Between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and all of the other insane rampant consumerism as we wrap up the year, let’s use the Sunday to support independent media.

Here are some of the projects that I subscribe to. I am definitely forgetting some that I do and there are many worthwhile outlets to that I don’t at this time.

*404 Media covers the intersection of technology, culture and the world, with sharp analysis and diligent investigation from journalists formerly at Motherboard. This is the sort of independent journalism that is able to speak truth to power.

*Accidental Tech Podcast are my kind of nerds. While I don’t always care enough about the arcane details of Mac nerdery that Marco, Casey, and John talk about each week, they do find interesting details and usually share their process of learning in thoughtful ways.

*Defector, like Deadspin before it, is a sports blog that’s about more than just sports, and not just because of the high quality of the writing. It covers sports and culture and politics.

*Escape Collective is about cycling, both as a sport, as an industry, and a lifestyle. Not only is EC a great website, but they do great podcasting (particularly their on-the-ground daily coverage from the Tour de France (both the TdF Hommes sans Zwift and the TdF Femmes avec Zwift) and host a lovely community.

*Extra Hot Great continues to be a great podcast about TV, from the creators of Television without Pity. Somehow, the heyday of TWoP was about 20 years ago???

*kottke.org is still the paradigmatic link blog and somehow continues to be fascinating and new consistently.

*Law Dork, Chris Geidner is a great writer and astute analyst of the courts and justice.

*Mountain Gazette is a singularly large magazine. Literally. Mike Rogge created this iteration of Mountain Gazette as a large format print publication, and it takes advantage of it with spectacular photography, as well as long-form snow and mountain culture writing.

*The Onion has been essential for years. If it did nothing else beyond reminding us that the American approach to gun violence is “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” dayenu. But, revitalized under new independent ownership, they’ve gone and bought the assets of Infowars. I’m happy to contribute to support this work and see what they do.

*Platformer covers the online social platforms and their relationships with the world. It’s essential for understanding how our culture, news, and politics are filtered through the choices and lenses of the various platforms and gatekeepers.

*Search Engine picks up some of the legacy of the Reply All podcast and is thoughtful and interesting without ever telegraphing where it is going.

*The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast from the newly independent Stuart Winchester is the most thorough coverage of the world of ski resorts. The in-depth interviews with ski resort managers give the same attention to detail and thoroughness to the largest resorts and the smallest indepedent mom-and-pop hills.

There are certainly more great independent news media worth your support (and I suspect even some that have earned my support that I’ve forgotten).

Over the last week, I can’t look at the news without thinking about kakistocracy

The Trump transition 2.0 is a very different clown car than the first Trump transition. In 2016, it seemed like Trump never understood the scale and scope of the Federal executive. For him, nothing could require more personnel or skill than running a New York real estate business. In 2024, a universe of MAGA loyalists, opportunists, and true believers are ready.

As with all things Trump, they just keep throwing things out to see what sticks. I think it’s crucial to remember that none of this is a single multi-step plan (do A to then do B to do C to then do D). Rather, they will try all of the things as much and as loudly as possible, see what sticks, and then move on to the next thing.

The “throw all the shit at the wall” tactic works through obstructions and fatigue as much as careful planning. Trump successfully avoided trial in three of the four criminally cases against him by lucking into a compliant ally in Judge Cannon in the federal documents case, which slowed the process down enough to get Trump to the election.

This throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach is how Trump is trying to fill his cabinet: reward the true believers who stick with him (Elise Stefanik), the friends from TV who will loyally help purge the disloyal (Pete Hegseth), and the heavily compromised whose loyalty can be secured (Matt Gaetz).

Even where the appointments are within the realm of typical Republican quality, like Marco Rubio for State, there are potential Trump loyalty issues underlying them. Elevating Rubio to Secretary of State would clear a seat in the US Senate for an appointment by FL governor Ron DeSantis until a special election in 2026. It appears that the Trumpworld is pushing Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump to fill that seat. While Rubio is not the most independent-minded maverick in the Senate, he’s not going to be as loyal as family.

The two most dangerous appointments announced so far appear to be Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Gaetz has experience in the Justice Department only as the subject of an investigation. His appointment seems to be the least palatable to Senate Republicans and unlikely to succeed. But leading with this lead-weighted trial balloon may clear the path for smooth appointments for the even more loyal Todd Blanche as Deputy AG and John Sauer as Solicitor General.

RFK Jr. for Secretary of HHS is likely the compensation for the support as a third-party candidate/endorser. For all of the issues with Big Pharma having influence over policy, I can’t imagine that drastic cuts to basic research funding will satisfy industry. I would be surprised if this goes through.

But having key lightning rods who are clearly unsuitable for the roles to which they’ve been nominated might help clear paths to appointments for the even more dangerous. Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard seems to have bonded with Trump as fellow Russophiles.

Aside from nominating flawed candidates, the appointment process is also testing other theories of ensuring loyalty to Trump rather than the United States. First, eschewing FBI vetting.

Most dangerously, the Trump team is floating the idea of making all of the cabinet appointments as recess appointments, so that the Senate does not get to use its oversight power before appointing cabinet members. If the Senate does not simply acquiesce, the Trump team has floated the idea of using the never-invoked Article II, Section 3 authority to settle disagreements between the House and Senate about when to adjourn to force the Senate into adjournment and make recess appointments. A compliant Speaker of the House could be a willing ally in this plan. Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare: Will the Senate even get to vote on Trump’s bizarre national security nominees?

It’s not one thing, or another. It’s all the things, all the time to try to wear us all down and get as much authoritarianism and grift as the system will allow.

Whether Jimmy Carter’s malaise, HW Bush’s recession, and the pandemic chaos in 2020, the one-term presidencies in my lifetime are all defined by economic downturn or the perception of economic downturn. 2024 appears to be no different. And this is not just an American phenomenon, but globally, incumbent parties were resoundingly rejected by voters unhappy with the status quo, both on the left (like the Democrats in the US) and the right (e.g. the Tories in the UK).

Every governing party facinig election in a developed country this year lost vote share:

Here in the US, aside from noticeable inflation, a number of pandemic-era anti-poverty measures were simply allowed to expire.

As a result, US child poverty nearly tripled between 2021 and 2023.

I suppose that it makes sense economic opportunity is something that binds Americans together. That’s why most of us are here, isn’t it? Our United States traces our organizing principles down to a bunch of colonizers who realized that they could just settle here and take advantage of the natural bounty. That grew and expanded. The market for cheap labor started by enslaving people, but even before it was abolished, the dream of prosperity started bringing waves of immigrants into the country seeking a better life with more economic opportunity. Yes, many Americans immigrated here because of the democracy and freedom to escape repressive regimes and be able to speak, practice religion, and associate freely, but generally when we say that they came for a better life, we talk about the economic opportunity. Immigration was the engine that fed cheap labor into the system and allowed generations of immigrants come to America and build better lives for themselves and their children.

In this 2024 election, the more informed a voter was, the more likely they were to vote for Harris. Reuters/Ipsos found a correlation between believing in misinformation and voting for Trump:

Engagement with information is also tied to engagement with campaign activities. This is why the energy, enthusiasm and attendance gap at the candidates' rallies was so stark. More Harris supporters were highly engaged. Trump won the low-engagement voters by a huge margin. They’re not going to hear him speak for 3-hours. But these are the voters who are impacted by the economy and are voting for change. Even though they lived through the first Trump presidency, they still voted for “change” without scrutiny to the basic concepts of candidates' economic plans.

Informed voters are motivated by concerns like democracy and protecting people’s rights to bodily autonomy. Low-information voters are motivated primarily by their pocketbooks. Low-information voters come out for presidential elections but not midterms. So the anti-Dobbs wave that I expected to combine with anti-insurrectionist indignity to drive this election with righteous fury never existed. This is a small fire burning fiercely, but not an uncontainable wildfire. Ezra Klein: The Democratic Blind Spot That Wrecked 2024

In the swing states where the Harris campaign spent the most resources on getting its message out to voters, they performed better than in safe states where they invested fewer resources.

Everyone wants things to be better. We may have honest disagreements on what we mean by better, but if you look at the policy proposals on their own, the more popular policies are not the ones offered by the more popular candidate.

Unfortunately, becoming a well-informed voter was far more difficult than it should have been in 2024. This is all Craig’s fault. Before widespread internet use, the local news business relied on classified listings and advertising to fund journalism. Craigslist and other online job listing and marketplace platforms were all simply better and far more useful than classified ads in newspapers. The media has survived through community-supported efforts, consolidation into larger conglomerates, or patronage from billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Marc Benioff. But, at the same time, conservative activists continue to fund a vibrant and active idealogical echo chamber. Nothing with comparable scale or purity exists on the left. Conservative media continues to cast the mainstream moderate news media like the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post as the left-wing media.

Algorithmic social media is also imbalanced. The social network formerly known as Twitter amplifies right-wing messages and misinformation. Meta’s platforms default to minimizing political content and amplifying content that is easier to sell advertising against. Who, except from Bytedance and the CCP, knows what TikTok’s algorithm prioritizes?

The billionaires who funded the Trump campaign got great value. They will not have to contend with a potential wealth tax. Rather, they will get rewarded for their patronage and continue to fund the foundations that support the conservative thinktank and media environment.

One of Trump’s unique political skills is his ability to read an audience and give them what they want, regardless of whether he directly contradicts himself or promises the clearly impossible. However, while Trump offers many contradictory statements, after living through one Trump presidency, I think it is clear what his top priorities will be: rewarding his loyal supporters, punishing his enemies, deporting as many people as possible, and making sure that he gets a cut of the profit, all of the glory, and deflecting blame onto anyone else. The conservative donors and backers will get their tax cuts, they will get their government contracts, and they will get their conservative judges.

Tariffs are not a sound economic policy. But they are an ideal policy in a transactional presidency. Exemptions from tariffs could be used to incentivize friendly behaviors. Tariff policy can be used to punish non-compliant businesses that rely on imports. Of course, none of this is regard to the actual economic impact, which will devastate small businesses across the country.

The transactional presidency will likely apply to all aspects of the executive branch. Trump-friendly states could get disaster relief quickly. Unfriendly states could be left to suffer.

After hollowing-out the administrative state, and appointing hundreds more anti-regulatory Federalist Society judges to the federal courts, abandoning support for other democracies as a core value of international relations*, and four more years of greed writ large on the national psyche, this will never be the diverse, entrepreneurial, and free country that it could be. Where we attract talent from all over the world to make a good life for everyone in this country.

Any failure to make intelligent choices about policy will create disastrous long-term effects. In particular, not addressing climate change will cause more people to suffer from natural disasters. Without intelligent and empowered regulators, an administration willing to provide opportunity to seek profit by working with AI accelerationists seems like the mostly way that AI could lead to problems. However far away true AGI may be, we are much closer to automated decision-making that could have devastating effects if used without thoughtful intent, oversight or understanding. Further eroding the public health system will only hasten the next pandemic and ensure that it is even more destructive than Covid-19.

Defunding education is likely to mean that lower tax states will struggle to fund public schools. Public education was crucial to building the strong middle class of the 20th century. As a result, it’s plausible to see a scenario where high school education is made optional and more teenagers are sent out into the workforce to take the low-wage work that were vacated as a result of Trump’s mass deportations. That’s also good for ensuring a continuing supply of Republican voters in the future.

Trump supporters see a need to Make America Great Again because everyone who is not a billionaire is being left behind by society in some way. But the Trump plans will not help more Americans get ahead. Instead, these plans try to address this pain by inflicting it on others. Instead of feeling better through success, feel better only by knowing that someone else is feeling worse. As people, we should all try to do things to make each other’s lives better that way we all win. Instead of healing the world, they are merely passing pain down the chain to the more vulnerable. Immigrants and transgender people are the most obvious targets for these actions. Local law enforcement will likely feel empowered and encouraged to act with more violence and cruelty, even if such actions contravene the official state and local policy. The most vulnerable among are the easiest targets and will suffer the most.

This is the future that we have chose. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Some other good analysis: emptywheel: Two Elections: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check”

Daniel Drezner: My One Post-Mortem About the 2024 Election

The Paris Olympics has been one of the best in recent memory and a wonderful set of sports to bring people together.

With the exception of the water quality for the triathlon swim in the Seine, Paris has used existing and temporary venues around the city to great effect. It feels like less of a boondoggle than many previous Olympics.

Some of the new sports added this year are solid additions. Sport climbing is interesting. Breaking exceeded my low expectations and is fun and entertaining. Gymnastics might be better if it had more one on one duels like breaking.

I’m not sure that I’d ever seen Rugby Sevens before, but it’s a great, watchable, fast, fun sport, with quick play, constant action, little downtime, and short games. Ilona Maher is deservedly one of the breakout stars of this year.

Of the sports that I follow more closely, both of the road cycling races were exciting. Kristen Faulkner’s win was not only unexunexpected, but tactically clever and thrilling. Remco needing a bike change (without being able to tell the team car about it over race radio) was a tense moment full of adrenaline. (Between two Olympic golds and a podium at the Tour, he’s had a pretty good month!)

NBC has finally recognized that viewers want to watch events live, as they happen. Good sporting events don’t need to be interrupted by human interest clips packages to be interesting. Understanding the personalities and the stories that brought some of the best athletes in the world to compete add to the drama. Streaming has enabled Peacock to do both. By making all of the feeds available live, they’re able to meet the simple demands of sports fans (watching the events as they happen). The primetime network coverage can include all of the packaging. Who would have predicted that by 2024, Snoop Dogg and Flavor Flav would become cuddly Olympics mascots?

For having a feed of things on and jumping around to highlights, Gold Zone was a great way to dip in and out of events. Somehow, Peacock got the balance largely correct for the Olympics (unlike the Tour de France).

One downer is the fact that the Olympics, like France, and the rest of the world has essentially just given up on doing anything to prevent the spread of Covid, which is a significant failure. Since Covid is likely to cause persistent long-term damage, the number of athletes who were allowed to and chose to compete while infected may have significant consequences for them. You can’t blame the athletes because there’s no public health leadership discouraging or preventing.

In the wake of the January 6 riot at the Capitol, it looked like Trump was done. Democrats and Republicans condemned inflammatory rhetoric and violence. Yet, even though that was enough of a visceral scare to Congress to bring a second impeachment against Trump, there were still enough. Republican Senators who didn’t support conviction.

During the Biden administration, efforts to hold Trump accountable and ensuring mechanisms to prevent a future authoritarian executive were stymied. During the last Congress, Democratic control of the Senate was tempered by Manchin and SInema’s maverick positions kept the filibuster in place. The Republican party has primarily stood for opposing whatever democrats propose, more than any actual policies. Protecting democracy not being something that Republicans would be willing to do, even if it had the potential to keep the sitting Democratic president in check.

Trump-friendly courts have issued rulings that lay the foundation for a system where TFG is above the law and prosecutors do not have the authority to pursue TFG. Trump was dealt the most favorable hand possible with Judge Cannon’s selection to preside over the classified documents trial where she’s been able to to slow and scramble the prosecution of that case enough to avoid any pre-election trial, if not any accountability. The Supreme Court not only managed to delay the trial in the January 6 prosecution, but also created a system where a President has broad immunity over any official act.

So much of our system is based on norms, rather than laws. Sometimes, the law has been adapted to codify norms, such as the 22nd Amendment. During his presidency, Trump tested the bounds of the ways norms and regulations constrain the application of power. After Trump realized that his base doesn’t care if he acts “Presidential” or not and conservative think tanks have spent the last few years drafting a blueprint for applying power to bring about a white Christian nationalist theocracy, there is no reason to believe that a second Trump presidency will be anything but a disaster for anyone who isn’t a white supremacist or be willing to play ball and do business with the kakistocracy.

And now we stand on the precipice of a dangerously close election. Joe Biden is a fine President, but this is a job that visibly ages the people who serve in it and Biden is the oldest person to serve as President. And whatever the causes (fatigue, illness, stutter, dealing with a loud narcissist across the stage) it was not a reassuring performance. (His appearances over the last couple of weeks have been reassuring.)

Trump will pull the US out of NATO and align with Putin and Orban. Trump will unreservedly support whatever Netanyahu wants to do in Gaza. I’d suspect that it is highly likely that results in the current hostilities in Ukraine and Gaza to break out into larger regional wars and an isolationist, anti-immigrant Trump administration standing back and standing by while a Russia-EU war or a regional conflict in the Middle East. Anti-abortion laws will restrict women’s rights to bodily autonomy. A post-Chevron regulatory state will favor whoever the administration decides in in favor.

It is frustrating to think about potential stakes of this election and fear that all that Democrats have to offer to counter the end of America is “donate money” and “vote harder”! And since there appear to be no institutional responses left to save the day, all that we can do is vote. I believe that there are significantly more people in this country who oppose Project 2025 and support women’s rights to control their own bodies than who support Trumpism, but the stakes are high and the consequences dire.

This year’s Oscars included a number of major nominees adapting high-profile books (or toys). Oppenheimer was a masterful adaption of a long biography and yet somehow managed to find the right version of the story to tell within its 3-hour running time. In contrast, Killers of the Flower Moon was a well-made film, but at more than 3 hours, was far too long. Yet, it was also far too short. Instead of being a deserving Best Picture nominee, this same cast and crew could have made a 6-8 hour limited series that would have won every Emmy. It also would have been able to develop more of the characters and tell a more complete version of the story. That said, I look forward to reading the book to learn more.

After 2 episodes of 3 Body Problem, I am pleasantly surprised. I read the books and enjoyed them – but they tend to focus more on the concepts than the characters (the concepts are big). Since this is Benioff and Weiss' second take at adapting a nearly impossible to adapt nerd-loved book series, I think everyone is a bit cautious. A Song of Ice and Fire sprawled beyond Martin’s ability to wrap it up in any coherent way. The Game of Thrones TV series did a very good job of adapting those books by streamlining – until it fell flat after getting ahead of the books when they were streamlining and adapting notes and outlines). Three Body Problem (and the other books in the series) are full of huge ideas, but not necessarily huge character moments. Hopefully, this series will achieve its ambitions over its full run. But considering the lukewarm critical reception, I am pleasantly surprised. I think that Netflix’s single day release schedule could limit discussion and conversation. Being able to talk about and think about a show for a week is part of the enjoyment of the medium.

I was surprised last week to see an ad for the limited series adaption of A Gentleman in Moscow, which premieres Friday March 29 on Showtime/Paramount Plus. I’d vaguely remembered that the Amor Towles novel was optioned, but hadn’t heard anything about its release before. A limited series should be the right form for adapting this, which takes place over a sprawling time period with the breaks making for opportunities for episode breaks. This is a wonderful book and the preview looks promising.

How the tables have turned from the 1990s, when Apple’s share of the computer business was so marginal that the DOJ filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft. Now, the DOJ has filed an antitrust case against Apple alleging that it uses unlawful anticompetitive practices to protect its monopoly in premium smartphones.

United Sates v. Apple, Inc.

Apple fervently believes that any useful activity that happens on its platforms could not exist without its platforms and is entitled to a cut of that activity. Yet some of the same features that Apple uses to provide a good platform experience are also the ones that the company is embracing and extending its control over its platforms for anticompetitive purposes.

But just as Apple believes that it deserves a cut of what developers earn using Apple platforms, the DOJ takes credit for Apple’s success. The iPod succeeded because it was available to Windows users, thanks to the “pathclearing antitrust enforcement case, brought by the United States and state attorneys general, against Microsoft opened the market and constrained Microsoft’s ability to prohibit companies like Apple from offering iTunes on Windows PCs.”

The complaint calls out five situations where Apple has used its control over app distribution or control of access to certain private APIs in iOS to suppress some technologies: *Super apps *Cloud streaming game apps *Messaging apps *Smartwatches *Digital wallets

While these may be the five areas that have the most evidence supporting anti-competitive behavior, these likely are not the areas where consumers and developers suffer the most harm.

Apple offers no benefit to consumers by prohibiting game streaming apps and making it more difficult for other smartwatches to integrate with iOS. Other GPS and smartwatches have second-rate options to integrate with iOS than the Apple Watch.

But it is arguable that Apple actually supports the privacy and security of its customers by controlling access to SMS and NFC hardware. Users who take a phone number from iOS to Android suffer from iMessage continuing to hijack the behavior of messages sent to a registered phone number. Allowing users to let different services take over handling SMS messages could be even more of a mess. Yet, the fact that iMessage is the default makes it difficult for iPhone users to switch to a different cross-platform act and it definitely locks users onto the iPhone to avoid bouncing back to green bubbles.

Requiring all NFC payment transactions to route through Apple Pay instead of letting banks directly access the system hardware does give Apple a part in every tap to pay transaction through iPhones. But as a user, requiring that all payment access flow through the system wallet does feel like a reasonable way to secure those transactions.

But, super apps? Really? Do consumers actually want to interact with bloated, cross-platform apps that may not have strong privacy controls or user experience? Isn’t this just creating future opportunities for anti-trust enforcement against super app platforms?

Two areas where Apple does use its market power and the App Store’s role as a gatekeeper to harm developers and consumers are the anti-steering provisions and the use alternative payment methods for in-app purchases. (The complaint only calls this out with regards to super-apps and other digital wallets, not app developers generally). Developers are prohibited not just from using alternative subscription and payment methods in apps distributed through the App Store, but even prohibited from providing information to direct users to purchase subscriptions on the web, except for the limited category of “reader apps” (in other words, other services with enough market power that Apple needs them on its platforms). Except for the limited exemption to reader apps, developers are not just required to use Apple’s payment processing, but developers cannot even suggest to users how to purchase services on a website.

How many other companies are able to run Oscar-winning film and TV studio/streaming service (and Fitness+) essentially as a front? Do these actually move the needle on services revenue or merely reputation-launder the 30% revenue cut it takes on in-app purchases in iOS apps?

Also, since this was filed in the District of New Jersey, perhaps I’ll get a chance to do some live reporting…

Some actually thoughtful and interesting commentary: Sara Jeong, The Verge United States v. Apple is pure nerd rage “The only thing that’s missing is a tirade on how ever-increasing screen sizes are victimizing me, a person with small hands” (co-sign)

Casey Newton, Platformer, The Department of Justice comes for Apple “The more different experiences an app enables, the harder it is for Apple to evaluate it for security, privacy, and other concerns. Ultimately, I’m not convinced that consumers are harmed by having to download different apps for different purposes.”

Lauren Feiner, The Verge, ‘Even stronger’ than imagined: DOJ’s sweeping Apple lawsuit draws expert praise “Still, the details of the case will be challenging to prove. One key fight will likely be over what the relevant market is — a common area of contention in antitrust litigation.”

John Gruber at Daring Fireball: “Superiority is exactly what made the iPhone what it is — superior hardware, superior software, superior integration. Even a superior retail experience. Not only is the DOJ’s take on the iPhone’s success a complete misunderstanding of the actual market dynamics for phones, it’s flabbergastingly insulting.”

Andy Hawkins, The Verge, Apple CarPlay is anticompetitive, too, US lawsuit alleges “The inclusion of CarPlay, as well as digital key functions through Apple’s Wallet feature, came as a surprise to some analysts, who say that the DOJ may be misunderstanding the utility and functions of the phone-mirroring system.”

Jason Snell, Six Colors, U.S. versus Apple: A first reaction “What happens when that collides with a product that has extremely high customer satisfaction ratings? Those of us in the know are well aware of all the ways that Apple plays hardball, and understand that the company is so powerful that really the only way it will be convinced to change its ways is under threat of government intervention. But will American iPhone users feel like the government is on their side, in taking on an American tech giant that makes a product they actually enjoy using?”

For the first year since the Academy expanded the Best Picture category to 10 nominations, I actually watched all 10 nominated films before the Oscars. And in a year where there were a number of excellent films, my main takeaway was that the system of naming one winner in each category is fundamentally broken.

Instead of treating one winner and a number of losers, the Academy should think of the Oscars more like the Peabody Awards, where it honors the various achievements. The ceremony could give some films or individual achievements additional recognition or palmares, but could give each recognized film, performance, and craft some level of recognition.

In a year like this, where the stupendous Oppenheimer cast a shadow over everything else, this would help provide more attention to other deserving films. Being able to say, provide a top-tier award to both Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone, and secondary recognition to other lead actresses would allow for more equitable recognition of awards.

The way that this should work is that each category would have up to 5 nominees (or 10 nominees) for Best Picture. Categories would not be padded out to have 5 nominees in each, but films would need to have a certain amount of recognition to obtain an Oscar recognition. Further voting from the recognized films would allow additional recognition for extraordinary or outstanding achievements.

This wouldn’t necessarily help films like Killers of the Flower Moon that should have been an 8-hour miniseries instead of a 3+ hour film. (Seriously, the story of Killers needed more room to breathe and demonstrate the amount of time passing. It could have told the story more fully, developed all of the characters much better – particularly among the Osage community as a miniseries. That series would have wrapped up every Emmy Award).

But this would allow voters to recognize films like Oppenheimer that are outstanding technical achievements as well as perfect, normal-length films, like the exquisite Past Lives and not force voters to choose between films with astoundingly bonkers elements like Poor Things and broadly popular (yet far deeper than necessary) Barbie. And having tiers would allow the best achievements to have a full-size, real Oscar, while the recognized films at lower tiers would get miniature statuettes.

While I’m sure the entertainment media would hate losing the straightforward narrative of winners and losers, this system would more fairly recognize the fact that even receiving a nomination is an honor. But the upside of seeing more speeches and more positivity would probably make more people like more films.

About a year ago, as I realized that Twitter was no longer going to be the public space for conversations and connecting to communities and ideas, I set a goal of writing more on my blog. I failed.

I planned out a series of posts linking to creators independently making great writing, criticism, podcasts, recipes, videos, and other online multimedia. A few days into the year, my web host’s security scans informed me that malware invaded my Wordpress installation. I cleaned it up, looked into alternatives, and migrated my blog over to Hugo hosted on Firebase. The Hugo site is very fast, but publishing the site relied on Github actions. I looked into using Orbit, which I had setup to work well enough with Git on my own computer, but spent a little time trying to figure out how to run it as a Cloud Function to add a way to post from MarsEdit, but didn’t get far. After another malware infection, I deleted my Wordpress installation, but never fully set up an alternative and did nothing.

Eventually, I learned that Micro.blog is not just a way to aggregate hosted feeds into a social experience, but a complete solution aligned exactly towards how I think about blogging. It’s simple, straightforward, and offered at a fair price. It offers all of the blogging features that I need (a place to host a blog and post from MarsEdit or a mobile device). But even more importantly, Micro.blog is designed around the concept of owning one’s own social posts and being part of the broader community. And it works with its own app and MarsEdit so that I can post from any computer, iPad or phone (even though most would still be on my computer).

Hopefully, ActivityPub can be the basis for more of the internet to be able to interact with more of the internet. At The Verge, David Pierce elaborates why it could be a net good: 2023 in social media: the case for the fediverse: “It doesn’t make sense that we have a dozen usernames, a dozen profiles, a dozen sets of fans and friends. All that stuff should belong to me, and I should be able to access it and interact with it anywhere and everywhere.”

Anil Dash is optimistic that the internet is about to get weird and become more creative and less centralized.

I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about how we use new technology and the internet to create and communicate. Professionally, my work is based at the intersection of the arts, technology, intellectual property, and privacy. But, I realize that not everyone cares as much. They put their mental energy into other things, and I want to learn about those things from them. Social media has been a great force at democratizing access to a publishing platform to make that easy. And not everyone cares so much about that.

Using three platforms to try to connect to the same networks of people I was plugged into on Twitter is a lot more work. Since I like aspects of each of my connections on these networks, I try to use all three, which means I use them all less and the experience is worse, because it’s more disjointed, and not in an easily divisible way – how my Twitter community overlapped across many different communities was what I appreciated the most. None of the successor platforms are individually as complete as pre-sale Twitter.

Bluesky is currently the experience that’s most like early Twitter. Early Twitter was great because the universe of people who wanted to participate was small enough that it didn’t yet have all of the problems that come with scale. Bluesky has this great clubby feeling, and its webapp is super-fast and simple. There are a few things that Bluesky does very well, like the ability to design and share custom algorithmic feeds and its use of domain names for identity.

Mastodon is where the people who care most about the ownership and control of their online social experience. Unfortunately, this leads to far too much mansplaining and demands on how to use the Fediverse correctly. While the app ecosystem around Mastodon is very good (Ivory, elk.zone, Mammoth), it also has the worst out-of-the-box experience. At least signing up on the Mastodon website or app now defaults users to Mastodon.social instead of requiring users to pick a survey. The Mastodon web and mobile apps are just fine, they’re not great, but the third-party client experience is first-rate.

Threads is by far the easiest sell for most people who are plugged in enough to online community to want to participate, but not so concerned about the methods. It has the scale and the ability to acquire users through Meta’s other enormous mainstream platforms, Facebook and Instagram. This is going to be the easiest place for most people to write publicly on the internet. And frankly, that’s enough for most people. And there are people from that group of the most who I want to connect with.

People who are attentive to the world are aware that Meta does not have the best track record. Erin Kissane, Untangling Threads: “I think it’s a common misconception that Meta just kinda didn’t handle content moderation well. What Meta’s leadership actually did was so multifaceted, callous, and avaricious that it was honestly difficult for even me to believe.”

As much as many Fediverse denizens want to stay insulated from corporate social media, it seems likely that there will be a Fediverse equivalent of Gmail – a very large service provider that is easy and reliable enough for the mass market. If Threads does go all in with ActivityPub and fully join the Fediverse, it will dwarf the rest of the network in scale.

While it might seem that the best case scenario is to be able to interact with people who want to use Meta’s tools without having to directly use Meta’s services, Meta already collects information about people who do not use their products. In a federated world, content moderation becomes a federated challenge requiring collaboration between the connected platforms. Mastodon server administrators – some of whom are old enough to remember AOL joining the internet back in the 90’s and starting the eternal September – are not unjustified in fearing the amount of work that a federated Threads may make difficult.

So I am hopeful that the next phase of the internet makes it possible to have a single feed with posts from the people and publications I want to read and a way to post my mediocre thoughts out into the world, to wherever a person or two wants to read them.