Jezebel, which has provided reporting and cultural commentary from a feminist point of view for 16 years, is shutting down. After Silicon Valley weirdo Peter Thiel killed its parent site Gawker in 2016, Jezebel was sold to Univision, which then sold it to a private equity outfit. From New York Mag:
Jezebel’s folding comes amid high and well-publicized tensions between G/O Media and its editorial properties — most recently, over G/O’s increasingly abundant reliance on AI, a strategy the company has continued to pursue despite strong objections from its writers and editors. On top of that, Spanfeller reportedly started evaluating writers based on algorithmically driven “scorecards” that meted out points based on traffic and engagement, seemingly prioritizing quantity over quality. Staffers have also complained that he blocked internal opportunities for growth, while hiring and promoting his daughter within a year. In August, Jezebel’s most recent editor-in-chief Laura Bassett resigned, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that “the company that owned us refused to treat my staff with basic human decency.” She is one of seven editor-in-chiefs to quit G/O this year alone.
For fuck’s sake.
Jezebel alum Lyz Lenz said it best on another platform that is currently being degraded by a dude-bro douche-canoe: “Jezebel was the site that helped launch my career. It was a place where women could unabashedly write about culture, politics, and everything with voice, humor, and the whole range of human emotions. The fact that it was killed by inept men is truly a metaphor.”
Yep. Open thread.
Alison Rose
I used to love the site years ago, but yeah…I had noticed a downturn in quality and usefulness. It started to feel more like a gossip rag with sporadic thoughtful posts thrown in. Tech bros will be the death of us all.
Baud
Omegle has also shut down.
Jerry
What a nightmare!
bbleh
“Inept” is such a … nice word.
teezyskeezy
@Jerry: Weird how that didn’t stimulate creativity and quality, right?
Kristine
Is there any record of a private equity company that didn’t break every blasted thing it bought?
Kristine
Accidental double post
geg6
Jesus. Private equity is a plague and must be wiped out. They ruin everyfuckingthing.
different-church-lady
@Jerry:
Welcome to how every single fucking thing in the 21st century now is.
different-church-lady
@teezyskeezy: Apparently it didn’t stimulate income either. A real triple crown of stupid.
Tony Jay
Wide-eyed look of utter confusion.
”But… but… these people are acknowledged experts in maximising profit. It can’t be their fault, it must be (checks techbro X FAQ) because real women are finally growing up and don’t want to be taught to hate men by feminazi dykes who never got laid in High School anymore. See? I knew it had to be something else.”
Burnspbesq
Spanfeller was an a*****e when I played intramural basketball against him in undergrad, and he clearly hasn’t changed a bit. He was primarily responsible for the death of Deadspin, and seems to have learned all the wrong lessons from that debacle.
Shalimar
@Baud: Isn’t Omegle shutting down a good thing? All I know about it is that it was notorious 10 years ago as a place where teenagers flashed each other. You can’t make a successful business out of that.
Alison Rose
@Shalimar:
Sometimes I am really fucking glad I was a teen before social media was a thing.
Anoniminous
Gawker Media was run by a TechBro with mild success before he ran it into the ground with “questionable” (to be nice) business, hiring and editorial decisions. The resulting lawsuits and judgements gutted the company’s Balance Sheet and Income Statement sending it into bankruptcy. Since 2016 it has passed through various corporate hands with a steady reduction in Who Cares?
Old School
Joe Manchin is not running for re-election.
Scout211
That is sad news about Jezebel.
I just read (or tried to read) an Atlantic article all about Peter Thiel this morning written by Barton Gellman, but I got bored and then nauseated, so I DNF.
TL;DR, Thiel is a visionary, a forward thinker, but he’s made some mistakes and he and Trump are never, ever getting back together. The end.
Here’s a link if you wish to read about Peter Thiel: 🤮
PETER THIEL IS TAKING A BREAK FROM DEMOCRACY
But here’s a fun snippet:
Alison Rose
@Old School: “I will fight to unite the middle” oh blow it out your ass, Joe.
Also LOL at the first response:
different-church-lady
@Scout211:
He wants to spend more time with his fascism.
Jeffro
Manchin’s not running…for Senate. He’s definitely all-in on No
PrinciplesLabels, though.Jill Stein, however, IS running.
I smell many, many rats.
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose: I’m grateful every goddamn day that social media wasn’t a thing during my adolescence. Seriously. There are benefits to it for sure, such as the way connection with others can give queer kids in rural conservative towns a lifeline to another world and a way to imagine a better life. But from what I’ve seen from the yoots in my life, it’s also a force multiplier for the most hellish, anxiety- and insecurity-inducing aspects of adolescence, creating an inescapable funhouse mirror effect. There’s a sweeping mental health crisis happening right now with young folks, and I think social media is a big part of it.
Cameron
@Jeffro: That was my first thought – he’s on a No Labels tour.
Jeffro
How many rats are we up to at this point, anyway?
PrinciplesLabelsAre there others?
MattF
@Jeffro: And they are fucking. Or being fucked, as the case may be.
Anoniminous
@Scout211:
Oh NO!!!!
How will democracy survive?
Ken
@Anoniminous: Yeah, that was kind of my reaction. Giving money to politicians is not the same as democracy.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, there are certainly aspects that are positive, and I do wish I had more photos from my teenage years with my friends and such. But I was, let’s charitably say, not a pretty girl as a tween and teen, and I already struggled to cope with the teasing I got IRL at school. Instagram would’ve been the 10th circle of hell.
Anoniminous
Good God almighty, now they are actuallyselling Bechamel Sauce Mix.
Cameron
Manchin hasn’t been much of a Democrat. Trouble is, his replacement is almost certainly going to be a Republican.
Ohio Mom
@Jeffro: Not that I’m in the Manchin fan club but that is one more new Senate seat we will need to keep the majority — assuming every current Democratic Senator up for reelection wins.
It’s a strange sensation, being sorry to see him go.
Jeffro
@MattF: I hope Biden/Harris ’24 runs ads using “Shake It Off” (with permission, of course!) with Joe and Kamala sweeping all of these clowns into the trash together.
game. OVER.
Jeffro
@Anoniminous: next thing you know they’ll be selling ice cube mix – just add water and freeze overnight! BAM!
Chief Oshkosh
@Burnspbesq: So what I’m hearing is that you had a chance to break his knees, which would’ve likely prevented his ascension to the highest levels of Peter Principality, but you whiffed.
Thanks a lot, Burns.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: Fuck the Fucking NY Times.
Frank Bruni (I know) has a column up today headlined Are We Looking at George HW Biden?
That newspaper has blood and the stench of dead children on its elitist hands.
Shalimar
@Anoniminous: The name is very intimidating for people who can’t cook and don’t realize how basic it is. Still no excuse in this age of instant information retrieval.
Ms. Deranged in AZ
Private equity is currently ruining the very narrow market of school nutrition. That’s how I lost my job this summer and I’m still looking for a new position. Those ivy League tech Bros don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. They do ruin everything they touch including the lives of their employees by demanding higher profits with fewer resources, which always results in lower quality all while choking out competition. If I had a dollar for every poor decision made by those jerks I would be a very wealthy woman. And every time I spoke up against them, I was told that I was being too negative. My response was supposed to be smile and just take it and I absolutely refused. If there’s a hell I hope they roast in it.
Citizen Alan
@Anoniminous: That’s hilarious. I actually read the ingredients on a few to see if it said anything other than flour, butter and milk, but apparently it’s flour and various menacing sounding chemicals (you provide the milk).
jackmac
I’m watching a live feed of Joe Biden’s appearance in Belvidere, Illinois as he takes a bow for helping auto workers secure wage hikes with the Big Three automakers and the much-welcomed — and unexpected — reopening of a major Stellantis plant in that community. He’s wearing a red UAW tee shirt and anyone who claims BIden is some doddering old man should see this guy speaking cogently, with enthusiasm and feeding off a great reaction from the crowd.
Mike S
If you want to listen to a great segment about how utterly destructive private equity has been this piece from NPR is a great place to start.
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
It was going to be an uphill battle for Manchin if he’d run, given how far red WV has gone, and he’s got an apparently popular governor running against him. He’s no spring chicken, so I can’t blame him for deciding it wasn’t worth spending the next year trying to hold onto his Senate seat.
Hopefully he’s got enough brains to not join a bullshit No Nothing ticket, but he doesn’t strike me as all that bright.
Ivan X
@Shalimar: Its original text-only incarnation was a place I once spent many happy hours talking to interesting people from all over the world, and it was a pretty mixed crowd agewise.
@Baud: I was actually kinda moved by the owner’s eulogy where the site used to be, though I think the site was corroded long before this “political” moment by good old fashioned capitalism, as bots (and humans) would simply use it as a platform to steer people towards various forms of pay-for-nudes. It got really boring then, because you couldn’t have an actual conversation. I was honestly surprised it was still running all this time until you noted its passing.
Citizen Alan
@Shalimar: Yeah. I don’t think anyone who could actually pronounce “Bechamel” would ever buy it in a premixed “just add milk” packet. Which you still have to whisk smooth, which is probably the hardest part of making it by hand.
evodevo
@Betty Cracker: Yep…just imagine eighth grade mean girls x 1000 …I can’t imagine how a fragile teenage ego would survive the gauntlet. I was horse-crazy and spent all my time riding, and didn’t belong to any “cliques”, so I was out of the loop even in those days. Just as well….
Citizen Alan
@Jeffro: I’m actually kind of happy Comrade Stein is running. Her presence on the ballot will make it easier to paint the Greens and every other Third Party as agents (unwitting or not) of Russian and drive home the fact that every vote against Biden is a vote for Putin.
mrmoshpotato
@Kristine:
Gonna bet “No.” on that one.
OGLiberal
@lowtechcyclist: Yeah, he’s been in this game long enough and survived long enough in a deep red state so he must have been pretty certain he had no chance at being re-elected – and that really tells you how far wingnut WV has become. (His primary opponent was a Dem until not that long ago – when he switched parties immediately after he won as a Dem and the latched himself onto Trump) Now he needs to go away, get a cushy job at some think tank or get some pharma lobbying job via his daughter, buy another houseboat and stay out of things. I really don’t think he’s going to pull a No Labels run, but who knows?
UncleEbeneezer
@evodevo: Also, imagine every stupid thing you say/write being screen-captured for use against you, 10-20 years later. No thanks.
OGLiberal
@Citizen Alan: One can hope – but these facts about Jill Stein weren’t actually a secret in 2016 and enough people voted for her in swing states to give us Trump. We’ll see if our voters is learning.
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
I can’t imagine what’s it’s like to be a teenager these days (and that’s excluding active shooter drills!).
There’s so much bullshit easily accessible these days (looking at you Fuckerberg!), and I can’t fathom how a teenager can navigate it all and know what’s good and what can go fuck itself.
Baud
I wonder whether I would have been less lonely or would have fallen down a dark hole if I had the Internet as a child.
Jeffro
@lowtechcyclist:
@OGLiberal:
I just hope that WV Dems (all three of them, lol) put up a quality candidate. Jim Justice doesn’t look all that healthy, and in any potential scramble to replace him, the WV GOP might put up a really repellent Blake Masters type.
Just sayin’…
John S.
@mrmoshpotato:
If anyone can find a single company that KKR, Bain, etc. didn’t bleed dry before running it into the ground, I’m all ears.
Baud
@Jeffro:
I support Senator Cole!
CaseyL
@mrmoshpotato:
Apparently, too many of the teens also can’t fathom how. Teenagers, balancing sharply on the edge of independence, are (IMO) pretty crazy to start with, what with their brains not yet having developed enough “Here Be Consequences” sense. The social media barrage, as fake and curated as it is, can’t help. Doesn’t help. There is said to be some major mental issues among today’s teens.
I’m also very glad my teen years were decades before social media was a thing.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: What the fuck (I really don’t give a flying fuck) does that dumbass headline even mean?
Ms. Deranged in AZ
@John S.: Funny you should say that because I was thinking about that exact same thing. These private equity guys are actually a species of vulture– “Mitticus Romnius”.
Elizabelle
@mrmoshpotato: How many terms did GHW Bush get?
Bill Arnold
@Old School:
I hope Jow Manchin’s friends are letting him know how stupid unwise it would be to run for POTUS as a third party candidate. Both for the USA, and for Joe Manchin.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: It sounds like gibberish. The only connection between the two is that they were both two-term Vice Presidents.
catclub
It seems to me that if Jezebel was a going concern and profitable, they would not need or want to sell to private equity.
danielx
@Jeffro:
Glenn Greenwald for starters…the list is endless.
Cameron
@Ms. Deranged in AZ: I think of them as pirates. They spot a rich target, loot it, then abandon its crew to their fate.
catclub
Of course, without vultures there would be a lot of rotting carcases lying about.
mrmoshpotato
@Ms. Deranged in AZ: Haha. Nice.
West of the Rockies
@lowtechcyclist:
I won’t miss his jutting jaw and dead eyes.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: Oh. Is that the blabber that’s inside?
Betty Cracker
Dog help us:
When my dogs had their standoff with the raccoon yesterday, I was so thankful for the up-to-date rabies shots! A good chunk of the human race seems determined to die of stupid. I’m sorry they’ll consign their pets to the same fate.
trollhattan
Okay, since we’re talking billionaire sociopaths I’m digesting this piece on a guy named Rat Dalio of the uber-hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. There’s an unauthorized bio: The Fund that he is displeased with.
Anyway, hoo-boy, the article is a slog. Lowlights:
– Copeland paints Dalio as an egomaniacal cult-of-personality leader with a penchant for cruelty. Under Dalio’s reign, he writes, sexual harassment was allegedly swept under the rug, employees were capriciously fired, and paranoia infected the workplace. Lots of people cried.
– One of Bridgewater’s most famous peculiarities is a scoring system Dalio implemented to rate staffers’ adherence to his principles (the list now includes “embrace tough love” and “be radically transparent”). Years ago, Copeland reports, one of the staffers tasked with designing software to measure employees ran into an issue: two of Dalio’s underlings ranked higher than him in “believability.” The billionaire—who has “compared himself to the Dalai Lama” and Steve Jobs— reportedly came up with a solution: He had himself set as the new “baseline.”
“Dalio’s rating was now numerically bulletproof to negative feedback,” Copeland says.
– As part of Bridgewater’s culture of transparency, employees were encouraged to rate each others’ performance, and they would file complaints on all sorts of trivial matters, from the toilet paper in the bathrooms, to the size of parking passes, to the quality of the peas in the cafeteria.
Many meetings were also recorded. In one anecdote from 2009, Dalio berated an employee for failing to quickly hire new recruits. “People in the room remember him screaming, waiting for her lip to quiver, then screaming at her again for failing to control her emotions,” Copeland writes.
Dalio allegedly had a sizzle reel made of her breakdown. He sent it to every person at the company and made prospective job candidates watch it, according to the book.
– Before he became director of the FBI—and went head to head with Donald Trump—Comey served as Bridgewater’s general counsel, with a $7 million salary, Copeland writes. For a time, Comey fit right in. He would investigate pressing issues—at least in Dalio’s mind—such as an extensive inquiry into a woman who complained that one of her coworkers didn’t bring bagels to the office “on the agreed-upon day.” Staffers accused of wrongdoing were put on trial internally.
In one case, Comey allegedly collaborated with a Bridgewater executive to entrap workers by leaving out a binder labeled in the executive’s name and seeing if anyone opened it. “Comey watched as a low-ranking Bridgewater employee stumbled upon the binder and began to peruse it,” Copeland writes. The executive and Comey “put the employee on trial, found him guilty, and fired him, with Dalio’s approval.” Comey declined to comment. [shock!]
brantl
@Scout211: Thiel never had anything to do with DEMOCRACY.
West of the Rockies
@CaseyL:
Any time I’ve seen TikTok, it is loaded with young women/teens lip-synching and posing and clearly saying, “OMG, am I not the most beautiful, sexy, amazing, desirable female you’ve ever, ever seen?” So glad my kid (they’re 22) dodged that bullet of behavior.
mrmoshpotato
@catclub:
Vultures are scavengers. They don’t kill their food (and then sell the company off for parts.)
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Do that with your pup and the parvo vaccine, you have a very good chance of the poor thing dying before it turns one.
Dumb.
trollhattan
@brantl: It was missing the verb “killing.”
Betty Cracker
@catclub: Depends on the owners’ goals. It’s not uncommon at all for private equity groups to swallow up thriving organizations and subsequently ruin them. Happens all the fucking time.
Miss Bianca
@evodevo: What? No horsey cliques as a pre-adolescent girl?//
(yeah, I know, horse girls are supposed to be the ne plus ultra of clique-y mean girls, but honestly, the horsey circles I ran in back in those days were the by far the least dramatic/traumatic in terms of interpersonal dynamics than any of the other ones I ran in – probably a clue that I should have stuck with horses in those years for my outlet!)
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: I got myself Mybook and Google+ accounts and frankly, can’t see what the fuss is all about.
Now Next Door, that’s a cesspool!
Cameron
@trollhattan: Dalio also fancies himself quite the philosopher. He’s got several books out, none of which I intend to read.
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron:
Well said.
I like this much better than “vulture capitalists.”
cain
@different-church-lady: He’s a child. A very rich child.
Bill Arnold
@jackmac:
Yes, worth a watch.
President Biden Remarks in Illinois on Labor Unions
jonas
@Old School: Not surprising, but it still sucks because he’s almost certain to be replaced by Jim Justice. I don’t think Justice is quite a raving MAGAt, but he won’t be good, either.
catclub
@John S.: Dollar General.
On June 21, 2007, CEO David Perdue announced his resignation leaving David Bere as interim CEO.[23] One month later, all shares of Dollar General stock were acquired by private equity investors for $22 per share. An investment group consisting of affiliates of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), GS Capital Partners (an affiliate of Goldman Sachs), Citigroup Private Equity and other co-investors completed an acquisition of Dollar General Corporation for $6.9 billion.[24]
As a part of the transition to a privately held company, Dollar General assessed each location at the end of its lease against a model known as “EZ Stores”. This assessment included evaluating whether the location had a loading dock, garbage dumpsters, adequate parking, and acceptable profitability. Stores that did not pass this evaluation were relocated or closed. Over 400 stores were closed as part of this initiative.[25]
![]()
Construction of a Dollar General store in Lowndes County, Georgia, in 2015
Dollar General filed on August 20, 2009, for an initial public offering of up to $750 Million turning the company once again into a publicly traded corporation.[26][27]
different-church-lady
@CaseyL:
Social media actively preys upon those whose ““Here Be Consequences” sense is under-developed. Facebook in particular was designed by sociopaths deliberately to do that very thing.
lowtechcyclist
@OGLiberal:
There’s a big difference, though, between ‘not actually a secret’ and ‘well known.’ People like us pay a lot more attention than most people, but all I knew about Stein in 2016 was that she was the Green Party candidate, and I didn’t know much about the Green Party beyond its name.
And really until the last few days before the election, Hillary was looking like a sure thing, so people probably felt they could afford to vote Green as a show of support for green causes. Hopefully the lessons of 2016’s narrow loss and 2020’s even narrower win haven’t worn off yet.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: He’s got a very nice wife and lots of great pets! He’s clearly got the naked-mopping-mustard-losing vote.
But is there room on the ticket for Baud for the eventual run for the White House?
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
I don’t have a MyFace account. I just know of all the Russky ratfucking that Fuckerberg allowed, and that turned out well for humanity.
Just the partial subject lines I see… Oh holy hell, you whiny brats! Get a hobby that isn’t bitching and moaning!
BruceFromOhio
@jackmac:
But her emails.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Miss Bianca: Doesn’t joining the horse set have very high $ barrier to entry?
Bill Arnold
@Citizen Alan:
For some of them, that’s “nice Mr. Putin”. (Hopefully fewer people than a couple of years ago.)
Warblewarble
One more “Never again” Biden should never quote Seamus Heaney, Heaney would never enable genocide.
teezyskeezy
@Citizen Alan: I’m sure there are all kinds of emulsifiers and other unnecessary sketchy chemicals in it to help with that part.
Jackie
@jonas: Maybe after he’s elected, Justice will switch back to a Democrat.
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
I cracked myself up!
Baud
@Warblewarble:
Intermingling separate issues is not cool.
phdesmond
@Burnspbesq:
is that “an athlete”?
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
Recently heard an interview with Lara Prior-Palmer who on a lark entered the Mongolia Derby at age nineteen, ended winning the thing. She was utterly charming and quirky in the interview and clearly someone who’d rather spend time with critters than people. Has since battled cancer and attended Stanford, so not done yet.
“In June 2013, at the last minute and on something of a lark, Prior-Palmer had signed up for the Mongol Derby, an endurance horse race held every August, getting a steep discount on the $13,000 entry fee. She was on her gap year between high school and university and had just been fired from her job as an au pair for an Austrian family.”
“Lara, for the final time you need to watch the children and stop bothering the wallabies.”
brantl
@trollhattan: Oh, that makes more sense.
brantl
@Betty Cracker: Bain ruined Dragon Speech which was thriving.
Alison Rose
@Warblewarble: Are you against all genocides, or only certain ones?
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
They haven’t been independent in a while. They were part of Gawker, which may have made sense at the time. But Gawker was gobbled up, so Jezebel became owned by whoever bought them up. And so it went from there. Josh Marshall is pretty sure that Jezebel could be run at a modest profit if it were on its own, but it isn’t their choice anymore. It’s just another piece of property to the vultures.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
Crap often fits better than inept.
Bill Arnold
@Warblewarble:
Get a grip. Israel is committing clear black letter law-of-armed-conflict war crimes. They are not committing genocide, unless you are objecting to a desire to destroy Hamas. There are elements in Israeli society that have expressed a desire for genocide (as there are opposing such elements elsewhere, expressing a desire to kill Jews), but they are not in control. (They should, however, be excised; they are malignant tumors.)
Quicksand
OMG, “editor-in-chiefs”? Speaking of editors!
brantl
@Bill Arnold: It would have to be discriminant, to be genocide. The only loophole that the Israelis are using is that some few of the horde of people that they killed, a sprinkling are members of Hamas. That’s all they’re hanging their “non-genocide” on.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BruceFromOhio: Sometimes I think about how in another timeline, we’d be most of the way through Hillary Clinton’s second term. Then I pour myself a drink.
Ruckus
@Ms. Deranged in AZ:
Hell doesn’t want them they are too high caliber fuckups and demand that when called fuck ups you use all caps.
FUCKUPS!
See, it really shows up better and gives them that extra boost.
cain
@Baud: he’s gonna fuck off to Arizona eventually :D
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Probably the reason marijuana legalization has taken off.
Warblewarble
Every bomb dropped on children and the blameless is a decision made, sending more bombs after we have seen how they are used is inexcusable.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
Gawker was bankrupted by the Hulk Hogan lawsuit funded by Thiel.
Univision, (a Spanish language broadcast corp) bought the assets for $135 mil and shut down some of the sites.
Later realizing that they knew nothing about running social media sites, they sold them off for $50 million to Great Hill Partners,
Tony Jay
@Bill Arnold:
I read that as Jowl Manchin and, yeah, I’m happy with that.
MisterForkbeard
@Bill Arnold: This is how I see it too.
Israel is not pursuing genocide. They ARE committing war crimes, in that they clearly don’t care about Palestinian civilian casualties.
Hamas has a stated aim of committing jewish genocide but is not in a position to accomplish that, and has also committed war crimes.
I’m unconvinced a ceasefire would happen, be honored, or accomplish anything so I’m loathe to assign the Biden admin any blame at all for not pushing for one publicly.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I imagine that the percentage of stupid hasn’t really changed all that much over the years – but. There are a lot more of us and we have far
bettermore communications over the last 20-25 yrs than we did when I was a teen – which seems like 2-3 hundred years ago. So far more teens get to be far more stupid right out in front of everyone.karen marie
@Baud: Hear hear!
Except I understand the job requires wearing pants.
BruceFromOhio
For any Defector subscriber, Spanfeller & company are well-known. He and his tribe are truly the anti-Midas, so it is no surprise that anything touched by these clowns turns into a pile of flaming shit. It is remarkable that in this year of Gaia 2023 anyone allows G/O media anywhere near anything resembling a functional media space.
My fuzzy recollection: Once upon a time, Jezebel.com was a creative site run by a solo graphic illustrator. It was sold to Gawker media in 2007, and the rest is history (lolol, get it? HIStory! bwahahaha)
If there is an upside, it’s the advent of the Defector model as reaction to the hedge-funded looters: employee owned and operated, grass-roots supported, and sources of splendid content unfettered by metrics, soulless management, or investors shitting in the gears to drive ever more elusive profit$. It’s not easy, and it takes a leap of faith by a group to make it work. Recently a group of video-game journalists decamped Kotaku for new site Aftermath, after several years of living under … wait for it … G/O Media.
Contrast with ProPublica, a non-profit leap of faith backed by some deep pockets, and donations from mokes like me. Though this is a different model, the investment in long-form journalism for the sake of journalism shows there is a space for this effort, an appetite for the content, and an audience willing to support it.
Conclude that it is possible to drive useful, relevant content sans ads, and unfettered by gaping rectums like Spanfeller and the rest of the techbro shitheads at G/O Media. While it does nothing for Jezebel in the here-now, it does light a candle for the next brave group of writers and journalists willing to make that leap.
Bex
@Baud: Beat me to it. Would like to see Senator and Mrs. Cole pictured at their first White House reception.
trollhattan
@Quicksand:
We need to reach out to all the chief of grammar polices.
Warblewarble
If clarification is needed I oppose all wanton savagery whether by hamas or our good Israeli friends.
Miss Bianca
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Depends where you are at and what type of riding you are doing. As with a lot of other sports, it can be extremely spendy, but it doesn’t have to be – only moderately spendy or not much at all, depending on whether you are trying to maintain your own horse/horse property or you’re content with/able to ride other peoples’ horses – *that’s* the budget way to approach it!
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: Oh, wow, I am totally going to read that story! Thank you!
(A friend wants to go horse-trekking in Mongolia in July, they use pack yaks, apparently – was asking if any of us wanted to go. Alas for me, July is a very busy month for the theater and then there’s that whole “getting to Mongolia” $ thing – but boy, I sure would love to cross the steppes on horseback!)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Maybe they should reform Jezebel as a series of substacks.
EarthWindFire
@karen marie: Overalls count as pants, don’t they? Cole and Fetterman could break the Senate dress code together.
BruceFromOhio
@phdesmond:
Asswipe!
Alison Rose
@Warblewarble: So what would you have had Israel do after Hamas slaughtered babies in the street and raped women and paraded them around, all while attempting to enact their stated goal of the annihilation of all Jews worldwide? Should they just have shrugged and said “well, we were about due for our next extermination experience, so it’s okay”. Because you seem to be arguing not against specific awful acts by Israel, but against the response as a whole. Do you think they had any right to respond at all?
BruceFromOhio
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Le sigh. I try not to go there, but then I do.
But nothing gets my back up like these clickbaiting fools and the “Joe Biden is too old” bullshit. Not having it this time.
OGLiberal
@different-church-lady: I’m not on social media much – used to rely on Twitter as, basically, a news feed but it just gets worse and worse every day Elon owns it. But in my experiences – however limited – there are a lot of people who do not have a developed “Here Be Consequences” sense who have not been kids for a long, long time. Facebook seems to be the worse as that’s where all the older nuts tend to congregate (not limited to boomers – I’m Gen X and my generation is horrible…at least most of the ones I grew up with), along with FB groups that claim to be about one thing but are really just recruiting grounds for Q-anon, anti-vaxxers, anti-pedo/groomer warriors and other conspiracy followers.
CaseyL
Since leaving X and moving to Mastodon, I have a lot of subscriptions to a lot of independent writers who made the same leap. I only pay for a few: Texas Observer, Chris Geidner (law), Daniel Drezner (IR and politics), and Phil Plait (astronomy) so far. I think all of the ones I subscribe to are refugees from Twitter, and/or made their pitch on Mastodon.
I’ve thought about ponying up for Defector, not least because (IIRC) that’s where a lot of terrific writers went after “investors” acquired and ruined their original outlets.
I’ve thought about quite a few other publications and individuals’ substacks, but I just don’t have all that much disposable income, so I have to pick and choose.
sab
@Betty Cracker: Finally the introverts who don’t actually care about popularity (as long as they have a few friends) have an advantage,
When I was in high school in the late 1960s we were obsessed with personal privacy. My, times have changed.
sab
@Ms. Deranged in AZ: Aren’t they just a bunch of well-networked Ivy League and Stanfoed guys that have known each other since prep school?
Betty Cracker
@sab: I was and still am an introvert. My sister used to say not giving a shit what other people thought was my super power. It really is if you can pull it off, but it’s much harder as a teen, when you’re still trying to figure out who you are.
lowtechcyclist
@MisterForkbeard:
That’s how I see it too. But I think it’s time to talk about the money.
We have been supporting Israel to the tune of $3B/year indefinitely. The least we can do is tell them that if they don’t choose their targets more selectively, that flow of dollars might dry up for a little while.
Israel’s military has found ventilation shafts leading into Hamas’ network of tunnels. If they’re going to do war crimes, how about one where they pump a shitload of poison gas into those tunnels, that Hamas has specifically said they’re not going to use to protect noncombatants, they’re for Hamas fighters/terrorists only. If that’s a war crime, I’d give them a pass on that one – it sounds like a perfect opportunity to kill Hamas without killing noncombatants.
sab
@Betty Cracker:Not giving a shit can also be a problem if there is an internet option to not give a shit in public. That is why I am so glad we were obsessed with privacy. I couldn’t even bring myself to keep a diary. “What if I get hit by a bus and my sister and Mom read it?” Now here I am all over BJ.
cain
@BruceFromOhio:
“Joe is too old” == “Kamala Harris is too black and too much woman”
Warblewarble
The current murderous campaign of the IDF. is in keeping with the years of acting as the more heavily armed wing of the expansionist settler movement The lives of Palestinians man , woman or child have not been spared for 75 years.
Martin
@Scout211: It’s a real coin flip whether to use my time machine to go back and kill baby Hitler or go back and plant a tree in just the right spot to make sure that Musks car crash finished the job.
I’m still going with the former since there’s a chance the butterfly wings from that would have caused the latter two to find a nice job selling cars in Berlin instead.
Alison Rose
@Warblewarble: I love how you refuse to answer direct questions. It’s okay, though, we get it. If you weren’t okay with Jews being murdered, you wouldn’t find it so difficult to say so. I agree that Palestinians have lived under horrid treatment for 75 years and that they deserve life and liberty as much as anyone else. You wanna take a stab at how many years Jews have been the victims of far worse around the whole world? I’m not saying that as justification for Israel’s bullshit, but just wanted to highlight once again that you only give a shit about the lives of one group and not the other, and you should really just state that outright.
CaseyL
Went to a bakery, andgot some fresh new pie!Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
@Scout211:
PETER THIEL IS TAKING A BREAK FROM DEMOCRACY
Very good! And so on point.
Warblewarble
A false accusation is a false accusation. I utterly condemn the murderous assault by Hamas the lives of Israelis are of equal value and have never suggested otherwise.
Martin
@Alison Rose: Do you think these actions will improve the security of the Israeli people in the long term?
Do you think that losing the support of the American people is worth these actions?
This says nothing about whether Hamas should be held accountable, that Israel shouldn’t carefully pick Hamas apart, violently if necessary. I’m fine with that. But Israel cannot colonize Palestine and then displace a million of the people they are colonizing, killing large numbers of civilians in the process, and retain the support of the American people.
A LOT of Americans are here because the place they came from suffered that very fate – including most American Jews. That’s the story of all of Africa, much of South and Central America, Ireland, a lot of eastern Europe, many parts of Asia, Ukraine right this minute. Watching Israel embrace the tactics of the people that mandated the creation of Israel in the first place is really fucking hard to watch.
H.E.Wolf
@Warblewarble:
Given the USA’s body count of dead children killed by guns inside the borders of our country, sanctimony is not a good look for us.
On a related – and encouraging – note, Moms Demand Action celebrated the election victories of 64 of their candidates on Tuesday: “from school boards to city councils to statehouses.”
https://nitter.net/momsdemand
Martin
But you are. Because that’s the only reason to mention it. Nobody here is denying that Jews historically and *currently* are suffering terribly, but as soon as you draw a parallel between that and what’s happening now, you’re conflating antisemitism and antizionism. There’s no way to not draw that conclusion.
The Israeli government has said time and time and time again in the last month that Palestinian civilians must bear retribution for any actions of Hamas. But Hamas is a product of Israeli policy, and not just indirectly. Israels interference in the Palestinian elections, and cutting off peace avenues contributed directly to Hamas’s rise to power, and current Israeli leaders have said in the past that Hamas was more useful to Israel than PA was because the latter wouldn’t give Israel justification to settle and annex Palestine. A more peaceful Palestinian leadership was counterproductive to Israel’s goals. And that leads directly to this minute where we see Israel carrying out the plan they’ve long wanted – annexation of Gaza.
Jews did not want 10/7 to happen, and Israeli citizens didn’t want 10/7 to happen, but some of Israels leadership definitely wanted something like 10/7 to happen, just as Bush/Cheney were all too ready for the opportunity that 9/11 presented them. It’s not like any of these people were hiding it.
Geminid
@Martin: No one in Israel wanted 10/7 to happen.
Warblewarble
Large numbers of Israelis who lost family members while the bulk of the active units of the IDF were deployed to give cover to settler provocation at the West Bank on October 7th have raised their voices against the current murderous campaign which they can clearly see is not solely directed against Hamas,but clearly has other long term aims,as the history of expanionism shows.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
And yet you have a dynamic presence.
Amazing how complex we are.
ETA. I am reminded of TV personality Johnny Carson, who was an absolute master as host of the Tonight Show, a good comedian and insightful interviewer. And yet he was shy and aloof off stage.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: You’re very kind — thank you! It’s a privilege to get to know y’all, in this limited dimension anyway. I’ve learned so much and been endlessly entertained!
Martin
@Geminid: There are people who were in the US government, and more than people want to admit, that after 9/11 walked into a meeting and said the words ‘You know, 9/11 gives us an opportunity to…’.
They didn’t want 9/11 specifically to happen, but they absolutely wanted that opportunity to happen. Israeli leaders, just like American leaders, have said that the status quo politically did not allow them to do something, but if they had a more adversarial opponent, that would increase the likelihood of such an opportunity to happen.
I mean, this is not that far removed from Democrats wanting the most extreme Republican running against them, because in the campaign that creates opportunities for them to swing voters with the risk that they lose and the extreme Republican does something extreme once in office. It’s the same dynamic, just higher stakes.
You don’t think the West Bank settlements aren’t designed to provoke a response from a weaker adversary that they can use as justification to twist the screws even tighter – as a tripwire force?
Warblewarble
Having received warnings the Netanyahu government were prepared to accept a containable Hamas incursion which they could use to advantage. what they got was not containable
Pharniel
Linda “My reporting defined gaming news this year” Codega was also let go.
I fully expect IO9 & the other Gawker sites to just be full on AI created nonsense.
Kathleen
@Elizabelle: WaPo had a million word story of an investigation of Biden the FBI conducted 17 years ago. It went on forever. Of course I didn’t read it but just the scrolling enraged me.
The themes range from “Democrats Are Too Full Of Themselves” to “Voters Like Democrats But Hate Biden”. Media filled with deranged jackals who revile Biden. I would say it’s a “sickness” but I don’t think they have “wellness” so there’s no polarity.
Geminid
@Martin: I understand the principle you assert. But the US response to 9/11 is not some universal template that applies to the events of October 7. People try to find a conspiracy here, an “inside job.” The Israeli right tried it first, and now you are.
The cause of Israel’s lack of preparedness seems totally obvious to me. Israeli leaders assumed that Hamas was deterred by Israeli firepower. They did not ask themselves: what if Hamas chooses not to be deterred?
Those political leaders including Netanyahu will not survive the aftermath of this war.
Geminid
@Warblewarble: Bullshit. Israeli leaders were caught by surprise because they made unwarranted asumptions that Hamas would not risk retaliation. Hamas chose that risk, knowing that the Israeli response would turn world opinion against them. The Gaza civilians at risk were pawns to be sacrificed.
Warblewarble
Those political leaders including Netanyahu will not survive the aftermath of this war,all too many others will not survive this war. So why the obscene rush to embrace this enemy of democracy. Palestinian mothers can sing “Someday my pause will come” as a lullaby to terrified children, how many of those children will live to see this famous pause?
Martin
@Geminid: I’m not asserting a conspiracy theory, or that anything was an inside job. I’m not even asserting that Israel ignored warnings.
But stochastic terrorism is called that because the actions are part of advancing an agenda, even if the party advancing the agenda has no actual control of what will happen. The point of it is to shift the status quo away from a state where the agenda cannot be advanced to one where it can. US conservatives that promote messages to induce stochastic terrorism *expect* that violence will happen to their fellow Americans, and that violence is a necessary price to be paid to advance their agenda. They can both be actually horrified by the actual incident that happens, and profit from the fact that they indirectly helped make it happen.
They didn’t want the specific events of 10/7 to happen, and they may not have wanted anything of that scale to happen. Israel has responded when a single family were killed – that may have been adequate for their goals, and they got worse than they bargained for.
But the point is that Israel isn’t responding in a way that makes the security of the Israeli people better. They’re responding in a way that advances an agenda they’ve long prepared for and expressed they wanted to advance. It’s less ham-fisted than the fabricated arguments to invade Iraq, but it rhymes with them. And I’m not saying Israel shouldn’t respond in some way to what happened on 10/7, but they wouldn’t have responded like this if it was just about that day. They wouldn’t be working so hard to justify the civilian deaths, which they are only doing because they know the response is not proportional or even focused on addressing the specific events of 10/7. They’re trying to sell something independent of 10/7 as being necessary because of 10/7. I didn’t buy that effort in 2003, and I don’t buy it today. What is happening doesn’t logically follow from the events of 10/7, it does if you bring in Bibi’s desire to annex Palestine which LONG predates 10/7. Then it makes perfect sense.
Martin
@Geminid: I don’t understand why Israel would think Hamas would be deterred. Hamas is vastly more willing to trade Palestinian lives for their political agenda than Israel is willing to trade Jewish lives. That’s been true for as long as Hamas has existed.
Geminid
@Warblewarble: I’m not embracing anybody, just pushing back on the theory that Netanyahu purposely allowed something to happen that will doom him politically. You can hate Israel all you want, but that doesn’t entitle you to make shit up.
Geminid
@Martin: You might not be able to understand it, but Israel did think they had Hamas deterred. Hamas leaders were not just risking the lives of Gaza’s civilians, but they risked their own as well.
I think you should read up on the Israeli reaction to October 7. The only elements saying it was an inside job were Netanyahu’s own partisans who tried to frame the security services. I have not seen one opposition leader or citizen who thinks Netanyahu knew what was coming, and some of them hate Netanyahu more than you do.
Martin
@Geminid: Again, I am NOT saying it was an inside job.
I’m saying Netanyahu and other Israeli hardliners needed opportunities to advance their agenda. They did not know the shape or nature of how that opportunity would arrive, but they knew the opportunities were more likely to arrive with Hamas than with PA, and therefore Hamas was useful to them.
The security crackdown on Gaza was beneficial to both Hamas and Israel – the latter both secured domestic support from hardliners but also ramped up the pressure to make an opportunity more likely. It was beneficial to Hamas because it helped them recruit. Israel must know that the crackdown would help Hamas build support (which they expended on 10/7). Israel is not dumb regarding this kind of stuff. They are famously very smart about it.
So all of these actions are designed to increase the odds of an opportunity to present itself. Israel may regret that the opportunity came with the costs that it did. Hamas may regret that as well. These can all be true.
What informs us is what they do with the opportunity, because it shows us at least something about what they wanted before it happened. In the end, I agree this may be Bibi’s downfall because the costs were so high, something he didn’t anticipate. He may have thought that Hamas was incapable of anything more than a minor skirmish which would have served the task.
My assertion here is that there’s a whole lot a FAFO going around – Hamas, Israel, Iran, maybe the US as well.
Ms. Deranged in AZ
@sab: Pretty much. And they almost always fail upward even after they’ve destroyed a company. There is no meritocracy in the US and I honestly think there never really was.
Warblewarble
Israeli leaders made the unwarranted assumption that Hamas could not launch a murderous assault on such a scale.1400 Israelis lost their lives,the toll of Palestinians is rising by the hour. I am all to well aware that a massive body count suits the hard men of Hamas. My point is that Netanyahu gambled on a containable local incursion which could then be exploited for expansionist ends.Now there is weeping in Israel ,and in Gaza and the West Bank. It breaks my heart and I speak out of pain, My grandchildren have lost their other beloved grandfather and I alone am left as their sole grandfather.Were it not for school my grandchildren might well have been with their grandfather when he was murdered.
Geminid
@Warblewarble: You assert that Netanyahu gambled on a containable local incursion but you have no facts to back that assertion up. That is because this did not happen.
I respect your feelings, and I apologize for saying you hated Israel. That was wrong. But I think people should stick to facts and not make them up in order to further their blamecasting.
Warblewarble
Show me where I’m hating anyone. .if my tone offends fans of Netanyahu so be it
Warblewarble
On second thoughts my hatred of the Hamas murders will never die.
Geminid
@Warblewarble: What Netanyahu fans have you offended? I certanly am not one. In fact, I have not seen one person on this blog say one good thing about Benjamin Netanyahu ever.
Warblewarble
Biting my tongue. Pain and grief can be overwhelming. Now I need some self care. I do take on the points that others make and hope that all find a way to be constructive and care for each other. Let us depart now in peace. Shalom.
PaulWartenberg
these private equity firms are buying up media outlets at every level and cashing them out, it’s terrifying that local news – oft-times the source of serious investigations into local corruption – is getting trashed and bankrupted by billionaires using the debt to destroy more industries.