Even just the notion of the president of the United States touting the country like a nightclub is unspeakable sad, before you get to the validation from a dictator part.

YouTube caves to Trump with $24.5 million settlement

DoorDash’s Dot robot talks—in a voice unexpectedly reminiscent of Donald Duck.

I’m at DoorDash HQ, where they’re unveiling Dot, an adorable delivery robot that can do 20mph. It looks like it gobbles up meals!

Our oral history of YouTube continues: How “Google’s first mistake” figured out how to monetize itself, avoid being sued out of business, and reach a billion hours a day of watch time, as told by people who were there. www.fastcompany.com/91408402/you...

Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

He truly is Chance the Gardener from Being There. www.kgw.com/article/news...

I was in Portland week before last. They managed to entirely hide the ravages of war from me.

If I could use a time machine to travel back to one day in world history, it would be the one when the Banana Splits came to San Francisco. (Also: Why are they STILL not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?) www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF-o...

She had these outrageous prima donna demands such as wanting to be paid for her time by a massively profitable enterprise.

For this week’s Plugged In newsletter, I wrote about Flash’s decline and fall—but also, and more importantly, the earlier period when it helped make the web amazing. www.fastcompany.com/91410148/you...

What a hero, and a great piece. (Relatedly, as far as I can tell, it’s ahistorical to call the studio musicians she was one of “The Wrecking Crew.” I’m not sure why people do it.) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/a...

I was just rereading something I wrote in 2009 while working on a new story, and see that my ancient PollDaddy polls—unlike so much old embedded content dependent on third parties—are fully functional. Still possible to cast your vote on this burning question.

Here’s our oral history of how and why a hot startup called YouTube became a Google property, as told by folks such as YouTube cofounder Steve Chen and then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt. I learned a lot reporting it! www.fastcompany.com/91408036/you...

This place is a gem. I hope it stays exactly the same forever. RIP. sfstandard.com/2025/09/24/s...

Also, a public service message rightly reminding us that escalators are terrifying and may gobble up your child. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zirp...

Weirdly, on the same day the UN’s escalator suddenly stopped when the president and first lady were on it, I stumbled across this old margarine ad involving an escalator suddenly stopping. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq65...

I hadn’t actually watched this until I watched Kimmel. It’s terrifying.

Kimmel is up on YouTube

I find I can’t muster a proper response to either the Tylenol madness or the U.N. appearance. At some point it is just too ridiculous. It would feel insane to offer sane commentary.

They also need an advisor in charge of making it less unremittingly terrible.

Trump brags about extracting $16 million from ABC settlement, says he wants to “test” the network out again. More explicit threats that if a private company doesn’t do his bidding, Trump will punish with lawsuits or government action.

In sorry to say that Walgreens’ use of a skeleton as vaccine spokesperson is horrifyingly relevant.

Still apparently legal.

“Strays?” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/u...

In the end, Kimmel’s suspension was way shorter than Jack Paar’s three-week absence from the Tonight Show in 1960 over his use of the term “water closet” in his monologue. But Paar being off the air was his own decision, and—as far as I know—Eisenhower did not gloat.

When stuff like this happened in the first Trump term, major tech CEOs at least tweeted their distress.

I wrote about this problem in *2018* for Fast Company, when it had already become a well-known problem. www.fastcompany.com/40536598/ove... cc @harrymccracken.com

Here’s chapter one of our epic oral history of YouTube, 2005-present. We talked to former and current execs, creators, competitors, and more, and they had tons of great stories. Gift link: www.fastcompany.com/91407321/you...

Trump’s attack on vaccines yesterday — delivered from the White House — “was the most dangerously irresponsible press conference in the realm of public health in American history” @pauloffit.bsky.social told us. More on Trump’s false claims with @lenasun.bsky.social

A pop up box on Tylenol dot com

Not a denial

I sprung for Perplexity’s $200/month Max account (at least for one month) to try its new email assistant, but can’t get most of it to work. Anyone had success?

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

One of the 1,000 amazing things about The Mary Tyler Moore Show is that theme song, RIP. www.cbc.ca/news/enterta...

It’s the 64th anniversary of the Sunset Strip’s fabled Bullwinkle statue, and here’s everything you need to know about it, and more. (A Jay Ward retrospective in LA earlier this year included amazing unseen film footage of Jayne Mansfield unveiling the statue.) harrymccracken.com/blog/2021/09...

Still breathtaking to me that Musk gave up arguably the most successful branding ever created by an internet company.

Greetings from downtown Provo, where I found more film-centric photography shops (two!) then I’ve seen in a long time.

The cartoons published upon Walt Disney’s death in 1966 double nicely as cartoons about the present Jimmy Kimmel situation.

“I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don’t know how to read. But they can’t help seeing them damned pictures!"—Boss Tweed

Definite “Microsoft swooping in to save Apple” energy. nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-...

This is the biggest attack on free speech since the McCarthy era but it also has significantly less popular consensus behind it than the second Red Scare. It's being done on behalf of a minority faction led by the most unpopular president in modern history. Organizing against this can win.

Dramatically raising the profile of people whose free speech you are attempting to suppress does not seem like a great strategy to me. But what do I know?

Tip: If you lose your AirPods in a public place and can’t find them, use Find My to play a sound on them over and over until the person who find them gets sick of it and—seeing you nearby looking forlorn—returns them. (Or at least it worked for me, about 90 minutes after I lost them.)

Cutest New Yorker I’ve encountered on this trip.

I regret to inform you that in order to understand the Jimmy Kimmel situation you may have to familiarize yourself with very boring things like a broadcast station megamerger and FCC ownership rules. I wrote about the Nextar-Tegna deal last month www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Silly Jimmy Kimmel. He should have just called for all homeless people to be killed and he’d still have a job.

Charlie Kirk called for Joe Biden to be executed.

Robert Redford playing a gentle incarnation of death, coming for a frightened old woman in The Twilight Zone episode "Nothing in the Dark" (1962). An extraordinary performance then, terribly bittersweet today

People say AI is overhyped, but it’s already transformed my appreciation for Paul McCartney’s tireless empathy.