I had no idea he had two Sinatra albums, and their profits go to a Down syndrome charity.

I don’t really share my thoughts on social media anymore, but today is a special occasion. I’m posting because it’s my ten-year wedding anniversary.

Marrying Maria McDevitt was unquestionably the smartest decision I’ve ever made, and I feel extremely lucky that we share our lives together. She continues to be my smarter, funnier, and prettier, better half.

I can’t wait for another decade (and beyond!) of laughter, love, and unforgettable memories together!

Why yes I did get married on 12/13/14. It was on purpose, of course.

The Illinois Flag Commission has released the 10 finalists for the new state flag design contest. Voting for the new flag design will begin in January 2025.

4669 - Interesting idea. Terrible execution.

5321 - The butterfly is unique and cool. Perfect color choices. Should win, but probably won’t.

4220 - The negative space throws me off.

4129 - Never would have ever figured out those were corn kernels.

3754 - Boring and bland.

3679 - I dislike the emphasis on Chicago with the offset star. Should come in second, but will probably win.

2752 - Actually terrible.

2246 - The most interesting one. I like it, but I don’t like-like it. Congrats to Clanin Creative from Champaign though.

896 - It’s the current one with bars. Hard no.

200 - Super generic.

Nicholas Bate –

Those goals we have in mind for 2025. How do make them happen? Make them STICK?

Consistency is all powerful. The magic word is everyday.

If you want to get fitter: every day.

If you wish to produce your novel: every day.

Your start-up? Plan and research every day.

But, but, but! Don’t we need a day off? Surely we deserve a day off? I mean I can’t exercise every day? That would be harmful surely? If I write every day, I’ll get writer’s block.

Try it. Sure, if you were doing press-ups every day that might be problematic. But you won’t. You’ll do press-ups some days and just a long walk another day. The key is every day you think and act fit. Some days are big edit days on your novel. The key is to become a writer.

Anyhow, you get the point. Every day will make any goal happen. That’s every day. No excuses.

I’m so glad that I made the right financial decision in 2018 and ditched my $89/mo cable package so that I can now pay $83/mo for YouTube TV, $23/mo for Netflix, $16/mo for Disney+, $13/mo for Paramount, $15/mo for Prime, $10/mo for AppleTV, and $21/mo for HBO

— Chris Bakke (@ChrisJBakke) December 12, 2024

Sigh.

YouTube sent emails to YouTube TV subscribers, like me, today to inform them about an upcoming price increase for the service. Starting on January 13, 2025, the base plan will cost $82.99 per month, up from $72.99 per month. At launch in 2018, YouTube TV was priced at just $35 per month, but pricing went up to $50 per month in 2019. In 2020, YouTube TV’s price was raised to $64.99, which then went up to $72.99 in 2023.

Ted Gioia points out that social media platforms bear some unfortunate similarities with the downfall of the modern American mall.

His three main points are as follows:

1. People go there because other people go there—but this is a fragile foundation for a community.
2. Malls died because there were too many of them. Social media is now entering that same phase.
3. Malls started to look identical, with the same merchandise, tenants, architecture, and ambiance.
4. Many malls, like social media platforms, became magnets for lurkers, losers, and toxic behavior of all sorts—and this made community-building impossible.
5. These bunkers were never real communities, and never will be. They’re just businesses—often run with distrust or contempt for their users.

That last one is the kicker and why I think many have left social media sites altogether. I expect more will do the same during the next four years.

The One Thing Substack Newsletter has a tremendous post titled The New Rules of Media. I don’t think I’ve seen something this strong, accurate, and eye-opening in a long time about our current media landscape. There are 20 rules, but I’ve highlighted a few of my favorites.

Everything is a personality cult, and maybe just a cult. You have to cultivate your own, no matter how small. To do so you must always be relatable, but also ideally aspirational. Just don’t get too out of the reach of your cultists.

Parasocial relationships are the name of the game. When people call for a Joe Rogan of the left, it seems like they don’t realize that one of the reasons he is so powerful is that he is many of his listeners’ best friend. People spend hours and hours a day with him; his show and its extended universe have become an on-demand loneliness killing service. The power (and value) of that relationship is unmatched. Puck is a parasocial publication, that’s why you hear the tentpole writers’ voices in solo podcasts.

The most compelling publications or media brands are the ones that can throw the best parties, because it shows they can mobilize an IRL group of interesting people, who are then consumers and customers and clients. (See Feed Me, The Drift, Byline / The Drunken Canal cinematic universe.) Media brands increasingly work like fashion brands: Consumers have to want to wear them. If no one wants to come to your party, you’re doing it wrong.

Broadcast on every channel, at least if you want to intensify your personality cult: text, livestream, video, audio. Jamelle Bouie broadcasts his ideas (and persona) on every platform at once. His TikTok commenters mostly ask him where he buys his very fashionable jackets. Now we’re watching Ezra Klein talk on the NYT site as well as listening to him. You have to be better than the rando parroting your articles in a selfie video.

Rely on nothing you can’t take with you. For now, Substack email lists and Stripe charges are still portable. If they weren’t, I would move to Ghost, because Substack’s incentive is to get you as locked in as possible. (Patreon still keeps your Stripe info, therefore fuck Patreon.) The same goes for audiences: Direct traffic, through homepages or email inboxes, is the most reliable because no one can take it from you, but it’s the hardest to cultivate.

Nothing matters more than the relationship between a person, brand, or publisher and their audience. Screentime has become a colosseum where everything is in competition with everything else: email from work competes with text from a friend competes with Instagram and Tiktok. Every second for the viewer is just that viral video where the person picks between two pop stars. You’re always deciding what to pay attention to. The relationship between person-who-makes and person-who-consumes is paramount to long-term success, because if you are winning that game then you will be able to survive.

Make sure you know why you’re doing something, especially if you’re a publisher or brand and you have limited bandwidth and / or resources. Your print magazine has a blog? Why? What is that accomplishing? Is it even good or does it make you look bad? Define your goals, inspect them thoroughly and be able to have an honest answer about why you want them. Media does too many things because they seem cool internally, when the audience doesn’t really give a shit.

Drew Magary, writing for SFGate, spends an entire column making fun of Bill Belichick.

The saddest thing you can do when you’re old and washed is to try to convince everyone you’re not old and washed. Take it from me, a 48-year-old man who doesn’t understand why kids today aren’t sufficiently appreciative of Def Leppard’s contributions to popular music. Culturally speaking, I have a fastball that moves slower than Bay Bridge traffic. Every time I try to pretend otherwise, God smites me by giving me more visible ear hair. Resistance is futile.

Speaking of futility, Bill Belichick.

Belichick was just hired as head coach at Cal’s longtime ACC rival, North Carolina. Everything about this move reeks of mutual desperation. UNC has never been a legit football program. That’s the top line here. This is not a seismic move. This will not alter the landscape of college ball forever. This is a mediocre program hiring a now-mediocre famous guy. Stanford and Bill Walsh gave this idea a try a few decades ago, and it failed miserably. The result will be no different this time. I don’t need to lay out my case much more than that. But I’d like to make fun of everyone involved here, so let me get into the details.

It reminds me a lot of the Lovie Smith hire at Illinois. It sounds great. He has a ton of pedigree. Hey, he even wants to hire his son.

I’m with Drew; it will fail spectacularly.

Nicholas Bate asks us to choose our word for the new year.

Choose a word. Any word. One word. Make it yours for 2025. Start thinking about it now. Whiteboard it. Write it every day on your planner. Put the word on a handful of 3 by 5 cards and place them in strategic places as an ever-present reminder. Make it BIG. Write it BOLD.

I didn’t have a word for 2024. However, I like Patrick Rhone’s word he picked so much that I think I will use it in 2025 for me.

If you have to have a full-blown 2000-word article fact-checking your interview with the individual you designated Time’s Person of the Year, perhaps that individual was a poor choice.

Seriously, this is shitty journalism.

Will Leitch, writing on his Medium blog, says it’s super important for everyone to find their distractions.

As we prepare for what awaits, we can take our solace, and our comfort, and our escape, in our worlds of diversion, of frivolity, of goofy texts about basketball or bad television or sudoku or which one of your friends looks the most like Timothée Chalamet. The world is larger than that. But day-to-day: That’s what our actual world looks like too. It is, after all, also history. I know Muammar Gaddafi’s death was a bigger deal than the Rally Squirrel was. But not in this house it isn’t. I think that’s OK. I think it is healthy.

I have plenty of things to distract me. Family, friends, more television and movies to watch than I have time for, more books to read than I have time for, and more blogs like Will’s to read and dream of distractions like the St. Louis Cardinals being competitive again.

Everyone who was ever a billed-in-the-opening-titles cast member of Saturday Night Live. I’m amazed how many of these people I’ve never heard of and so many cast members I’d forgotten. Hello, Laurie Metcalf.

Tricia Tisak, writing for The New York Times, has an interesting collection of 24 things that happened for the first time in 2024.

The selections range from groundbreaking scientific moments to technological breakthroughs and, of course, geopolitical events.

Malia Mendez for the Los Angeles Times –

Nicko McBrain bid farewell over the weekend to the last crowd of metalheads he will ever perform for as a touring member of Iron Maiden.

McBrain, 72, who has served as the British heavy metal band’s drummer for more than 40 years, announced his retirement from touring hours before the band’s Saturday show in Sao Paulo, Brazil — the closer of the Future Past Tour.

“After much consideration, it is with both sorrow and joy, I announce my decision to take a step back from the grind of the extensive touring lifestyle,” the London-born musician wrote in a statement on the band’s website, adding that Saturday’s show would be his “final gig” with the band.

McBrain had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He regained his mobility after weeks of physical therapy. It’s an amazing story.

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Bill Burr on his Monday Morning Podcast:

What’s annoying me about this kid who killed the CEO, none of these news programs are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they are at their most vulnerable.

After we’ve all given you our money every fucking month and now we finally need you and all you do is deny us. And then these pussies are taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I gotta be honest with you, okay I love that CEOs are fucking afraid right now. You should be. By and large, you are a bunch of selfish, greedy, fucking pieces of shit and a lot of you are mass murderers you just don’t pull the trigger. That’s why it looks clean.

I’m glad I stumbled upon Bill Burr’s podcast the other day. This is hardcore. Pulls no punches. Lays it all out. And the bottom line is he’s not wrong.

For more than half a century, Syria has been ruled by the Assad family – thirty years by the elder Hafez, and nearly as long by his son Bashar – a brutally authoritarian reign that, following the Arab Spring in 2011, devolved into an even more brutal civil war that has claimed half a million lives. The deeply complicated conflict, a bloody multipolar struggle between the Russia-backed Assad regime, the US-backed opposition forces, Iran-backed Hezbollah, the Kurdish leftist enclave in Rojava (and its Turkish antagonists), various ISIS-aligned terror cells, and myriad competing tribes, warlords, and sub-groups, has been more or less static since a 2020 ceasefire. That is, until a surprise offensive late last month by the Islamist opposition group HTS triggered a pile-on from all sides that broke through Aleppo, Homs, and finally Damascus, swiftly collapsing the Ba’athist government in a matter of days and driving Assad out of power (and out of the country). The regime’s stunning fall is a massive blow to Russia, reshaping the balance of power and leaving an unprecedented power vacuum as a shattered nation looks to the future.

Donation resources: UNHCR - UNICEF - Syria Relief - Karam Foundation - International Rescue Committee - Islamic Relief Worldwide - Save the Children

HT: Metafilter

The word of the year: Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary says it’s “enshittification” (wasn’t that last year?) while Oxford says it’s “brain rot.”

I know it’s still 2024, but I’m absolutely sure the 2025 word will be kakistocracy.