November 11th
Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 35.3 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
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Today’s news, fermented:
It’s still balmy on the East Coast as I sit outside writing this, thinking about how human migration patterns will have to shift to accommodate sweltering temperatures and superstorms.
I think the theme for today is denial—and how denial generally yields worst-case-scenario results.
The first thing that comes to mind is the climate crisis (especially when it impacts countries in which the US has caused irreversible harm). Along with white supremacy, I’d say this is America’s favorite thing to deny.
Of course, there’s also COVID denial, which is not going so well for the good people of Staten Island, the borough NYC will never accept. Don’t get me wrong, Staten Island has a lot going for it (namely, Wu Tang, good food, potential for marsh restoration), but if you overlay the electoral map and the COVID hotspot map, well, you know how that looks.
On a bureaucratic level, it seems like state governments also aren’t prepared to distribute a vaccine, which is a whole different kind of denial that I have usually heard referred to as ‘incompetence.’
Then there’s the denial by the Democratic party that actually, the left wing is doing really well and it’s everyone in the center who’s failing to get (re-elected), including in rural America, another realm of tremendous misunderstanding and denial.
And then of course there is the denial in the White House. Now is as good a time as any to let your electeds know you are not down for this bullshit.
This isn’t quite an animal, but seems…thematically appropriate.
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
I almost always happen to come across some type of Twitter commotion while I'm cooking dinner. I don't know what it is about the early evening that's got people acting up at their best (worst), but it seems like people like to take Twitter after work and just relieve themselves of their stress by typing into the ether of this Bird app and causing chaos around them.
So it was last night, as I was flipping my flatbread in my skillet and scrolling through my timeline that I happened across Dean Browning of Pennsylvania, a white, retired businessman and former member of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners who also happens to moonlight as a "Black gay man" online to sow disinformation on social media on his throwaway account(s?). Oh baby, you read that right -- and buckle up because this story is only about to get crazier.
Late Tuesday evening, Twitter users noticed that Dean had responded to a post on the platform describing himself as a "Black gay guy" who supports President Tr*mp. Of course, the tweet was deleted not long after it was published and Dean said that he was simply quoting one of his followers rather than pretending to be someone he wasn't.
This in itself was scandal enough. But we live on the Internet, with people who have investigative and sleuthing skills that are more powerful than the FBI, Mossad, and Interpol combined, so it wasn't long before people quickly found the throwaway account they suspected Dean would use to be on his bullshit: @DanPurdy322, an account very recently (in October) created and who regularly responds to Dean's actual account.
But because 2020 has more surprise twists than M. Night Shyamalan and Christopher Nolan's filmographies combined, it appears that "Dan Purdy" is in fact a "Black gay guy" who supports D*n*ld Tr*mp whose real name is William Holte -- and who also happens to be Patti Labelle's son. QUELLE SURPRISE!!!!!
The Real Dan Purdy stood up and posted a video of himself responding to claims that his account was Dean's alt and to prove that he is who he says he is. The video has since been deleted but we are still collectively reeling from the penultimate finale reveal of this season. Y'all!!! I was gagged and on the phone all night last night, talking to my friends about this. Could this be a ploy to drum up sales for Patti's infamous sweet potato pie for the upcoming holiday season? I wouldn't be surprised. But my brain is in knots and reliving this whole journey makes me feel like I need to take another nap.
TL;DR:
