Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

The Same Story (Taylor’s Version)

At the heart of this article is an amazing distillation of why monopolies are the worst:

TicketMaster is good at scams, but they’re bad at selling tickets.

At the heart of monopolies is the fact that at some point doing the actual thing they were originally designed to do is not profitable because there is not actually such a thing as infinite expansion and the only game in town after that, is scamming people out of money.

Honestly this article is nothing new, it cites two books from years ago which both point out the flaws not in capitalism, but in Ticketmaster itself which is how outrageously out of control the issues have gotten that we no longer can complain just about the system but literally point at just the handful of companies running the entire economy. In the end the article is hopeful that people are fed up because not even inconsequential things work anymore. I hope that optimism is well placed.

>Number Two<

Japanese History Repository

Allow me to wax poetic about a time on the internet when you used to go to more than three sites in a single day and people would make these large, messy, single user (or small group of people with access to the same ftp) proto-wikis and that’s what Sengoku Daimyo is for information and translations about the history of Japan. The website it basically a preserved achieve of historical information about Japan for the purposes of knowledge, preservation, and re-creation but also a historical preservation of a time on the internet where personal archives were common and knowledge was free and communal.

>Number Three<

Religion is Complicated

I’m a big fan of Foreign Man in a Foreign Land who always brings levity and thought to some heavy issues. His videos are super entertaining and always leave me thinking about things in a different light. I especially loved this video about some of his complex feelings when he saw people appropriating religion on TikTok which led to him having some great interviews with other POC folks and asking himself about how he interacts with religion.

For people not familiar with Foreign’s content though just sit tight with it for a minute he has a very unique style XD

>Number Four<

Get Your Money’s Worth

Am I insufferable about how broken the US medical system is on every level? Yes. Will I stop? Absolutely never.

I don’t think it’s a secret that the majority of US made drugs and research is funded almost completely by the government, and that all that funding comes from the pockets of the US taxpayer. Nowhere is this more evident then during the past few years as the COVID-19 vaccine was developed with money from the US government and now is sold at profit by corporations like AstraZeneca to other countries and through to the US government that paid for its creation.

In this article it outlines that these patent and profits cause barriers for people in the US and all over the world from sharing life-saving, cheap drugs and they block other countries and institutions from replicating the drugs as well. This system fundamentally exploits the US taxpayer, who pays for drugs twice in the form of research and then advertising and profit for these companies to the tune of billions of dollars, but it also makes the world a worse place keeping medical access out of reach of millions of people every day.

>Number Five<

Your Apple is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

This is basically a little nothing site but I got a huge laugh out of Apple Rankings. It’s exactly what it says on the tin, a website where apples are ranked. The Letterboxd of apples if you will.

As a former Seattle resident, I got really into cider while I was living there and had the absolute pleasure of sampling many many ciders made from heritage apples and the apples themselves! There are so many wonderful apples in this world, and there used to be nearly one for every household so even though the site is mainly a silly little joke with a few good chuckles guaranteed, having met dozens of people who do the work to preserve the diversity of useful and tasty and even gross apples in this world, it’s good to know that we can still have a laugh at how bad some apples are.

Alright folks that’s all she wrote, see you next month!