Adam Simon

Outlook 2026: Adding Friction For the past decade, I’ve started the year with an Outlook report, detailing changes I saw in early-adopter behavior that I thought would…

My annual look at how consumer behaviors in tech and media are shifting — please have a read and let me know what you think! medium.com/@adamjsimon/ou…

Trump-administration officials and MAGA influencers have repeatedly called these activists “violent” and said they are involved in “riots.” But the resistance in Minnesota is largely characterized by a conscious, strategic absence of physical confrontation. Activists have made the decision to emphasize protection, aid, and observation. When matters escalate, it is usually the choice of the federal agents. Of the three homicides in Minneapolis this year, two were committed by federal agents. “There’s been an incredible, incredible response from the community. I’ve seen our neighbors go straight from allies to family—more than family—checking in on each other, offering food and rides for kids and all kinds of support, alerting each other if there’s ICE or any kind of danger,” Malika Dahir, a local activist of Somali descent, told me. If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

One thing I found deeply moving about resistance in the Twin Cities was the universalism of loving your neighbor, the philosophy driving the opposition to the ICE/BP invasion. I couldn't help but notice the contrast with the blood and soil-ism of Miller and Vance. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

*refused to testify *in private*. This is a disingenuous, click bait headline, and we don’t fall for that on this platform. Do better.

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

I’m a novelist who’s just bought a video games company. Here’s why you should care about games writing | The Observer

just incredibly thrilled to announce that after months and months of uncertainty over the future of the game, and several I have bought Zombies, Run!, the game I co-created and have been making for the past 12 years:

zombiesrungame.com

observer.co.uk/the-critics/...

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Please - stop doing the screenshot no link thing on Bluesky. This platform does not punish you for posting a URL. You picked up the habit from Meta apps? Stop doing Mark Z's bidding. Link ESPECIALLY to authors, reporters, bloggers, etc. where you quote the work.

a rainbow colored shooting star with the words the mo you know above it ALT: a rainbow colored shooting star with the words the mo you know above it

Rich people, especially rich people in the media & entertainment industries right this moment:

The point of having fuck you money is saying “fuck you” when it counts.

Iger returning to Disney was the final finger closing on the money’s paw. He’s really going to wish he’d sailed off into the sunset.

Imagine being underwhelmed by the news in 2025. The dream!

If I fill out a form on a website and you call me immediately, you've just lost my business. Psychotic, desperate behavior.

I don’t think many haters appreciate that, with the heels and the hair, many drag queens are around 7 feet tall and imposing as hell.

1/ Popping back in with another #fallvaccine update. 👇

In case you missed it, Friday (or soon after) the FDA is expected to license the Covid-19 vaccine. Word is that the label will be restricted to adults 65+ and people at high risk.

But a few organizations have made different recommendations.

It looks great, but that salary seems disconnected from the amount of impact this person will have.

It's become clear that this administration is just a protracted war on anybody who's read a book without pictures in it. It's a miracle we're all still getting up and going to work every morning. The psychological drain is the point, and I'm increasingly grateful to the people who are still decent.

I preordered a book that took 1.5 years to ship. They sent zero notice when they were ready to ship, so it arrived at an old address that I no longer had access to. And they were *indignant* that I dared suggest that maybe it was irresponsible to not confirm a shipping address after all that time. 🤷‍♂️

An Onion front page with the headline: Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protesters. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing. Members of Congress, now more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice. Our republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our Founding Fathers, in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero action as this precious inheritance was stripped away—and that is where we have finally arrived. Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and grov- eling. Now is not the time to say, “Enough is enough,” and have the tough conversations about resisting the ongoing assaults on American liberty. This is the time to let the wave of apathy and indifference roll over you as you think about getting a really nice renovation to your house in Kalorama. But what can I, one coward, do alone? you might ask.

Donald Trump just unilaterally bombed Iran. A masked gang is terrorizing our streets. America has rapidly devolved into an authoritarian state.

That's why, today, The Onion has purchased a full page ad in today's New York Times with a simple plea to Congress:

Sit back and do absolutely nothing.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history - which is no doubt true - but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

From Hunter S. Thompson’s ESPN page 2 column one week after 9/11.

250+ million acres of public lands eligible for sale in SENR budget reconciliation package The bill mandates disposal of over 2 million acres of BLM and National Forest lands; public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 250 million acres, including local recreation areas, wild...

"The bill directs what is likely the largest single sale of national public lands in modern history to help cut taxes for the richest people in the country....all without hearings, debate or public input." wilderness.org/articles/med...

Paying Evita audience upset as Don’t Cry delivered offstage to West End passersby for free Paying audiences divided over staging in which they get video feed of Rachel Zegler singing on balcony to passersby

At this rate, Jamie Lloyd is going to invent live television by 2030. www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/j...

This is serious, rigorous analysis and it should change the way the media has been covering these protests. These were, in the aggregate, *massive.*

Get in losers. We're building a popular front.

I told you we’d be back

We need to build some real social stigma around being afraid of cities. You don't have to like them or live there, but a politics built this strongly around watching TV and going "ewww" is embarrassing, and people should be embarrassed by it. It's like "fear of werewolves" being your top issue.

not the main issue here but i'd really appreciate it if democratic politicians spoke out in support of big-city life and culture with the same energy and reverence that all politicians have for small towns

los angeles is "real america" and so are all the other big cities the president hates

Some of y’all can’t handle 2 high agency males going at it and it really shows.

So from my uniquely weird perspective after living in the UK through Brexit, being in India during Modi's demonetization, and living in Brazil when the real tanked during the Bolsonaro administration, I can confidentally say that Americans do not and can not understand how bad this is going to be.

Millennials have been told to wait their turn for years to have influence over institutions and those institutions are being destroyed either just as we are given a smidgen of responsibility or before we even get a chance, and at least I'm pretty annoyed about that