Today in Tabs

Every weekday from Monday to Thursday, Today in Tabs delivers a concise roundup of internet content. It features links to articles I found interesting or frustrating over the past day, updates on the latest media controversies, industry gossip, some tech critiques, playful jokes, recurring themes, and at least one musical highlight. For more context, our work has been highlighted in NeimanLab, The Observer, and Politico. While it's up for debate whether Tabs played a role in popularizing email newsletters in the early 2010s, which contributed to the current newsletter trend and the rise of platforms like Substack, I’ll leave that assessment to others.

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It's Not A Marathon

Jan 23, 2025 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

Tabs was off earlier this week because I spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday renewing my Wilderness First Responder certification. WFR is a level of pre-hospital medical training about halfway between first aid and EMT, aimed at developing the skills needed to identify and manage life threats in a wilderness environment.
Heart of Zuckness

Jan 10, 2025 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

In keeping with the enthusiastic adoption of fascism by the rest of his cohort of American tech billionaires, a characteristically waxy and dead-eyed Mark Zuckerberg, clad in the Uncut Gems cosplay he has favored recently, announced that he’s unlocked a new slur pack for all of his company’s websites in a bizarre and unsettling video message. Mark Zuckerberg on some extremely “exterminate all the brutes” shit.
Fracking The Web

May 28, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

“Google AI said to put glue in pizza — so I made a pizza with glue and ate it,” wrote Katie Notopoulos. This is the kind of flawless sicko blogging of which we could only dream during the pivot to video. I am surprised that Business Insider let Katie describe glue pizza as “an easy and delicious weeknight meal for the whole family that anyone can whip up in thirty minutes or less,” but maybe they feel invulnerable after surviving Bill Ackman?
Canadian A.I. Girlfriend Unsubstantiated

May 21, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

On Sunday OpenAI announced it was removing its new horny robot girlfriend voice, explaining in a blog post that the voice was “not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson” at all (and frankly it’s weird of you even to think that???) but was actually the real human meat voice of a completely different actress who goes to another school, you wouldn’t know her. Also she’s from Canada.
Six To Ten Hours Of Hard Tab Processing

Apr 16, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

The New York Times Magazine fired back at The Cuttoday in the ongoing Poly Discourse Wars with a feature about the Harvard University of polycules, a twenty-ish member group located “in the Boston area” (no, not Tufts) who are radically committed to the allegedly queer value of pretending everyone is happy. For such a short piece it was difficult to choose just one excerpt, but let’s go with this one: Ann: My husband and I are very, very different, which is our strength.
Weird Ancient Dog Found

Apr 11, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

Here’s a little amuse bouche from tabs past to clear the palate after a long week of discourse: in 1979, an impossibly precocious fourteen year old Cuban American named Miguel Esteban decided “to publish a biweekly, 24-page magazine of and about science fiction entitled Transmission.” For the first (and last) issue, he commissioned an original essay about writing race in science fiction from a 32 year old Octavia Butler, who not only delivered the essay for the $50 fee offered, but graciously...
Schlepping Out

Apr 4, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

To paraphrase a famous math textbook: David Foster Wallace wrote a cruise ship story for Harper’s in 1996 and died in 2008, by his own hand. In 2014 Caity Weaver spent a week on a Paula Deen cruise and so did Taffy Brodesser-Akner, but fortunately both still live. There was also Imogen West-Knights’ “Gone Girl Cruise” story, which it’s unclear whether anyone survived.
The Case For Marrying An Older Tab

Mar 27, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

This essay in The Cut is titled “The Case for Marrying an Older Man” and its first sentence is: “In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery,” so I can’t say I didn’t know what I was getting into. But Grazie Sophia Christie and an editor who remains unnamed but obviously despises her have created a classic hate-read of the kind I thought was extinct in these debased times.
The House Puts Its Comically Large Foot Down

Mar 13, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

Four hundred thirty two members of the U.S. House of Representatives pulled up to the Capitol building this morning in one tiny car and piled out one at a time over the course of nearly an hour, each doing a humorous cartwheel, honking a bulbous red nose, squirting water out of a trick lapel flower, etc, etc.
I'm Going to Become The Literary Joker

Mar 12, 2024 | todayintabs.com | Rusty Foster

Lauren Oyler listed her anxiety symptoms in The New Yorker and honestly: same. It never would have occurred to me that a catalogue of my weird twitches and lack of knowledge about therapy could add up to a New Yorker essay without any other discernible point, “But catharsis for me is boring for you,” she concludes, with regrettable accuracy. The piece is from Oyler’s forthcoming essay collection “No Judgement,” which Ian Wang entertainingly panned for ArtReview.