The State of the Union is tomorrow and we do NOT plan to watch even a single moment.
In fact, I am mostly "politicked-out" for now. So I thought tonight it would be interesting to sample a wider range of interesting stuff.
Just as Cory Doctorow invented "enshittification" to describe the inevitable decline of social media, so Ryan Broderick has invented "pre-deplatformed" to describe the new generation's intention to reject social media restrictions of artistic guerilla creativity.
At Garbage Day, Broderick writes The only taboo left is copyright infringement The Future Of Media Is Pre-Deplatformed
....if everything is just attention now, and attention is completely commodified by algorithmic tech platforms, how can you push back against that? Well, I am slowly coming around to a theory on the new cool: You have to essentially pre-deplatform yourself.Broderick follows up with a related piece this week An endless feed of celebrities eating chicken wings.
Culture right now is determined not by human teams of editors and producers picking and choosing what youth culture gets the spotlight, but, instead, by the unthinking algorithms that power YouTube and TikTok. Which means the only things that have the level of scarcity and danger required to be seen as cool by young people will, slowly, but surely, be whatever is unacceptable on those platforms.
... But politics, left or right, is actually not actually the most subversive thing you can do right now. It’s copyright infringement.
In 2022, filmmaker Vera Drew created a movie called The People’s Joker, which turned the story of The Joker from Batman into a trans allegory. Drew received a cease and desist from Warner Bros. and held guerilla screenings of the film until the rights were worked out. And this trend, of filmmakers using the corpse of the theater system to bypass the world of algorithms, has only continued. The 2022 film Hundreds Of Beavers had a similar renegade quality to how it was screened. Hell, even Taylor Swift was savvy enough to screen the Eras Tour concert in theaters directly through AMC. And you could argue that’s what YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach just did with Iron Lung, which bypassed the studio system entirely and caused such a stir in Hollywood its massive ticket sales were removed from box office charts.
In fact, just this week, filmmaker Matt Johnson released Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. It had the biggest opening ever for a live-action Canadian film and not only is the film itself a massive copyright rats nest, but the web series it’s based on is completely illegal to watch on streaming platforms currently. Johnson, at a screening I attended last week, said he was excited to find out if they were going to get sued once the film debuted this week. (They haven’t yet, it seems.)
... The culture that feels the most dangerous, and, thus, exciting to young people, will be what you can’t see online. And the most dangerous thing for platforms is not racist garbage. It’s unmonetizeable content. The “metric” that will matter most going forward will not be the numbers at the bottom of a post or video, but the human beings in a room that left their house to experience something. Which, of course, will be filmed and put back online. You can’t escape the matrix entirely.
Both articles are worth reading.
And speaking of chickens:
Here's another good piece:I think about this tweet every time I feel something online start to curl its annoying little grip into my head
— localswampgay (@localswampgay.bsky.social) February 23, 2026 at 10:50 PM
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Brad Davenport writes The 3-Second Rule: What a Pigeon Knows About Belonging A Study in Unearned Confidence
Next, when If you need a break from the 21st Century, why not go back to the 10th?
The substack Weird Medieval Guys covers all sorts of oddball things like historical mysteries, how birds were named, coats of arms, and on.
I also love James Lucas' posts and articles on his substack Beauty is Truth.
For modern wonders, I check out the Everything Is Amazing science newsletter by Mike Sowden. The latest one covers Tully Monsters, fossils with teeth, and the island Ailsa Craig where curling rocks are quarried.
The other day I saw a pigeon confidently walk into a bakery like it was there to pick up a special order.And he goes on for several thoughtful paragraphs. Worth reading it all.
Not wandering in by accident. Not nervously hopping through an open door. Walking. With purpose.
Like it had an appointment.
You have to admire the hustle.
This pigeon wasn’t behaving like a pigeon. It was a valued customer.
One who knows exactly what they want and expects it to be ready when they arrive. I watched it hop past the queue.
Past people actually paying. It didn’t give them so much as a glance. It headed straight for the counter with the kind of determination usually reserved for people who’ve been waiting on hold with customer service for 45 minutes and finally got through....
Next, when If you need a break from the 21st Century, why not go back to the 10th?
The substack Weird Medieval Guys covers all sorts of oddball things like historical mysteries, how birds were named, coats of arms, and on.
For modern wonders, I check out the Everything Is Amazing science newsletter by Mike Sowden. The latest one covers Tully Monsters, fossils with teeth, and the island Ailsa Craig where curling rocks are quarried.
Olympics Wrap-up
It was so close, wasn't it, and such a magnificent effort.
There are no words:
One of the many odd things about the way our athletic competitions are set up is that while you often must win your way into Bronze, like Homan did, you have to lose your way into Silver, like our hockey teams did this time.
Dean Blundell writes Gold Medal's Can’t Clean a Dirty Regime Or The Pedohile/Rapist President They Played For:....what happened after the game mattered more than the goal. .... It’s called sportwashing. Borrow the goodwill of athletes. Wrap yourself in their sweat and sacrifice. Sell the illusion that their win validates your leadership or the direction of a country, swirling the toilet in every available metric.Americans see it too:
But “YAY team USA?”
Trump didn’t win that game. Hellebuyck did. Hughes did. The American roster did.
...here’s the uncomfortable part for some folks: athletes don’t control who tries to stand beside them when the confetti falls. But they do control what they normalize, and I can’t beleive that every member of Team USA is oblivious to the executions of innocent Americans, the beatings, abuse, and internment of migrants and people of color, ON TOP of covering up pedophelia and sexual abuse of women at the hands of Trump and this regime.
Optics matter. Associations matter. Silence, sometimes, speaks louder than a podium speech, and none of that mattered to Team USA. Winning gold for their Rapist President sure seemed to, though.
You can celebrate a gold medal without turning it into a political prop, but Team USA’s players had no problem winning that Gold Medal for a rapist/pedophile who’s been credibly accused and convicted of Rape 31 times, is mentioned as a violent sexual abuser of children and young women over ONE MILLION TIMES in the Epstein Files, and is a self-avowed racist.
Fuck, they even celebrated with America’s rapist/pedophile in chief, laughing when Trump said he’d begrudgingly have to invite the Women’s team too “to be fair,” to which a drunk FBI director Kash Patel screamed, “Fuck yeah, I’m on it.”
...Because here’s the difference: when Canadians cheered that game, we cheered the sport. The skill. The rivalry. The moment. We didn’t need it to justify who we are.
We didn’t need it to prove moral supremacy while hiding decades of sexual abuse by the President of the United States and all of his pals.
We didn’t need a politician hijacking the celebration to validate the country. Team Canada actually refused several diplomatic and political visits to the dressing room for that purpose.
Hockey Is Bigger Than Politics — Until Politics Grabs the Stick
The Canada–U.S. rivalry is beautiful because it’s competitive, not ideological. It’s Crosby vs. Hughes. It’s red vs. white. It’s decades of grudges settled in 60 minutes. But when leaders try to fold that into a narrative about national virtue or regime legitimacy, the game gets distorted.
The players deserved their moment.
The fans deserved the rivalry.
And the rest? That’s noise layered on top of a classic being pimped by pedophiles and players and coaches who have no problem with them doing it. Like Penguins Coach Mike Sullivan, who was more than happy to stand proudly next to Kash Patel, a gatekeeper of all that rape and pedophilia his proud country is desperately trying to cover up, that has destroyed thousands of lives, including those of thousands of children.
Final Score
USA: 2
Canada: 1
But if you’re asking me whether I’d trade my pride in being Canadian for a different-coloured medal tied to political theatrics?
Not a chance.
Trigger warning: In this video, you hear the actual Trump insult and the locker-room laughter.in public, the men's hockey team has been supportive of the women's team, going to games, cheering them on, saying they were inspired by the OT golden goal must be gutting to feel that support and then get first-hand evidence that behind closed doors, when it's just The Boys, they're laughing at you
— Rodger Sherman (@rodger.bsky.social) February 23, 2026 at 10:29 AM
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Sickos Committee has some different counts:The final medal count of #MilanoCortina2026 🥇🥈🥉
— TSN (@tsnofficial.bsky.social) February 22, 2026 at 11:13 PM
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What if we counted every individual medal given out at the Olympics? That means one for each member of a relay team or one for each member of an ice hockey team. USA ends up with 65 golds!
— Sickos Committee (@sickoscommittee.org) February 22, 2026 at 11:43 AM
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And isn't this the truth:We've been tracking 4th places finishes all Olympics long in our Aluminum Medal Table! Congrats to Germany who wins it with fourteen 4th place finishes.
— Sickos Committee (@sickoscommittee.org) February 22, 2026 at 4:30 PM
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— Faron Gidge (@farongidge.bsky.social) February 22, 2026 at 8:16 AM
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