Lisa Schmeiser

The entire piece has the same general vibe as two of the drunkest girls you’ve ever seen in a bar bathroom hyping each other up to go key someone’s car because they “just love sooooo hard” or some nonsense like that.

My hippie theology is shaky but I do not recall Matthew 23:37 reading, "When I was in prison, you visited me ... to kill me because I did something 'very detrimental to society' and sometimes murder is justifiable, that is my whole thing in the New Testament, a complete escalation of violence."

OK, I grew up in a parish where our priest was fully into Vatican II, the stoles were often folk art made by the 2nd-grade CCD class & the choir once bopped through the nave to Godspell's "Prepare Ye" ... but I don't recall Jesus being down with KILLING criminals solely because they did stuff wrong?

I just read the Lisa Taddeo piece in Airmail so you don't have to, and I'm not sure "Look, EVERY GIRL in love has chosen the wrong man & helped him get into a position to enact terrible public policies, so who are you to judge?" was the most persuasive pro-Olivia Nuzzi argument anyone could make.

OMG this is beautifully and concisely put.

It is always wild to hit Reddit & see the Extremely Online absolutely slagging wine moms, etc., when every proposition campaign I've seen WORK is run by one (or more) middle-aged woman with a job, kids she ferries to multiple extracurriculars, & a willingness to grind for months & friends who help.

But in offline spaces, people control how other folks can access their time & social energy. They cut interactions short, refuse to engage, or leave.

Blocklists seem like a digital extension of what we already do offline -- avoid being around people we don't trust to engage in good faith.

One of the weirdnesses of being online in the early days was "Wait, I can just ...reply to someone in this place? Like we know each other?"

A lot of folks unconsciously presumed "access to a forum" = "access to someone's attention." A lot of bad actors have exploited this premise online.

Giving the gift of independent journalism: a guide The Handbasket has subscription suggestions for almost everyone on your list.

NEW — I put together a list of independent journalism subscriptions that would make great holiday gifts. From music to politics, astronomy to alcohol, tech to social justice, there’s something for [almost] everyone. Support indie media *and* surprise and delight your loved ones!

My guide:

High praise from you! Thank you.

In comedy of errors, men accused of wiping gov databases turned to an AI tool Defendants were convicted of similar crimes a decade ago. How were they cleared again?

This entire story reads like an Armando Ianucci television show episode: arstechnica.com/information-...

Thank you! There's hopium and then there's outright delusion.

Anyway, as we chew over Olivia Nuzzi running out the clock on her temp contract at Vanity Fair, consider this: ambitious people who love status signifiers and attention will return to the thing that put them -- however briefly -- on the A-list. There will be no shortage of people to help them. /🧵

Among the things that are remarkable about this whole saga: It started with some pretty significant professional missteps and the person doing those things had 25 years to learn from their poor performance -- but they went out and did it again. Multiple people failed to learn something here.

Ruth Shalit Barrett has since sued over the accuracy and veracity of the editor's note, and the implication she was trying to hide her history with a different byline, and the case was settled only three months ago: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/b...

By November 1, 2020, the Atlantic had retracted the article -- unusual in itself -- and posted an editor's note saying they could not attest to the trustworthiness & credibility of the author:

www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/b...

Wemple's subsequent queries to The Atlantic -- about allegations of young fencer suffering stabbings to the carotid artery & Olympic-sized hockey rings being built in back yards -- were not publicly addressed. He kept digging and unearthed more inaccuracies: archive.is/2z17J

The Washington Post's Eric Wemple immediately had some issues with her piece, a fantastically juicy story of sports-crazed parents in a moneyed CT enclave:

archive.is/2XfJV

So Ruth Shalit pivoted to advertising and soft-launched her journalism comeback via New Media, inveigling a column at Salon: www.salon.com/writer/ruth_...

She got married -- a new last name! -- and had kids and tried to return to the big leagues with an Atlantic piece under the name Ruth S. Barrett

In '95, Shalit was also caught out for introducing factual inaccuracies in a TNR piece on the Washington Post, "Race in the Newsroom."

She was subsequently placed on leave for six months in 1996, then ushered out of TNR in '99: washingtoncitypaper.com/article/2734...

Truth, Lies, and Second Chances Last year, a journalist’s attempted comeback from a 25-year-old plagiarism scandal was canceled by new charges of misconduct. Now, a lawsuit claims she was wronged.

I am old enough to remember when Ruth Shalit was a big deal in the '90s. She was a Bright Young Thing in fin-de-sicle magazine journalism (the New Republic, the New York Times magazine, GQ).

Then, from 1994-1995, she was caught plagiarizing no fewer than five times. 🧵

www.cato.org/commentary/t...

Vital Cat Update It’s time to talk about my cat. To which you might be saying, “Chuck, I didn’t know you had a cat!” and I’d respond with, “I didn’t know I had a cat either…

AI is so awesome. I’m so glad the entire tech industry - nay, the ENTIRE ECONOMY - is being built around this wondrous technology.

terribleminds.com/ramble/2025/...

Oh my gosh, this is perfect. And now I can never unsee it.

Olivia Nuzzi: "I don't know how to responsibly handle this on camera."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhhW...

"Here’s the type of content losing to AI: explainers, how-tos, evergreens, aggregated news, resource lists, hours of operation for government offices, recipes." www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/sorr...

Olivia Nuzzi will get hired at CBS timestamp

What kind of fresh start would that be? What do we need to start over from?

Remember: both nostalgia and rigorous conformity are key to the aesthetics of fascism.

And that's why I cannot stop thinking about this color selection and what the corporate forecasters & merchandisers think is ahead. /🧵

Pantone names its Color of the Year for 2026 | CNN Capturing the cultural zeitgeist and trends for the year ahead is a tricky business. But every year, the Pantone Color Institute chooses a color to do precisely that. And it has settled on a shade of ...

And then Pantone actually went on the record with:

The color is “associated with new beginnings” and “signifies our desire for a fresh start,” Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the institute said.

www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/s...

An instagram post where a tradwife influencer shows three white children weaing white and because they have different colored hair, captioned it with "we have all the diversity we need."

Trend forecasters looked at things like this and decided the white-stuff aesthetic was fine to tack into. Not the millennial-coded "stuff white people like" (including performative diversity). White as an explicity rejection of diversity & a move to aesthetic conformity:

This… “stuff”? Oh, okay. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue. It's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner…where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs. And it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact…you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room…from a pile of "stuff."

All of these things are possible because retailers offer them. Or, as was brilliantly encapsulated in "The Devil Wears Prada":