Longtime readers of this blog — I believe in you! — will recall an infrequent feature called Short News in which I posted links to news stories that interested me. Over the years, however, I found posting those links on Twitter a much easier way to bookmark articles and essays for future reference.
While the demise of Twitter has been overstated — the IP is too valuable for extinction so it will stagger along in some fashion, with or without Musk — it’s heyday is certainly in the rear-view. For years my doubts about Twitter have grown, with a central question becoming more and more inescapable: Is Twitter something a grown-ass man should be participating in? I’m not alone. Far from being the “town square,” only 23 percent of Americans use Twitter, much fewer than Facebook (69 percent) or even Instagram (40 percent) — and that data was compiled in 2021.
Watching Musk’s takeover has been like reading about a Marxist coup against some third-world dictator: I feel no sympathy for the old guard and yet in no way is the new guard an improvement. Twitter’s culture is so awful — a gamified popularity contest in which the worst human expressions are hardwired into its design — that just browsing my timeline feels increasingly dirty, immature, and undignified.
The moment has come, I think, to pull back from Twitter and resuscitate Short News here. Plus, my blog is searchable.
Not the Hero We Deserve. Axios profiled Amy Siewe, a former snake breeder and real-estate broker from Ohio turned python hunter. Over the past three years, Siewe has single-handedly captured and killed 405 Burmese pythons in the Florida wilderness.
Crypto Bro Deep Thoughts. In an interview, FTX twat Sam Bankman-Fried stated he never reads books. When pressed why, he replied:
I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. … If you wrote a book, you f—ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.
No answer to the obvious follow-up question — But would you read a collection of blog posts? — has been forthcoming.
The more I learn about the boneheads behind the crypto curtains, the more I believe anyone losing money through crypto and NFTs fucking deserves it. Washington Post source here, paywall.
One Man’s Problem. New York City is looking for a “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty” candidate to become the city’s new rat czar who will “fight New York City’s relentless rat population.” Consider this my job application: I know where we can get snakes real cheap.
