Jeff Sharlet

“Despite telling the officers he was an American citizen, one of them broke the driver’s side window and detained him. In a video shared to the outlet by Cesar Jimenez, Christian can reportedly be heard asserting his citizenship while an officer responds “get out of the car” and “I don’t care.”

First photo of Bolsonaro in prison

"The high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by....(1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, and (3) athletic recruitment" which are "uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes" unlike SAT/ACT scores

Ugh. No. The ruling class sucks and Epstein was a criminal, but in this country, “the Epstein class”? Might as well say “Elders of Zion.”

The DHS Twitter account is *not* run out of Tel Aviv; this screenshot is faked. Free Palestine and don’t spread lies

Truth social post from Trump, in golden armour with crown on a throne, small democrats kneeling at his feet.

Things are going well over on Truth Social, where Trump just reposted AI Slop of himself as what I can only describe as imperial Lannister cosplay, with prominent Democrats kneeling at his feet

Me, I like cover stories. I like publicity budgets for my books.

Yes, because more of you want to read her work than the work of most of us.

I figured you really did!

We need both

I don't think it can be addressed, especially because you can rarely be certain whether someone favors bad stuff because they're being lazy, or duped, or because that's just the limit of their abilities. But social media is definitely gas on fire.

With respect, I could literally not disagree with this more. In part because for better or worse, I publish sometimes in "major" media, & I know how much better that work is than anything I could express in this form. *This* is commentary. It's not reporting. Read reporting. You'll like it!

Speaking as one who does just fine, no complaints, but does not, in *that* sense, get promoted--that is, one whose work IS put before you alongside that other kind of work--the public makes its choices. The rest of us journalists, our work is *right there.*

Yes, absolutely -- and the corresponding reality that more readers prefer that sort of thing. They're "our" monsters. The reading public makes them. Their faults are their own, but their prominence is the result of a reading public.

Thanks, but we most definitely won’t! And we’re losing ground tmore rapidly now than ever. Part of problem is readers of all stripes excuse themselves by saying the enshittification is fault of some politics they don’t hold. But it is across. The. Board. Not “both sides,” everywhere all at once.

Oh, she was no pioneer! Celebrity journalism is as old as the modern press. But also, before her collapse into fascism, she was quite good. But then, I’m in that small group that can say what Nuzzi has done is abomination, *&* she was at times quite good.

That’s Nuzzi’s failure as a writer, but she’s been enabled by a lot of readers. Many of whom are repeating the mistake right now, reveling in the awful details of these people rather than the damage those details led to. You don’t have to choose! Both part of a true story. Get the whole story.

you're covering yourself the way the old you would have covered you: as a character first, without much regard to what your character flaws have wrought.

I thought this insight from @anamariecox.bsky.social was perceptive not just about one person many mock now but about a broad range of political journalism that many of those who mock will keep reading if it aligns with what they think they know. newsletter.anamariecox.com/archive/note...

So what is to be done? I dunno. At scale, probably nothing. I’ve been a journalist 33 years, & in this regard same as it ever was. For individuals looking to get free? Read weird, be skeptical, don’t take cues from social media (so ignore this!), grow yr attention span, ask structural questions.

That is, many decry “access journalism,” but what they really don’t like is “access journalism” that contradicts their beliefs. When Nuzzi was on the right side of the beliefs of enough people, her extreme form of access journalism actually expanded her audience.

There’s not much new in that. They deliver gossipy news, they *can* be talented sentence-makers, recent missteps excepted, their stories tend to reaffirm ideas large sectors already hold, they signal their status & many readers *want* status in their reporters.

I’m sure as heck not saying that as a defense! I’d like to think I’m among the many, many journalists who can’t afford 3-story Georgetown Brownstone. I do ok. They do much “better,” because more readers, & that may include you, prefer the stories they tell.

I think the people wondering how the Nuzzis & the Lizzas of the world get so famous are maybe making more discriminating choices. But fact is, more people prefer such ego bombs than the many, many excellent journalists w/out white mustangs or tell-all bamboo metaphors.

Ok I’ll meet you on that point—scale. That said, 2 points: it’s not likely scale of dysfunction so much as scale of ability to indulge & subsequent blowback. And we’re not “fed” such characters. I appreciate you reading my work; but I must accept fact that far more prefer the Nuzzis of the world.

Dispensing false information in a confident tone, rather than offering no answer when none is readily available, is a major flaw of generative AI, experts say. An audit of the top 10 generative AI models including ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta’s AI by the media literacy non-profit NewsGuard revealed that the non-response rates of chatbots went down from 31% in August 2024 to 0% in August 2025. At the same time, the chatbots’ likelihood of repeating false information almost doubled from 18% to 35%, NewsGuard found. None of the companies responded to NewsGuard’s request for a comment at the time.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

You never encountered people who’d had affairs with people they’d met at work or people who measured attractiveness by perceived status?

I reviewed it for Bookforum. In fact, I wish more people read it. I believe a significant part of our trouble now has to do with so many—not you, obviously—who believe the only thing they need to know about fascism is it sucks. They don’t know how it works, or why, or who is really involved.

A lovely position, but given the alleged role she may have played in RFK’s ascent, you and I will both be dealing with the impact for years.

So is Frey’s garbage. So is a good 1/4 of big buzz lit fiction.

Accelerationism.