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Niche InternetContinue & Persist Letter
the people that made this (Mark Chan and Adnan Aga) are funny and have interesting sites/profiles
Elio’s Education | Los Angeles Review of Books
Just How Queer Is Luca Guadagnino’s Queer Anyway?
Guadagnino reminded me that as we come of age, we decide for ourselves what informs us, and spoke to the first time he read Burroughs. “You enter into the language of Burroughs and you understand, at 17 years old, that there are ways we can express ourselves that are so wide, sophisticated, complicated, and that you never have to adapt to a logic that is preordained.”
Burroughs in fact traveled there in 1952; The Yage Letters chronicles his experiments in his letters to Ginsberg. He was obsessed with the idea that yage could enhance telepathy. In the hallucinatory new scenes, the connection between Lee and Allerton goes to places the earthbound book could never take it.
When the screenplay is his own, firmly in Guadagnino’s hands, it’s actually fabulous — and a relief after the earlier conflict between the director and his material. At the same time, it makes no sense. That’s the most Burroughsian nod in this film: the sheer randomness and trippy outrageousness of the end. It’s very Naked Lunch — both the book and David Cronenberg’s 1991 film inspired by Burroughs, which was clearly on Guadagnino’s mind.
It’s paying more of a tribute to an adaptation of a different Burroughs book, a film that feels genuinely Burroughsian but has less of a basis in the underlying text than his own. Something is off, the essential is missing, and this may be why I didn’t feel Burroughs’s spirit.
still, I wept through scenes of Guadagnino’s film — including a hallucinatory reference to Joan’s death in which Lee does the same failed William Tell routine with Allerton — but it wasn’t for Joan or Burroughs; it was for James’s lover Michael Emerton, who killed himself with a gun. I wept as this beautifully designed movie, with gorgeous men in well-cut suits, gave me time to think about the karmic connections that both blessed and cursed me. I wept for Billy Jr., whose mother Burroughs had killed. Then I wept for Burroughs, and I wept for Joan.
I wept for the portrayal of transactional sex that was the “romance” the director referred to. I wept as I questioned notions of intent and integrity in transactional relationships: mine with younger, troubled men who lived on the fringes of gay culture; Burroughs’s with James; and James’s with me. Those relationships, for better or worse, follow the karmic path laid down for me 40-plus years ago. That karma, at least for me, as I flew through the past making sense of it, was neutralized by the acceptance of its very existence, its painful impact on me and those affected by it, and, finally, by releasing it. That was Guadagnino’s gift to me.
Most poignantly, I wept for James, who lives alone, unable to walk, with a brain injury that was inflicted during a gay bashing and made worse by his falls at home and sustaining further concussions. But there has been some nice news for him, as a double LP of his work as a singer-songwriter is being released on Lotuspool Records. And he told me he liked Guadagnino’s Queer — though he quibbled with the casting and look of Allerton — and that’s even better news. Guadagnino liked hearing that
On the Zoom with Guadagnino and Anderson, I wanted to ask about legacy. Are there responsibilities we who make art or work in the arts have to our elders, to the radical spirits who pushed open the doors? I mentioned the affluent gay men, usually heteronormatively married, who “rent a womb” and maybe buy an egg to drop in it so their children have their genes — all of which seems to me to be the furthest thing from queer. In response, some signifiers were mentioned. Anderson speaks to the look of the film, citing George Platt Lynes’s influence; they both chimed in about Powell and Pressburger (the Archers), of The Red Shoes; I mentioned Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s Querelle, which Guadagnino said, indeed, influenced him. The point has been missed, and the clock is ticking. I move on, disappointed.
Will this film ignite a radical spark in younger viewers — be they queer or not? That’s what Burroughs did for me and for many, many of his readers
The craftsmanship of the film is sterling on many levels. But it is not the book I know by the writer I knew so well. It is stylish in the modality of fashion — having a “look”; it is beautiful in its entirety as a complete visual construction. It is, essentially, a gay location film. It is romantic, something of a travelogue — you might want to go where it is set, eat at the restaurants, while wearing the clothing, certainly in the company of some of the flawless boys cast. But it is not the world that the book conjures for most readers, certainly not me. This is the work of the director — as any film should be.
Still, a bad match of director and material renders confusion at best, emptiness at worst; I worried that this film could potentially misconstrue the importance of Burroughs’s role as a visionary queer writer for future generations.
I was incapable of explaining this to Guadagnino and Anderson, in our 20-minute Zoom, not to mention it might have stopped the interview. But I tried.
It wasn’t just the peculiar casting of a beefy daddy like Daniel Craig as the Burroughs character, William Lee, or pretty Drew Starkey as the aloof, younger love interest, Eugene Allerton, who spends the film looking great in fabulous knitwear by Jonathan Anderson, Guadagnino’s friend and the film’s costume designer, but nothing like the image of the character I had in my head.
Fish eye lens for text
Each level gives you completely different information, depending on what Google thinks the user might be interested in. Maps are a true masterclass for visualizing the same information in a variety of ways.
Viewing the same text at different levels of abstraction is powerful, but what, instead of switching between them, we could see multiple levels at the same time? How might that work?
A portrait lens brings a single subject into focus, isolating it from the background to draw all attention to its details. A wide-angle lens captures more of the scene, showing how the subject relates to its surroundings. And then there’s the fish eye lens—a tool that does both, pulling the center close while curving the edges to reveal the full context.
A fish eye lens doesn’t ask us to choose between focus and context—it lets us experience both simultaneously. It’s good inspiration for how to offer detailed answers while revealing the surrounding connections and structures.
Imagine you’re reading The Elves and the Shoemaker by The Brothers Grimm. You come across a single paragraph describing the shoemaker discovering the tiny, perfectly crafted shoes left by the elves. Without context, the paragraph is just an intriguing moment.
Now, what if instead of reading the whole book, you could hover over this paragraph and instantly access a layered view of the story? The immediate layer might summarize the events leading up to this moment: the shoemaker, struggling in poverty, left his last bit of leather out overnight. Another layer could give you a broader view of the story so far: the shoemaker’s business is mysteriously revitalized thanks to these tiny benefactors. Beyond that, an even higher-level summary might preview how the tale concludes, with the shoemaker and his wife crafting clothes for the elves to thank them.
This approach allows you to orient yourself without having to piece everything together by reading linearly. You get the detail of the paragraph itself, but with the added richness of understanding how it fits into the larger story.
Chapters give structure, connecting each idea to the ones that came before and after. A good author sets the stage, immersing you with anecdotes, historical background, or thematic threads that help you make sense of the details. Even the act of flipping through a book—a glance at the cover, the table of contents, a few highlighted sections—anchors you in a broader narrative.
The context of who is telling you the information—their expertise, interests, or personal connection—colors how you understand it.
The exhibit places the fish in an ecosystem of knowledge, helping you understand it in a way that goes beyond just a name.
Let's reimagine a Wikipedia a bit. In the center of the page, you see a detailed article about fancy goldfish—their habitat, types, and role in the food chain. Surrounding this are broader topics like ornamental fish, similar topics like Koi fish, more specific topics like the Oranda goldfish, and related people like the designer who popularized them.
Clicking on another topic shifts it to the center, expanding into full detail while its context adjusts around it. It’s dynamic, engaging, and most importantly, it keeps you connected to the web of knowledge
The beauty of a fish eye lens for text is how naturally it fits with the way we process the world. We’re wired to see the details of a single flower while still noticing the meadow it grows in, to focus on a conversation while staying aware of the room around us. Facts and ideas are never meaningful in isolation; they only gain depth and relevance when connected to the broader context.
A single number on its own might tell you something, but it’s the trends, comparisons, and relationships that truly reveal its story. Is 42 a high number? A low one? Without context, it’s impossible to say. Context is what turns raw data into understanding, and it’s what makes any fact—or paragraph, or answer—gain meaning.
The fish eye lens takes this same principle and applies it to how we explore knowledge. It’s not just about seeing the big picture or the fine print—it’s about navigating between them effortlessly. By mirroring the way we naturally process detail and context, it creates tools that help us think not only more clearly but also more humanly.
A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer | The New Yorker
SCAM AMERICA 777
I got the sense that their entrepreneurial spirit had led them to the sort of scam that leads you to wear a shirt with a huge dollar sign on it alongside a number of similar young men willing to wear that same shirt, the type of scam that encourages you to work out with and find community among your new colleagues, the type of scam that answers the two dominant questions posed by the young American man in 2024: what will make this mean something, and how can I get rich as quick as possible?
I think young men have turned more conservative because “conservatism,” as it were, is the mode of politics that makes the most sense in Scam America, and these young men are the Scam Generation.
America has always been a nation of grifters, con men, and schemers; what’s different in Scam America is the scope and form. America in 2024 is not a fallen or crumbling empire; it is an enshittified product, a tired casino, a website losing ad revenue, a restaurant line full of private delivery drivers.
America is a casino now, and the young men voting for Trump are the sort of young men pounding free drinks at the blackjack table and toasting the pit boss. A vote for Trump is a vote for a cig inside, for another round, for the line to keep going up, up, up. Does that mean this configuration is permanent? Maybe, maybe not. Casinos are windowless so that you cannot tell the time; they pump in oxygen to keep you alert. They do this, of course, because their owners know that in time everybody loses. The young men of Scam America are not necessarily out of reach, but if the left wants any chance at swaying them, it should plan ahead to when party’s over and the hangovers kick in.
Apple Store gave my prepaid MacBook Pro to a thief and Apple refuses to refund or replace it
Alex Griswold on X: "What are the other “Flint has clean water” and “we pretty much fixed that hole in the o-zone”s that people don’t know about? Public policy wins that happened so quietly that no one noticed." / X
Living documents as an AI UX pattern
TIFF 2024: In 'Queer' Bicurious Boys Are Another Addiction
Lee is chasing Allerton, but he’s really chasing a sense of self. This isn’t just a film about queer characters with a queer form — it’s also a film with very specifically queer motivations and conflicts. This is a film for anyone who has every desired assimilation, who has ever looked for self-love in self-hate, who has ever sought control with a desperate fuck.
Allerton is an idealized figure for Lee. (With their glasses and similar hair coloring, Allerton could even appear to be an idealized figure of Lee.) His disconnect from his queerness is a pull for Lee. The same way Lee wants to distance himself from the more feminine gays, he wants to run toward Allerton. It’s not just an addiction to desire, it’s an addiction to self-loathing.
Daniel Craig embodies Lee’s desire with an idiosyncratic charm. He may yearn for Allerton’s neutral normalcy, but, as portrayed by Craig, he’s undeniably queer. This isn’t shown with the obvious cues often inhabited when famous actors play gay. Instead, Craig finds the layers in Lee’s queer presentation — how he plays it up and how he tries to quiet it down.
Building LLMs is probably not going be a brilliant business
In the 1960s, airlines were The Future. That is why old films have so many swish shots of airports in them. Airlines though, turned out to be an unavoidably rubbish business. I've flown on loads of airlines that have gone bust: Monarch, WOW Air, Thomas Cook, Flybmi, Zoom. And those are all busts from before coronavirus - times change but being an airline is always a bad idea.
That's odd, because other businesses, even ones which seem really stupid, are much more profitable. Selling fizzy drinks is, surprisingly, an amazing business. Perhaps the best. Coca-Cola's return on equity has rarely fallen below 30% in any given year. That seems very unfair because being an airline is hard work but making coke is pretty easy. It's even more galling because Coca-Cola don't actually make the coke themselves - that is outsourced to "bottling companies". They literally just sell it.
If you were to believe LinkedIn you would think a great business is made with efficiency, hard work, innovation or some other intrinsic reason to do with how hardworking, or clever, the people in the business are. That simply is not the case.
What makes a good business is industry structure
Classically, there are five basic parts ("forces") to a company's position:
The power of their suppliers to increase their prices
The power of their buyers to reduce your prices
The strength of direct competitors
The threat of any new entrants
The threat of substitutes
It's industry structure that makes a business profitable or not. Not efficiency, not hard work and not innovation.
If none of the forces are very much against you, your business will do ok. If they are all against you, you'll be in the position of the airlines. And if they're all in your favour: brill, you're Coca-Cola.
A trans bathroom controversy in Congress.
On the one hand, I think the progressive trans movement has moved so far it’s trying to defend an untenable position: that all you have to do to gain access to a protected space is claim a protected identity for yourself. Imagine a situation where someone known to family and friends (and identifiable to the public) as a man declares one day that they are transitioning to female. Nobody could reasonably expect all girls and women to be comfortable with that person showing up in their bathroom or locker room a few days later.
And yet, this isn't how transitioning always (or even often) works. To take the example at hand, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride is 34 years old. She was her student body president at American University in college, and in her final week in that role, she came out as trans in the school newspaper. She described how she wrestled with her gender identity, writing that being trans was her "deepest secret" and something that she "couldn't accept," thinking she had to pick a pursuit of politics over being trans and couldn't possibly do both together. That was over 12 years ago, and now she is an openly trans woman who has been elected to Congress.
Regardless of your views on this issue, we should all be able to empathize with McBride and the intentionality behind her transition. She is not a confused teenager. She is not someone attaching themselves to an identity for personal gain, or to be a predator, or on a whim. She is an adult exercising her freedom to live as she chooses.
Many on the right seem to think they can just legislate trans people away — pretending that by excluding them they will somehow cease to exist. They won’t. Whether they exist because of gender dysphoria or ambiguous sex organs or social contagion is, for the purposes of legislation like this, irrelevant. As a pluralistic society, we should strive to create free societies for all.
At the same time, many on the left seem to think they can use academic theory to set the definitions of common words and reorganize social norms without listening to concerns about comfort level, fairness, basic differences among the sexes, and perceived or actual safety. This, too, is entirely unrealistic.
I genuinely think someone like McBride should be able to use the women's bathroom in Congress’s halls, yet I can also hold that this doesn't mean all self-identified trans women are entitled to all women's spaces. I wish more people could hold these things at the same time, too, but alas — that doesn’t appear to be the country we have.
Fight Theory
Polls show that many of the policies enacted by President Biden are popular. His measures to reduce the cost of insulin and other drugs receive support from more than 80 percent of Americans. His infrastructure bill, his hawkish approach to China and his all-of-the-above energy policy, which combines expanded oil drilling with clean-energy subsidies, are popular, too.
But voters obviously like some of his policies more than others. And an unusual pattern seems to be hurting Biden’s re-election campaign: Voters are less aware of his most popular policies than his more divisive ones.
Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a Democratic-aligned group, blames what he calls fight theory. “It’s not enough to have positive messaging,” Green said. “Voters must see drama, clash and an ongoing saga in order for our message to break through a cluttered news environment.”
fights become the subject of political fundraising emails, activist campaigns, news stories and social media posts. Conflict attracts attention. The situation with Biden’s most popular economic policies — especially the reduction of medical costs — is somewhat different.
My Mom Voted for Trump. Can We Let It Go?
voting for morally reprehensible candidates doesn’t mean you necessarily share their vices. You will almost certainly be voting with a focus on the good things you hope they will do or with the belief that they will do more good than their opponents. You might have gotten something wrong — about how the world works, about what they will do, about what is good. Others can complain that you didn’t do your due diligence. Still, most Democrats, like most Republicans, are bound to have a lot of erroneous beliefs about what their candidate would have done. A preponderance of voters will fall short when it comes to meeting the standards of due diligence.
At the same time, your mother is, as you say, mistaken to speak of her vote as if it were nobody else’s business. For these purposes, the causal consequences of how she voted, in one state or another, is a distraction. It isn’t that any of us is casting the determining vote; it’s that we’re joining with others to achieve the results we favor, collectively sharing responsibility for the outcome if we succeed. And because she has been open about her previous two votes, people who know her are entitled to ask her why she cast them. If they can’t make sense of her answer, they’re free to reproach her or express their disappointment. That goes for you as well: Treating your mother with respect means being honest about your views.
But it doesn’t mean cudgeling her with them. Once you’ve said your piece and listened to what she has to say in her defense, repeating the same arguments over and over would be the act of a bully.
At the same time, your mother is, as you say, mistaken to speak of her vote as if it were nobody else’s business. For these purposes, the causal consequences of how she voted, in one state or another, is a distraction. It isn’t that any of us is casting the determining vote; it’s that we’re joining with others to achieve the results we favor, collectively sharing responsibility for the outcome if we succeed. And because she has been open about her previous two votes, people who know her are entitled to ask her why she cast them. If they can’t make sense of her answer, they’re free to reproach her or express their disappointment. That goes for you as well: Treating your mother with respect means being honest about your views.
But it doesn’t mean cudgeling her with them. Once you’ve said your piece and listened to what she has to say in her defense, repeating the same arguments over and over would be the act of a bully
your mother is, as you say, mistaken to speak of her vote as if it were nobody else’s business. For these purposes, the causal consequences of how she voted, in one state or another, is a distraction. It isn’t that any of us is casting the determining vote; it’s that we’re joining with others to achieve the results we favor, collectively sharing responsibility for the outcome if we succeed. And because she has been open about her previous two votes, people who know her are entitled to ask her why she cast them. If they can’t make sense of her answer, they’re free to reproach her or express their disappointment. That goes for you as well: Treating your mother with respect means being honest about your views.
But it doesn’t mean cudgeling her with them. Once you’ve said your piece and listened to what she has to say in her defense, repeating the same arguments over and over would be the act of a bully.
Notes on “Taste” | Are.na Editorial
Taste has historically been reserved for conversation about things like fashion and art. Now, we look for it in our social media feeds, the technology we use, the company we keep, and the people we hire.
When I ask people what they mean by “taste,” they’ll stumble around for a bit and eventually land on something like “you know it when you see it,” or “it’s in the eye of the beholder.” I understand. Words like taste are hard to pin down, perhaps because they describe a sensibility more than any particular quality, a particular thing. We’re inclined to leave them unencumbered by a definition, to preserve their ability to shift shapes.
’ve found a taste-filled life to be a richer one. To pursue it is to appreciate ourselves, each other, and the stuff we’re surrounded by a whole lot more.
I can’t think of a piece of writing that does this more effectively than Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp.’” In her words, “a sensibility is one of the hardest things to talk about... To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble.
Things don’t feel tasteful, they demonstrate taste. Someone’s home can be decorated tastefully. Someone can dress tastefully. The vibe cannot be tasteful. The experience cannot be tasteful.
Someone could have impeccable taste in art, without producing any themselves. Those who create tasteful things are almost always deep appreciators, though.
we typically talk about it in binaries. One can have taste or not. Great taste means almost the same thing as taste.
They’re the people you always go to for restaurant or movie or gear recommendations. Maybe it’s the person you ask to be an extra set of eyes on an email or a project brief before you send it out.
It requires intention, focus, and care. Taste is a commitment to a state of attention.
As John Saltivier says in an essay about building a set of stairs, “surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality.”
To quote Susan Sontag again, “There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.” The sought-after interior designer may not mind gas station coffee. The prolific composer may not give a damn about how they dress.
Taste in too many things would be tortuous. The things we have taste in often start as a pea under the mattress.
it is often formed through the integration of diverse, and wide-ranging inputs. Steve Jobs has said, “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”
taste gets you to the thing that’s more than just correct. Taste hits different. It intrigues. It compels. It moves. It enchants. It fascinates. It seduces.
Taste honors someone’s standards of quality, but also the distinctive way the world bounces off a person. It reflects what they know about how the world works, and also what they’re working with in their inner worlds. When we recognize true taste, we are recognizing that alchemic combination of skill and soul. This is why it is so alluring.
many snobs (coffee snobs, gear snobs, wine snobs, etc.) often have great taste. But I would say that taste is the sensibility, and snobbery is one way to express the sensibility. It’s not the only way.
If rich people often have good taste it’s because they grew up around nice things, and many of them acquired an intolerance for not nice things as a result. That’s a good recipe for taste, but it’s not sufficient and it’s definitely not a guarantee. I know people that are exceedingly picky about the food they eat and never pay more than $20 for a meal.
creating forces taste upon its maker. Creators must master self-expression and craft if they’re going to make something truly compelling.
artists are more sensitive. They’re more observant, feel things more deeply, more obsessive about details, more focused on how they measure up to greatness.
Picasso remarking that “when art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.” Taste rests on turpentine.
the process of metabolizing the world is a slow one. Wield your P/N meter well, take your time learning what you find compelling, and why. There are no shortcuts to taste. Taste cannot sublimate. It can only bloom. To quote Susan Sontag one last time, “taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste.
JSON Viewer and Formatter - JSON.pub
Charge high prices with 95-endings
The Fury
Tracking Esther down at an after-hours club and marvelling at her artistry, he resolves to propel her into pictures. The number she performs at the club, “The Man That Got Away,” is one of the most astonishing, emotionally draining musical productions in Hollywood history, both for Garland’s electric, spontaneous performance and for Cukor’s realization of it. The song itself, by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin, is the apotheosis of the torch song, and Garland kicks its drama up to frenzied intensity early on, as much with the searing pathos of her voice as with convulsive, angular gestures that look like an Expressionist painting come to life. (Her fury prefigures the psychodramatic forces unleashed by Gena Rowlands in the films of her husband, John Cassavetes.) Cukor, who had first worked wonders with Garland in the early days of “The Wizard of Oz” (among other things, he removed her makeup, a gesture repeated here by Maine), captures her performance in a single, exquisitely choreographed shot, with the camera dollying back to reveal the band, in shadow, with spotlights gleaming off the bells of brass instruments and the chrome keys of woodwinds.
Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range weapons in Russia.
Consider this: Russia threatened "escalation" and promised attacks on NATO allies if we sent M1A1 tanks. We did, and nothing about their approach fundamentally changed. They made the same threats with HIMARs rocket launchers; again, we did, nothing changed. The Patriot Air Defense system, the cluster munitions, the F-16 fighter jets — over and over and over Ukraine has asked for support that the Biden administration has balked on giving immediately, all while Russia said "if you do this, we are really going to make you pay" — then we eventually do it and Russia doesn’t change its strategy.
Is it risky to bet that Russia will continue to bluff? Of course. Do I think Russia has any interest in widening this war — including a nuclear escalation — beyond the territories in Eastern Ukraine it is now struggling to defend or capture? No. NATO involvement would be a death-knell for Putin's war, and he knows that. Instead, after 1,000 days, the U.S. should start acting confidently, with the understanding that Putin is doing more flexing than punching.
It’s possible that threats exist I don’t fully understand. But with 20/20 hindsight, if I could go back to the first week of this war, I think I would have advocated that the U.S. give Ukraine everything it wanted right away and allowed them to better defend themselves — within their borders, in the skies, and on Russian territory. What we've done instead is create exactly the kind of war of attrition Russia is built to win, spent exorbitant amounts of money on weapons, and allowed a million Ukrainians and Russians to die.
i found millions of YouTube videos that have default camera names as titles (like IMG_0276) and made it into a website where you can watch random ones.
How Podcasts Became the New Battleground State
It’s widely established by now that Trump, who avoids all forms of unfriendly press, has rounded out his unwavering support from the right-wing media ecosystem by wholeheartedly embracing the “manoverse.” He’s appeared on bro-casts like This Past Weekend With Theo Von, Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant, and the Nelk Boys’ Full Send, among others, deepening a strategy of playing into the aesthetics and grievances of what’s often described as “disaffected young men,” a demographic that makes up a considerable portion of his base. These appearances take the shape of friendly hangouts where Trump and the hosts cover topics like sports, libertarianism, free speech, dads, and conspiracy theories, a topic that connects with the former president’s vigorous deployment of baseless claims. Trump’s campaign is so happy with this approach, apparently, that it seems to have fully integrated the digital subculture to further power its appeal. That’s how we ended up with the comedian-podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe, a.k.a. the host of the podcast Kill Tony, calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend.
in a culture supercharged by micro-celebrity and the internet, messiness is a kind of proxy for authenticity. As reflected by anything from Smartless to Call Her Daddy to any number of other reality-television podcasts, lasting episodes are ones containing moments that feel like you’re looking beyond the veil: a private revelation, the dispensing of tea, an instance of interpersonal friction, the emergence of an inside joke. This stacks the deck for Trump, a chaos agent whose primary gift is a capacity to make loud noises, redirect conversation, and keep your attention.
If Trump has successfully mapped his talent for making mess onto the basic incentives of a podcast, Harris is a classical operator still working with old media tactics. On Call Her Daddy and Club Shay Shay, Harris reiterated many of the same talking points and anecdotes she’s already delivered elsewhere. Speaking to Sharpe on the subject of grief and her late mother, Harris gave the same response as she did to Anderson Cooper during her CNN Town Hall on October 23. “Grief is difficult,” she says. “There are two sides to the coin. There are relationships in your life that touch you deeply, and then to lose that person, it leaves a big void.” It’s a thoughtful answer. It’s also too rehearsed to make a lasting impression on someone who, like Rogan, is interested in off-the-cuff remarks and visceral reactions.
Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk
MANAGING FINANCIAL INSTABILITY IN 2025
Managing Financial Instability Risks in 2025
Summary
- The analysis positions itself as a warning about economic warfare, not financial advice
Key threats identified:
- Alleged Russian influence over key US political figures including Trump and Musk
- Strategic goal to dismantle US through internal turmoil and financial destabilization
- Bitcoin characterized as an economic weapon in a zero-sum game
- Christian Nationalist alignment with plans to destroy dollar/Fed system
Immediate financial risks for 2025:
- Potential government shutdown due to no budget passage
- Proposed $2 trillion budget cuts by Musk
- US debt default risk as leverage for cuts
- Strategic Bitcoin Reserve proposal threatening dollar stability
Critical timeline identified:
- January 2 2025: Government runs out of money
- January 3: New Congress installation
- January 20: Treasury transition period
- May 2025: Potential default date ("X-Date")
Recommended defensive measures:
- Diversify holdings across bonds, real estate, gold/silver ETFs
- Avoid Bitcoin/crypto investments
- Contact representatives to oppose extreme measures
Additional considerations:
- Moving to another country unlikely to help financially
- Social Security potentially at risk
- Banking system likely to hold but spreading funds recommended
- Resolution depends on mainstream Republicans recognizing and countering these threats
Document context:
- Living document subject to updates
- Written by Dave Troy, presented as analysis of warfare operations
- Includes extensive bibliography and related articles
- Last updated November 16, 2024
A computational analysis of potential algorithmic bias on platform X during the 2024 US election | QUT ePrints
A Graveyard of Bad Election Narratives
The Cost-of-Living Crisis Explains Everything
headline economic figures have become less and less of a useful guide to how actual families are doing—something repeatedly noted by Democrats during the Obama recovery and the Trump years. Inequality may be declining, but it still skews GDP and income figures, with most gains going to the few, not the many. The obscene cost of health care saps family incomes and government coffers without making anyone feel healthier or wealthier.
To be clear, the headline economic numbers are strong. The gains are real. The reduction in inequality is tremendous, the pickup in wage growth astonishing, particularly if you anchor your expectations to the Barack Obama years, as many Biden staffers do.
During the Biden-Harris years, more granular data pointed to considerable strain. Real median household income fell relative to its pre-COVID peak. The poverty rate ticked up, as did the jobless rate. The number of Americans spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent climbed. The delinquency rate on credit cards surged, as did the share of families struggling to afford enough nutritious food, as did the rate of homelessness.
the White House never passed the permanent care-economy measures it had considered.
the biggest problem, one that voters talked about at any given opportunity, was the unaffordability of American life. The giant run-up in inflation during the Biden administration made everything feel expensive, and the sudden jump in the cost of small-ticket, common purchases (such as fast food and groceries) highlighted how bad the country’s long-standing large-ticket, sticky costs (health care, child care, and housing) had gotten. The cost-of-living crisis became the defining issue of the campaign, and one where the incumbent Democrats’ messaging felt false and weak.
Rather than acknowledging the pain and the trade-offs and the complexity—and rather than running a candidate who could have criticized Biden’s economic plans—Democrats dissembled. They noted that inflation was a global phenomenon, as if that mattered to moms in Ohio and machinists in the Central Valley. They pushed the headline numbers. They insisted that working-class voters were better off, and ran on the threat Trump posed to democracy and rights. But were working-class voters really better off? Why wasn’t anyone listening when they said they weren’t?
Voters do seem to be less likely to vote in their economic self-interest these days, and more likely to vote for a culturally compelling candidate. As my colleague Rogé Karma notes, lower-income white voters are flipping from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party on the basis of identitarian issues. The sharp movement of union voters to Trump seems to confirm the trend. At the same time, high-income voters are becoming bluer in order to vote their cosmopolitan values.
The Biden-Harris administration did make a difference in concrete, specific ways: It failed to address the cost-of-living catastrophe and had little to show for its infrastructure laws, even if it found a lot to talk about. And it dismissed voters who said they hated the pain they felt every time they had to open their wallet.
One last look at why Harris lost the 2024 election.
"The fog of war" is an expression that describes uncertainty about your adversary's capabilities and intentions while in the middle of battle. But it's also an appropriate way to describe our knowledge and understanding of history while living through it.
Everyone in the media seems to want this election to be about the issue they care most about, or to find a way to answer “why Trump won” or “what happened to the Democratic party” in a few sentences. I think that kind of quick summation is impossible. Elections are always decided by a confluence of several factors, some more important than others, and today I’m trying to lay out those factors I suspect were most relevant. That’s the goal: not to give a single, definitive answer, but a holistic and overarching one.
A lot of people, including Democratic strategists, have tried to explain to voters why they shouldn’t feel this way. They've pointed to low unemployment, inflation dissipating, and GDP growth — traditional metrics for measuring economic success — as proof that Bidenomics was working. But these macro numbers didn’t soothe the reality of what was happening at the granular level. Very few Democrats, and very few pundits, seem to have grasped this.
it turned out that Trump's 2020 performance (even in a loss) was the beginning of a new trend, not a fluke. While Democrats were focused on winning back white working-class voters, they actually lost support among their traditionally more multiethnic base.
You Don’t Believe In Free Markets And Free Speech If You’re Demanding Criminal Charges Against People For Their Free Market, Free Speech Decisions