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Some sad news: Paste politics has joined the same farm upstate many others in digital media have. Eternal thanks to @ShaneRyanHere and @joshjackson for taking a chance on an unproven sales guy way back in the before times in early 2016.
Here's a thread pieces I'm proud of
Here's a thread pieces I'm proud of
I was lucky to be supported by two great assistant editors.
@erika was a massive get for our media section and wrote a great piece on diversity in the workplace. https://www.pastemagazine.com/media/diversity/practice-what-you-preach-is-there-really-diversity/
@BerrakBiz is so smart and savvy and her piece on AI is a must-read https://www.pastemagazine.com/business/artificial-intelligence/the-robots-are-already-taking-over-how-artificial/
@erika was a massive get for our media section and wrote a great piece on diversity in the workplace. https://www.pastemagazine.com/media/diversity/practice-what-you-preach-is-there-really-diversity/
@BerrakBiz is so smart and savvy and her piece on AI is a must-read https://www.pastemagazine.com/business/artificial-intelligence/the-robots-are-already-taking-over-how-artificial/
Miriam Baksh wrote a piece on Breitbart and AT&T in early 2017 that became more and more prescient as the net neutrality debates raged on. https://www.pastemagazine.com/business/breitbart/what-breitbarts-relationship-with-att-could-mean-f/
Michael O'Neil wrote so many good solar pieces for our business section that it's hard to pick just one, so here's some hopeful news on how solar will integrate into society in the coming years. https://www.pastemagazine.com/business/solar-power/solar-applications-you-may-be-using-soon/
We were lucky to have @EoinHiggins_ write for us and one of my favorite pieces of his was how the movie Logan's eerie vision of trucking was an accurate depiction of our future. https://www.pastemagazine.com/business/driverless-trucks/logans-eerie-vision-of-the-future-of-trucking/
I had tons of fon sitting next to @iamthemaster every day as we were proverbial frogs in a boiling pot of water, studying the rise of the Trump era, and he gave me maybe my favorite headline ever: the Woke Fence. https://www.pastemagazine.com/media/mother-jones/the-woke-fence-mother-jones-endorses-a-neolibera/
It was a great experience covering the Trump-Russia madness with @SollenbergerRC, and his piece about how Steve Bannon thinks your stupid was one of those that both hammered home an important point and did mega traffic. One of our most read stories ever. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-thinks-youre-stupid/
This was the hardest piece I ever had to edit, as @WalkerBragman did a devastatingly excellent job of explaining the need to see graphic images, like of children killed in Yemen by US bombs, and presenting them.
WARNING: graphic images. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/yemen/americas-death-trail-in-yemen-and-the-importance-o/
WARNING: graphic images. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/yemen/americas-death-trail-in-yemen-and-the-importance-o/
. @joycechenchen wrote so much great stuff for us, and her piece on AMI's purchase of @usweekly is such a great explainer for the broader state of media. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/journalism/an-industry-insider-explains-why-amis-100-million/
Carmen Bojanowski cold-emailed me with no previous full time experience and wrote some of the best stuff for both our business and media sections. Her piece on who deserves a living wage is especially resonant in our current moment. https://www.pastemagazine.com/business/living-wage/what-jobs-are-worthy-of-a-living-wage/
full-time
full-time
Brian Penny, a Bank of America whistleblower, published a really unique insight into the nature of whistleblowing. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/whistleblowing/we-need-more-whistleblowers/
. @briebriejoy needs no introduction at this point, and we were lucky to have her publish a really great piece for us back in 2017. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-doesnt-have-a-black-problemhe-has-a/
Wrapping this thread up, I'll end with some self-promotion. Here's the first piece I ever wrote for Paste in 2016 about how Trump is the logical result of the last half-century (plus) of the GOP. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/donald-trump/sleep-in-the-bed-you-made-donald-trump-is-the-logi/
In 2016 I wrote about how I am the first white guy in my Polish Jewish family, and the history of the amorphousness of and meaning of the term "white." https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/whiteness/believe-it-or-not-trump-supporters-whiteness-is-no/
Paste tasked me with leading our Trump-Russia coverage, & I'm proud of the balance I was able to strike between "something clearly happened here" and "DADDY MUELLER IS GOD." What I wrote in October 2016 basically turned out to be the gist of the scandal. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-is-the-kremlins-man-a-comprehensive-c/
I did a 22k word, 5 part deep dive into the Trump-Russia mess in an attempt to find as much factual information about what the hell is going on as possible, and turns out you can construct a pretty convincing case just using Trump's words through time. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/donald-trump/the-kremlins-man-how-donald-trumps-own-words-conne/
I didn't get everything right though, as evidenced by this theory I was pretty sure of whose basis wound up getting debunked. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-began-citing-a-specific-amount-of-cli/
I underwent an ideological transformation at Paste, as I realized I hadn't challenged my fundamental beliefs since college, and here is 3,000 words considering whether I still was a capitalist. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/capitalism/am-i-still-a-capitalist/
For a while there, when you Googled "best political hip hop songs," this was the first result. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/hip-hop/the-10-best-political-hip-hop-songs-of-all-time/
Same with this one and @SethAbramson (appearing above his own writing, which is **chefs kiss**). I wrote the first debunker on him and was quoted in a couple notable publications on the topic of Trump-Russia grifters because of this piece. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/seth-abramson/stop-listening-to-seth-abramson-on-donald-trumps-r/
This piece on Jeff Sessions exposing the true meaning of states rights on marijuana policy was shared by The Daily 202 in @washingtonpost https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/jeff-sessions/jeff-sessions-new-marijuana-policy-proves-that-som/
One of my personal favorites, a quiz of sorts that I put together.
Is this take from Breitbart or @nytopinion? https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/new-york-times/is-this-bad-take-from-the-new-york-times-opinion-p/
Is this take from Breitbart or @nytopinion? https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/new-york-times/is-this-bad-take-from-the-new-york-times-opinion-p/
Being a sports junkie, I tried to write about it whenever I could, and the Marlins beaning Ronald Acuna because they couldn't get him out allowed me to rant about the nature of American toxic masculinity. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/toxic-masculinity/last-night-baseball-provided-the-perfect-example-o/
I wrote about the myth of the "moderate Republican" and how Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Ben Sasse prove that in this age there are only Trump Republicans. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/republican-party/jeff-flake-ben-sasse-susan-collins-and-the-myth-of/
Pretty sure I lost my mind writing infinity columns about how the media normalizes fascists. Here's one on how the NYT described Gavin McInnes in more flattering terms than Gavin McInnes described himself. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/mainstream-media/to-the-mainstream-media-stop-normalizing-fascists/
What you think is capitalism isn't actually capitalism. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/capitalism/what-you-think-is-capitalism-isnt-actually-capital/
A lot of my frustrations with the Democratic Party can be summarized in this column about Kirsten Gillibrand and how loose principles seem to get for certain Dems when it's their sacred cows on the wrong side of things. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/kirsten-gillibrand/the-kirsten-gillibrand-saga-highlights-exactly-wha/
A Fortnite money laundering scam was a helpful reminder that money isn't real. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/capitalism/this-fortnite-money-laundering-scam-is-a-helpful-r/
Over time @ShaneRyanHere turned me into a fact checker for fact checkers, and I cannot stress this enough: @GlennKesslerWP is so, so very bad at his job. Here's one on him using Amazon and Wal-Mart PR statements as statements of fact. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/fact-checking/please-let-this-awful-wapo-article-on-aoc-be-the-d/
Sadly, I covered my own demise in a way, and here's another column stretched into sports where I find a commonality between media layoffs and the free agency freeze in baseball and football. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/business-of-media/last-weeks-layoffs-are-proof-that-the-business-mod/
No column I wrote ever got me more hate mail than this one that simply pointed to Bernie Sanders's extremely favorable Gallup polling. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/bernie-sanders/its-an-objective-fact-that-bernie-sanders-is-wildl/
Sorry @DanCrenshawTX, the NFL is a communist system. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/nfl/the-nfl-is-communist/
I'm pretty cynical about politicians and find people's hero-worship of them offputting, but it was a very sad day for me when John Dingell died. I did my best to try to eulogize a titan of progressivism who predicted the future to a T. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/john-dingell/longest-serving-congressman-john-dingell-is-dead-a/
Because the content laws demand it, I did a bracket and last year I declared James Buchannan to be our worst president ever. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/presidents/worst-american-presidents-the-bracket-finale/
Everything in the Democratic Party can basically be boiled down to being traumitized by 1972, and I unpack why that mindset needs to shift here. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/2020-democratic-primary/democrats-need-to-get-over-the-humiliation-of-1972/
Fittingly, I'll end this thread with a critique about how capitalism is built to create the oligopolistic reality around us due to the dynamic it places upon the supply and demand curves.
Thank you to all who read us over the years. It meant the world. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/capitalism/capitalisms-fatal-flaw-is-something-so-simple-anyo/
Thank you to all who read us over the years. It meant the world. https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/capitalism/capitalisms-fatal-flaw-is-something-so-simple-anyo/
