Mark Slagle

Say it with me: "Nuclear Wessels." #RIPWalterKoenig

67 Years Ago Today: Linus mentions the "Great Pumpkin" for the first time! ~ "This is the time of year when we all write to the "Great Pumpkin" and tell him what we want for Halloween." ~ Linus van Pelt (Classic Peanuts - October 26, 1959) 🎃 #Pumpkin #History #NationalPumpkinDay

Meta has delayed the roll out of terms that would allow broad scraping of news sites. New date: November 20. Legal experts and news publisher associations remain skeptical. @hanaatameez.bsky.social with the latest update in our ongoing coverage @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/meta...

Such a lovely piece about a really talented, thoughtful dude.

Debbie Does Dallas For Tax Purposes

A beautiful piece about a movie that is very dear to this erstwhile Durhamite’s heart (even if, as Peter notes, it’s not really about Durham).

"The apotheosis of insanity.” For the 20th anniversary of 30 Rock, I went deep on my favorite thing about it: all the fake shows, movies, and songs. With help from Tina Fey. www.theringer.com/2026/10/08/t...

How your email finds me.

Hell yeah

I want to party with the margarita raccoons.

Revisiting Weezer’s cringe masterpiece at 30: defector.com/revisiting-w...

Welp. According to Semafor, David Ellison has discussed bringing Elon Musk on as an investor in Paramount's merger with Warner Bros., which could mean Musk could have a stake in CBS News and CNN. www.semafor.com/article/09/2...

NEW: We spent months investigating a little-known media startup called Brown Brothers Media, which buys legit news sites and turns them into AI-powered zombie content farms What blew my mind was its traffic -- it appears to be getting more readers than NPR or CBS News futurism.com/artificial-i...

From this week's WUNC Politics Newsletter: Did the "North Carolina Independent" newspaper show up in your mailbox? Are you seeing ads for the "North Carolinian"? As you might guess, they're not your typical news outlets: www.wunc.org/politics/202... #ncpol

Pretending the days after Sept. 11, 2001 were some kind of gauzy Hallmark special when we came together as a country is nauseating and ahistorical. The country went completely insane and has not recovered

Hi, yes hello. Would you like to play a game featuring Wolverine that's more than just Fine as most of today's reviews suggest? HAVE I GOT THE GAME FOR YOU! www.theverge.com/23490255/mar...

Hey everybody. On the 25-year anniversary, we're reprinting the much revered 9/11 edition of The Onion and sending that free to every member this month. It's been 25 long years. Look back in anger.

Eh, close enough. Via mydialect.us/quiz-extende...

California is about to do something really cool for local journalism: mattdpearce.substack.com/p/california...

The Durham Record Label Where Dolly Parton Found a ‘Little Spot of Heaven’ From Dolly to Doc Watson, Sugar Hill Records played a big role shaping American roots music. While many have forgotten its origin, the legacy its founder built lives on.

😢 youtu.be/-nEOjMI4p78?...

BREAKING: The editor of military newspaper Stars and Stripes says he has been fired for insubordination after calling any censorship a "red line."

STOP POSTING THE BURRITO PICTURE

i got into journalism for the same reason most people do: i wanted more pictures of spider-man

What if we kissed at the—

This is a triggering image of a museum display in the natural history museum in DC about life before smartphones. Me and a fellow 40+ person were laughing at how we are now LITERAL MUSEUM PIECES. MY teen was like did you have a clear phone? An address book? A book of maps. Yes, yes I did. 🫠🫠🫠

Graduating high school before ChatGPT is like having a brain made of recovered steel from warships old enough to not have been weakened by atomic bomb isotopes.

Raymond Chandler, novelist and screenwriter who excelled at hardboiled noirspeak, was born today in 1888 #botd “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” - Farewell, My Lovely

I have a good Pyrrhus joke, but it's not worth it.

One of my strongest-held opinions is that the “track listing” section should be higher on the Wikipedia page for an album.

Burgess Milk

R.I.P., Sam Neill, and thanks for a rollicking interview that went from “Please don’t mention that ever again, don’t even inquire about it, if you continue to try and find it, I will hunt you down” to “You’re very knowledgeable, aren’t you?” Although it’s that first bit that’s really stays with me…

Murderers in Agatha Christie novels 🤝 USA goalies Having your life ruined by a Belgian