[a pleasurable headache] spied on spies
Still no word on the submission alluded to in the last edition. This is how the wheels of progress turn in the writing game a lot of the time. Slowly, greased with the blood, sweat and tears of all those who came before. No news is good news, right?
Links
Substack triples down
https://theracket.news/p/substack-triples-down
Substack really going for broke with their shitty behaviour.
"For the blissfully uninitiated, here’s what’s going on there: The original poster — an “investigative reporter” whose recent scoops include the incredible find that “there was no pandemic (great news, everyone!) — is complaining that Substack must be irredeemably biased against him because it featured an interview with the reactionary trolls’ bête noire. Then McKenzie — who can’t be bothered to respond to a single question about the Hanania interview from anyone, mind you — jumps in to say: Don’t delete your account! Don’t take your newsletter elsewhere! We’re having on Alex Berenson — the anti-vax, reefer-madness-stoking COVID truther memorably dubbed “the pandemic’s wrongest man.”
Really great platform they're building over there.
===
The CIA Opposes JFK Record Releases Because Each One Is More Damning Than the Last
https://jacobin.com/2023/07/cia-jfk-assassination-records-declassification-lee-harvey-oswald/
"As reported by the New York Times, the document in question shows a CIA official named Reuben Efron writing about mail correspondence between Oswald, who was returning home after a three-year stint as a defector in the USSR, and his mother while he’d been living in Minsk, with both the letter and a Washington Post story about his return to the United States attached. Dated June 22, 1962, Efron’s memo notes that “this item will be of interest to Mrs. Egerter” — Elizabeth Ann Egerter, who worked under CIA counterintelligence (CI) chief James Angleton in the “office that spied on spies,” the Special Investigations Group (SIG) — as well as to “CI/SIG, and also to the FBI.”
===
A funeral for fish and chips: why are Britain’s chippies disappearing?
A very British link this one, as you can tell.
"Now, in summer 2022, conditions were tougher than Fleming had ever known them. As consumers battled rising costs of living at home, they were eating out less. Because they were eating out less, proprietors were being forced to charge more, right when they could least afford to discourage custom. There is a fish bar in Cardiff, John’s, that shut in 2001 and has never been bought or altered since. A decaying menu at John’s still advertises a takeaway portion of fish and chips for the unthinkable price of £2.45. Two decades later, the same meal cost £9.40 at the Wee Chippy. Few proprietors dared breach the holy barrier of £10. In fact, the owners of a shop called Café Fish in Belfast had done some honest maths and concluded that, given prevailing costs, fish and chips ought to be selling for about £15 per portion. “Who would pay it?” Fleming wondered."
===
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
An article that's ten years old at this point but made for an interesting read, especially with the U.S going through its nuclear laundry again due to Oppenheimer's release.
"Historically, the use of the Bomb may seem like the most important discrete event of the war. From the contemporary Japanese perspective, however, it might not have been so easy to distinguish the Bomb from other events. It is, after all, difficult to distinguish a single drop of rain in the midst of a hurricane.
In the summer of 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force carried out one of the most intense campaigns of city destruction in the history of the world. Sixty-eight cities in Japan were attacked and all of them were either partially or completely destroyed. An estimated 1.7 million people were made homeless, 300,000 were killed, and 750,000 were wounded. Sixty-six of these raids were carried out with conventional bombs, two with atomic bombs. The destruction caused by conventional attacks was huge. Night after night, all summer long, cities would go up in smoke. In the midst of this cascade of destruction, it would not be surprising if this or that individual attack failed to make much of an impression—even if it was carried out with a remarkable new type of weapon."
===
Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/
A Reuters investigation has found that Tesla cars purposefully obfuscate and muddle their vehicle range numbers based on several factors. They also set up a dedicated team to divert customer's calls and questions when they began to catch on and thought their batteries were defective. Extraordinary.
===
How to Ignore 4.5 Million Deaths
https://fair.org/home/how-to-ignore-4-5-million-deaths/
FAIR review Norman Solomon's new book, War Made Invisible, a book on how casualty figures in U.S conflicts are obscured or hidden.
===
Who needs film critics when studios can be sure influencers will praise their films?
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/01/what-are-film-critics-for-today
"More worrying still, some critics see themselves that way, avoiding ruffling any feathers (internet backlash against unpopular opinions doesn’t help) and instead choosing to generate bloated excitement for any new release. The studios are partly responsible, inundating young, broke writers with extravagant film merchandise that they otherwise could never afford and taking off their mailing lists those who review their films negatively. But the problem runs deeper still: in a climate in which the film industry is already struggling and streamers (yes, them again) have worked hard to make films appear about as worthwhile as a YouTube or a TikTok video, letting you watch thousands of them for a small subscription fee rather than paying the price of a cinema ticket for each one, it is tempting for film lovers to want to promote cinema at all cost. Why discourage more people from going to the movie theatre with an unfavourable review?"
Thanks, I hate it.
===
I'm off to see Barbie and make an obnoxious TikTok video from the front row. See you in two!