Adam B. Vary

"War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength"

The Duffer Brothers on How ‘Game of Thrones’ Taught Them to Get Bigger Budgets From Netflix and Why the ‘Stranger Things’ Cast Aging Is ‘Not as Dramatic as People Think’ "Stranger Things" creators Matt and Ross Duffer discuss how "Game of Thrones" helped them to get bigger budgets and why they aren't sweating how their cast has aged.

For our #StrangerThings cover story, @adambvary.bsky.social and I interviewed Matt and Ross Duffer for hours over two long sit-downs — so we had a ton left over. There's one COVID-season fact about Sadie Sink in Season 4 that blew me away, but we just couldn't include it! variety.com/2025/tv/news...

Just saw this today. This is a transparent attempt to KILL DUE PROCESS by lying about the job of immigration judge and stacking the deck through hiring only bloodthirsty lawyers who want to deport people.

This comes after they pushed out over 100 judges deemed too likely to grant relief.

This is fucking insane, gaslighting the entire nation with a poisonous dehumanization.

What a disgraceful, mortifying time to live in.

The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted.

If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.

There are 4 types of guys online. No exceptions.

Like, this is approaching turning-your-name-into-a-noun levels of self-owning embarrassment.

Part 1: How I Found Out Olivia had just returned from a reporting trip—at least that’s what she told me it was—and her Herschel backpack, the one with the flap that never quite closed properly, was tossed beside our bed, its...

I'd been keeping the Nuzzi/RFK/Lizza story at arm's length for my own personal sanity. Then a colleague implored me to read Lizza's first public account, all the way to the end. Welp. I'm invested now! www.telos.news/p/part-1-how...

This is looting.

Saying Goodbye to ‘Stranger Things’: The Duffer Brothers Tell All on Season 5 Secrets, the Tearful Finale and Leaving Netflix for Paramount (EXCLUSIVE) Matt and Ross Duffer grace the cover of Variety and discuss ending "Stranger Things," the future of the franchise and leaving Netflix for Paramount.

Here is that original cover story, btw.

Oh no Drew, I am so sorry, this is horrifying.

you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric

‘I’m at a Loss Without the Show’: Inside the Final Days of ‘Stranger Things’ and the Cast’s Heartbreaking Goodbyes The cast of 'Stranger Things' tells all about the final days of making the Netflix hit, from tons of tears to emotional farewells.

For our #StrangerThings cover story, @adambvary.bsky.social and I interviewed one zillion people, and asked all of them about their final day working on the show. Adam put that reporting together into an oral history of the last days of "Stranger Things." Enjoy! variety.com/2025/tv/feat...

‘I’m at a Loss Without the Show’: Inside the Final Days of ‘Stranger Things’ and the Cast’s Heartbreaking Goodbyes The cast of 'Stranger Things' tells all about the final days of making the Netflix hit, from tons of tears to emotional farewells.

As @kateaurthur.bsky.social and I were reporting out our #StrangerThings cover from last month, the show's cast kept telling us vivid, emotional about their final days on the show. So we put them all together in this (spoiler free) oral history.

NEW: At Pope Leo’s Urging, Bishops Issue Historic Rebuke of Trump’s Raids Nearly all U.S. Catholic bishops united in Baltimore to denounce the Trump administration’s “inhumane” deportation campaign — a near-unanimous, unprecedented moral stand against a sitting president.

BREAKING: At Pope Leo XIV’s urging, U.S. Catholic bishops just delivered the strongest rebuke of a sitting president in Church history — condemning Trump-Vance raids as “inhumane” and “dehumanizing” in a 216–5 vote.

I think a big reason Chicagoans are avoiding shopping at the Miracle Mile is because it's very inconvenient to drive all the way to the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles

New ep of Podcast Like It’s The 2000s! 🎭
@emilystjams.bsky.social  & @pmiscove.bsky.social  chat w/ @adambvary.bsky.social  about Mike Nichols’ Angels in America: Millennium Approaches a defining moment for HBO & queer storytelling on TV.
Listen now + watch full video on Patreon. #PodcastLikeIts

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

THEY PEPPER SPRAYED A BABY

THEY PEPPER SPRAYED A BABY

Please read this entire excellent piece by Caroline, which points out that a judge ordered the Feds (again) to stop doing **this exact kind of thing** and they are still continuing to do it all over Chicago

oh so these people do pay attention to who politicians follow on social media, they just don’t care that the vice president follows a bunch of actual neo-nazis

X and social media in general are the 21st century’s internal combustion engine: a revolutionary invention at the center of the economy that we’ve all come to realize is poisoning the world.

This week on @podcastlikeits The 2000s @emilystjams.bsky.social and I jump back into our Mike Nichols miniseries to talk Angels in America: Millennium Approaches with Variety’s @adambvary.bsky.social! We discuss the play, its development history and the absolutely incredible cast.

Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone Developing ‘Miss Piggy’ Movie With ‘Oh Mary’ Tony-Winner Cole Escola Jennifer Lawrence says she's making a "Miss Piggy" movie with Emma Stone and Cole Escola.

The world is healing.

The Democrats won several VA House seats where winning looked like a pipe dream going into the election. The Dems won these seats because they recruited candidates and actually campaigned. Important lesson for 26--the electorate is pissed--but you can only win when you run. Run everywhere!

just want to remind everyone again that zohran is the one cis candidate i am aware of that had his platform on trans rights written by trans people. i think that matters

Whatever polling you want to look at, there's extremely minimal evidence that anti-trans campaigns move the needle when Donald Trump is not on the ballot.

The gay man who restyles himself as an arrogant bully because he's spent his entire life trying to prove that he's worthy of the company of straight homophobes is a very familiar type to me. I went to college with this one. There are many like him, although, happily, infinitely more who are not.

Too soon!

A Halloween Tradition People Love to ‘Hate’

Gonna be the Gay History Nerd for a sec: This headline continues a decades-old tradition of explaining gay cultural phenomena to readers via straight confusion/resentment--and of assuming that highly specific references are designed to confuse or exclude, not delight. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/s...