One of the best requests we’ve ever received came from a reader named Nicole Jones. (Hi, Nicole.) Here’s what she said:
I wish y’all had like a “Best Essays of the Week” section or something. Because if there’s anything I want from y’all, other than more and more content, it’s for y’all to also edit the internet for me. Collect the best. Be my algorithm.
Be my algorithm! It’s a phrase that stuck with us.
We’re having an ongoing debate about the best way to be your algorithm—the best way to save you time so you don’t have to spend all day scouring the web. (We love reading the internet. Yes, we’re a bunch of masochists.)
We’re batting around different ideas. Would you like a daily collection of links? A weekly digest summarizing the best pieces of the week? (Tell us at: tips@thefp.com.)
For now, we are trying out something simple: reprints of the best journalism you might have missed.
So for today:
Rob Long, the executive producer of six TV series (including Cheers), writes about the upcoming writers strike—and how, though he comes from a long line of union-busting industrialists, working in Hollywood has turned him into an unlikely union man. (Originally published in Commentary.)
Ted Gioia, whose newsletter The Honest Broker has fast become one of our must-reads, on the most important natural resource in the world.
And last: what does it look like to live in truth, even when you are inside a cage? Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced Monday by a Moscow court to 25 years in prison for criticizing Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, shows us how in his powerful, final speech. Read this one to your kids.
Enjoy. And, as always, tell us what you think in the comments.
Show business is in the middle of a systems-wide panic attack. Executives are beleaguered and terrified. Shareholders are starting to ask nettlesome questions about profits (such as When will they start coming?) and losses (such as When are they going to end?).
Even the great and powerful Amazon was forced to reveal that Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power—a series it spent nearly $1 billion to produce and market—has mustered only a 37 percent completion rate among its audience. In other words, about two-thirds of the people who started watching the most expensive filmed entertainment product in history got bored and went on to something else.
Clearly, something isn’t working in show business. And now the writers show up and start complaining? Of course we are.
That’s what we do when we get together. We complain. Some of it, of course, is timeless—raging against agents, managers, executive notes, residual payments, that sort of thing. But a lot of it is new.
In their last statements to the court, defendants usually ask for an acquittal. For a person who has not committed any crimes, acquittal would be the only fair verdict.
But I do not ask this court for anything. I know the verdict. I knew it a year ago when I saw people in black uniforms and black masks running after my car in the rear-view mirror. Such is the price for speaking up in Russia today.
But I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will evaporate. When black will be called black and white will be called white; when it will be officially recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who fostered and unleashed this war will be recognized as criminals, rather than those who tried to stop it.
Here are some news stories from recent days. Can you tell me what they have in common?
Scammers clone a teenage girl’s voice with AI—then use it to call her mother and demand a $1 million ransom.
Millions of people see a photo of Pope Francis wearing a goofy white Balenciaga puffer jacket, and think it’s real. But after the image goes viral, news media report that it was created by a construction worker in Chicago with deepfake technology.
Twitter changes requirements for verification checks. What was once a sign that you could trust somebody’s identity gets turned into a status symbol, sold to anybody willing to pay for it. Within hours, the platform is flooded with bogus checked accounts.
Officials go on TV and tell people they can trust the banking system—but depositors don’t believe them. High profile bank failures from Silicon Valley to Switzerland have them spooked. Over the course of just a few days, depositors move $100 billion from their accounts.
The missing ingredient in each of these stories is trust.
Everybody is trying to kill it—criminals, technocrats, politicians, you name it. Not long ago, Disney was the only company selling a Fantasyland, but now that’s the ambition of every tech empire.
The trust crisis could hardly be more intense.
If you’re hungry for more great content, check out these recent Free Press stories, including an illustrated guide to self-censorship, the story behind a timeless love poem, and why teenagers have given up on driving...
Also like a Yaron Brook a fan of yours,I would like a daily look at " the good the bad and the ugly"!
Another reason to despise Russia. This is what a dictatorship really looks like. There is no free speech there. Putin is another Hitler.