Hello not-post-truthers. This newsletter is doomed. So begins its kamikaze run. I’m founding a new publication on this beat, The Screen. It will be a low-volume, magazine-style website — thescreen.org — with social media, a podcast, and a newsletter. That newsletter will supersede this one. It will have a different…

Gimlet Media, the deluxe podcast people, are reportedly considering a buyout offer from Spotify worth over $200 million. That would make them one of the grandest business successes of this cursed media era. Gimlet’s shows aren’t about politics, but whether or not it’s possible to create independent, high-quality media outlets…

Roger Stone, the Trump political svengali arrested by the FBI on Friday, has lived a long life of self-professed evil, like a lying, racist Zelig, playing a part — or claiming to have played one — in a number of well known efforts to subvert all that is politically decent…

— Mueller bops BuzzFeed’s scoop The Special Counsel's Office last night denied BuzzFeed News’s report alleging President Trump ordered former Trump Org executive Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the company’s Trump Tower Moscow project. Reporters covering the Justice Department encouraged a maximalist reading, writing that despite the vagueness of the SCO’s statement, the…

Welcome back, dear readers. For real this time. —Legal commentators missold Trump-Russia The FBI suspected Donald Trump of secretly working on Russia’s behalf against US interests and opened a counterintelligence investigation targetting him that was soon after taken over Special Council Robert Mueller, the New York Times reported last night. That means Trump’s efforts…

Hello dear readers. Please forgive me very long unexplained absence. Much has changed in the past months, but the public discourse remains broken. So, let’s continue. — Political Subterfuge Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty yesterday to eight felonies including violating campaign finance law at Trump’s direction. …

Welcome back, dear readers. It was a rocky, politics-filled week, and yet another hyper-paced Friday night (and Saturday morning) of news. I’m leaving a lot out and focusing on just two main stories, both on the theme of massive tech firms failing to address major criticisms. Enjoy! —MORE LIKE CAMBRIDGE BAN-ALYTICA Cambridge Analytica— the…

Welcome back, truth truthers. I don’t have any exposition for you this week. Enjoy the links and photos below. YOUTUBE = HOT POCKETS YouTube is designed to feed users increasingly-radical content on any topic they search for, from jogging, to vegetarianism, to political propaganda, argues Zeynep Tufekci of UNC. Web platforms sell ads, so…

“You’re so focused on building good stuff. You’re not sitting there thinking, if we get lucky enough to build this thing and get two and a quarter billion people to use it, then this other bad stuff could happen.” — Mike Hoefflinger, former Facebook executive. This newsletter covers one of…