After a recent discussion with friendly fellow journalists, I started using Reddit again. I’d dumped Reddit after the whole dustup this summer between the Reddit CEO and the developer of the Apollo client. It left me feeling like the CEO was a petty jerk, and I didn’t want to support him.

But after Friday I decided to give Reddit another try, and I find I like the discussion there. And call me a sucker but I like watching the karma points rack up.

And it’s a good opportunity to promote articles.

But I miss Apollo. Reddit is barely usable on the iPhone and iPad without Apollo.

WSJ: Meta Is Struggling to Boot Pedophiles Off Facebook and Instagram

The headline and deck on this article are too kind to Meta. The companies do not seem to be “struggling” to get rid of this content. They don’t seem to be trying very hard at all.

More from Casey Newton (paid sub required I think) who points out the difference between “Internet problems” and “platform problems.” “Internet problems” arise from the fact that we live in a world where evil exists, and will inevitably find its way onto the Internet. “Platform problems” are unique to a particular platform.

Pedophilia content on Meta platforms isn’t an Internet problem. Facebook and Instagram are actively promoting that content to pedophiles.

I’m not feeling good about being on Facebook right now.

Neil Barsky at The Guardian:

One gray Sunday in the middle of the Covid lockdown, I received an unwelcome call from my family doctor. Until then, for virtually my entire life, I had managed to stay out of a doctor’s office, except for routine checkups. My luck had run out.

“I am sorry to disturb you on a weekend,” she said. “But your tests just came back and your blood sugar levels are alarming. I am pretty sure you have diabetes.”

Barsky controls his diabetes with lifestyle changes.

I did the same more than 10 years ago—diet, exercise, and losing 100 pounds of weight.

My diet is different than Barsky’s. I do eat carbs—pizza on Fridays, plenty of fruit every day, and 4-6 cookies as a bedtime snack.

But I eat a lot less carbs than I did in my pre-diabetes life.

I rarely eat sandwiches anymore, or potatoes, nachos and other chips, or rice.

I almost never have a burrito anymore, even though I live in a Mexican-food capital of America,

I do miss that Mexican food.

I question the advice that the author initially got from his doctor. When I was diagnosed with diabetes, 20 years ago, my doctor told me that both lifestyle changes and medication were the answer to managing the disease. Barsky’s doctor seemed to brush off lifestyle changes and focus just on meds.

Max Read:

.. you know the kind of movies I’m talking about: Movies set on submarines; movies set on aircraft carriers; movies where lawyers are good guys; movies where guys secure the perimeter and/or the package; movies where a guy has to yell to make himself heard over a helicopter; movies where guys with guns break the door into a room decorated with cut-out newspaper headlines. … Movies that dads like. I love these movies pretty unreservedly and only somewhat ironically.

This essay starts great and just gets better.

I have seen most of these movies and enjoyed every one. These are the only movies I need to see for the rest of my life.

Kirsten Powers:

I began to notice a learned helplessness in the United States, where people don’t revolt at the notion of a college education costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wondered why so many people treat it as completely normal that we have GoFundMe campaigns to help people pay for life-saving medical care that their health insurance won’t cover.

I watched as people on social media claimed it was “pro-labor” to tip a person for ringing up your order at a food or coffee chain rather than demanding the multi-millionaire (or billionaire) owner of that company pay their employees a living wage (as is the norm in Europe, where tipping is not expected and the owners of the restaurants and stores are typically not among the uber-wealthy).

I realized there are other places in the world (not just Italy) where life isn’t about conspicuous consumption and ‘crushing’ and ‘killing’ your life goals, where people aren’t drowning in debt just to pay for basic life necessities. There are places where people have free time and where that free time is used to do things they love — not to start a side hustle.

Ends on a hopeful note. The United States can—and should—do better.