What's Good: Mar. 26, 2021

Food crimes, drip, and glitter.

Mar 26, 2021

Hello, good morning, happy Friday. Kind of a weird week this week! I am sure you have all heard about the big boat that is ruining global commerce or whatever, which is a big mood, etc. What did I do this week? I don’t know, honestly I could not tell you. I picked up some more beer from the taproom yesterday? I ordered Indian food at some point? I made wings last weekend?

We are over a year into the pandemic at this point and the days are really starting to blur together in a deeply dissatisfying manner. The weather is warming up and we will soon approach beer-on-the-roof-after-work viability, which is nice, but I remain very tired of this whole situation. Cook County says I qualify for getting a vaccine if I can get an appointment now, despite Chicago proper still not having its shit together, so maybe in the coming weeks I will be able to celebrate getting my shot. But like, in the meantime, I spent at least 40 minutes listening to Tragedy + Time on loop last night.

Drippin’

Let’s start this week with some good and pure content:

Take a stroll through Chinatown, and you can’t help but notice certain fashionable seniors nonchalantly strolling the streets in head-to-toe looks. From grocery-shopping grandmas in matching sets paired with wide-brimmed sun hats to dapper grandpas in freshly pressed suits and aviators, the outfits are an effortless mix of deeply personal vintage and modern streetwear.
But who are they? That’s the question two friends, photographer Andria Lo and writer Valerie Luu, set out to answer in their book, Chinatown Pretty: Fashion and Wisdom from Chinatown’s Most Stylish Seniors. “We started out really just wanting to know how they compose their outfits,” Luu told the Cut. “But the clothes became a gateway to learn more about their immigration stories, their life histories, and their active daily lives that they live as seniors in Chinatown.”
Amid the surge of horrific anti-Asian hate crimes, Chinatown Pretty’s subjects provide much-needed solace — a powerful reminder of the joy in Asian American communities. For Lo and Luu, it’s a love letter to Chinatown. “We’re happy to offer some insight into the humanity of the neighborhood,” said Lo. “If we can actually show these visible faces from the neighborhoods in a really caring and tender way, that is a form of activism.”

Lost

And then immediately pivot into everyone’s favorite recurring subject of this newsletter - losing your friends and family to conspiracy theories:

I want to talk about Ruby Freeman.
Really, I want to talk to Ruby Freeman, but I can’t. She has been, bravely and correctly, off the grid since some psychopaths doxxed her shortly after the election.
I bet you don’t know who Ruby Freeman is, and that would make you a normal person. Here’s some background.
In reality, Ruby runs one of those kiosks in the middle of the mall that sells ladies’ accessories, purses — that sort of thing. She also helped count ballots in Georgia last month. Her business is called Lady Ruby’s Unique Treasures, and I don’t recommend you look at the Instagram comments for that store anymore.
That’s because, on 4chan and far-right blogs, she is some sort of Sith Lord/Al Capone combo, who personally stole the election by doing…something with briefcases? That part’s unclear, but what the QAnon people are certain of is Ruby Freeman — a 60-something election worker who also sells handbags at the mall — is part of the global conspiracy to steal the election.
This comes as a surprise to me, since I’ve heard Ruby’s voicemail a lot in the last few weeks. She pretty joyfully tells everyone that she’s “living holy and having fun without backsliding” and reminds you: “Remember, in all thy ways, acknowledge God and he shall direct your path.”
This is tragic, obviously, but it is probably not shocking to you that people reading screenshots of 4chan on Twitter in an effort to drum up support for overturning the election might have access to some bad information. So why do I want to talk about Ruby Freeman?

Money shot

“Food influencer wanted by the FBI” is the kind of premise that mandates inclusion in this newsletter. Therefore, behold:

When a man calling himself Gavin Ambani contacted Pål Hansen out of the blue one day in 2018, the highly regarded portrait photographer wasn’t sure what to make of him. Hansen has built his reputation on photographing the likes of Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton and Sir Lewis Hamilton, as well as some of the world’s best known chefs for Observer Food Monthly. But Ambani, a loquacious character with a high-pitched voice, wanted him to do some work for his Instagram account.
“I said it doesn’t sound like something I’m interested in,” recalls Hansen.
But Ambani was nothing if not persistent. He told Hansen that Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, the chef-owners of the restaurant Honey & Co, had personally recommended the photographer. “They’re amazing chefs,” says Hansen of the Israeli couple. “Very well known and lovely people.”
This is the process by which Ambani, who is awaiting an extradition hearing relating to fraud charges in the United States, gained people’s attention: affecting friendships with influential people.

Shot, chaser

Something that happened on Twitter this week is that Amazon tweeted from its Public Relations account that its employees don’t need unions because it is already such a good and perfect company, which is obviously a lie. And then it also tweeted that stories about its employees peeing in bottles and defecating in storage bags during their delivery routes were false and unbelievable. Ken Klippenstein, a good and cool reporter, immediately solicited information otherwise, and not even 24 hours later went to print with a story showing that Amazon was… not being truthful. Surprise:

But Amazon workers with whom I spoke said that the practice was so widespread due to pressure to meet quotas that managers frequently referenced it during meetings and in formal policy documents and emails, which were provided to The Intercept. The practice, these documents show, was known to management, which identified it as a recurring infraction but did nothing to ease the pressure that caused it. In some cases, employees even defecated in bags.
Amazon did not provide a statement to The Intercept before publication.

Brain drain

I don’t think anyone has written about it yet, but this week MEL Magazine fired its entire staff. This fucking sucks, and not just because MEL was a major source of content for this newsletter. The writers are all very talented and creative people, and it was one of the only publications willing to consistently publish the kind of content it established a niche for. It was interesting and funny and engaging and managed to give earnest and useful attention to and explanations of people and things that would otherwise go unacknowledged.

Anyway here’s a story about Medium buying out (read: firing) all of its writers for a third time as they were on the verge of unionizing, which I’m sure is a coincidence:

Last week, a partnerships manager at Medium working with the White House found that there was a strange problem with the platform: President Joe Biden was being served porn.
The manager was in a video conference with a White House staffer to discuss how Biden, who had used Medium as a campaign blog in 2020, could begin posting to the official Medium @POTUS account. While sharing his screen with the White House, the staffer logged in to @POTUS and saw the first article recommended to him by Medium: “A is for After,” which a sub-headline described as “a cuckold love story.”
It’s unclear if the White House saw the story. But after the meeting, the Medium staffer tried to improve Biden’s recommendations. He followed political topics; he “read” posts by President Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris while logged in as the president. When he refreshed his recommendations, Medium recommended another piece of erotica: “Getting a Piece (and Some Pizza Too),” a story that carries the sub-headline “step sister taboo erotica.”

No it really is a story about that, I swear. Anyway I’m sure the mass firing of journalists and other writers and creative types nationwide is totally healthy for our democracy, what could go wrong, etc.

“My name is Daria, and I got fired”

I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and I used to listen to Daria, Mitch, and Ted on 105.1, The Buzz, almost religiously. I got asked in a group chat this week what my favorite radio stations were growing up, and my first answer was 102.3, KUFO - I was very into modern rock in high school, and I loved Cort and Fatboy. But I still listened to The Buzz back then, and Daria’s stories are the stuff of Portland legend. She married Dallas Eliuk when he moved to Portland for the Lumberjax, the city’s former professional lacrosse team, and I got to meet him a number of times at Jax games. I think I met her once or twice, too. Both of them are just lovely. Salt of the earth.

But when I went to look up what Daria has been doing lately, I couldn’t find a damn thing. No website, no Twitter, no active internet presence to speak of at all. What the fuck? Surely there could be no fucking way that such a titan of Portland culture could have just… disappeared.

Actually it turns out that the radio station’s shitty corporate owner fired all of her friends and moved her to another station. Then they cut her hours and fired her, too. But she did give a TEDx talk in 2019! And it’s good! Sad, but good. Please enjoy:

Eat the rich

I feel like it is sort of common knowledge that rich people have all of these magical legal loopholes that they use to grow their wealth and/or avoid taxes, but did you know that a significant amount of those tricks involve the state of South Dakota? Me neither, let’s learn about it:

Enter South Dakota. The state has created a bespoke legal system for America’s richest families, with wealth-sheltering tools including the aptly named “dynasty trust.” In 1983, the state adopted a 19-word law that effectively abolished the “rule against perpetuities,” an ancient, obscure rule that had one salutary effect: It kept families from locking up wealth perpetually. After the repeal, wealth advisers began advertising South Dakota as the go-to solution for aristocrat wannabes.
Nevada, Alaska, Delaware and other states also participate in this race to the bottom. South Dakota fends off competition with annual legislative giveaways: new “asset protection” and “decanting” tools for rejiggering existing trusts to stiff spouses, children, business partners and accident victims — while making wealth transfer taxes optional and ensuring ever-stricter secrecy.
The giveaways work. Hundreds of billions in free-floating wealth have drained into the state. “To some, South Dakota is a ‘fly-over’ state,” boasted South Dakota Supreme Court Chief Justice David Gilbertson in a 2019 address to the state legislature. “While many people may find a way to ‘fly over’ South Dakota, somehow their dollars find a way to land here.”

Make me laugh, funny man

This is an interview with Dave Jorgenson, also known as the Washington Post TikTok guy. I love him and his TikToks. I love this interview. I hope you do, too:

The Washington Post isn't a regular newspaper, it's a cool newspaper.
Yes, it publishes hard-hitting, breaking news; but when Dave Jorgenson — video producer, editor, writer, and resident Funny Guy at the Post — created the company's wonderfully weird, witty, and topical TikTok account in May 2019, he also added an unmistakably current factor to the 143-year-old paper.
Over the past two years, the internet has watched Jorgenson bring some of his most outlandish ideas to life in the form of comical, well-executed, surprisingly informative TikToks. While the platform is certainly an unconventional approach for boosting the young readership of a serious newspaper, the 30-year-old's efforts are clearly paying off. He's created hundreds of videos, amassed close to 900,000 followers, and helped inspire a whole new generation of Washington Post readers along the way.
Since March 2020, Jorgenson has been embracing the chaos of quarantine and faithfully cranking out daily TikToks from his Washington, D.C. apartment. To mark a full year of Jorgenson TTFH (TikTok-ing from home) I called him to chat about his career, his dream TikTok guest, and, of course, his love of Spam.

What’s in the box? (It’s glitter.)

I am a simple man. When Mark Rober posts a video about his porch pirate boxes, I watch it. This is the most recent video in that series, but boy, it goes much further. I cannot recommend it enough, it is long but you will love it.

What’s in the box? (It’s pizza.)

John Carruthers makes the brand go brrrr for a certain beer company that I am quite fond of, but also in his free time he sells pizza to raise money for charity. It fucking rules, he fucking rules. Please enjoy this lovely video of him fucking ruling.