“What does Jeff Bezos’ non-endorsement mean?” – Max Read

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“The idea of a billionaire sugar daddy buying and “stewarding” your institution as a charitable legacy project sounds kind of nice compared with alternative ownership structures (private equity, Macanese gambling syndicate, the GRU). But it’s fatally condescending to those newspapers and magazines. A good rule of thumb is: If the billionaire that owns you is not trying to influence you to hurt his political enemies, it’s because you don’t matter very much”

https://maxread.substack.com/p/what-does-jeff-bezos-non-endorsement

“The Big Squeeze: Why Everyone in Hollywood Feels Stuck” – Mia Galuppo (Hollywood Reporter)

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“You get to a point where you’re living in your beautiful house in the hills, you’re meeting only other wealthy people and you’re not connecting to the audience,” adds Galloway. “And the moviegoing audience is primarily young, so at a certain point you become really detached from them.”
Which explains why so much of what Hollywood is producing these days feels so familiar. For instance, there are currently remakes or sequels in development for ’80s classics like An Officer and a Gentleman, Ghost and Dirty Dancing — projects that have little or no emotional resonance to anyone under 50”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hollywood-workers-stuck-battle-opportunity-1236047705/

“Shadow of the Groundnut” – Dan Davies

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“The political “lessons” are more or less insurmountable – in this unfortunate world, we have to live with the fact that big projects are going to be led by people who come across well at interview, and that this is very much less than perfectly correlated with ability to do the job.

But the really crucial lesson would be “if something is going wrong, review whether it is viable and don’t hesitate to reverse course; abandoning a failed idea early is a good thing which should be to your credit”. Instead, the UK policy structure seemed to learn “don’t attempt anything big, because if it fails you will be blamed”

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/shadow-of-the-groundnut

“What’s really behind America’s men v women election” – Katty Kay (BBC)

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“It’s 2024 and few people want to be the jerk who’ll tell a pollster outright that they don’t think a woman is fit for the Oval Office (though plenty are prepared to share misogynistic memes on social media). A Democratic strategist suggested there’s a code, when voters tell pollsters that Harris is not “ready” or doesn’t have the right “personality” or “what it takes,” what they really mean is that the problem is she’s a woman”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr430gry81o

“Fandom has toxified the world” – Alan Moore (Guardian)

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“And while the vulgar comic story was originally proffered solely to the working classes, soaring retail prices had precluded any audience save the more affluent; had gentrified a previously bustling and lively cultural slum neighbourhood. This boost in fandom’s age and status possibly explains its current sense of privilege, its tendency to carp and cavil rather than contribute or create. I speak only of comics fandom here, but have gained the impression that this reflexive belligerence – most usually from middle-aged white male conservatives – is now a part of many fan communities. My 14-year-old grandson tells me older Pokémon aficionados can display the same febrile disgruntlement”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/26/fandom-has-toxified-the-world-watchmen-author-alan-moore-on-superheroes-comicsgate-and-trump

“Good grief” – John Elledge

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“But the thing about grief I never got before is that it’s not a straight line, or a curve, but a wave form. I sort of imagined, before all this, that it would be linear: things would be bad, but gradually they would get better; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But those stages don’t happen one after another, but pile onto you at random; you can be triggered by anything or nothing at all, and the pain of everything you’ve lost and the hole it left behind can still hit you like the first time again. Sometimes, when you think you’ve turned a corner, you run straight into a wall”

https://jonn.substack.com/p/good-grief

“Starmer deserves a better class of critic” – Ian Dunt

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“I’ve never wanted to love a politician. I evaluate them entirely negatively – not by wondering what wonderful things they will achieve, but by embracing all the terrible things they might prevent. I am prepared to accept all sorts of compromises with my own values as long as the government is better than the alternative. Voting is not an expression of my soul. It is not a demonstration of my identity. It is my attempt to secure marginal improvements on what came before, regardless of all the various disappointments it will necessarily entail.

If there is a central principle that this government is all about, it is about this chief distinction in politics – between those who want pragmatism and sobriety and those who want a great zero-sum battle in the sky”

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/starmer-deserves-a-better-class-of

“Issue 68 – Opportunity agenda” – Molly White

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“If there’s one thing crypto fans won’t give up on, it’s trying to create their own countries, sovereign communities, seasteads, and other things of that nature. One such community is the rather uncreatively named libertarian paradise that will be “Liberland” — at least if they can convince the Croatian government to stop arresting its supposed “citizens” every time they try to visit the roughly 1700-acrem patch of floodlands next to the Danube that Liberlanders claim is a sovereign state. (Croatia apparently disagrees)”

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-68/