KKR may or may not end up being a bad owner for S&S, but almost everything in this scathing, anonymously "sourced" hot take is based on hypotheticals rather than S&S' specific situation.

Private Equity is often a terrible steward, but so are most other forms of conglomerate capitalism.

#cmonson #publishing #KKR
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/private-equity-simon-and-schuster/675261/

Thanks to the great rebundling, I'm back to paying for "channels" I don't want to get the ones I do. The current example is Disney+, which I've lost all interest in but can't extricate from the bundle with Hulu and ESPN+ because those two aren't in a package by themselves and cost more separately than the trio. 🤬

#streaming #cmonson

If you're still on Twitter at this point, there really is no line for you, IMO. It shouldn't just be about finding an alternative (there is no direct replacement), but also about not enabling further harm. Your continued presence, even significantly reduced, ensures it continues to be a channel for the worst of things. The little good you think you may be doing is just a comforting lie you're telling yourself. #cmonson

I don't believe the #USWNT came into #WWC2023 full of hubris, but American sports pundits definitely did and are now foaming at the mouth with heavy criticism, as they get paid to do.

Lalas and Lloyd, in particular, may have been great players but they're the worst kind of pundits and really should STFU.

#MastodonFC #cmonson

This would just be another stupid but funny Musk anecdote if Tesla hadn't been held up as an innovator for all other car manufacturers to follow, and the vanguard of EVs. JFC.

via @arstechnica

#cars #EVs #Tesla #chicanery #cmonson

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/tesla-exaggerated-ev-range-so-much-that-drivers-thought-cars-were-broken/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

☝🏽 Listening to this on my run, I can't tell how much was tweaked, but it's still overly reliant on opinionated interviews without any fact-checking. It presents naive overviews of the music industry, ebook production and distribution, and how public libraries actually work, while frequently conflating the Internet Archive and traditional public libraries.

Bizarrely, it even manages to create several moments of sympathy for publishers?!? 😐

#libraries #EbooksForAll #cmonson

"Meta's 'friendly' Threads collides with unfriendly internet"

JFC, Reuters! Zuckerberg is NEVER going to be a friend of journalism, stop playing his PR games and frame Threads for the Trojan Horse — privacy threat and wall-building — all Meta initiatives fundamentally are.

#cmonson #SocialReboot

https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-friendly-threads-collides-with-unfriendly-internet-2023-07-07/

"Massive legacy platform with 2B+ users launches new service that its existing users can 'join' in a few clicks, and it already has 70M users!!!"

😐 🤡 💩

The media is playing itself once again, as are the wannabe influencers desperate to find an easy replacement for Twitter where they won't have to do the work to build a following.

#cmonson

The irony that anyone is considering Threads as a viable alternative to Twitter is jaw-dropping.

Bluesky is Twitter's seemingly better cousin, so pretending it might be different is a little more understandable than believing Zuckerberg's latest spawn won't screw everyone over again. Locking Threads users in via their Instagram accounts was a brilliant move, and I'm frankly stunned by how many people fell for the bait of decentralization.

Fool me once, blah blah blah...

#cmonson

Media coverage of Twitter has two notable elements: a willingness to forgive every transgression, and requiring any alternatives promise an immediate audience for them.

That's why they're so dismissive of Mastodon and desperately want Bluesky and Threads to succeed. They've forgotten how to build a following from scratch as most joined Twitter long after it became relevant and their employers had already established a footing there.

They don't want to do the work.

#TwitterMigration #cmonson

It feels like we're on an inevitable path to secession or outright civil war, as the right ruthlessly and relentlessly gathers power at every level while the left focuses on tone policing and attempting civil discourse with people who want to see entire groups legally marginalized or killed.

The American Experiment has failed, mainly because too many people blindly believed it couldn't until it was way too late.

#cmonson

"The AI is eating itself" @caseynewton

aka, Mad Web Disease. 🤦🏽

#AI #ChatGPT #cmonson

https://www.platformer.news/p/the-ai-is-eating-itself

No, Google, you cannot spy on me while I'm sleeping! WTAF?!?

#Pixel7 #snooping #cmonson

"In a course designed to be taught at the college level, students complained that a teacher assigning a National Book Award-winning volume about race was 'illegal in South Carolina.' Instead of defending the teacher’s right to teach this material, the school board sided with the students and censored the curriculum."

I wonder how my tattoo from Coates' book would go over in SC?

#BookBans #Racism #cmonson

https://pen.org/press-release/outrageous-government-censorship-says-pen-america-about-removal-of-ta-nehisi-coates-memoir-from-south-carolina-ap-course/

"Selling cosmetic items only, albeit at a premium, is a far less obnoxious approach than almost any alternative, from locking up playable content behind paywalls, via play-to-win item sales, through to the grifters’ favourite du jour, play-to-earn cryptocurrency-based models." Rob Fahey

I'm fine with this approach to subsidizing live-service games, and I've never had a game ruined because someone had a cooler outfit or weapon skin than me.

#cmonson #gaming

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/in-defence-of-the-cosmetic-whales-opinion

So many layers to this Author Behaves Badly on #Booktok story, but my favorite is the lack of disclosure that Sparkpress is a hybrid publisher, which means the author screwed up so bad they won't take her money to publish her book despite it getting more publicity than it would have otherwise! 🤣

#WritingCommunity #marketing #cmonson

https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-sarah-stusek-three-rivers-goodreads-backlash-1850498236

Substack has done a brilliant job of branding themselves on the backs of various writers who use their platform to create and manage their newsletters, and now they have a nice little primer to help those writers generate even more free PR for Substack!

Substack is mentioned 36 times, while newsletter is only mentioned 3 times. 🤔

#cmonson #Substack #newsletter

https://on.substack.com/p/how-to-pitch-your-substack-to-press

I'm not linking to McIlroy's laughable "the trade book publishing industry as we know it will soon be obsolete" take on AI at PW, but I am going to comment on it in this week's newsletter.

tldr, it's a speculative "What if?" exercise in punditry that fails to support its claims and isn't worth the clicks and shares it's already received.

#cmonson #AI #publishing

Read between the lines of this transparency report — produced under duress while the company is under a microscope related to its attempted sale to Microsoft — and Kotick's claim that "a very aggressive labor movement" was exaggerating things is even more ridiculous.

If he actually stays in charge when the sale finally goes through, whatever credibility Microsoft has left will be flushed down the toilet.

#cmonson #gaming #unionize

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/activision-blizzard-tallies-harassment-reports-punishments

"We didn't have any of what were mischaracterizations reported in the media. But what we did have was a very aggressive labor movement working hard to try and destabilize the company."

Because unions have nothing better to do than create fake scandals, while big gaming corporations are notorious for being wonderfully inclusive places to work for all kinds of people!

😐

#cmonson #gaming #unionize

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/kotick-blames-scandals-on-a-very-aggressive-labor-movement