we're in florida this week, and we're not ashamed to say this is our first time visiting the wrinkly elbow joint of america. who knew there was a state where alligators were the most sentient inhabitants? it's not that we're surprised that there's a state where there are more swamps than people, but having to keep our windshield wipers constantly on due to the humidity is still crazy. anyways, we'll be back to civilization by monday, but until then - enjoy our in-depth hottake on Jacob Zuma, the "florida man" of south africa.

big idea: nanny Joe is here to rescue us all

1. Joe unveiled his newest plan to beat COVID thursday, which basically boils down to...get vaccinated and quit the shenanigans. the highlights include requiring either vaccination or weekly testing for all employees who work for large businesses, all government contractors, and nearly all federal employees. that’ll cover an estimated 100 million people, or two-thirds of america’s working population.
2. this comes amid the delta-spike in cases, with 1,500 people dying daily from COVID and a new CDC study which found unvaccinated people are eleven times more likely to die from COVID than vaccinated smartie pants. it also comes after months of Dems essentially begging Joe to screw his critics and go full nanny state.
3. what finally changed Joe's mind? more than likely, his dropping poll numbers combined with a fully FDA-approved vaccine. his team finally realized that his critics were going to compare any move he made to an overbearing, interfering nanny state, so why not take actually effective policy steps to end the pandemic? states with higher vaccination rates clearly have fewer outbreaks and deaths, and it is time to replicate that success nationally. we'll have to wait and see though, if you're crazy enough to refuse the vaccine, you're probably crazy enough to quit your job over it too.

story to watch: TikTok beats YouTube in minutes used

1. a new report adds to the growing evidence that TikTok is the new social media app to beat. Android users in the US and UK spent more average time on TikTok per month than YouTube. in 2020, TikTok beat Facebook’s Messenger app to become the most downloaded app of the year, and now earns more money than YouTube per user.
2. that’s phenomenal performance for an app which is barely five years old, especially when considering TikToks are three minutes long at most. because YouTube has more than double the number of users (two billion versus 700 million), it still has more time spent on its platform. to put things in perspective, 44% of all time on smartphones is spent on social media apps, so TikTok is at the very top of the app game.
3. like all the other massive social media platforms, this crown will no doubt shed more light on the shadiness of TikTok. its corporate owner is ByteDance, a chinese company which claims there is a firewall between the communist party and the massive amounts of data it