Mitch's Blog

I loved this Ezra Klein interview with Kyla Scanlon, a newsletter writer who focuses on the attention economy. The discussion complements one of my greatest fears about the U.S. (and maybe the whole West) — that the economy, politics and society are now built on attention and virality, rather than things that matter — manufacturing, science, infrastructure, etc. It’s all about the retweets.

We’re doing ok now, coasting on past accomplishments, like wealthy spendthrifts living off the wealth of past generations. But it’s coming apart fast.

Donald Trump is, of course, the ringmaster of this circus.

Crypto is the apotheosis of the U.S. economy built on social media virality. Gilded Age robber barons were monsters, but they built railroads, coal and steel mines and factories. They built urban infrastructure. The U.S economy and society today are built on conspiracy theories and digital beanie babies.

This sounds dire — but we can stop this. People and societies have free will. It’ll take a while to dig out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into. I probably won’t live to see the end of this process. But we need to get started.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

“Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence – that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time,” Vance said.

He explained that such a definition “would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it “the logic of America as a purely Creole nation.”

By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship “purely as an idea” would “reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,” he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups.

“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he concluded.

My ancestors did not serve in the Civil War. My grandparents immigrated around 1905. I suspect that by Vance’s bullshit standards I don’t qualify as a real American, even though I and both my parents were born here.

It’s a strawman argument to suggest that anybody believes that simply agreeing with the ideals of the Declaration makes a person American. There’s more to it than that. But Vance’s blood-and-soil patriotism is both wrong and traitorous, and it’s particularly shameful that he gave his talk on Independence Day weekend.

Shockingly, Mamdani, who was born in Uganada to parents of Indian descent, checked both the “Asian” and “Black or African-American” boxes on his Columbia University application in 2009. Supposedly, this was wrong of him to do, even though he is, in fact, both Asian and African-American.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt:

Where’s the lie? Did Uganda move? Is it not in Africa anymore? Are we really going to pretend that America’s racial categories, designed primarily for descendants of American slavery, map perfectly onto the global complexity of human identity?

Also:

But here’s what kills me: they could have written a fascinating story about how a network of racist activists was trying to weaponize hacked university data that revealed nothing particularly interesting to attack a Muslim mayoral candidate. They could have exposed the whole operation. Instead, they decided to become part of it. It’s like if Woodward and Bernstein, upon discovering Watergate, had decided to focus their expose on how the security at the Watergate Hotel was top notch, with an anonymous quote from G. Gordon Liddy.

The Double Standard is Glaring

The Times' decision becomes even more indefensible when you consider their recent editorial choices. They refused to publish hacked materials about JD Vance during the 2024 election and declined to explain why. But when a racist hands them a hacked college application from 2009 that reveals nothing of public interest, suddenly those ethical concerns disappear.

The paper also famously decided not to endorse candidates in local elections–except when it came to Mamdani, whom they specifically urged voters not to rank at all on their ballots. Interestingly, they didn’t issue similar “please don’t vote for this person” guidance about Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who resigned over sexual harassment allegations and has been plagued with scandals from his mismanagement during the pandemic. Apparently checking the objectively accurate box on a college application is more disqualifying than a pattern of sexual misconduct and mismanagement.

Manufacturing Controversy To Justify Bad Journalism

Perhaps most galling is the Times' response to criticism. When readers and media critics pointed out how absurd this story was, an anonymous Times source told Semafor that the controversy proved they were right to publish this:

“The fact that this story engendered all the conversation and debate that it has feels like all the evidence you need that this was a legit line of reporting,” one senior reporter told Semafor.

But that’s not how any of this works. At all. Sometimes the “conversation and debate” is about how you should have known better.

The Times mostly does solid journalism. I subscribe and read it most days. But it also regularly kowtows to racist Republican interests.

Lindsay Zoladz at The New York Times:

Starr then drifted back to a memory of his early days gigging around Liverpool, before he joined the band that he sometimes refers to as “the Fabs.” “When I first started,” he said, “my mother would come to the gigs. She would always say, ‘You know, son, I always feel you’re at your happiest when you’re playing your drums.’ So she noticed. And I do.” He smiled. “I love to hit those buggers.”

Journalist Jennifer Senior writes at The Atlantic about her own and the nation’s struggles with insomnia: Why Can’t Americans Sleep?.

Like Senior, I have struggled with fierce insomnia, sometimes getting only two hours per night of sleep for several nights a week. It started in 2020 or so. And like Senior, medication has corrected the problem for me. She takes Klonopin; for me, it’s 50 mg of Trazodone, an antidepressant. I take it at bedtime, and I sleep soundly most nights. It hasn’t fixed my insomnia, but it’s reduced to two or three nights a month.

Not only is restored sleep great for my physical and mental health, but I get the added benefit that I can drink as much coffee as I want, whenever I want. It’s coming up on 4 pm right now and I’m thinking of fixing myself a cup now!