This week's Noise Level is out! It focuses on what brands and politicians must capture to "go viral," and what can happen when your interns and staffers are a bit too online -- not all internet content is safe for public consumption. noiselevel.io/p/how-to-fit-i…

Russia is even more out of ideas than we are if the best they can come up with for an influence operation is bankrolling Benny Johnson and Tim Pool

Listen, you may have just lost a game that you had no business losing, at home, as a big favorite, against a team who looked dead in Week 1, to lose your 7th in last 9 games. BUT at least Big Dom got to be featured in the ESPN pregame! Super serious, championship operation.

Presidential candidates are going on podcasts instead of cable news. Our latest newsletter supports this strategy. Traditional media is dying out to this new form of discourse. I also defend Theo Von from folks calling him "MAGA adjacent." He isn't! noiselevel.io/p/the-media-is…

If you’re just logging back on now and seeing this— A late breaking poll totally changed the state of the race and you weren’t there to Monitor The Situation. Because of your inattention, your candidate is now going to lose. I am sorry you had to find out this way.

A few thoughts from the conversations I’ve been having and hearing over the last week: The hard question isn’t the 2 points that would’ve decided the election. It’s how to build a Democratic Party that isn’t always 2 points away from losing to Donald Trump — or worse. The

Most post-mortem takes are reductive and dumb. This one is not. You should read it.

An area that is not getting enough attention in the autopsies of 2024 is the civic structure of the Democratic Party: how money, attention, organizing, leadership, and decision-making power flow through the party. My start to an exploration here: thenation.com/article/politi…

“I love this country for what it could be.” Soren Duggan #TheWell2024

Corporate media, a play in 3 acts

Merry Knickmas!!! 🎅🏽🎄

.Soren Duggan on the connections between our online lives and participation in community -- an important contribution to our conversations on social isolation, loneliness, and polarization. | open.substack.com/pub/connective…

Just putting this prediction down now.

All of FinTwit

If men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom. - Fukuyama 30 years ago

There is going to be a random tourist walking out of Penn Station around 6 PM seeing New York City for the first time. Filled with anticipation, fulfillment, a revitalized sense of adventure, and absolutely no clue they are about to be thrust into a real-life World War Z scene.

Wow, what a stressful week of work. Time to relax by holding a phone beaming endless streams of horrific international news inches from my head

A comprehensive Politico story about Dems who urged Cuomo to resign in 2021 then endorsed him in this race. An orgy of self-inflicted humiliation. politico.com/news/2025/06/1…

In the social media era everything seems simultaneous rather than chronological and causal: Online I can see incitement and pro-assassination rhetoric - and overreaching responses - and backlash to overreach - and critique of the backlash; it's all at once, layers not sequences.