Stranger Than Fiction

A brief daily note on things you might find interesting or useful

September 14, 2020

You can support the newsletter that you’re reading right now using PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, or purchase a subscription on Substack.Don’t forget to join us in the Stranger Slack for access to source documents and a running feed of news throughout the day. (this link was broken for awhile and has now been fixed)TOP NEWS

  • Oracle Wins Bid for TikTok in U.S., Beating Microsoft “Oracle won the bidding for the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app TikTok, a person familiar with the matter said, beating out Microsoft in a deal to salvage a social-media service that has been caught in the middle of a geopolitical standoff.”

  • West Coast Wildfire Death Toll Hits 33 “Nearly 100 wildfires raged in the West over the weekend, as high winds and dry conditions were expected to fan some of the fast-moving blazes in the coming days in states reeling from a death toll of at least 33 people and struggling for resources.”

  • Tropical Storm Sally Could Hit New Orleans as Category 2 Hurricane “Tropical Storm Sally is bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and is expected to make landfall late Monday or early Tuesday, possibly as a Category 2 hurricane.”

  • Israel to Shut Down Again as Second Coronavirus Wave Hits “Israel will begin a second nationwide lockdown Friday as its government struggles to contain a fresh coronavirus outbreak that has hammered the economy and divided the country.”

  • In Belarus, Protesters and Lukashenko Locked in Dangerous Stalemate “More than 100,000 people poured into the streets of Belarus’ capital Minsk, sparking a show of force and mass detentions by riot police on Sunday in one of the largest in a string of demonstrations aimed at keeping pressure on President Alexander Lukashenko.”

WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO

THE COMMENT

“Between single-payer health care and simply expanding Obamacare, there’s a lot of room for compromise. Ditto on how to combat climate change and expand access to education and training. And the economy is in sufficiently dire shape that boldness, in both a short-term recovery plan and a long-term investment strategy, could look simultaneously like realism to centrists and a “New New Deal” to progressives. Finally, as Adam Serwer argues in a powerful and historically informed essay in the Atlantic, a majority may well exist for a new Reconstruction Era on behalf of racial justice. We’re a better country than Trump thinks we are.” - E.J. Dionne Jr.

THE STRANGEST

THE AV ROOM