Drinking! Your! Own! Pee! Will! Not! Cure! Covid!
Mōrena lil shits!!
I’m still getting back into the swing of this whole ‘work’ thing (which means I’m still going for rides on the biscuit at lunchtime) (are biscuits (inflatable tube/donut things) that you tow behind boats just a New Zealand thing?? What are they called elsewhere? Someone fill me in.)
I wanna say a huge hello to all my new angels who’ve subscribed in the new year!! Sending u love and big welcome energy and please, stick with me for a week and I promise I’ll win you over. Also, thank you to everyone who’s becoming a member of this cool thing! For $5 a month you can subscribe and 1) make sure your ol’ mate Luce can pay rent 2) get access to special editions - like my bumper book reading lists!!!! And 3) keep me motivated to get up stupidly early to figure out the world for you. I LOVE YOU!
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In today’s newsletter:
A Novax Djocovid update
Anti-Vax Leader Urges Followers to Drink Their Own Urine to Fight Covid
Golden Globes Winners
Everything you know about Monopoly is a LIE
“Ah yes the famous Shakespeare play ‘Much Adieu About Nothing’”
A Te Reo Māori version of Wordle!!
An update on old mate Novax Djocovid
First things first - and because I really am milking this pun for all it’s worth - Novax won his legal battle with the Aussies (because they didn’t follow proper procedure when he initially arrived) and has been granted his visa back to be able to go play a few rounds of tennis (If you're confused, I gave a summary of whole the story in yesterdays newsletter.)
Meanwhile, Mehdi Ali, an Iranian refugee who arrived in Australia when he was 15 has spent nine years in detention in the same hotel where Novak was held (there are 32 other asylum-seekers sharing the hotel with him too.) By the way, armed police guard the doors and they can’t leave - in case that wasn’t obvious. But don’t worry about them! There’s a tennis match to worry about!
And while we're on the subject: Anti-Vax Leader Urges Followers to Drink Their Own Urine to Fight Covid
The only person who can tell me to drink my own urine is Bear Grylls, I don’t care what you say. Anyway, here’s the excerpt from The Daily Beast who reported on this story:
“Anti-COVID-19 “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key has a new quarter-baked conspiracy theory for his anti-vax followers to use to cure themselves of COVID-19: Drink their own urine. “The antidote that we have seen now, and we have tons and tons of research, is urine therapy. OK, and I know to a lot of you this sounds crazy, but guys, God’s given us everything we need,” Key said in a video posted over the weekend on his Telegram account after being released from jail over a trespassing charge. “This has been around for centuries,” he added. “When I tell you this, please take it with a grain of salt,” the anti-vaccine advocate warned while saying people might now think he is “cray cray.” “Now drink urine!” he continued. “This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” he concluded. “I drink my own urine!” Reached for comment by The Daily Beast on Sunday night, Key doubled down on what he calls “urine therapy” and railed against “foolish” people who took the COVID-19 vaccine, which is safe and effective.”
I just posted about this on insta and some of the comments are already too good:
“big "pee pee poo poo" energy”
“Therapee”
“Let them do it”
“If urine to this, European.”
“He’s actually takin the piss”
“Urine danger”
“Darwin was right”
“It’s just natural selection that this point”
“Necessary? Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No, but I do it anyway because its sterile and I like the taste” - Patches O’Houlihan”
Honestly, you are all so fucking funny and QUICK that I should be letting y’all write the newsletter at this point.
Golden Globes Winners
The Golden Globes happened yesterday, and I’m gonna let you go and read the full list of winners here, but a few notable winners for me were:
Best actor in a motion picture - musical or comedy: Andrew Garfield, Tick, Tick … Boom!
Best actress in a drama series: MJ Rodriguez, Pose (EXTRA SHOUTOUT TO MJ WHO IS THE FIRST TRANS WINNER OF A GOLDEN GLOBE - GO OFFFFF!!)
Best original song - motion picture: No Time to Die from No Time to Die, by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell
Best motion picture - animated: Encanto
Best TV series - drama: Succession (we have a podcast dropping about this tomorrow actually)
Best actor in a drama series: Jeremy Strong, Succession (GO OFF KENDALL)
Best actor in a TV series - musical or comedy: Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso
Best supporting actress in a series, limited series or TV movie: Sarah Snook, Succession
Best supporting actor in a series, limited series or TV movie: O Yeong-su, Squid Game (who played the old man)
Everything you know about Monopoly is a LIE
This next story was written by Sophie - an avid reader of the SYSCA newsletter and new pal of mine, who went on a deep dive into patents and actually found something hella interesting (yeah, patents and interesting usually feel like an oxymoron, I know!). I’ll let her take it from here...
After deciding that I would do more research on patents, I chose to look into board games. Why not? Monopoly was the first to come up on good old ✨Ecosia images✨– hey, it makes me feel better that my waste of electricity doing useless deep dives like this might plant a couple of trees, don’t judge. My quick search showed various versions of this image below. The original Monopoly patent.
Now, patents are supposed to stop people from using someone’s idea(s) without their permission, right? Well, Monopoly as a game seems to be a copy of an already-patented game.
Introducing Lizzie. J. Magie’s ‘The Landlord’s Game’. This was patented in January 1904, according to Google Patents, a site which I didn’t know existed until today. Lizzie was an awesome lady, in my opinion. Outspoken feminist, activist, ‘short story and poetry writer, comedian, stage actress… and engineer’, she created more than just the precursor to Monopoly. She also invented and patented a way for typewriters to work better by getting the paper through the rollers with more ease – at age 26! According to Wikipedia, which I trust for better or for worse, she even became locally famous for buying an advertisement and selling herself as a ‘young woman American slave’. According to an arguably more reliable source, she did this to make a statement about the dismissal of women – and likely about the evils of slavery, too, but that’s just my speculation. She said that ‘girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition’, regardless of whether they were married or not. She herself didn’t get married until aged 44, around 1923. What an icon!
Her game was controversial and innovative, for similar reasons to Lizzie herself. She was a Georgist, an economic ideology believing that money gained from land should be equally distributed, and not held as a monopoly by landlords. Can you see where this is heading? Despite her patent stating that the ‘object of the game is to obtain as much wealth or money as possible, the player having the greatest amount… being the winner’, it’s also been said that Lizzie created The Landlord’s game to show that rent ‘enriched property owners and impoverished tenants’ to promote Georgism. The modern Monopoly (the one we all know), however, dropped this idea, and only ran with the one officially stated in her patent. It’s now about gaining as much property as possible, so that you may claim a total monopoly over the board. The opposite of what Lizzie wanted!
Elizabeth Magie’s marvellous creation - The Landlord Game’ was patented in 1904 and first published and manufactured in 1906, by a company which she set up herself with two fellow Georgists. The patent for Monopoly, though? Registered in 1935. Almost 30 years later; which gave a 30-year window for Charles B. Darrow to copy Lizzie J. Magie’s (or Phillips’, now) ideas.
Even after publishing and manufacturing, Liz’s game spread mainly through word of mouth via university students who were taught the game along with their economic studies. (Just like the students who take finance in my school played Monopoly for what seemed like two weeks’ worth of lessons, right?) In this time, society made a few changes to her game. It became shorter and overall… different. Students started making their own versions. Good on them, but not good for Elizabeth Magie. Unfortunately, it was also around this time that her patent ran out in, in 1921.
She got a new patent in 1924, but by this time the home-made versions of her game were already going by the nickname ‘Monopoly’. Bad news. Regardless, Lizzie (who now had the surname Phillips) made an updated version with a new patent, and a more explicit, political purpose. It was now made ‘to illustrate… how under the present or prevailing system of land tenure, the landlord has an advantage over other enterprises’. Very Georgist! This version also had street names, one of the most characteristic things of the modern game.
Meanwhile, Charles Darrow was taught the home-made ‘Monopoly’ version of the game by his wife Esther, who was taught it by a friend, Charles Todd. The copies of the game which Darrow made were copies of Todd’s, even with his misspellings – or, perhaps they were Lizzie’s. By 1933, Darrow had patented, printed, and put a few fun design aspects on there which were a) actually original and b) remain part of the game to this day. Like the red arrow on ‘GO’.
Soon enough, the Parker Brothers began selling the game and then found out that Darrow didn’t invent it. Instead of, I don’t know, dropping his stealing scumbag self and crediting Miss Magie on her invention, they bought Lizzie’s patent (FOR $500 MEASLY DOLLARS) as well as any/all others which had legal rights against them. Woah. They also got Darrow to admit that he copied the game, and gave the Parker Brothers company worldwide rights to the game, releasing Darrow from any legal costs that would be in store.
Since then, Charles Darrow has been credited for the invention of ‘Monopoly’, becoming the first millionaire game designer in history. Liz, on the other hand, earned $500, and only after taking a stand against the Parker Brothers. Another loss for female inventors of history.
Without further ado… yesterday's mundane poll results!
Yesterday's poll makes me laugh so much and for what???? I asked whether you think it’s without further ‘adieu’ or ‘ado’ and honestly, I can’t believe that 25% OF YOU THINK IT’S ADIEU! Without further ‘ado’ which is the correct term for what the phrase we are talking about, means ‘without much fuss’ or ‘without further delay.’ Adieu on the other hand, is a French word that refers to a farewell, so I guess you could be saying ‘without further goodbye's' but… I doubt it. Anyway, I loved this comment by user @carilouie: “Ah yes the famous Shakespeare play ‘Much Adieu About Nothing’” hahahah.
One more thing about Wordle:
I’m so glad so many of you either a) started playing Worlde after I wrote about it yesterday or b) were already playing!!! BUT WHAT IS EVEN COOLER IS THAT THERE IS A TE REO MĀORI VERSION YOU CAN PLAY TOO!
Here’s my result for today (I made a lucky guess):
Wordle 206 4/6
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Everybody Hates Millennials: Gen Z and the TikTok Generation Wars
Gaslighting but... in words u can understand
Throwback to when we interviewed Lorde
You can listen to us talk about Sex & The City & Josh Bassett on Culture Vulture, about THE WORLD on The Shit Show or watch us explain the internet on Extremely Online.
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