At least half of my media studies lectures:

While people are suddenly and uncharacteristically paying attention to media regulation, please take a moment to notice all the massive harm Brendan Carr has done to consumer protection and public safety as well me, back in April:

My intro media studies class units on the telecom act of 1996 always hit hard because of the enduring influence of deregulation on our mass media environment, but it really feels helpful to be discussing it with 18-24 year olds this and next week. I wish there were less plentiful examples from news.

This could not be more correct. It's easier to censor media that is consolidated. Repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

These firings, with zero due process, are violations of widely accepted principles of academic freedom & are completely unacceptable. College & university administrators MUST NOT exploit these shocking events to censor protected speech & concentrate their own power. www.wsmv.com/2025/09/12/t...

Insightful thread on political incongruity of some young folks, whose sensibilities are shaped by/ through meme culture + the predicament of being very (very) online. I say this as someone that came of age in presocial media messageboards that I thought made me very online. But this is different.

Reminds me of my friend who worked at Google in the early era of Gmail, where her job was to read folks’ emails and assign advertising topics to determine what ads made sense to serve to the user. Eventually, the work became automated but for a while it was someone’s job to read your private emails.

I think it’s this plus the fact that if you opened an algorithmic platform any time after 3pm today, you likely saw (or were fed) videos of his assassination, from multiple angles, creating a different (perhaps parasocial, and definitely more concretely visualized) relationship with his death.

Me daydreaming re: Pulp this week (and NIN last week).

I know the VMAs used to premier on week days. Regardless of when they air it, this sort of thing be planned to avoid conflict with the most important, routinized force in linear tv today.

To give an idea of the state of the VMAs’ ratings (a prior dominating cultural force that has all but gone out w a whimper), this yr they are being broadcast on big network parent, CBS. In addition to MTV simulcast and streaming venues. I will be curious if it helps reverse ratings of recent years.

In the golden age of MTV, bands paid thousands of dollars for folks at the network to take a look at their music video and consider it for airing. I think it was something like $3-6k for them to watch your video and consider inclusion on 120 Minutes.

They played so many songs that I had hoped to hear in Toronto last year! So much fun and a great crowd singing every word.

Yup Yup Yup Yup Yup Yup Yup Yup Yup Yup

This was a very correct decision. @someclevername.bsky.social

Arena food it is!

After a lot of hemming and hawing I decided I do definitely need to see Mercer PA’s finest sing March of the pigs in 2025.

It’s wild that openAi’s response to the constellation of awful ai news was a vague “whoops we are gonna keep trying to do better” blog post, implying users are in fact guinea pigs in an undisclosed human subjects research study that never went through irb…

This one time I was Employee of the Month

We’ve reached the point that we should be asking if it’s okay to test your product on human beings when it keeps trying to convince them to kill themselves or others. This country does not believe in holding the wealthy accountable when they cause our deaths though.

It’s wild that openAi’s response to the constellation of awful ai news was a vague “whoops we are gonna keep trying to do better” blog post, implying users are in fact guinea pigs in an undisclosed human subjects research study that never went through irb…

Happy Chris Belasco Day!! On 8-29-2019, then-Mayor Peduto made a city-wide proclamation for #Pittsburgh bc @someclevername.bsky.social is such a great employee. We cont. to celebrate w a cake every year. Here he is being the only guy in a Modern Lovers tee at the descendants zombies world tour. ❤️ 🎉

-Bucs won, Skenes went 7 and had run support -Read played BEAUTIFUL renditions of the Anthem and God Bless America at the Bucco game -Bloomfield Beach was a perfect cool-off after -This corn was the best all season

Tomorrow I have 2 “back to school” nights at 2 different PPS schools, across town from each other, at the same time (which also happens to correspond w rush hour). I had it all figured out: divide and conquer. But both kids want us both to be there. Last year they were different nights. What to do?

This mugshot is so good. Free her and put her on real housewives!

I wrote a bit about the Texas flooding and the less than altruistic viral Facebook content that has sought to engagement farm in its aftermath. mediahistory.substack.com/p/when-trage...

Objectively least alpha to put your subtitle or descriptor in parens, tho.

Our entire world is getting filled with lorem ipsum filler but somehow dumber

My labubus / Lafufus appeared on KDKA #talkpittsburgh! Segment below. Thx to hosts for great questions + convo on my 1st of 2 #techtalk segments last Thurs. My #labubu #excitingmacaron #popmart arrived too late to unbox on tv. I’ll have to wait for the next viral trend. m.youtube.com/watch?v=95g4...

Happy Father’s Day to @someclevername.bsky.social! An amazing dad whose energy level never ceases to amaze me, in true dad form, he got the yard + garden looking perfect before the rain. The girls made him a multi course breakfast bc he of all the incredible meals he makes. We love him so much!

Back on tv tomorrow at 3pm w 2 segments in the same episode. One on ai & “blackmailing” tests, and the other about viral trends (such as the #labubus from popmart). Tried to grab a labubu today from the roboshop for it, but it was broken, so I got lafufus. My pop now orders are still on the way.

I had two #talkpittsburgh @cbsnews.com #pittsburgh #techtalk segments in May and have two more appearances on the program in June! The first will be this Thursday. Here is my mid May segment about adult ai content targeting kids. www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/v...

1A will always be constrained in the face of a consolidated, for-profit media industry, but combined w a highly transactional + retributive president, (&media conglomerates recognizing their own future mergers + acquisitions at stake), this kind of swift punishment/compliance becomes the result.

Please, haven’t we been through enough?

"Of the single adults who have been housed through the program, 98% have not returned to the homeless system. All of the families have remained housed."

Ah yes the very direct high agency alpha masc energy of parallel posting (essentially subtweets) across two different social media platforms!

Ok two more from the leftover ingredients from yesterday

Here is the yard king at the garden center in his natural habitat.

Not a joke

"Editorial: Scab paper thrilled that Bobby Newport was victorious."

Short answer: Capitalism + the pursuit of functional monopoly (US media industry is an ever concentrating oligopoly that has worsened in scope since the telecom act of 1996 which deregulated ownership rules re the permissible size of media business; we see similar patterns in unreg big tech too).

Casa San Jose is a great local resource that might be able to help. Can folks in #pittsburgh suggest others? casasanjose.org/en/home/

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms in my life, especially the incredible @jesspgh.bsky.social who makes our family glow up all the time.

One of the things I learned writing a book about global trade is that thing you got delivered next day started its journey *months* ago in China or SE Asia. A few months from now you will see an explosion of stories about empty shelves. It’s going to blow people’s minds.

On the 101st day presser: “Your children are going to have less and it is going to cost more.”

They wasted no time and began knocking it down today.

And just like that, the long battle for #pittsburgh Bloomfield church site of Immaculate Conception (St Maria Goretti parish) is over it seems, as a demolition team spent the afternoon smashing the iconic windows and deconsecrating the mosaic mural at the altar.

Sundar Pichai boasting captive audience numbers after the govt ruled multiple times over that the business breaks antitrust regs. Like… “Our monopolistic company was able to scale growth via one of its engines of monopoly!” isn’t really a flex!