Today in Tabs: It Is What It Is

I'm here for you, dear reader, so let me level with you: nothing important happened on the internet since yesterday. If you're looking at this with a sigh, thinking "oh man, now there's tabs, and I just don't have time for this right now," please, set it aside. It'll keep. What follows for those still with me is an arbitrary assortment of tabs that I cannot seem to arrange into any kind of pleasing order or symmetry. But, as the young woman in white furs and stiletto heels outside the 2nd Ave F train stop last Wednesday said into her iPhone several times in a row: It is what it is.

(Aside: I'm going to recommend you hit play on this remix of Jeff Goldblum's laugh from Jurassic Park for musical accompaniment to your tabs today.)

So what is it? It is Pierre Omidyar, subject of Friday's Pando-gram, pointing out that he was only contacted for comment after the story supposedly went up. Not so! says free-market monster Sarah Lacy, he in fact had nine whole minutes. So there's your future of news, nine minutes away.

It is Ridiculous Randi Zuckerbergtreading the boards in Rock of Ages because she is a great actress slash singer and not because she's Mark Zuckerberg's sister. It is also Facebook thinking about buying drone company Titan Aerospace to "provide internet connectivity""in Africa," where "provide internet connectivity" is a euphemism for "spy on" and "in Africa" actually means "your dumb ass."

It's Cortana, Microsoft's useless answer to useless Siri, because MS execs noticed everyone walking around all the time talking to Siri and getting all kinds of useful information and went "dude are you as high as I am right now because it looks like those people are using Siri?" and other MS execs were like "Wouldn't it be... like... cool? If we had a thing... like..." and the first MS execs were all "Dude what?" and the second MS execs giggled and went "wait I didn't finish I mean... like Siri?" And then the giant pile of money made it happen somehow.

It is this incredibly stupid Hoverboard viral/hoax, which was debunked by everydamnone. It's machines like bodies and bodies like machines. It's one more reason to never use Yahoo again. It's definitely this Santa Barbara restaurant getting ruined by the ocean (via Digg).

It is what it is. Everything is what it is, or it would be something else, which seems obvious, but nevertheless we are constantly plagued by people fretting that it will not remain what it is but instead will slide down a greased chute into being any number of other things, with regard to, in this case, trigger warnings. Now a gentle bit of corrective pushback on the more excessive/abstruse trigger warnings is one thing, but that New Republic tab is something else. It begins kind of plausibly, so let it get warmed up before you come to any conclusions.

It is definitely yet another bitcoin service shutting down. Do you own any bitcoins? Are they on the internet? Are you a total idiot? The only valid answers are three yeses or three nos. It is the Ellen selfie, which we've been surprisingly free of deep thoughts upon until we learned that Samsung donated $3 million to charity for it (why? idk idk idk), and Philip Bump investigated in excruciating detail who actually owns it. (Spoiler: the answer is "whoooo caressssssssssss??!!")

It could not possibly be more this video revealing at last who the Yellow King is.

If it is what it is, we may also deduce that it is not what it is not. So what is it not? It is not custom wedding koozies. It is not flying women from NYC to SF to date startup manbabies. It is not "the armpit," which surely is among the nicer body parts New Jersey has been compared to. It is never the Winklevii again, assuming they go to space and don't come back. And it isn't dumb answers to marketing company surveys which are, need I even remind you, a hoax.

It is what it is. And that, I'm sorry to say, is all it is. Before you go, check out Ken Layne and Matt Langer's new blog Greenfriar, which is about being outdoors. Being outdoors is cool, cause you're all like: "Check it! There are the doors, and here is me, completely out them." Try it!

Don't forget to subscribe to the all-new print Newsweek which is slick as all get out, but expensive too, so it has that high class feel that you can't get from, say, a custom wedding koozy.

Every Day's Emoticon:¯_(ツ)_/¯

Today's Song: Lykke Li, "Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone" (via Balk)

~Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est~

Today in Tabs may never recover from this fiasco. Nevertheless, we are (however reluctantly on their part) brought to you by Newsweek and via email. I usually say more things down here but I think that's enough for one day. Il est ce qu'il est.