What a week. I don’t know about you, but we could all use some female power hip-hop in this joint. The Tiny Desk Concert from Doechii fits the bill. Featuring a full band, horns, and two background singers, the performance is a masterclass in creativity. I’m not even a huge fan of hip-hop, but this jazz-influenced mini-show is amazing. The girls with the cornrows… they got all the talent.

Need more? This Jazz musician reacts to the Tiny Desk concert.

Will Leitch, writing for New York Magazine, has a smart piece on the Super Bowl and how it’s trying to keep the outside world outside and how the Super Bowl itself is an escape from the outside world.

The Super Bowl is the most American of unifying traditions. But it’s happening with the country in a nearly unprecedented state of confusion — not even the people in charge seem to know who’s in charge — when nothing is unifying and tradition lasts as long as you can rip the copper wiring out of the walls. What does a country do when it is transmogrifying itself into something more unrecognizable by the second? Well, it does the one thing it has always done together: It watches the Super Bowl and pretends that everything is just fine.

That is to say, it handles it the New Orleans way. The New Year’s terrorist attack was only 38 days ago, yet it seemingly happened several decades in the past, or in a different universe. But it didn’t. It happened in the same area where I had dinner last night and saw countless colleagues, like I do every year at the Super Bowl, which is as close to a national sportswriter convention as anything in the business. It happened in New Orleans, and in America. But so much has shifted since then, so much will continue to shift, that lingering too long on one incident, one more speck of random violence in an ever-elevating spate of them, can’t help but leave you in the past. It all morphs together anyway. The terrorist truck driver, the plane crash, the January 6 pardons, the California fires, the Luka Dončić trade, some techie teenager bro with your Social Security number — it’s just one thing after another.

Combined, they just give more impetus to escape, to turn your mind off, to watch football, to pretend, for three hours, like none of this is happening. It can only work for so long. The illusion can never last. But that’s the promise of the Super Bowl, and of the city that is hosting this year’s game. This is what sports has always done. I’m not sure it’s ever tried to do it harder than it has this week in New Orleans. I suspect it will still not be enough. But New Orleans, and the Super Bowl, will do its best regardless. If you keep the party going and make sure not to look too far in any direction, you can almost convince yourself everything is fine.

I would not cut to Trump in his suite at the Super Bowl at any point in the game. Then again, I wouldn’t cut to Taylor Swift, either.

Every night, my wife and I sleep to reruns of The Golden Girls. It has become our ritual.

I was in college when The Golden Girls was on television. I never watched it. The demographic they were looking for did not include me. I was too busy watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and MTV.

Watching The Golden Girls today is like time travel. Certain shows are products of their eras. Unsurprisingly, it feels nostalgic, but it also makes me feel old. I am the age now the leads were on the show. Of course, they are permanently fixed in the late 1980s as much as the cast of Friends is stuck in the 1990s.

What will be the equivalent for today’s viewers? I have no idea.

There are several journalists putting together clear-eyed reports on what is currently happening in the Federal government. None of it is good. NONE. OF. IT. Seriously, read them all while you still can.

Here’s a few to get started: Jamelle Bouie, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Ezra Klein, Heather Cox Richardson, Heather Cox Richardson again, Timothy Snyder, Timothy Snyder again, Paul Krugman, David Roth, Joan Westenberg, Mike Brock, and David Frum.

These elected and unelected clowns think they’re smart, but really, they’re just Fredo flailing on the deck chair.

Additionally, here’s a long video from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laying out what’s happening and what congressional Democrats and citizens should do about it.

This idea circulated around the blogosphere a month or so ago, and I decided to try it out a month later. Never say I don’t hop on trends.

I use these apps and services pretty much every day. Anything new to you?

Mail Client: iOS: Spark. Desktop: Gmail, Outlook

Notes: Notion and Apple Notes (I haven’t fully set it up, but I’m a fan of Forever Notes)

To-Do: Apple Reminders and Notion

Photo Shooting: iPhone 12 Pro Max. I probably need to upgrade this year.

Photo Editing: Mostly: Photopea. Sometimes: Photos

Calendar: Apple Calendar and Outlook Calendar

Cloud File Storage: Mostly: Dropbox. Sometimes: iCloud Drive (for apps that do it by default I don’t care that much about the file locations)

RSS: Inoreader

Contacts: Apple Contacts

Browser: Desktop: Chrome. iOS: Safari. I want to like Arc, but I can’t get into it.

Bookmarks: Notion Web Clipper and Instapaper Clipper

Read It Later: Instapaper, Notion

Rich Media: Iframely

Blogging: micro.blog, Medium

Word Processing: Mostly: Word and Ulysses. Rarely: Pages

Shopping Lists: Apple Reminders

News: Inoreader. Rarely: Apple News

Music: Spotify.

Podcasts: Overcast

Password Management: 1Password

VPN: NordVPN

Sleep Tracking: Sleep Cycle

Personal Site: Carrd

I watched most of the Grammys last night, and honestly? It was a mixed bag. I mean, sure, there were some cool moments, but nothing that’s gonna stick with me for long. It always feels so political, just like the Oscars.

Beyoncé winning Album of the Year for her country album Cowboy Carter was surprising. Over Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and the others? I don’t think so. Plus, beating Chris Stapleton for Best Country Album? No way.

Chappell Roan’s acceptance speech, in which she criticized the music industry, probably won’t get the response she thinks it will. Although it was bold, that feels par for the course for this artist.

The performances were where things got fun. Sabrina Carpenter brought the energy and fun. Benson Boone, with his ripped tux and crazy flips in a shiny bodysuit, was also entertaining. I can’t stand his song (especially that scream), but I’ll give him style points.

But Doechii? She was something else. I’d never heard of her before, but her performance was electric. She moved with incredible precision, switching between vocal styles like it was nothing, backed by dancers in matching suits. My wife and I were totally blown away.

Raye was another surprise. This UK artist performed an incredible hip-hop-soul fusion, scatting in front of an old-school bandstand. It was just phenomenal.

The thing about the Grammys is they’re basically a one-night wonder. Super entertaining while you’re watching, but by tomorrow? Completely forgotten. It’s like musical fast food - tasty in the moment, zero nutritional value afterward.

And seriously… The Rolling Stones and The Beatles winning again? Come on.

The NBA was rocked last weekend by news that the Los Angeles Lakers have acquired Luka Dončić from the Dallas Mavericks – a stunning move that could prove the most consequential sports deal of the decade. What made this 100% not-a-hoax trade particularly extraordinary is that Luka – a 25-year-old superstar who led the league in scoring last season while nearly averaging a triple-double – never requested to leave Dallas. In fact, the Mavs front office initiated the trade themselves amidst alleged concerns over his conditioning and a reluctance to offer a $345 million ‘supermax’ extension. Making matters more bewildering, Dallas didn’t shop their franchise player around the league, instead dealing directly with the Lakers in a secret negotiation that left other teams' front offices (and even Mavs staff) completely blindsided. The Lakers, continuing their historic tradition of landing generational talent (see: Wilt, Kareem, Shaq), now pair Luka with LeBron James in a dynamic that could reshape the sport for years to come.

“I’ve stopped caring, and it’s worked out beautifully. I know that sounds irresponsible and somewhat Canadian, but I just don’t even not give a fuck. That’s too extreme. When I hear someone say, ‘I don’t give a fuck!,’ I think you sound like you put a lot of effort and energy into that fuck that you’re refusing to give. I need you to dial it down…that’s what I’m preaching — radical apathy.” – Doug Stanhope

Chris Hays in The Atlantic:

“Attention is a kind of resource: It has value, and if you can seize it, you seize that value. This has been true for a very long time. Charismatic leaders and demagogues, showmen, preachers, great salespeople, marketers, advertisers, and holy men and women who rallied disciples have all used the power of attention to accrue wealth and power. What has changed is attention’s relative importance. Those who successfully extract it command fortunes, win elections, and topple regimes. The battle to control what we pay attention to at any given instant structures our inner life–who and what we listen to, how and when we are present to those we love–and our collective public lives: which pressing matters of social concern are debated and legislated, which are neglected; which deaths are loudly mourned, which are quietly forgotten. Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organization is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention. It is now the defining resource of our age.”

Kek-W is a UK-based writer of comic-books, graphic novels, prose fiction, film and TV. Warren Ellis, another UK-based writer, noted the following on Kek-W’s newsletter about another UK-based writer:

Grant Morrison famously had a series of black notepads with ideas / pitches for virtually every major character IP from Sherlock Holmes onwards, just in case someone, you know, asked. It’s a good habit / exercise / praxis to get into as a writer: well, what would you do if you got to write, for example, a Tarzan story? And even if you never get to play with that character / universe, it can spark ideas for yr own original creations. But in the unlikely situation that someone from DC is reading this: Well, hello, there!

What an interesting idea.

Chuck Wendig, writing at his site, on how to handle today and the future.

It’s just the first of the weird bad days.

And if we’re being honest, it’s not even the first of them, it’s just another in a long line of weird bad days where the weird part and the bad part are spiking simultaneously, like an outbreak of a particular kind of illness. It’s not just turbulence on a flight, it’s a turbulent flight, from start to finish, snout to tail.

But we can get through it, we can land the plane.

This country is a mess, it’s always been a mess, always will be a mess, but it’s our mess. We’re with it, in it, and have often helped to make it, and that’s not defeatist, that’s not apathetic, it’s just realist to see that we’re a fucking goofy nation that has stumbled and staggered up and down some big hills and into some mucky fucking ditches. Just try to remember we need to climb the hills to see the beautiful views, you know? And first we gotta get up and out of the damn ditch. Beyond that? I think at the end of the day the people we’re with, that we surround ourselves with — that matters. It’s the people we love and care about and who care about us in return. I think it helps me to remember that it’s not like we’re some shining castle in the clouds. We’re a messy place full of messy people and I think it’s good to recognize that, and to see that we can still make motions to make it better than it is, even when it fights us like a bucking, sweat-foamed horse.

Then again, I don’t know shit about shit and might feel different tomorrow. Don’t let anyone chastise you for feeling sad or upset. Toxic optimism isn’t going get us through shit. We feel how we feel and those worries, those concerns, they’re valid. It’s okay to see that shit’s gonna be hard.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of others. Be taken care of when needed.

CJ Moore, writing for The Athletic, did not like the officiating during the Illinois-Michigan State game.

I was disappointed when Jakucionis fouled out in only nine minutes of action against the Spartans. Illini coach Brad Underwood was in the same boat. “The best player in the game played eight minutes,” Underwood said at his postgame press conference. “You saw just a little bit of what he can do when he’s in. Just controlled the whole game with pick-and-rolls and passes. Unfortunately today, he didn’t get to play. … There hasn’t been one team in the country that has guarded him with any success. He’s a maestro. He is completely different than anybody else. You saw the little three-minute stretch he went on that he did play; every bucket was easy. He got a layup. He is that dude now. Don’t make any mistake. If he’s not the best point guard in the country, he’s very close and he’s 18 years old.”

As for the fouls: “I don’t know. I’ve got to look at the film.”

I did. And I don’t love commenting on the officials, but every single one was on the questionable side. (I have much more to say on the interpretation of the fifth foul, when Frankie Fidler jumped into Jakucionis to draw a whistle, but I’ll save that for a column down the road.) It’s a lot easier to slow down the film and critique, but it was frustrating officiating for anyone who just wanted to see the best players play in a great matchup. Luckily we get to see a rematch on Feb. 15. Fingers crossed no one fouls out.

I got in trouble in my house because I was yelling at the TV a bit too much. The Big Ten and maybe all of Division 1 basketball has got to be more consistent across the board.

Plenty of pundits, who had no skin in the game, commented on how obvious it was that Illinois had been hosed. It looked so bad that I actively wondered if the fix was in.

That’s got to change.

I could not care less about TikTok and would consider it an upgrade to the Internet if it were removed from the US and, frankly, everywhere else. Of course, I watch plenty of Reels, so my opinion is eye-roll-inducing.

Anyway, John Gruber has all the details about TikTok and the roller coaster of the last few hours if you need a deep dive.

Between 1996 and 2002, VH1 had a show called Pop Up Video which paired music videos with trivia and jokes that “popped up” on screen, mostly without controversy. Most of it is unavailable today, but the Internet Archive has a number of episodes taped off televion. Here is a list:

Episodes 1, 2 & 3, featuring these videos: Tina Turner, “Missing You”; Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”; Los Del Rio, “Macarena”; George Michael, “Freedom”; Olivia Newton-John, “Physical”; Tom Petty, “Walls”; TLC, “Waterfalls”; Counting Crows, “Round Here”; John Mellencamp, “Pink Houses”; David Lee Roth, “California Girls”; Celine Dion, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”; Alanis Morissette, “You Learn”; Rolling Stones, “Love is Strong”; R.E.M., “Losing My Religion”; Culture Club, “Karma Chameleon”. Episode 4, featuring: Toni Braxton, “You’re Makin' Me High”; Blues Traveler, “The Mountains Win Again”; Janet Jackson, “Runaway”; Pat Benatar - “Love is a Battlefield”; Madonna, “Express Yourself”. Episode 5, featuring: Jewel, “Who Will Save Your Soul”; Mariah Carey, “Fantasy”; Meat Loaf, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)"; Bruce Springsteen, “Glory Days”. Episode 9, featuring: Sting, “I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying”; Hootie and the Blowfish, “Let Her Cry”; Joan Osbourne, “One of Us”; The B-52’s, “Love Shack”; Lionel Ritchie, “Hello”. Episode 10, featuring: Melissa Etheridge, “Nowhere To Go”; U2, “One”; Sting, “If I Ever Lose My Faith”; Blind Melon, “No Rain”; Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Episode 17, featuring: Babyface, “Everytime I Close My Eyes”; Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”; INXS, “Never Tear Us Apart”; George Michael, “I Want Your Sex”; The Bangles, “Walk Like an Egyptian”. Episode 37, featuring: Jamiroquai, “Virtual Insanity”; Hootie & The Blowfish, “Only Wanna Be with You”; Miami Sound Machine, “Bad Boy”; Van Halen, “Hot for Teacher”; Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”. Episode 40, featuring: Bon Jovi, “Midnight in Chelsea”; Mariah Carey, “Always Be My Baby”; Aerosmith, “Cryin'"; Devo, “Whip It”; ZZ Top, “Gimme All Your Lovin'”. Episode 42, featuring: Lisa Stansfield, “Never Never Gonna Give You Up”; The Proclaimers, “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles”; Natalie Cole, “Unforgettable”; Dire Straits, “Money For Nothing”; Men at Work, “Down Under”. Episode 47, featuring: Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”; Gin Blossoms, “Allison Road”; Madonna, “Take A Bow”; Milli Vanilli, “Girl You Know It"s True”; Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. Episode 48, featuring: Michael Jackson, “Stranger in Moscow; The Rembrandts, “I"ll Be There For You”; Robert Palmer, “Addicted to Love”; The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”; Blondie, “Rapture”. Episode 55, featuring: Texas, “Say What You Want”; Spin Doctors, “Two Princes”; Michael Penn, “No Myth”; Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight”; Billy Joel, “Uptown Girl”. Episode 63, featuring: Janet Jackson, “Together Again”; 10,000 Maniacs, “These Are the Days”; Tom Jones, “If I Only Knew”; John Fogerty, “The Old Man Down The Road”; Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Come On Eileen”. Episode 97, featuring: Sugar Ray, “Fly”; 4 Non Blondes, “What’s Up”; Elvis Costello, “Veronica”; AC/DC, “You Shook Me”; Pat Benatar, “Shadows of Night”. Episode 136, featuring: R.E.M., “Shiny Happy People”; Sheryl Crow, “A Change Would Do You Good”; Madonna, “Nothing Really Matters”; INXS, “I Need You Tonight”; Kylie Minogue, “The Loco-motion”. Elton John special episode, featuring the songs: “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues”, “Nikita”, “Candle in the Wind”, “I’m Still Standing”. Songs from movie soundtrack, featuring: Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You”; Los Lobos, “La Bamba”; Bryan Adams, “(Everything I Do) I Do For You”; Tina Turner, “We Don’t Need Another Hero”; John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John, “Grease Megamix”. Songs from 80s movie soundtracks, featuring: Ray Parker Jr., “Ghostbusters”; Kenny Loggins, “Danger Zone”; Madonna, “Into the Groove”; Psychedelic Furs, “Pretty in Pink”; Michael Sembello, “Maniac”. 80s songs about dancing, featuring: Men Without Hats - “The Safety Dance”; The Hooters, “And We Danced”; Herbie Hancock, “Rockit”; Wang Chung, “Dance Hall Days”; David Bowie & Mick Jagger, “Dancin' in the Street”. 80s songs about the Cold War, featuring: Frankie Goes To Hollywood, “Two Tribes”; Culture Club, “The War Song”; Sting, “Russians”; After The Fire, “Der Kommissar”; Genesis, “Land of Confusion”. One hit wonders, featuring: The Outfield, “Your Love”; Tom Cochrane, “Life is a Highway”; Martika, “Toy Soldiers”; EMF, “Unbelievable”; Neneh Cherry, “Buffalo Stance”. Rock n' roll hall of fame part 2, featuring: Fleetwood Mac, “Hold Me”; Santana, “Black Magic Woman”; Eagles, “Hotel California”; David Bowie, “China Girl”; John Lennon, “Nobody Told Me”. Metal Mania part 3, featuring: Judas Priest, “Breaking The Law”; Metallica, “The Memory Remains”; Ratt, “Round and Round”; Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”. Rock n' Roll Heaven, featuring: The Doors, “Break on Through”; Bob Marley, “Could You Be Loved”; Stevie Ray Vaughan, “Crossfire”; Roy Orbison, “You Got It”. Rolling Stone special episode, featuring the songs: “Start Me Up”, “Going to a Go-Go”, “Undercover of the Night”, “Has Anybody Seen My Baby?” Songs about social issues, featuring: Ben Folds Five, “Brick”; Stevie Wonder & Babyface, “How Come, How Long?"; Aerosmith, “Janie’s Got a Gun”; Rod Stewart, “Young Turks”. Greatest Artists of Rock n' Roll, featuring: Rolling Stones - “Start Me Up”; Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got To Do With It”; U2, “One”; Prince and the New Power Generation - “7”; Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al”. Greatest Dance Songs, featuring: Cher, “Believe”; Dead or Alive, “You Spin Me Round”; Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive”; Paula Abdul, “Straight Up”; Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”. Big 80s part 1, featuring: Duran Duran, “Rio”; Culture Club, “Karma Chameleon”; Billy Idol, “White Wedding”; Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”; Olivia Newton-John, “Physical”. Big 80s part 2, featuring: A-ha, “Take on Me”; Pat Benatar, “Love is a Battlefield”; John Cougar, “Jack & Diane”; Lionel Richie, “Hello”; Van Halen, “Hot For Teacher”. Big 80s part 4, featuring: Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”; Thomas Dolby, “She Blinded Me with Science”; Billy Joel, “Keeping the Faith”; The Jacksons, “Torture”; J. Geils Band, “Centerfold”. There are no more whole episodes on the Internet Archive, but here are 332 individual songs in a big Pop Up Video playlist. Finally, here’s an interview with show creators Tad Low and Woody Thompson.

HT: Metafilter

I recently read about a couple of would-be Instagram competitors out. Flashes (based on BlueSky’s protocols) and PixelFed seem to have been created at least in part as a response to Facebook’s decision to stop most content moderation.

Personally, more power to them. I won’t be joining either of them.

Ray Ratto, writing for Defector, gets it right. Bob Uecker was just the best:

He was the face and voice of baseball cinema, the man whose line-reading made “Ju-u-u-u-st a bit outside” so good that “iconic” doesn’t remotely cover its impact. Even if you’re not a seamhead, you likely came across Bob Uecker and smiled.

So Thursday’s announcement that Uecker has died at age 90, due to small cell lung cancer, came as a blow. Nine decades is a good long run, but there was never a sense that he was running out of material; Uecker was still a joy to hear on Brewers broadcasts even in Year 54 of being the voice of Wisconsin baseball for two-and-a-half generations. The reaction to his passing was unanimous in the same ways and for the same reasons that the response to Vin Scully’s death was unanimous — it was an outpouring of both sadness at the loss and gratitude for all the time we got to spend with him. In an epochally angry time in America, at a moment when it isn’t hard to find even anti-puppy polemics with a keystroke, Uecker gets a pass from most everyone. Yes he defined baseball, but he also managed to become more than merely Mister Baseball. From the moment of his first appearance on Johnny Carson’s definitive version of the Tonight Show, which Uecker earned merely by mastering the tripartite arts of comedy writing, unabashed self-deprecation, and martini-dry humor, he was recognizable as that rarest of Americans, the guy you’d sit back down to listen to even if you were already halfway out the door. Put another way, Norm Macdonald thought he was one of the funniest men he ever met. Beat that with a stick.

MLB.com has a fine obituary that includes a slew of links and videos. Uecker, 90 years old, was on the call for the Brewers right up until the bitter end of last season, when they fell to the Mets in the 9th inning. His final words as a broadcaster: “I’m telling you. That one — had some string on it.” So does this one.

The nickname “Mr. Baseball” was coined by Johnny Carson during one of his appearances on the Tonight Show. If you want lose a few hours in laughter, head down the rabbit hole of Uecker’s 100-some appearances on Carson. Here’s the first one that just came up for me now, a 1976 appearance where Uecker, utterly deadpan as ever, makes Mel Brooks spit out his coffee.

He appeared in many Miller Lite commercials. “I must be in the front row” He starred in the movie, Major League. He was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. He was also known for his comedy. His classic line about catching the knuckleball, “I let it roll until it stops and then I go pick it up.” One of my favorite clips is Norm McDonald on David Letterman telling stories about Bob.

I am quite sure that when he gets to the Pearly Gates he will be placed in the front row.

Charlie Warzel, writing in The Atlantic, has some good advice for those still clinging to the chaos that is modern social media.

To watch the destruction in Los Angeles through the prism of our fractured social-media ecosystem is to feel acutely disoriented. The country is burning; your friends are going on vacation; next week Donald Trump will be president; the government is setting the fires to stage a “land grab”; a new cannabis-infused drink will help you “crush” Dry January. Mutual-aid posts stand alongside those from climate denialists and doomers. Stay online long enough and it’s easy to get a sense that the world is simultaneously ending and somehow indifferent to that fact. It all feels ridiculous. A viral post suggests that “climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.” You scroll some more and learn that the author of that post wrote the line while on the toilet (though the author has since deleted the confession).

Call it doomscrolling, gawking, bearing witness, or whatever you want, but there is an irresistible pull in moments of disaster to consume information. This is coupled with the bone-deep realization that the experience of staring at our devices while others suffer rarely provides the solidarity one might hope. Amanda Hess captured this distinctly modern feeling in a 2023 article about watching footage of dead Gazan children on Instagram: “I am not a survivor or a responder. I’m a witness, or a voyeur. The distress I am feeling is shame.”

When Twitter was still good, it told the stories of disasters or near disasters. It was information immediately. The news right now. Not always accurate, but without it there was a feeling of “Fear of Missing Out.” What do you mean you don’t know about this thing that’s happening right this very second!

I decided, in the last couple of years, that learning about someone who I haven’t seen in person in over a decade just got a new dog is a waste of my time. So, I consciously don’t go on Facebook much anymore. It’s the same feeling with Instagram. I don’t need to do that much anymore, but I have become slightly addicted to Reels. I recognize the addition, so the next step is to do something about it… probably deleting it from my phone.

Then there’s Twitter. I had it perfectly curated into lists. I used Tweetdeck and other apps. I never saw the For You tab. Now, it is intolerable to use. I migrated to Threads and Bluesky, tried to build that same curated digital garden, but now it seems like so much work and I’m not getting much out of it personally.

I’m finding I don’t need social media. I’ll keep my accounts, but I simply don’t go there anymore.

Today, I’ve moved all in with RSS and Inoreader for the kind of news, articles, and similar types of content I might have found or been directed to through social media. Curating my RSS feeds is far better than trying to curate the social media platforms. The sites and writers I want to read have been added to Inoreader through RSS feeds either included in their design or created by me.

I follow like The Atlantic and New York Magazine via RSS, but mostly I follow individual writers. It allows me to curate who I read or at least who I see to read. Inoreader has a place for to follow specific Bluesky accounts, so that’s a plus too.

Every day I go through my RSS feeds and newsletters. I use the Read later feature a lot as I go through new additions. I also use the Tags feature if there’s something interesting I want to add to the blog or save for other nefarious reasons. That’s it.

I’ve curated my digital garden to be exactly what I want. It might work for you too. In any case, it’s far more healthy than doomscrolling through a half a dozen social media feeds.

Pulling back from the social media pull is difficult, but not impossible. I’ve replaced it with something better. Maybe you can as well.

Joey Einerhand, writing at his blog, has an interesting post about social media and RSS.

I waste too much time scrolling through social media. It’s bad for my health, so why do I keep doing it?

Because once in a while, I’ll find a post so good that it teaches me something I never knew before, and all the scrolling feels worth it. But I’ve stumbled upon an old piece of free and open source tech, relatively unknown today, which is THE solution of solving the problems with modern media without sacrificing accessible, good content: RSS.

Reddit, Facebook, Twitter — platforms built for engagement, not efficiency. Instead of showing you high-quality posts upfront, they pad your feed with memes, spam, and astroturfing. There is only so much ‘good’ content created in a day. By padding your feed with trash, they make the limited amount of good posts “last longer”. These sites want you to spend more time scrolling on their website, so they feed you scraps which makes the occasional great post feels like a jackpot.

That’s a good bit of insight. For a long time, I did both. Today, I’m using social media less and less and upping my RSS feeds from less than 100 to more than 200. Much easier to curate and go through. I’m in control not the other way around.

Until 2020 Diamond Comic Distributors had a decades-long near-monopoly as supplier of comics & merchandise to the North American direct market. This changed following the arrival of COVID-19 when many of the biggest publishers signed deals with new distributors. Yesterday Diamond announced that it had filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

Over the years Diamond has been criticised by creators, retailers, consumers, and publishers for the power it wielded over the market. However, the exodus of major publishers, led by DC, also sparked concerns from retailers, including San Francisco’s Brian Hibbs, about the affect weakened Diamond would have on North America’s approximately 2000+ comic retailers.

Supplemental Links
How Do I Comic Shop? Everything anyone would need to know about buying comics by Matt Brady, 2022
ICv2’s Comics Direct Market 50th Anniversary, a stonking collection of articles and interviews, 2023
Comic Stores and Diamond Distributors Clash as Industry Reopens, https://bsky.app/profile/graemem.bsky.social">Graeme McMillan, 2020
Should Comics Keep It Direct? by Brigid Alverson, 2024
3-hour Comic Industry Insiders interview with Brian Hibbs, YouTube/Podbean, recorded just before Diamond’s announcement

Supplemental FPPs
The Rise and Fall of the Comic Industry’s Direct Market and Other Stories
15-year-old FPP by some handsome guy presenting a history of the direct market by The Comics Journal. Most if not all of the links are dead, but the comments are great. Archive.org scrapes of the primary links:
Part 1 Fine Young Cannibals:How Phil Seuling and a Generation of Teenage Entrepreneurs Created the Direct Market and Changed the Face of Comics
Part 2 Black and White and Dead All Over
Part 3 Suicide Club: How greed and stupidity disemboweled the American comic-book industry in the 1990s

[Before Carol] People Were Making Change Out of Tackle Boxes Remembrances of Carol Kalish, whose 1980s tenure as Marvel Comics' Direct Sales Manager made an indelible impact on the industry

H/T: Metafilter