The Present Age

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The Present Age Weekly Recap: June 10, 2022
www.readtpa.com
TPA Weekly Recap

The Present Age Weekly Recap: June 10, 2022

There's just so much going on in the world.

Parker Molloy
Jun 10, 2022
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The Present Age Weekly Recap: June 10, 2022
www.readtpa.com

Welcome to the weekly recap. In this post, I’ll be linking to my work from the week, sharing some stories from others I thought were interesting, and providing a few casual thoughts on [gestures at everything]. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “TPA Weekly Recap.” If you don’t want to receive the weekly recap, leave all boxes except “TPA Weekly Recap” checked.


The Present Age is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.


From me this week: Yashar Ali, Ilya Shapiro

On Tuesday (which was the one-year anniversary of The Present Age, btw!), I published a story I had started working on last week about Yashar Ali, whose life was turned upside-down after Los Angeles Magazine published an unflattering profile about him.

The Present Age
Yashar Ali is ready to talk about that magazine profile
On June 9, 2021, Los Angeles Magazine published a story titled, “The Curious Rise of Twitter Power Broker Yashar Ali.” The profile was a sprawling, nearly 6,000-word list of Ali’s accomplishments as a journalist and sociopolitical kingmaker, along with a slew…
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8 months ago · 24 likes · 8 comments · Parker Molloy

And on Thursday, I wrote a bit about the latest example of a “victim of cancel culture” getting massive media coverage despite not actually being “canceled” (whatever that means these days). I plan on writing more generally on the topic next week, so stay tuned.

The Present Age
Ilya Shapiro and the media-victimhood industrial complex
You probably don’t know who Ilya Shapiro is. And that is okay because this post isn’t really about him. He just happens to be a good example of what I want to talk about, so stick with me here… So back in January, news broke that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement was imminent. As is always the case, people who spend way too much time on the internet rushed to Twitter to share their thoughts — some good, some bad, and… well… some… Ilya Shapiro…
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8 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Parker Molloy

Reflections on year one.

Rather than publish a recap, last week I focused on sharing some of my favorite stories from the first year of TPA. You can read those here:

The Present Age
A look back at the first year of The Present Age, Part 1
I launched The Present Age on June 7, 2021. Since then, I have published 165 newsletters. If you’ve read any of them, I’d like to thank you for doing that. If this is your first, welcome aboard! That being said…If you haven’t yet subscribed, it would mean a lot to me if you did! The Present Age is a reader-supported publication…
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8 months ago · 13 likes · 2 comments · Parker Molloy
The Present Age
A look back at the first year of The Present Age, Part 2
I launched The Present Age on June 7, 2021. Since then, I have published 166 newsletters. If you’ve read any of them, I’d like to thank you for doing that. If this is your first, welcome aboard! That being said…If you haven’t yet subscribed, it would mean a lot to me if you did! The Present Age is a reader-supported publication…
Read more
8 months ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Parker Molloy
The Present Age
A look back at the first year of The Present Age, Part 3
I launched The Present Age on June 7, 2021. Since then, I have published 167 newsletters. If you’ve read any of them, I’d like to thank you for doing that. If this is your first, welcome aboard! That being said…If you haven’t subscribed, it would mean a lot to me if you did! The Present Age is a reader-supported publication…
Read more
8 months ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · Parker Molloy

When I first started out, I was nervous about using Substack. To be totally honest, I’m still nervous about Substack. There’s not a day that goes by without something happening that makes me go, “Jesus Christ, please just stop,” especially when reading some of the corporate communication that comes from over there. “Please don’t accidentally drive away my subscribers” pops into my head quite a bit.

That said, I’ve kept my work here for a few simple reasons:

As far as the tech side of things is concerned, it’s really nice to not have to worry about fixing glitches or wondering whether or not my emails will actually get where they need to go. A big subscriber list doesn’t matter a whole lot if I can’t escape the dreaded spam folder.

As far as features are concerned, Substack just keeps on innovating. That’s great for someone like me. In the year since I started publishing The Present Age, Substack’s branched out to include audio and video in posts, released its own app (which functions as an RSS reader for non-Substack newsletters), gave users the option to add paywalls further down in the posts, and added a bunch of new updates meant to make it easier to both share content and consume it. By comparison, Twitter’s Revue option remains pretty clunky, Patreon hasn’t done much in the past few years, and Facebook (er, I mean Meta)’s Bulletin doesn’t stand out.

The best part of running my newsletter on Substack is that I have complete creative and editorial freedom, which includes the freedom to promote other Substack newsletters I enjoy through the recently-released recommendations feature. It’s really neat to see how many subscriptions I’ve driven to other publications (and how many subscriptions other publications have driven to me). It creates a sort of community, entirely of my own making. How cool is that?

Add on the fact that I keep 90% of all revenue I bring in and I’m actually getting somewhat close to being able to make this my full-time job, which means I’ll be able to devote more time to things like guest posts (see the recent piece the great Michael Hobbes wrote for TPA recently) and actually hire an editor. If year two keeps up at the pace of year one, I’d definitely be okay with that.

Feel free to, you know, subscribe, if you haven’t:


Stories from others I’d like to highlight

Once again, it’s like Lyz Lenz is taking the thoughts right out of my head and putting them in word form (but better than I could do it). Check out the latest edition of her “Dingus of the Week” segment.

Men Yell at Me
Dingus of the Week: People Who Think Drag Shows Are Hurting the Children
This is the weekly dingus, the Friday newsletter, where I talk about something dumb that happened in the news and share drinks and links. If you’ve come to depend on your weekly dingus, become a paying subscriber…
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8 months ago · 28 likes · 23 comments · lyz

I’ve long admired Marisa Kabas, and I was happy to see that she started up a new newsletter! This story about being a woman in media is great (I mean, the situation she describes is not great, but you get the idea).

The Handbasket
On Being a Woman in Media
A few years back, I was a staff writer for a website with around 50 employees where all eight members of the leadership team were men. The managing editor often went out of his way to make the women on staff who worked for him (like me) feel stupid or disrespected, and routinely made comments in meetings and on Slack that made us uncomfortable. So, afte…
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8 months ago · Marisa Kabas

As usual, Teddy Wilson has some great watching-the-January-6-hearings companion reading for you:

Radical Reports
Capitol Riot Map Updates: 'Storming the capitol building with hundreds of thousands!'
“The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected at its first hearing on Thursday evening to connect the far-right Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia groups in the same seditious conspiracy, according to two sources familiar with the matter.” …
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8 months ago · Teddy Wilson

As you may know, I’ve been a big fan of these new artificial intelligence art tools. I wrote a piece about my early experiences with Midjourney a while back. Over at Platformer, Casey Newton has a story about a week of using OpenAI’s DALL-E tool. I applied for the beta to that, but haven’t gotten it. If anyone has an in at OpenAI who could help out… send them my way, please.

Platformer
How DALL-E could power a creative revolution
Programming note: I’ll mention this again next week, but giving you a heads up that I’ve added Platformer’s summer break to the posting schedule. After next week, I’ll be off the following two weeks to recharge and work on some longer-term projects. As always, thanks for your help in making this …
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8 months ago · 32 likes · Casey Newton

And finally, Dan Pfeiffer has a great breakdown of the Republican plan to whitewash the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The Message Box
How the GOP Plans to Wash Away the Truth about Jan 6th
Congress will gather tonight for the most important set of hearings since Watergate. The January 6th Committee will present its findings about what happened and who is responsible for the January 6th Insurrection prime time with promises of smoking guns and blockbuster witnesses…
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8 months ago · 50 likes · 9 comments · Dan Pfeiffer

Today’s tunes:

“Something Loud” by Jimmy Eat World

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The Present Age Weekly Recap: June 10, 2022
www.readtpa.com
1 Comment
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Sean Corfield
Jun 11, 2022

"I’m actually getting somewhat close to being able to make this my full-time job" -- that's GREAT news! I love the newsletter, so I'm really pleased to hear it is working well for you! And I've ended up subscribing to several writers that you've highlighted so that's also a win. Thank you!

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