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Today’s Fortune: The ritual begins.

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Newsreel

Beef-infused rice may make lives longer, healthier, and grosser.

Russian assassins stopped procrastinating.

Julian Assange’s case got its learner’s permit.

Megachurch, Super Bowl, and Waffle House shootings fought for headlines.

The Olympic Village uplifted poor Parisians to a new zip code.

Water molecules on asteroids drove Nestle to space.

Today's Mood

War Journal

Something’s stuck in my teeth.

I do a little parody/satire/topical humor/hackwork. All four riff on high-profile stupidity. But half of contemporary stupidity is for attention. It’s bottled bath water all the way down. Feeding the beast doesn’t feel productive.

Do I go harder? Do I skip egregious cases? Do I underline their equally stupid meta-intent each time? Do I stop overthinking, and meet my deadlines? I can’t stop prodding the question.

My answer changes every week. Usually based on the best joke I have on hand.

There’s a spot where I work better, faster, with less stress. It’s an hour and a half away from my apartment. Unless the MTA is the MTA. Then it’s two hours from my apartment.

I’ll take it.

My laptop’s covered in old pranks. I’ve built up more stickers than injuries over the years, and it shows. I aimed for zany with the collage, but failed to consider that the CIA and Sliwa parodies make me look categorically insane.

It’s useful: they deflect productivity-disrupting Meet Cutes. I’ve got some tense deadlines.

The Present

The manosphere can always, always get dumber.

An overview of a crime we committed twice.

This love guru stuff might be my retirement plan.

Ape strong. Network writing weak.

Everything Abridged is still my master stroke.

The Past

I got a few interesting messages about this Clarence Thomas riff.

The Future

I’m losing my mind. Expect some good stuff.

Not Brought to You By

Want to talk politics? Me neither. Luckily, that’s from a graphics card ad.

Not the most competitive market. The dropoff from NVIDIA and AMD to everyone else is interesting. Not surprising, as concentration vaults us toward privatized air. But notable.

In 2016, AMD leaned into its (relative) underdog status. By supporting the second biggest corporation, you could join…the Radeon Rebellion.

It’s hard to care.

I should be nicer. There’s a solid visual hook (note that I kept the colors), a wealth of standalone posters and videos, and we still thought hashtags worked. But it feels like watching a magic trick from behind. The mirror’s right there.

Every duopoly’s little brother tries some version of this. Think classic AVIS, early AEW, pre-iPhone Apple, etc. It often works (I heard Apple’s doing okay). You just need some sleight of hand.

Creativity: D
Persuasion: D-
Sanity: B

One Sentence Reviews

Kaiju No. 8 (Recent): We’re going through a rough patch. (2.5/5)

My Hero Academia (Recent): I filed papers. (1.5/5)

Kingdom (Recent): Going strong. (4/5)

Kill Six Billion Demons (Recent): We’ll grow old together. (4/5)

Open Question

Signing off

Thanks for reading Extra Evil, the newsletter in second place. Share it for an uprising.

-DD