Canned Dragons

Asymmetrical news coverage at most of the mainstream media sites is something that I’ve almost just come to accept without any particular frustration. However, there are times when a particular topic comes up, and it’s so obvious that the coverage has been unfair and skewed, that it creates a sense that I have only been told what the media outlet wants me to hear. It feels a bit insulting that the leadership at these organizations has decided that I’m not intelligent enough to get all the facts and make judgments for myself.

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Probably the closest publishing platform to the one I'm using — Ghost — is Substack. Although Substack is much more popular for a few reasons, not the least of which is the low barrier-to-entry (it's free if you are not charging for your publication), it has come under quite a bit of scrutiny lately. There was a big push to get writers to abandon the platform after The Atlantic posted an article asserting that there were many Nazi publications using the platform to spread and even monetize their ideas. A prominent tech journalist named Casey Newton, who was using Substack, led the charge to get the company to amend its content moderation policies. After not achieving complete success with his campaign, Newton took his publication, Platformer, to Ghost. Substack did, however, remove five accounts (out of the six that Newton reported) that were distributing Nazi material, in accordance with its existing policies about violent speech. Many writers opined that this was the bare minimum that Substack could do to quell the outrage that was being directed at them.

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A friend recently introduced me to the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy podcast, wherein Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick explains the Orthodox Christian faith. One thing I took away from it, and really appreciated, is the exploration of the Orthodox view of competing brands of Christianity. Fr. Andrew describes other sects as "incomplete." Having come from a Protestant background, the characterization struck me as both charitable and accurate. There isn't any attempt to denigrate other forms of Christian faith, but merely to point out that perhaps there is more out there to discover.

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In many ways, though not in all, it’s gotten much harder to share the music you love with others. I was reminded of this a couple of days ago. For my wife’s birthday, my sister made her a playlist on Apple Music. This was thoughtful and kind, but unfortunately, we don’t have Apple Music. So my wife had to copy down the tracks that made up the list and find the songs to make her own playlist on Qobuz.

Back in the day, when you had a crush on someone, or simply wanted to spread the gospel of superbad tunes for getting down, you made a mixtape. If the recipient of your tape had a cassette player (which everyone did — they were standard government issue), they could listen to your creation until their heart's content. Or until the tape wore out (this is a real thing).

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Alisa Ruddell wrote a masterful and in-depth review of the visually stunning animated film The Peasants for Christ and Pop Culture. The movie follows a woman named Jagna, whose promiscuity threatens the social fabric of her community in rural Poland around the turn of the last century. The use of the movie’s contemporary changes cast against the original book it was based upon (which was published in parts between 1904 and 1909) provides fertile ground for illustrating changes in society.

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