onfocus

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

If you have a billionaire you're basically immune from market forces. But very happy to see people stop supporting a billionaire's unprincipled pet project. Really nice work. I'm going to stop linking to it. (Up next: stop using Twitter?)

I don’t fear that my entire publication will be forced to kowtow to the whims of billionaire trying to make nice with a fascist. I don’t fear that an editor will tell me I can’t publish an article calling Donald Trump a fascist. I don’t have to get anyone to approve it when I say that I, and Citation Needed, wholeheartedly endorse Kamala Harris for president, not because she is perfect but because the other option is violent authoritarianism.

Molly White on the freedom and pain of being an independent journalist.

This early sneak preview of what dictatorship actually looks like is also providing the most important lesson we could have right now, which is how to not obey in advance but stand up against strongmen and bullies. How all of us respond over the coming days and weeks will decide the fate of the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country.

More on billionaire capitulation.

On Friday, the Washington Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced that the paper would no longer make endorsements for president—after its journalists had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision was made by Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner.

What’s the point of a billionaire owning a newspaper if he can’t use it to promote his interests? Disgusting how ungrateful these billionaires are to the country and institutions that put them in a position to make billions.

He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

I’m afraid this is what many people find appealing about Trump. During a crisis it doesn’t work to have a deeply incurious, unserious, and cruel person at the helm as we found out with covid. Please vote for people who want to make government work beyond eternal personal revenge.

Framing a strike as potentially strangling the economy (with little mention of the hardship striking workers would no doubt face) serves to help the reader, whose economic situation is almost certainly closer to the workers, identify instead with the multibillion-dollar logistics companies.

News stories are always from management’s point of view. You typically have to go directly to the union to get their take.

At one point during the event — which was ostensibly supposed to focus on Trump’s policy vision — the former president told his supporters, “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into our music. Who the hell wants to hear questions? Right?”

Sounds like the vibes were immaculate for Trump, but this is not normal presidential behavior. This isn't even stalling for time. This is a problem when this person wants to be commander in chief.

Historians: He’s a fascist. Political scientists: He’s a fascist. His own aides: He’s a fascist. The NYT: He shows a wistful longing for a bygone era of global politics.

That, in essence, is the issue with these headlines.

Breaking my rule about linking to Substack because the NYT coverage of the election has been abysmal. In a just world it would mean the end of the NYT. (It would be ok, we could get our word games somewhere else.) But maybe there are enough fascist-curious consumers and backers to keep it going. They just need one billionaire to weather any storm.

The United States imports a wide variety of items that cannot be produced in large enough quantities to satiate domestic demand. Basic foodstuffs such as coffee, bananas, avocados, cocoa and much more do not grow in U.S. climates. And there are no domestic replacements for wild-caught Chilean sea bass or yellowfin tuna.

Countering MAGA beliefs with logic isn't going to move any numbers, but it is good to make the rational case that Trump's economic plan would tank the economy. He's not good at business or economics. That’s a mythology that was created to sell garbage. Plus he's surrounded people who are out to prove the government doesn't work.

The letter is an effort to draw a contrast between the 59-year-old Democratic nominee and her 78-year-old Republican rival, Donald Trump, who is vying to become the oldest person ever elected to the Oval Office and has released relatively little detailed information about his own medical history.

Please remember that a vote for Trump is a vote for a potential Vance presidency and no one wants that.

Writer/researcher Erin Kissane is working to build better and safer networks for collective survival, with efforts including the COVID Tracking Project, a powerful 40,000 word analysis of Meta’s role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, and current research into the culture and governance of the next wave of social networks.

When necessary government infrastructure to fight the covid pandemic was missing, internet randos came together on Twitter to build it. Amazing, heartbreaking talk here. Inspiring reminder that confronting the pain of the world is difficult and necessary.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that AI is advancing so fast, and requires so much energy, that there is no way to keep up with climate goals.

"On second thought," Eric Schmidt implied, "be evil." This kind of shameless greed is going to ruin our planet.