politician’s biography: Paralympians are celebrated and accomplished athletes. But his hopes for the Paralympic Games, now slated for summer 2021, were allegedly dashed by his worsening disability.
If I were a Republican who planned on lying about something to make myself sound more impressive for a political run, I would probably not choose a lie that was extremely provably false. But, hey, if you are a Republican, reality is fake, I guess. Just say a thing and your voters will believe it and love it. Truth is for suckers!
Family matters
Speaking of shitty Republicans, imagine this happening to you:
Rep. Andy Biggs’ two brothers have publicly castigated him for sowing doubt about President Joe Biden’s election win and called for his removal from office.
In a letter to the editor at The Arizona Republic, William Biggs and Daniel Biggs of Tucson said their brother, who argued to set aside Arizona’s election results in Congress, is “at least partially to blame” for the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago.
Being such a shitty fucking person that your brothers disown you in the press! Wow! Couldn’t be me. Republicans will do anything to keep power and money, I guess.
What
No really, what:
The Army falsely denied for days that Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the brother of disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, was involved in a key meeting during its heavily scrutinized response to the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Charles Flynn confirmed in a statement issued to The Washington Post on Wednesday that he was in the room for a tense Jan. 6 phone call during which the Capitol Police and D.C. officials pleaded with the Pentagon to dispatch the National Guard urgently, but top Army officials expressed concern about having the Guard at the Capitol.
Flynn left the room before the meeting was over, anticipating that then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who was in another meeting, would soon take action to deploy more guard members, he said.
“I entered the room after the call began and departed prior to the call ending as I believed a decision was imminent from the Secretary and I needed to be in my office to assist in executing the decision,” Flynn said.
The general’s presence during the call — which has not previously been reported — came weeks after his brother publicly suggested that President Donald Trump declare martial law and have the U.S. military oversee a redo of the election. There is no indication that Charles Flynn shares his brother’s extreme views or discharged his duties at the Pentagon on Jan. 6 in any manner that was influenced by his brother.
Did they think they would get away with this? That no one would figure it out? What.
The storm that wasn’t
President Biden became President Biden this week. Obviously the QAnon people did not anticipate that this would occur. So let’s check in them:
As the rest of the country waited for Joe Biden to be inaugurated, believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory thought they were about to see something else: the long-awaited mass arrests of Biden and a host of other “deep-state” Democrats, followed by the restoration of the Trump presidency.
“Trump will walk out during the arrest and thank America for reelection,” one QAnon supporter posted on a forum shortly before the inauguration. “This will be remembered as the greatest day since D-Day.”
As Biden was sworn in, though, the mass arrests that QAnon believers call “The Storm,” stubbornly refused to happen. Trump really did appear to have left office, rather than springing the sly trap as they had all hoped. The Democrats really did have control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
The tens of thousands of National Guard soldiers QAnon believers thought would help Trump retake Washington instead appeared to be there for a more obvious purpose: protecting the city from the same crazed QAnon believers who had violently attacked the Capitol two weeks earlier.
“I’m about to puke,” one QAnon fan watching Biden take the oath of office wrote.
Yeah, that’s the good stuff.
Light in the dark
The inauguration was good and Amanda Gorman was great, here's more from her:
In the midst of the pandemic and calls for racial justice, many artists are using their energies to help advocate for transformative change.
Amanda Gorman, the nation's first Youth Poet Laureate, is among them. The 22-year-old graduated from Harvard earlier this year and is using her talent to offer words of hope and understanding.
Here & Now's Tonya Mosley speaks with Gorman about poetry as a tool for activism.
And here’s the video from the inauguration if you missed it:
You deserve some good animal content
Have a good weekend.