I read my own strange mix of things and watch the occasional YouTube video related to the news, and I’ll compile interesting info from those sources (with links) from time to time as well. Among the things I consume are
’s Racket News, The All-In Podcast, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying’s Darkhorse Podcast, and occasional episodes of other pods like Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman when they have guests on that I think are interesting. Often I’ll listen to a podcast I’ve never heard of at all, if they have someone I want to hear from, such as Nassim Taleb or Eric Weinstein. Chamath Palihapitiya will be speaking at the Oxford Union this week, so I’ll definitely find somewhere to watch that!There wasn’t a lot I wanted to call attention to, this week, in the All-In Podcast. Chamath mentioned (at about 38:52) the combination of a big lawsuit Trump has going against the news media and a proposal RFK Jr. has made about outlawing Pharma ads on TV. The implication seems to be that one way or the other, broadcast/cable media are going to be severely challenged, financially.
I used to watch Krystal and Saager on The Hill years ago, and I subscribed briefly when they went out on their own to do Breaking Points. I don’t watch regularly anymore, but occasionally catch things they post on YouTube. This week, Emily Jashinsky and Ryan Grim mentioned that Joe and Mika of Morning Joe endured some ratings pushback when they went to Mara Lago and "kissed the ring". According to their coverage, personal friends of the couple completely understood and supported the move, but fans and viewers who had bought into the rhetoric about how Trump was Hitler are a bit confused and upset. (link here)
I'm not as big a fan of Krystal Ball as I once was, but I thought she presented some interesting points in a recent monologue. AOC questioning the Democrats' devotion to AIPAC, commentators admitting that Democrat politics were problematic all the way back to shutting down Bernie's campaign, and a New York Times Op-Ed by Adam Jentleson that sounds vaguely interesting. I don't subscribe, so I won't have a chance to see for myself. But Krystal quotes it:
By pushing away these complexities, a coalition-first mindset produces many candidates who are the inverse of what voters want. People with the cultural sensibilities of Yale Law School graduates who cosplay as Populists by overly relying on niche issues like Federal Trade Commission antitrust actions.
Krystal then paraphrases author Matt Stoller's pushback on that line, that VP-elect J.D. Vance is the epitome of that caricature! But then she points out that the Democrat Donor Class hated Biden's antitrust agenda. She goes on to describe how the donors kneecapped what might have been some Harris economic policies I would probably have supported. The problem, of course, is that we'll never know whether these were causes Kamala cared about but was advised by the Democrats to avoid mentioning, or just another set of potential talking points they were trying out. (link here)
"Krystal Ball"? Really?