Make it stick.
06.03.2026 18:25
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Polymarket is trying VERY HARD to wheedle their way into a more socially acceptable space, where instead of being FanDuel for bombings, they are thought of as An Important Dataset. They just partnered (read: gave money to) Substack for this reason. Do not accept the premise. It is bullshit.
This has nothing to do with the specific content here, but Polymarket adopting the language of news, here with BREAKING, and with Texas election results earlier this week, is BAD. Polymarket is not and will never be a news org or break news. It's a betting app. It's Draft Kings for sociopaths.
Reading is so solitary. Part of the appeal, but also what drives us to seek reviews, reactions, comment threads. When I finish a book, I usually read reviews afterwards—to see who shares my experience, who didn’t and why, to find perspectives or clarity I missed. Communal experience restored.
These days, I rarely go to the theater. Getting a group together for a viewing that we’re all excited and available for is difficult. Having the hangout time after is challenging, too. The experience is diminished for me. (I also enjoy seeing movies alone, but little hitting cineplexes entices me.)
In high school and college, my friend group went to movies en masse. After the film, we’d stand in the parking lot and talk about it. Then go to a diner or coffee shop and continue to dissect it further. This communal experience was just as important and fun as the movie.
I wonder if reviews & react content in general comes to an extent from atomized society. We treat reading or watching a work a full experience but what if the full experience is doing that AND talking about it with friends, experiencing it as a community. Reviews provide a simulacrum of this.
I say this as someone who was once upon a time a huge Firefly fan: bringing this show back would reward the worst people in fandom, the ones who refuse to grow emotionally/spiritually and are perpetually stuck in a past that was incredibly unkind to folks like me.
Thankfully she was wearing a mask in a busy store, which probably prevented an external cut and possible tetanus issue where it impacted her upper lip. Not optimistic about the post-swelling bruising, though.
Doing alright. Shelf hit her hard in the mouth. Huge gash inside her lip but didn’t split the front/outside, so no stitches. Teeth/jaw seem okay, but will need x-rays and follow-up. Face is swollen and half her mouth looks like she just got filler.
Doing alright. Shelf hit her in the mouth. Huge gash inside her lip but didn’t split the front/outside, so no stitches. Teeth/jaw seem okay, but will need x-rays. Face is swollen and half her mouth looks like she just got filler.
But the equally sickening part might be the “common” folk eagerly cheering on these monsters and atrocities like it’s their hometown football team they’ve sworn blood-allegiance to. To have faith in humanity constantly eroded.
Every day is a horror show, from the little enshittifications deployed by billionaires and techbros to make our lives worse, to authoritarians and oligarchs murdering with impunity while our “elected representatives” sit and spin on their collection thumbs.
Woke this morning to learn my wife was injured when a retail store shelf collapsed on her. Didn’t hear about Iran till at the ER. Wept over my lunch reading about children dying in a bombed school. Sick to my stomach worrying about retaliation attacks, more dead innocents, and a fascist government.
And there it is. This would be terrifying in the best of times, but we're living in the bad times, where the FBI is under the control of a drunken douchebro who uses FBI resources to party with his girlfriend and at the Olympics.
People. Are. Going. To. Die.
On the one hand, the presidency is a fundamentally broken institution.
On the other hand, Congress is a fundamentally broken institution.
On the third hand, the Supreme Court is a fundamentally broken institution.
A broader takeaway I think is nobody should be allowed to be so rich that being told no, or being held accountable, represents such a moral injury to that person's psyche that they feel like their only recourse is to burn the world down.
As hard as we are fighting, book bans are having an impact on the books being written and published. To put this another way, a very small number of well-funded people who don't write books, don't teach books, don't work in libraries are trying to decide what books are available for everyone else
A digital drawing of author Maia Kobabe, a white nonbinary person with short brown hair wearing a patterned blue shirt, who scowls while holding up a copy of eir book GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR. Maia is saying: H.R. 7661 is a national book banning bill which seeks to remove any book that "involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism" from all public schools in the US. This would ban my books, and any other book with trans themes, from public schools. PLEASE call your House Reps and say: NO ON H.R. 7661!
H.R. 7661 is a national book banning bill which seeks to remove any book that "involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism" from all public schools in the US. This would ban all my books, & any other book with trans themes, from public schools. PLEASE call your House Reps & say: NO ON H.R. 7661!
If you're watching what's happening to the transgender community in Kansas today, be sure to catch up with the monthslong coverage by our @kansasreflector.com journalists.
This is why people are so upset when people say Democrats need to stop focusing on trans issues because it's too woke and people aren't ready for it: we're not talking minor inconvenience here. We're not talking microaggressions
We're talking: they are stripping IDs from trans people
I know people get mad at me for being so anti-Newsom, but this is why. Pander to the worst people in our country, get the worst fucking policies.
If you have trans homies in Kansas, check in on them. Let them know they're not alone. Let them know they're loved.
No one left behind.
I like that "True Crime" has its own section cordoned away from all the fake crime.
As a woman in academia, the latter half of this translates to, "we gleefully bullied her out of academia".
I agree that short form brain rot content is a Problem. I’m ADHD, the dopamine hunt is a real issue. And we are being flooded with absolute junk on all platforms. The erosion of literacy is terrifying. But we can combat these things while recognizing the value of various media to various consumers.
I, too, prefer to read news in text. I consume nonfiction in both print and audio book. I listen to audio podcasts every day as I do mundane tasks. I read abundant fiction, with an eye for storytelling craft. And I watch a lot of YouTube and narrative media. All tickle my brain in various ways.
We continue to offer the audio-only version. And I’ve found that, despite the extra labor of video production, I enjoy it. I have an extra layer of expression beyond my words/voice. The set allows me subtle visual expressions of taste and interests as well, and Easter eggs for astute viewers.
Our existing audience was really excited, too. Many have said it’s comforting to see our faces and body language, that understanding the context of our comments is easier with the visual. I’m sure we’re mostly second-screen entertainment, but it’s clear the visual heightens the impact for some.
My wife and I have been audio podcasters since ~2012. And I worked in radio (not on-air) for a decade before that. Our current show, a figure skating podcast, ran 3 years as audio only, but we got many requests to do video. We made the “pivot” last year, and saw our audience grow quickly.
I understand everything the OP and the commenters are saying here, and I relate to a lot of it. But there is a big sense of “these things don’t suit MY needs, talents, or tastes, so therefore they are objectively BAD” that rubs me the wrong way.