Good morning!
This is Issue 65.2 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of things happening in the world.
Today’s news, fermented:
A few weeks ago I saw a tweet about how unpleasant it is to get a cold again, after a winter of (arguably worse medical events/scares and) very few colds.
And now I have arrived, post-nasal drip and all. I’ve noticed that my thinking about ~contagion~ has really shifted: should I be wearing a mask in the house to prevent my cohabitants from getting this cold? Should I wear one outside? This is certainly a cultural norm in many densely-populated parts of the world, but has never been here. I’m still working remotely, but if I wasn’t, would I stay home and work from there so as not to expose my colleagues?
Anyway, a bit of musing to say that I don’t have much to share today other than this incredible series in the Guardian about climate crimes. It’s basically a compendium of articles slamming the fossil fuel industry for causing the climate crisis.
As heat waves suffocate the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, it’s heartening to see relatively mainstream news coverage commit to pulling back the veil on the corporate giants behind the crisis that yields heat and floods, fires and tidal waves.
Not only is it getting published—but articles about the climate crisis account for eight out of ten of the most-read stories on the Guardian’s site today.
That’s plenty of reading, so I’ll leave it there. Here’s a pinniped, possibly resting a little easier now that we are finally turning our attention to the catastrophe at hand.
(via)
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
Will you be watching the Olympics this year? I feel pretty apathetic about it, to be honest. Obviously, the Tokyo Olympics were supposed to be held last year but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I personally think it's still kind of insane to keep forging on with it this year, despite the fact that vaccines have become somewhat widely available now. I mean, there's a whole new, much more highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus making its way downtown, walking fast, faces pass, and it's homebound.
It's a concern shared by many Japanese people too, with more than 80% of residents saying they want the games to either be cancelled or postponed again. Only 2% of the population in Japan is fully vaccinated and infections are still pretty high in the country. So you can see why people are worried and uninterested in having an Olympics this year. Frankly, the only country I've seen so far really talking about the Olympics and showing any hype or excitement for it at all is the U.S.A. -- and that's because vaccine hoarding got ya'll to where you are now.
With the games comes too the business of going to the Olympics, and this year there's a new business in town. Enter Kim Kardashian's shapewear line SKIMS, who was recently announced as Team USA's official supplier of shapewear, pajamas, and loungewear. This is a pretty big deal, especially for a brand that was founded so recently and by a celebfluencer rather than a "legit" designer. The SKIMS line is a highly lucrative brand. It propelled Kimberly into the leagues of billionaires within a year of its launch. So it's a smart business move on Kim and Team U.S.A.'s part to partner together for this venture. Personally, I won't be spending a dime on her products but I can't even hate the woman for her hustle.
If there's anything I'm really looking forward to at the Olympics, it's seeing the Liberian national team's outfits that will be created by current hot potato designer Telfar Clemens, who is the brains behind the hugely popular Telfar bags (dubbed "the Bushwick Birkin") that have been sweeping social media, the country, and the entire world these last few years. Telfar, whose parents were originally from Liberia, was actually contacted by one of the Liberian athletes, who had heard about Telfar's bags from his girlfriend. And the rest, they say, is fashion history.