T.M. Brown

🤔

This is the major talking point re: gentrification that I think is deeply stupid and also widely held. Why are people obsessed with telling people they’re not allowed to live in a given place? It’s such a funny evolution of a deeply reactionary impulse.

Chinese Manufacturers Have Been Turning to TikTok Diplomacy

you know those videos where Chinese manufacturing sourcers tell you they can get you Lululemon and Dyson Airwraps directly from the factory? i wrote about how they're a new frontier in diplomacy for
@nytimes.com magazine www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/m...

What the Trump Team Is Communicating With Their Very Chaotic Clothes Trump 2.0 is a bonanza of odd menswear. Writer T.M. Brown decodes the lapels and collars of Washington, DC’s sundry power players.

First time in @gqmagazine.bsky.social and I wrote about how goofy the fits are in rightwing politics and what they say about where these people want the country to go www.gq.com/story/what-t...

Bluesky Can’t Take a Joke Bluesky has been a safe haven for users fleeing X and Threads. But while there’s less hate, there’s also fewer lolz.

He’s right you dorks www.wired.com/story/bluesk...

paging @jamellebouie.net to let me on the pod

‘Natty or Not’ Influencer Kenny Boulet Wants People to Be More Honest About Steroids (Gift Article) The fitness influencer Kenny Boulet, who asks gymgoers if they’re “natty or not,” wants people to be more honest about their steroid use.

Got to write about steroids, male body image, and the question on everyone's minds: Are you natty or not? for the @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/s...

The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema Why did Hollywood lose interest in making paranoid thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor? Was it a change in the culture? Or a change in the marketplace?

for @thenation.com, i wrote about the evolution on conspiracy thrillers from the 1970s to now — and why we seem a lot less interested in ambiguous conclusions about how the world works. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

i'm talking about places i *want* to live Peter

few things more humbling and irritating than looking at what your NYC housing budget can get you in Los Angeles ☹️

Spectacles of Banality | The Point Magazine As not only a straight guy but also a writer, I don’t seem to fit into the usual picture people have of a reality TV enthusiast, and it is assumed that I must, for some reason, have enough sense to kn...

for @thepointmag.bsky.social i wrote about reality TV's postmodern appeal and why we long for the banal in the face of such overwhelming anxiety thepointmag.com/criticism/sp...

deeply funny that i do not post on here (and probably will never post on here) and yet people keep finding me

i think that's a fair critique here, though we were a little limited by word count and the movement around state policy is such a huge and vital topic that i think we wouldn't have been able to do all the nuances justice.

Priced Out of New York, She Took Her $350,000 Budget to Philadelphia. Here’s What She Found. (Gift Article) After a near-death experience gave her a new lease on life, a writer ‘broke up with New York’ and headed south to find a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment.

Hello from my hangover. Here’s my last piece of the year, a Hunt column about an amazing woman named Diane who broke up with New York and found a home and community in Philadelphia. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Still hanging onto the lead slot on the culture page

god the nerds on bluesky are somehow more annoying than anyone on twitter

The Technology That Actually Runs Our World The most dominant algorithms aren’t the ones choosing what songs Spotify serves you.

i wrote about why the discourse around algorithms and culture ignores much wider structural issues for @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

but man, i find this sort of this genuinely exhausting! mostly, i assume, because i maintain a presence on a bunch of different platforms now where the prospect of trying to do that here just seems so... daunting.

there's sort of an interesting dynamic that is playing out both here and on substack, where it's effectively a land grab for influence that *should be* of interest to someone like me that missed out on the initial days of twitter audience building

Who should write? Expansionists vs. Limiters

people yelled at me about this piece about who should be able to call themselves a writer and now i bring it to bluesky tedthoughts.substack.com/p/who-should...

I wrote about gift guides lol

Just going to post the full spread of my Zyn story since apparently there’s like a critical mass of people here now?

Practical Magic: The Lucrative Business of Being a Witch on Etsy and TikTok Modern witches no longer lurk in dark alleys or operate out of the back rooms of stores, you can instead buy their services online for a pretty penny or two.

Happy spooky szn everyone 🧙🏼‍♀️🔮🧙🏼‍♀️🔮👻👻🧙🏼‍♀️🔮🧙🏼‍♀️ I wrote about the witches of Etsy for the @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/s...

@davidehrlich.bsky.social so is if any better over here or should we just not have social media anymore?

Ugh hi everyone.