It's the End of the World as We Know It
+ my media diet & Gavin Newsom, thought digest, 08.25.2025
You’re reading default.blog, an emotional scrapbook of the Internet, technology, and the future.
Good evening, Deeists.
Welcome to this week’s thought digest, a round-up of default.blog housekeeping, links, and all the random shit on my mind. Sorry I’m coming a little late today. Time keeps slipping away…
THE CALL-IN SHOW
This week we’re taking calls about how the world might end or why it hasn’t ended yet. Climate change, AI, financial meltdown, solar flare, whatever keeps you up at night.
We stream every Thursday at 8:30 ET/7:30 CT on YouTube, X, and Twitch. Call us at 702-941-1181.
MY MEDIA DIET
A few people have asked me about my media diet. I consume media like an American of the European imagination consumes food—that is, to the point of self-injury.
I start every morning with an episode of Coast to Coast AM. It might take me 2-3 days to finish a single episode because they’re long. Today, I started listening to a June 12, 2004, episode where Art Bell interviewed technologist Dr. Lauren Weinstein about the Internet.
My number one recommendation for people who want to stay on top of trends is to start by looking backwards. Media discourse, especially, runs in cycles. There are episodes of C2C from 1997 that could have been recorded yesterday. This isn’t because “culture is stuck” — it’s because a lot of supposedly “new” issues like atomization, immigration anxiety, and Internet privacy have long histories.
On this particular C2C episode, Art and Dr. Weinstein discussed the early spam epidemic overwhelming email systems, with Weinstein warning that more than half of all internet traffic was already spam by 2004. They complained about slop and fake news and the media’s left-wing bias.
They also explored the fundamental identity authentication problem — the same one people are still debating today. At one point, Art proposes that it might ease trolling if people were forced to have some kind of centralized ID number, and even though that might impede the First Amendment, our libel laws are “stuck in the 19th century.”
Every episode of Coast to Coast is like this.
C2C is also particularly valuable because it covers the news of the day, politics, pop culture, science, fringe subcultures, the New Age, conspiracies, music, and —most importantly! — unscreened calls from ordinary people. You get a really clear picture of how much (and how little) has changed.
From there, I move to the present.
A few newsletters I always read when they hit my inbox:
404 Media: Left-leaning tech news with unique, high-quality reporting.
Blood in the Machine:
’s tech newsletter, mostly about AI’s darker social impacts. I often disagree with his pessimism, but that’s part of why I read it.Wellfound (formerly AngelList): Aggregated startup/VC news for staying current on major tech trends.
Pirate Wires Daily: Unexpected, and dare I say contrarian, takes on politics, tech, current events, you name it — helps me track the broader conversation and often provides a reality check for me. I also read much of their reported work — they’re the other outlet that’s doing really cool, high quality reporting that you just don’t get in other publications.
Financial Times: Global finance and business coverage, some culture writing too. You already know this one.1
FeedMe: My window into coolness. Business trends, marketing, what’s new in the media ecosystem.
Less Mad (
): McLuhanite explorations of computer history, internet culture, and media theory — shaped by Clinton’s recovery from psychosis. In a lot of ways, Clinton is a hero of mine.Fandom Exile (
): Sharp analysis of fandom—helpful for understanding today’s unstable social media climate.
And last but not least, a non-exhaustive23 list of writers I try to keep up with as much a time allows:
, , , Ruby Justice Thelot, , , .Off Substack4, I always read an Ann Manov book review;
is quickly becoming a favorite; is another long-time staple; and so is , whose book The TikTok Boom I still recommend without reservation and have for years.It’s important to me that I don’t marinate in one ideological bubble for too long. I want to read things that are contradicting one another, and from all angles. I have my own biases — many of them — but I don’t like the idea of only hearing one side.
For real-time cultural intelligence, I monitor specific subcultures across BlueSky, X5, and TikTok, plus industry and discipline-specific listservs. Each platform has its own information ecology that rewards different types of content and behavior— I have a carousel of alts I use to organize information. There are also certain subcultures that are better at spotting trends than others.
BlueSky’s list feature is particularly valuable because it lets me curate information flows without getting trapped in algorithmic recommendation loops. Unfortunately, it’s limited by BlueSky’s user base, which could be larger (and let’s be real, slightly less … BlueSky-ish).
As for YouTubers and podcasters, I’m not especially into either right now because I get my parasocial fix from scrolling TikTok for hours a day (and talk radio), but MemeAnalysis and Doomscroll represent two very different takes on internet culture. Doomscroll offers a more curated, big-picture view of major internet personalities and MemeAnalysis approaches memes through the lens of psychoanalysis for the Internet.
And that’s about it, excluding books and movies. I’m still looking for more news aggregation and will happily take recs.
POLITICAL FAN FICTION TAKES THE FORM OF A CRYSTAL BALL
TikTok astrologers predicted Trump would die on August 24, 2025, which reveals something more interesting than the usual “people believe dumb things online” analysis might suggest. These predictions function as political fan fiction with a mystical veneer.
Just as fan fiction writers project their desires onto fictional characters, TikTok psychics and astrologists are projecting political fantasies onto tarot spreads and natal charts. The August 24th prediction wasn’t really about divination, at least not totally — it’s about living in a moment where normal political predictions feel inadequate.
TikTok psychics aren’t replacing political analysis but they are providing an alternative way to imagine what comes next.
THE MEME POWER MYTH
I don’t actually think the above is true. Fun idea, though.
Maybe controversially, I think that the memes that succeed get absorbed into larger, pre-existing movements or speak to latent desires. Here’s how it goes: a subculture/movement/meme starts bubbling, someone or something with influence co-opts it, and helps you grow more. Here’s how it doesn’t go: memes hijack people’s minds and something comes out of nothing. That’s why grassroots campaigns don’t work without support and why top-down (e.g. all of the astroturfed DNC memes of the last however many years) astroturfing doesn’t work, either.
This is probably deserves its own article, though, doesn’t it?
LINKS + THINGS
Vindication on bundling and networks and the return of a little thing called “cable.”
ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis Isn’t Real by Blake Dodge
Submit missed connections, personals, and advice questions to Katherine directly or on Tellonym. She’s always accepting writing submissions, personal ads ($20 per ad), and regular ads ($50 per ad).
I also am a regular reader of The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Reason, and GQ. I told you, it’s a lot!
I cannot stress the “non-exhaustive” part enough.
The list was originally longer, but I didn’t want to be annoying.
I also hate-read a number of blogs. At the risk of not starting shit, I won’t list those publicly here. I am, however, willing to sell that information.
I follow a lot of right-wing Substacks, but X is where I get most of my right-wing news.
I peeked at BlueSky and it seemed to be two groups of people: 1) starving artists and 2) a bunch of progressive people posting slightly different takes on one progressive cause du jour. It looked like a murmuration of starlings.
For those of you keeping score at home, the topic du jour on the day I looked was "FIFA should yank the World Cup from the USA, you know why".
omg thank you so much for this shoutout!!!