Today's Takes: Tuesday, September 7

Good morning, everyone.

Hope everyone had a nice, refreshing weekend. If you have thoughts, comments, insults, compliments, funny memes, jokes, or just need to vent, you can respond directly to this email or reach out to us at [email protected]. With your permission, we'll publish the best responses we receive.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

Headlines

📰 Today's Front Pages

• Reuters: El Salvador leads world in adopting bitcoin as official currency (Read)
• New York Times: The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student (Read)
• Wall Street Journal: Deals Spree Puts Banks on Track for Busiest Ever Year (Read)
• Fox News: State Dept trying to steal credit for rescue of 4 Americans from Afghanistan, organizer says: 'Total lie' (Read)
• CNN: US reaches 40 million recorded Covid-19 cases -- with 4 million counted in the last 4 weeks (Read)
• NPR: Climate Change Is The Greatest Threat To Public Health, Top Medical Journals Warn (Read)
• Breitbart: Pinkerton: How Warriors Keep Their Honor Clean Even in Defeat (Read)
• HuffPost: Human Rights Campaign Fires President Alphonso David Amid Links To Andrew Cuomo (Read)

🏛 On the Hill

• Biden Orders Declassification Review of FBI 9/11 Investigation (NR)
  • "The order comes after family members of victims asked the president not to attend any memorial events for the September 11 attacks this year unless he declassified more documents, which they say would implicate Saudi officials."
• Joe Manchin Calls for Pause in Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Spending Push (WSJ)

🗺 From the Frontier

• China’s Hottest New Rental Service: Men Who Actually Listen (Sixth Tone)
  • "Whenever she feels like some male company, the divorcée heads to a café in central Shanghai named The Promised Land. There, she spends hours being pampered by a handsome young server, who fetches her drinks, watches movies with her, and listens attentively to her anecdotes."
• Afghan refugee trolled after sharing photo of food rations at Fort Bliss (NY Post)
• Ireland’s population passes 5m for first time since C19th famine (Guardian)

🌦 Climate Faux Pas

• The New Normal: Doomscrolling Through the Climate Tipping Point Outside Your Window (Vanity Fair)
  • You can just choose to not "doomscroll".
• What part of the US is safest from climate change? (Quartz)

🚼 On Being Born

• When Abortion Access Is At Stake, Suddenly The Left Remembers Men And Women Are Different (Federalist)
• After Texas Abortion Law, Match CEO, Bumble Create Funds to Support Those Affected (WSJ)
• Why Satanists may be the last, best hope to save abortion rights in Texas (Slate)
  • Nice.
• Bette Midler recommends 'all women refuse to have sex with men' in protest of Texas abortion law (Insider)
  • Thanks, Bette, but we're good.

🔥 Heat of the Moment

• FROM 2017: Help, I Can't Stop Hooking Up With Trump Supporters (Glamour)
• ‘The Next Ted Lasso': After Year in Pandemic, Hollywood Dumps Edgy for ‘Uplifting’ Projects (The Wrap)
  • An interesting expression of Hollywood's understanding of national sentiment. Following WWII, when the United States exploded economically and everyone was thriving, film noir emerged as a counterpoint to the buoyant spirit of the times.
• Elon Musk: Tesla Making a Robot Because “Robots Are Coming Anyway” (Futurism)
  • Innovation as, "Meh, it's inevitable."

🚷 It's, Like, Not What You Think, Man

• What’s Wrong With Sex Between Professors and Students? It’s Not What You Think. (NYT)
  • "It is true that today’s college-age generation has, in many ways, a more expansive relationship to gender and sex. But those dissident possibilities are taking shape against a background of still-rigid gender expectations — an implicit understanding, often internalized, of what girls and boys, women and men, are for."
  • So, the problem isn't a power imbalance, it's that a male teacher sleeping with a female student "perpetuates" gender stereotypes.
• San Francisco Paying People Not to Shoot Each Other (Breitbart)
  • Well, in SF, crime doesn't appear to pay anymore.

Original Essays

📏 Megan Podsiedlik checks in with Noble's Beer Hall & Kitchen to see how they weathered the pandemic and the challenges they face (Read)

In case you missed it

• Tell Them Phil Valentine Said, “Hey” by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)
• Total Recall: California’s September election by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)
• Entourage's Last Stand by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)
• 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' and the Evergreen Ills of American Politics by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)

Nashville Politics

• A look at coverage of Lee’s wide-ranging press conference (TNJ)
• Gov. Bill Lee defends state's pandemic response as Tennessee becomes top state with COVID-19 infections (Tennessean)
• Nashville more concerned about affordable housing than COVID-19 (Post)

Nashville News

• 25 North Nashville Families Will Receive $1,000 Monthly Payments So Researchers Can Study The Impact (WPLN)
  • A pilot program testing a UBI like monthly payment to families making under $40k per year.
• Experts seeing increase in mental health issues during the pandemic (WSMV)
  • “There’s been a 20 percent increase in depression, a 30 percent increase in anxiety, and then you lead this into the isolation people feel in quarantine and it further accentuates the problem.”
• HCA, Bridgestone and Philips reveal worker diversity data as Metro approves jobs grants (Biz Journal)
  • The justification for disclosing diversity data is that Nashville taxpayers are paying for the grants, and thus, each company should properly represent the area.
• Williamson Co. Schools short hundreds of employees, causing delays and requiring parent volunteers (Channel 5)
• East Bank redesign meets criticism from community activists (Post)
• Southern hospitals have lost thousands of workers. Those who remain are exhausted. (Tennessean)

Nashville Development

• East Nashville for-sale property sees asking price upped (Post)
• Nashville-based firm pitches mixed-use project by Printers Alley (Biz Journal)
• AJ Capital Partners closes on Merritt Mansion, surrounding site (Biz Journal)
• Baton Rouge chicken eatery chain taps Broadway location (Post)
• Women’s Rescue Mission slated for $20M campus (Post)
• New Mixed-Use Development Proposed on 12th Avenue South In Nashville. (Now Next)
• Music Row property offered for $3.45M (Post)
• Developer pays $15.86M for WeHo properties (Post)
• Amazon Air launches cargo service at Nashville International Airport (Biz Journal)

Nashville Life

Tonight
🎸 Steve Cropper - 80th Birthday Bash @ Ryman, 7p (Info) Nashville legend who has worked with artists such as Otis Redding, Levon Helm, Rod Stewart, and Booker T. & the M.G.'s. Cropper is ranked as the #39 best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone.

Other

• Avant-garde leader takes over Oz Arts in Nashville with diverse line-up of shows planned (Read)

COVID Gutter

The Rolling Stone published a story that claimed hospitals in Oklahoma were overwhelmed by overdoses of Ivermectin—the latest palliative drug to fall into the "trust the Science" crowds crosshairs. The article claimed that hospitals were so full due to Ivermectin poisonings, that even gunshot victims were turned away. Just a couple of hours after the story hit the press, the Rolling Stone issued what amounted to a redaction claiming, "One hospital has denied Dr. Jason McElyea’s claim that ivermectin overdoses are causing emergency room backlogs and delays in medical care in rural Oklahoma, and Rolling Stone has been unable to independently verify any such cases as of the time of this update."

Despite the shaky ground of the report, the press machine jumped at the corpse of the story like a bunch of hungry jackals. Joy-Ann Reid and Rachel Maddow both ran the story in their shows even after Rolling Stone issued the correction. Taken in stride with the news that Joe Rogan, the world's most popular podcast host, took Ivermectin to deal with COVID, the media had an absolute conniption. The narrative is slipping away from them. People are beginning to actively distrust state-sanctioned information and are blazing their own paths. Can you blame them?

Headlines

• COVID-19 Vaccine Passports Will Be Imposed on UK This Month: Minister (Epoch Times)
• Florida to Start Fining Businesses $5,000 for Violations of Vaccine Passport Ban (Epoch Times)
• Patriots Cut Cam Newton After Covid-Related Disruptions (NYT)
  • Newton has refused to receive a vaccine and missed three days of practice last week. Though the NFL doesn't require vaccination, there are heavy limitations placed on unvaccinated players.
  • Jaguars coach Urban Meyer became the first coach to announce that vaccination status would be factored into whether a player makes the final roster or not (Twitter)

Opinion

• Vaccine Regret (American Mind)
• Vaccine Failure and the Way Out (eugyppius)
• Say No To Vaccine Passports (American Conservative)

Stat of the Day

💰 Estimates claim that organized retail theft accounts for around $45 billion in annual losses for retailers these days, up from $30 billion a decade ago. At CVS, reported thefts have ballooned 30% since the pandemic began (Read)

One Good Read

🎀 When did we all become women? (Read)

Have a great Tuesday