[upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am your co-host, Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto. And there's no guest today. You're stuck with us.
But, um, yeah, we'll be talking about a few things that have been on our minds and in the news. I would like to start by saying I had a really moving experience this morning. Um, I, I went out.
The local bakery in my neighborhood, they're closed on Mondays, so I tend to go on Tuesday morning to get a nice loaf of bread for my week. And I got a loaf of sourdough rye, sandwich shape loaf. Really good choice.
Still hot from the oven, and I walked home. It's this kind of fall morning. I'm holding it to my chest. It was, it was, it was like [laughs] the warmth of a, of a child or something like that.
I was gonna say, fatherhood, here I come. Yeah. Um, yeah. It... I don't know. It was a really beautiful moment. I just wanted to share that. That is a beautiful moment. Um- Mm-hmm... I liked that a lot. [laughs] I...
A lot of times it's, my little morning taunt is, like, two iced coffees. And so- Two? Like, wow. It's... Yeah. It's like walking home with a j- They're both for you?... very cold baby in each hand. [laughs] Um, no.
[laughs] I... That's horrible. Nobody wants to- More than one tray... what? No. Yeah... it's just not the same. Yeah. But, um- Yeah... one of them is usually for Ben. Okay. So- Okay...
I actually- I wasn't sure if you were, like, preparing for your day- I usually ask for a tray... and then you go to the fridge, no ice...
but now I have extra trays at my house, so I've been trying to remember to bring my tray. Trying to remember. So you've been stockpiling more trays, uh, and saying that you won't.
Basically, I put it next to the door, and I still forgot it. Um- Mm-hmm. Uh, okay. Let's, let's talk about, let's talk about farming.
We didn't really talk about this piece that a couple weeks ago we published, you published in Dirt a piece I wrote about both my own decision not to take over my family farm as well as the disappearance of family farms- Mm-hmm...
of small farms rather, um, which are typically family farms, uh, in, in this country. I believe the stat was since the turn of the century, we've lost 13.2% of small farms in this country, which is 286,780.
Um, I was inspired to write this after reading about Smallhold's bankruptcy. Adam Dimartino, co-founder, and I believe he was CTO was his, was his, uh, role there at Smallhold. Uh, but last year they went bankrupt.
And when I had first learned about Smallhold like five, six years ago, I was fascinated by what seemed to be a profitable farm where you could make a good living, but you could still produce produce, and these kind of values that I grew up with, right?
But it turns out that at the end of the day, despite all the VC cash that they raised, it was still a mushroom farm that was not quite profitable enough or scalable enough to justify venture investment.
Um, related to that, I've just recently read this article about farmers, uh, really, really in the Hudson Valley, Catskills region. Um, a nice stat from this. This was in The New York Times a month or two ago.
To quote here, "In Sullivan County, the latest census data show that of the 749 producers reported, 36% were new and beginning farmers." And then they spoke to farmers here of, of all ages, all backgrounds.
Um, and there was kind of one who was, like, more of the traditional farming route, descent... Like, three, third-generation farmer, um, and then a couple newer, like, sort of neo-hippie, back-to-the-land farmers. Mm.
And I think that piece was more optimistic, where mine was maybe a little more pessimistic. I don't know if mine was so pessimistic, but it was like, I think where I left the reader was that, uh...
Well, actually, specifically, where I leave it is I talk about my parents trying to sell their farm and how it will be difficult for them to find somebody with the right mix of skills, value, and capital. Mm.
And what I'm implying is you can't really... Nobody has all three, right? Pick two or even just one. Yeah. But I think the- I shoulda done a you pick two triangle graphic. A- So yeah. [laughs]... You Pick?
Like the blueberries, You Pick two? Um, but- Yeah... but I think, but this whole bit, but this, uh, New York Times one,
I think they find, they found people who had the capital and the value and were, like, very actively learning the skills. Yeah.
But I think it also kind of prove that, proves that point where, like, you might have two, but you have to find the third. You might have the skills and the values.
You're gonna have to find the capital, and that's gonna be very hard. Right. Also, like, this idea that farming is either a subsistence business for people born into it or the hobby of somebody after they become rich.
Mm-hmm. Um- Yeah.
One of the guys in this article was, like, a former financier in New York, and uh, yeah, made a bunch of money, and then could do this without the crushing- It's like Marie Antoinette being like, "Build me a small village- Mm-hmm...
where I can pretend that I have sheep." [laughs] Yeah. But I under- Like, I think people are doing it out of deeply held values- Mm-hmm... and a desire to be closer to nature, and I don't judge that. No, not at all.
I just think if... I mean, if those people were succeeding disproportionately, it could conceal a lot of the issues facing people doing it for subsistence, but they probably fail at the same rate, if not higher. Mm-hmm.
Okay, your parents don't do soybeans. No. That is far from it. I feel like any- Yeah...
I don't know the exact economics behind soybeans, but from what I understand, if you're doing soybeans, first, you're probably in the Midwest, and second, you're probably farming hundreds of acres.
Well, the economics are China's supposed to buy them. They're not buying them as a retaliatory measure. And so they're buying Argentinian soybeans, but Argentina is still... The economy still is, is bad.
So we're also simultaneously bailing Argentina out to prop up their-Um, more sort of capitalist president. Mm-hmm. And- De Lay, I believe his name is. Albanian... so we're basically subsidizing
the soybeans that are being sold to China instead of our soybeans, and the government's gonna have to bail everyone out anyway. Sort of a beautiful own goal. It is an Ouroboros of stupidity.
[laughs] I saw the, uh, the, that report where they sort of- I'm absolutely soy facing. You can't see this at home, listener. [laughs] I'm absolutely soy facing.
They, they sniped a, a, a photo of the text message that I think who, Treasury Secretary, was getting from the Agriculture Secretary- Uh, yes, I saw this, yeah... basically laying all of this out.
Um, but, I mean, it's been, this, all of this has been reported, I think. It was just, that was the crash out. Um, not great. Not great. Uh, yeah, I, I don't...
Not that we have to go so deep into tariffs, and I don't know enough about this to speak eloquently about it, but I, I find it hard to believe that
this isn't just going to end with, like, pie on face for a bunch of people.
I, I guess the point is, is more about, like, a few specific people getting rich and not really about, like, re-energizing the manufacturing industry in America, right? Um, but yeah, I,
I'm, I'm not saying anything new here, but I j- it just boggles my mind that we're, like, holding to these tariffs on soybean, uh, or, or just, like, these, these, these trade chaos.
I would like for people who grow soybeans in this country to feel like they can vote their self-interest and that those self-interests would align with my interests. Mm-hmm.
And I don't wanna be at odds with the people that grow soybeans in this country. [laughs] I'm always saying that. I'm always saying that. [laughs] 'Cause I think what they do is important- Yeah...
and I'm sure they all think what I do is important, but, um, this was all, I do believe this was all foreseeable. I don't know. Um, it's, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if any of these tariffs are even real, so.
Yeah. Uh- But this particular retaliatory measure is real, so. I, I was...
I, I, I, um, 404 did this great story, uh, a m- a month or so ago about how the end of the de minimis exception is, like, hurting anybody with, like, a niche hobby who buys stuff on eBay, basically. Mm-hmm.
And I, I was scrolling eBay the other day for, for, for Japanese ties, vintage Japanese [laughs] ties. Mm. No comment. Uh, no comment.
Um, a friend was just in Japan and brought me back this nice tie, and I was like, "Oh, this is fun. I'm gonna look at more of these." So, uh, anyways, the, the, it was like- That's the W. David Marks activity.
Uh, uh, that is- [laughs] Have him, tell him what you want and have him bring it when he comes for his book tour. Have him bring it. That's fair.
Uh, but, uh, yeah, he, he, he can order, I can order it to his house [laughs] and he can bring it. Um, no, the point is, this tie was, like, $5, and then shipping was $250. Oh, my God, no.
I understand that this is what they've done is, like, a bunch of these people in other countries that, you know, often are selling to the US, um, have just made the shipping cost of anything $250. [laughs] Serenity now.
Mm-hmm. Serenity now. Um, yeah, well, I'm gearing up to do another zine with global contributors, and I, everyone gets two copies of the zine. Oh, no.
But I'm like, "Who's gonna be the most expensive person to send two copies of the zine to?" I'm so excited to find out. 'Cause, like, even if you're sending it as a gift, that, it might get flagged. Yeah, we'll see.
Certainly if, if, if, um, you know, the, if agents of the Postal Service are listening to this now. My postal office added, like, another big thing about not shipping perfume, and, like- Really?...
I for sure have shipped perfume from there. Is that a thing? 'Cause it's an aerosol and it's, I, I have no idea. Yeah, you have to deny you're se- sending perfumes and aerosols.
But let me tell you, I have shipped perfume in my life, and I have received perfume in my life, and- I have ordered, I have bought it online. Well, those people have a license. Um- Oh... I don't, but that's okay.
Um, okay, well, the, the thing, the thing I wanted to bring up, um, related somewhat to the, that, that New York Times farm article, um, and really, and really mine, where it's like, you know, some of these VC-backed techno farms that were growing food weren't really...
Like, that was never really what they were gonna make their money off of. What they were gonna make their money off of was tech, um, that they were using to grow their food. Mm-hmm.
Specifically, like Square Roots have these container farms that have these systems. That was the Basil company. The Basil company, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Um, and then somewhat related, uh, this New York Times article, there's people who, like, have a, um, like, a lodge that they rent out that you can go stay in, right?
And maybe that makes more money than parts of the farm, or it's just a part of the overall revenue mix that makes it all work, right? Oh, mm-hmm. Um, mm-hmm. Or, like, weddings. Or weddings. A wedding venue.
I bet some of them make money on weddings. Definitely. Certainly. Um, but- Do you have weddings on your farm? No. Are you gonna get married there? Uh, on my sister's farm. Oh, there you go.
Yeah, there you go, but I'm not paying for that. Um- [laughs] Thank you to my loving sister.
Um, no, but, so I read this piece by Doug Shapiro, media consultant, writer, theorist guy, um, called What If All Media Is Marketing Now, which I would agree.
I mean, that's kind of what I do for a living with Creator Spotlight- I feel like that's all we talk about on this podcast... at Beehive. It's all [laughs] it's all we talk about. Um- Knock it up, Doug. No, sorry...
but, um, okay- We'll hear him out...
so th- there's like a long, it's a really long article and well-researched, uh, but he very graciously provides a TLDR at the beginning, which I will, [laughs] I will read one segment of this, which is, um, he's basically talking about, uh, how gen AI will oversaturate the market.
It's gonna be impossible to monetize with advertising or subscriptions. Sure, something we do often talk about, as you say. Um, and I'm gonna read two bits of this quick. "What happens then? Here's a common pattern.
When barriers collapse in a market, supply explodes, consumer price sensitivity increases, prices migrate toward marginal cost, and all the value shifts to the scarcest complements.
This has happened in markets as diverse as food-"Stock trading, digital photography, PCs, consumer electronics, and many others.
In all cases, the commoditized product becomes a loss leader, customer acquisition cost, or at best, marginally profitable and value shifts elsewhere.
If the same pattern plays out in media, most content may cease to be a profit center. Instead, it will become top of funnel to something else. Media will become marketing. Last bit.
To be clear, there's a difference between media sells marketing and media is marketing. Today, content is the product, and one way it monetizes is by renting out the attention it generates, selling advertising.
In this new model, content is the cost, and the only sustainable profits will be for media companies to own the complements themselves. Or...
And now, now I'm speaking, or, um, for the complements to own the media companies, if you will. I mean, yeah. And we see it with Semaphore, right? A large percentage of their business is events. Yeah.
I was telling you off mic- The newsletter's free. Mm-hmm. Is it? They have... I think they have, like, um, a, like, a crazy high-ticket executive- Oh... cost newsletter.
But, like, I'm subscribed to their, their daily, their tech newsletter, their media newsletter. These are all free. There's no paid version. I'm gonna... While you...
Wait, while you, you have a point to make, I'm gonna look at the free and paid part.
Well, I was telling you before we started about the piece in New York Magazine, I think by Charlotte Klein, about Cultured Magazine and, like- Mm-hmm...
its reputation was always as, um, almost like a vanity project, although they've had advertisers like Chanel since the beginning. It was sort of like a Hamptons art mag was the reputation. Um,
like, I feel like they haven't always paid freelancers particularly well. Um, but apparently they've had, like, in recent years, a bit of a renaissance. Mm-hmm. They've hired some really smart critics.
They have, like, Cult one hundred franchise that they did at the Guggenheim, um, that's bringing advertisers in. And I think that they have, like, a Cultured Club- Mm-hmm...
which is like a membership club, which is sort of what Doug is talking about, which made me think of this.
I will say, like, I think this is an amazing business story for your [lips smack] magazine to have been around for more than ten years and then, like, eventually achieve more profitability
and really, like, crack whatever the ideal, um, split between various revenue streams is. I will say I could not tell you a single thing that they've ever published. And
I don't think it has to be either/or, but, um, yeah, that's... It makes it hard for me to be like, "Okay, here's the replicable model," where I'm like, "What is the taste of this?" Yeah.
"What is the point of view of this, this magazine?" Um, maybe it's not for me, but I care about everything that they cover. So, um, I don't know. I think, like, it is an example though, like, if you...
If it had the reputation of being a vanity mag, it was sort of like, vanity magazines are thought of as marketing for the person that started it or the company- Mm-hmm... that started it. Um,
now it's like, well, all media is marketing, so I've definitely heard that thrown around less. Um, but it seems like- It's a given... the substance of the business now is, like, these experiences perhaps.
Um, and advertisers are interested in sponsoring them. Yeah. I mean, I was looking, I think it was today or yesterday as we speak, it was published, uh, Hellgate's annual report, which is- Mm-hmm...
um, I don't wanna, I don't wanna give away the whole thing here because it, it is behind the paywall, but two details I think are worth bringing up.
One, they are mostly monetized through paid subscribers, which is sort of like a refutement of this conversation we're having, right? Mm-hmm.
Um, they said that they have nine thousand paid subscribers now as, as of the end of September twenty twenty-five, which is a sixty-nine percent increase from their previous annual, annual report.
They've been active for three years now. Um, and they have seventy thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue, which is up sixty-six percent from last year. At this time last year, they were at forty-two thousand.
Um, and again, they are primarily funded by subscribers. They're also funded by philanthropy, ads, and public funding. But ads, they only sold twenty thousand dollars worth of ads over the last twelve months.
Um, so I think, I guess why I bring this up is, like, the question of, like, when is media not marketing and, like, now and in the future?
Like, 'cause, you know, I think Doug Shapiro's piece is more like this is a transition that's happening. Um, but I f- I feel like something like Hellgate will always,
you know, will always be able to make money in this way because people want to support it because it's, they're doing reporting that they won't get elsewhere and/or people want to, want this thing to exist, and there's, like, that, that patronage aspect to media.
I know, um, you know, my parents have long been, like, local radio station supporters, and when all that media funding was cut by the government at the beginning of the year, they upped their increase by, like, a hundred bucks a year or something like that.
Um, so I think this, like, this point that all media is marketing, like, I think this kind of, like, local media or, like, you know- Local media has the... Is I think people perceive it as a public good- Yeah...
in a way that magazines are not. Um, I think magazines, like, to draw on a point that maybe, I actually forget where I even made this point, if it was on this podcast or on Boys Club live stream. But, like,
magazines, I think, do act as a check on the worst consumer impulses of the sort of, like, uncultured class. Mm-hmm.
Um, and maybe we sort of, like, that's, we kinda forgot that until we lost it, that, like, magazines are supposed to, like... In the same way that, like, political journalism will, will check-Power.
Cultural magazines check the impulses of people that have cultural power. Um, to say like, "If you have a, a weird wedding, we're gonna make fun of you." If you [laughs] Yeah You know what I mean?
Like, "If you're driving a weird car, we're gonna make fun of you." [laughs] Um, or if you know you're buying a new car and your, your company's being sued for discrimination, we're gonna make fun of you. Mm-hmm.
So there is that like... It's not a public good in the same way that reporting on campaign finance is, but there is some important dynamic to, um, doing almost like a controlled burn of what's happening in culture.
And without that, like, platforms do the opposite, right? Like Paul Graham Mm-hmm Everyone knows Paul Graham is my emotional support libertarian. Um, [laughs] or my- A famous investor...
emotional support centrist, I think is what I called him. Mm. You know, he's like... It's, I don't know where he's been for the last two years, but yesterday he was like, "Something's deeply wrong with Twitter."
And it's like, yeah dude, because I have a couple of accounts where I'm not following a lot of people- Mm... including dirt, so I kinda get just like the raw whatever anyone's getting, and it is bad. Yeah.
Um, they are deliberately showing the most divisive stuff. They are deliberately showing very cherry-picked, um, [lip smack] racial crimes, violence, from both sides. Mm-hmm. And it's not good.
And so you have magazines which, yes, there is sensationalism. You know, obviously, like Enquirer or stuff that you, like in the grocery store with like, you know, JonBenét Ramsey: She's Alive. Like yeah, not that stuff.
[laughs] But like, like a Vanity Fair. Yeah. Um, obviously they wanna get attention, but they want to control the cultural conversation. Um, not let it be dominated by people with the most money. And platforms,
they... I, I think the, the incentive is much different. Um, it's success by division, where division breeds engagement. Mm-hmm. And
I think that's messed up, and I think people are starting to realize like, "Hey, like we've sort of lost something here," and can't put their finger on it. Um, they see the media as part of it.
They see the media as sowing division, but we have so much force now.
Are we talk- Wait, so are we talking about like, um, th- to focus on like how what succeeds is polarizing, do you think that is exclusive to Twitter, or is this true of like Instagram, of TikTok, of Blue Sky, say, of YouTube?
Uh, I think TikTok's pretty messed up. I think Instagram and YouTube have more checks in place. Mm-hmm. I know Threads you can't even talk about politics, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
I think all of their numbers are made up, though. [laughs] I, I agree. I know, but I would, I would agree.
Because I have been, I've been like, I think I've been creating Threads against my will, to be honest- [laughs]... 'cause sometimes I forget to like untoggle- You've been creating them?... when I post on Instagram.
I've, I don't think I've ever created a Thread. Well, you might be- I do-... without knowing it. [laughs] They, they get me sometimes, though, when, when it's, [laughs]
when, when they, uh, you know, in your Instagram feed when they like show a Thread. Yeah. It'll be like some stupid, usually like a soccer thing.
Um- Yeah, so if you click that by accident, you're probably in their numbers as a Threads user. Certainly. Certainly I am. I probably open it once a day in that way, [laughs] and then I immediately close it.
I don't blame them for trying to create an alternative, just like I don't blame Substack for trying to create- Yeah... an alternative.
Like my issue is replacing something that was fulfilling a very different function- Mm-hmm... and then trying to convince everyone that this is better.
Even people who don't like media or the idea of media as a fourth estate, if you ask them to come up with thought experiments for how to solve for the trustlessness of information in society, they will basically come up with the media again.
Yeah. They will reinvent it from scratch. They'll be like, "Well, we should call people- Same as you do, different as you don't... and ask them what actually happened." And it's like- Yeah...
wow, yeah, we do, we, we should call people and ask them what actually happened. Imagine that. I also think, I don't know if there's any books about this. I feel like there must be.
Like I would be very interested in the history of the opinion page and the opinion section- Mm... and how it has both benefited and taken away from the role of the newspaper. Because everyone has turned against
this idea of the op-ed board or a newspaper- Yeah... um, making a presidential endorsement.
At the same time, all you hear from people who are interested in sort of like new decentralized media is all about parasociality, it's all about commentary, it's all about opinion.
And so if you, if you can't graft that onto the traditional news product without destroying the credibility of the traditional news product, like where does that leave the news? Mm-hmm.
Um, and can the news and, can the news and opinion exist separately, and have they ever existed separately? I, so I, I, I, I just tried to see if there's a book on the [laughs] history of the, of the opinion section.
Well, we're gonna ask ChatGPT.
And, and maybe there is, but I, but I did, I specifically searched for, 'cause I, I figured this would be the best proxy for it, if there was a history of, a book on the history of The New York Times opinion section.
Mm-hmm. And what I did find is this piece, um, from 2021 by Kathleen Kingsbury, the opinions editor- Yeah...
of said Times, um, about why The New York Times is retiring the term op-ed, which if I knew this had ever happened, I, I did not know. But, um, just- Yeah, I didn't know about that.
You're just telling me that for the first time. [laughs] You're telling me that for the first time.
[laughs] Um, but so okay, to scan a few details here, um, the first op-ed page in The New York Times was on September 21st, 1970.
Um, it was so named because it appeared opposite the editorial page, and not, as many still believe, because it would offer views contrary to the paper's.Um, inevitably it, it would Hmm... do that too. Okay.
Um, "It's time to change the name. The reason is simple.
In the digital world, in which millions of Times readers absorb the paper's journalism online, there is no geographical op-ed, just as there is no geographical ed for op-ed to be opposite to.
It is a relic of an older age and an older print newspaper design." So 50 years later, they're retiring it.
"Editorials will still be called editorials, but the articles written by outside writers will be known as guest essays, a title that will appear prominently above the headline." Hmm.
So I guess that, I mean, to, um, there's, there's a little bit more. It's not actually a very long piece here. Um, the geography of the public square is being contested. In many ways that square is more representative.
Everyone has an outlet from Facebook to Substack to Twitter. This is 2021. Those are different things then. Um, this is, that is to be welcomed. What is disparaging though are voices...
are spaces where voices can be heard and respected. Okay. Um, enough of this.
But w- I guess what's interesting to me here is that, um, that, yeah, it comes from this context where it's like, here's the facts, here's the editorial, and then here's people maybe railing against it- Mm-hmm...
j- just some opinion that isn't necessarily, like, the truth. Um, and then the, like, the make your own page of, of the, of internet media consumption kind of- Grok, is this true? Grok, is this true? Um, Grok ed.
Oh, they're making a Grokipedia. Did you see that? No. Yeah. I hate that. Attempt. There's an attempt. [lip smacks] Um, d- I, I also read that
the government signed some contract, federal government signed a contract with Grok. Sure. I don't know. Why not?
Um, anyways, speaking of, of, of magazines, I got the Metrograph, second issue of the Metrograph magazine this weekend. Oh, bummer. They offered me one of those. I forgot to respond. It's really beautiful- Damn... right?
Well, it is nice. Yeah, it's really nice. Um, which I, I think it costs, like, 20 bucks. I don't know. I got it at Iconic Magazines on Kenmare. I think that's the name of that one. Um, there's only one ad.
I think I have some friends in there. There's only one ad. Is it for Metrograph? No, it's for Hermès on the back. The... Okay, so they just sold the back cover to Hermès and said, "That's enough of that." Yeah.
No, I'm, I'm- [laughs]... flipping through. I'm looking for more ads. I'm not seeing any more ads.
Well, I was gonna tell you, so when you were talking about Hellgate, um, so that's, like, obviously more paid subscribers than I have- Mm-hmm... but I've already sold more than $20,000 worth of ads for next year. Mm-hmm.
So it's just very different, like, the models and, like, I think, like, everything that I've said, like, in my essay about the future of media as a bank, like, there's obviously carve-outs to that. Like- Yeah...
Midcoast Villager is a great example, um, that- Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm... they are doing amazing, right? And I think what they're doing is super interesting. That's...
People are always gonna view spending on something like that differently from spending on a Vogue or- Which is an indulgence as opposed to a necessity.
[lip smacks] It's an indulgence, but an indulgence that plays an important role in our cultural ecosystem. Mm-hmm. And I think that's the thing that everyone's trying to drill down on. Um- Yeah. Wait, I- But-...
actually have something here. Um, so- Okay... at, at, at the, uh [lip smacks] we were both at On Air, the Archival- Yeah, I was there-... conference... in the morning. You were there for more of the afternoon.
Well, okay, so the, the final, uh, talk- Shout out to Ari, by the way. That was ridiculous, like- Friend of the pod, former guest, former boss... uh, down to the last detail, you guys. This was a cult.
Uh, it was like a cult activation. Okay, wait. So we, we should, we should talk about all the details and, and how good a job Ari did, um, flatter his, his ego here.
But, uh, so last, the last talk of the day was- Mm-hmm... Shane Hegde, our CEO, and Nicholas Thompson, CEO- Mm-hmm... o- of The Atlantic.
Um, and Macy Gilliam, um, friend of the pod, uh, from Morning Brew famously, she asked him a really good question. And- Was she on Creator? S- She, she been on Creator Spotlight? Uh, no, but soon to come. Okay.
Okay, okay. Yeah, that's- We, we did, we, we did discuss that... we were sitting with her. We were- Mm-hmm... we were all sitting in the same row, right? We were, yeah. Yeah. Well, I was right behind you guys.
Um- Macy had a very cool plaid outfit on, guys, so. Yeah, she did. Yeah. Um, okay.
Anyways, she asked a great question, um, that was basically, what do you make of the fact that so much low-quality information and even propaganda is freely available online, whereas something that is produced, that's very highly produced and more rigorously fact-checked, e- et cetera, like The Atlantic- Mm-hmm...
that is all behind a paywall and harder to access? The gist of her question. Mm-hmm. Um, and Mr.
Thompson gave a pretty good answer, I would say, where, you know, i- i- he's, he's basically saying, like, "Look, we have a bottom line. To produce that costs money.
Subscriptions are the, one of the best ways for us to get that money."
But, and I think this is the, the part, again, longer answer, but this is the part that stuck with me, is that they've been experimenting with, like, what's the loosest paywall we can do- Mm-hmm...
that still drives people to sign up and still allows us to make enough money to keep producing this journalism.
And I think there was a lot of, like, AI conversation, and he was talking about how there's some way they're implementing AI to test the loo- the loo- like, the loosest possible paywall. Mm-hmm.
Um, which I guess is, is technology beyond what I'm working with in the day-to-day. Um- The Atlantic stable coin. [laughs] Yeah, The Atlantic stable coin. Um, yeah, I don't know.
I, but I thought that was, it was a really good question, um, and I, I thought it was a compelling answer. I hadn't really heard somebody talking about that. It is a really good question. I think it is...
I do think people are, are circling back on some of the ideas around, like, early experiments with micro payments and trying- Mm...
to figure out whether AI is the thing that could remove the friction that was making them tough. 'Cause I, like, I love a metered paywall where you put in your email- Mm-hmm...
to read the article, but you can only do that once. Mm. So what can you do-Other times, um- Companies have been- I don't know 'cause I was sitting next to Ben Dietz, friend of the pod- Mm-hmm. The pod...
um, at the Air event, and he flipped his phone over to show me something in Retail Dive, which was like, "Birkenstocks is doing so well, they're opening another clog factory." Wow. And I was like, "Where? Where?"
And it was a Bloomberg article, so he clicked through, and he hit the paywall, but it looked like you could do Apple Pay. Mm. So I was like, "Buy the..." I was like, "Buy the article."
[laughs] And so he's trying to, like, double-click for Apple Pay 'cause I was like- Yeah... "If that works, that's sick. I didn't know that they were doing that." Yeah, that'd be awesome.
He was trying to double-click just like you do at the fricking subway. And like, 'cause you only... You just have to have your phone unlocked to swipe in now in New York City subway. Mm-hmm.
And it didn't work, and I, and I was like... I literally said to him, "Ben, solving that, what just happened to you, is my life's work." Mm.
Because if you had been able to pull that up and just double-click and pay on Apple Pay for that article- That's clam... that's clam. Clam, excuse me. That's clam. Like- Yeah... everyone should be able to do that.
And there's this new thing, um, that Cloudflare and Base are working on together called the 402 Protocol,
where they're trying to, um, create a system where AI agents that are crawling the web for information are kind of automatically paying as they go.
Uh, but my argument is there's always gonna need to be some sort of user interface as well- Mm-hmm... where, like, we can see what other people are paying for. Like, if I'm doing a search through an LLM- Mm...
I'm definitely happy to know that every, uh, every source that became an input for that search is being compensated, but I think that there's another piece of the way people understand their taste that, that requires some sort of user interface for us to be- That requires agency, if you will.
Agency, yeah, and activity in those decisions- Mm-hmm... even if some of them are augmented by a programmable wallet or an AI agent working on our behalf.
Um, 'cause then people are gonna be like, "I wanna pay more for the stuff-" Mm. "... that I really care about-" Yeah... "beyond the baseline." Um, and that's where that secondary market for AI agents comes in of, like,
maybe I just wanna subscribe to the taste of somebody else, and I wanna pay them- Mm-hmm... as the intermediary.
One thing, okay, um, related here, I often think about how with newsletter paywalls, which newsletter paywalls, I think, are so much better than some of the paywalls of the past, where it used to be very easy to get around, say- Mm...
a New Yorker paywall, um- Mm... w- in various ways. Uh, one of my favorite techniques was, uh, sometimes this still works for some websites.
If you load it, load the page, and immediately click the X button up by the URL to stop it loading, sometimes it stops it from loading the paywall. It's a little intel for you.
Um, but, uh, but Beehiiv, Substack, Ghost, any of these m- modern newsletter platforms basically, like, are pretty good at, like, lo... Like, there's not really a way to get around the paywall.
You just simply have to pay. There's no archive.com whatever. Um, but if you're a paying customer of a newsletter product,
and you've been paying for a while, and then you stop paying, you still have all of those articles, all that content archived in your email in as much as your, you know, Gmail is an, is an archive and not something that is itself unstable, right?
Mm-hmm. Like, but you could download those emails. You could put them on a hard drive, whatever.
Um, so, uh, like, in the context of, let's say, paying $2, a dollar, whatever it is for a Bloomberg article, do you think it would also archive it in that way?
Like, would it s- would it email you a, a copy of it, and then you kind of, like, have bought this paper? I mean, it should. Like,
I think some of the benefit of having AI paywalls is, like, you can have, like, really specific upsells, right? Mm. Like, in this instance, it's the friction that was the problem. Like, he was- Yeah...
willing to pay $1.99 while I was billing him, but- [laughs]... like, it wasn't speaking to the Apple Pay. Like, if it was- Yeah...
speaking to the Apple Pay, like, if you remove that friction, then you can do really interesting stuff. Like, maybe Ben is getting this deal that's like, "Pay a dollar for this article or $5 for the next six months."
"Oh my God- Mm... great deal. I'm just gonna pay five." Yeah. Like, but I'm getting a deal that's like, "Put in your email for free or pay $2 to read this article." And that, they, they could be offering through AI
150 different paywall deals at the same time. That is smart business. The only not s- the only stupid business is stuff that is not making people pay for stuff. [laughs] You know? Like, right? Yeah. That's what I think.
[upbeat music] There was something else. Oh, well, okay, so Danny and I also t- kind of treated it like a, a meeting about creative complaint. Mm-hmm. So we kept, like, running away to a corner to brainstorm.
[laughs] Yeah. Um, but we're really excited, so we're, we're turning "Ick" into a podcast called Creative Complaint, and currently working on getting the art and music set for that.
Um, but Danny's gonna be hosting, and- Mm... I, I'm honestly shocked that we didn't think of this before because the idea of being able to come on and talk about stuff that you don't like is so compelling.
One of the things that was a challenge for us, though, is I didn't wanna use the word hate in the tagline of the show because I feel like there's so much hate in the political environment right now- Mm...
that I don't wanna contribute to it, even if it's just, like, the stuff that we're talking about that we hate is not people. It's behaviors and stuff. Yeah.
So that was something that we had to work around because obviously hate gets people's attention,
and the tagline we ended up coming up with was, I believe, um-Taste told through distaste Mm So as a result of that, Ben has been referring to Creative Complaint as Distasteland. [laughs] Distasteland. That's good.
[laughs] That's good. I think if we did that, that would be too much, and I do like the- Right... the repetition of Creative Complaint. Um, I also think, like, Dani... So Creative Complaint is Dani's podcast.
We're distributing it at least through the end of the year. Mm-hmm. But it allows her to potentially take it with her, just like you might do someday with Creator Spotlight. Like- Yeah...
if she needed to, and she could also potentially expand it to be more about the creative process. Um, you know, she could be the Rick Rubin of [laughs] talking about stuff that you distaste. Mm-hmm. Um,
and so I liked that flexibility too. Like, this is just not, like, open mic for haters. This is, like, getting into, like, well, why does the stuff that bother, bother, bothers us [laughs] bother us? Um- So like therapy?
Yeah, like therapy. Mm. You know, we have another podcast coming that's a lot more like therapy- Well-... but I can't reveal details... we'll keep that one under wraps for now. It's under wraps for now.
This is an exclusive. That's, that's yet to be scooped. Uh- Yes... actually, I don't know, it might have been scooped already by the time- Um... you hear this. [laughs] I didn't give it to Mark Stenberg.
[laughs] Mm, okay. I spread my scoops around. I'm very generous. Mm-hmm. That's, that's really sustainable of you- It's like mulch... for the media environment or something. You have to spread it- Like mulch...
across the whole garden bed. Love mulch. I love mulch. [laughs] Mulch smells so good. Manure smells so bad. Make that- Yeah... more sense. Y- You know, um,
I'll exclusively, exclusively reveal I do have a nostalgic sense for the [laughs] smell of manure. Do you... You're on Fragrance Go, like, it's not supposed to smell like manure. The, uh...
Well, especially, it was, like, um, my high school- I'm pulling it up right now...
my high school, uh, n- uh, it's kind of, like, on this hill above the, the bottoms is what you call it in the town where I'm from, which is, like, the, the area, like, between town and the ocean that's, like, the water table's really high.
So it's, like, pastureland and stuff. Yeah. And so sometimes when the wind was right, you get out of class and, [laughs] and it sm- just reeks of manure. Um, but yeah.
Um, similar thing, but for driving through Pennsylvania on the way to Ohio. Mm. There's a pig stretch, and let me tell you, you do not wanna stop there. Um, do you know about this?
I just, I just put in manure as a note in Fragrance Go just to see what would come up, and do you know about this perfume Paddock from Hermes, speaking of Hermes? Uh, certainly I do not. All right.
The notes: hay, carrot seeds, amber, and grass. But I think somebody must have used the word manure in their... Oh, I see, I see. Okay.
So they're talking about how this was inspired by some sort of, um, equestrian event that Hermes is involved in, but they left the manure scent out of the perfume itself. Hmm. Okay.
Oh, a thing I just remembered from Shane's talk with Nicholas Thompson at the end of the Air event, uh, he was talking, or somebody, I think somebody had asked... No, no, no, this was before somebody asked this question.
Anyways, uh, he was talking about, like, the, the AI race, the AI war between the US and China- Mm...
um, and had this way of framing it, it, in terms of, like, look, like, if, if China is purported to win the AI, the AI war or vice versa, the US, like, what do you think is gonna happen the day before they, like, figure out AGI?
Like, the one country is going to bomb the other, right? Like, if it's really this thing that's, like, world-eating and world-ending, like- He said that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
'Cause I mean, he was like, "It's the logical, it's the logical thing." If AGI is really gonna, like...
is the key to, like, winning everything and becoming super rich, whatever, if one country is about to figure it out, then the other company will just, [laughs] or the other country will just bomb them.
Um, and then he was, you know, walking it back, like, okay, from there, like, what do you think is gonna happen one year before?
So I, I don't, I don't remember, like, if he gave quite a conclusion on this, but what I got from it was that, like, it's inevitable that, like, neither country will, like, win this AI war as such because they will, like- Well, he's extrapolating based on what was the same thing that happened with nuclear weapons, right?
Yeah. If somebody's about to have a nuclear weapon you don't want them to have, you bomb them- Mm... with nuclear weapons. Yeah. But in an all-out scenario, it's not that, it's not that clear cut, right? Yeah.
He also said, uh, he was at some
conference or something in Switzerland, and he'd brought his 17-year-old son, and they were having lunch with some, like, big AI scholar guy, some guy, um, who is a big wig teacher or something at some university.
Um- Mm... and anyways, like, hi- his son asked the guy, was like, "Well, I'm about to go to college.
What, which college should I pick, or like, what should I study in college if, if we're taking for granted that AGI will soon be a thing?" Um, and he recounted the guy saying, like, "Oh, just go to a party school.
Like, don't, don't worry. Just go to a party school. Enjoy your time."
Like, which I, I don't know if this, if this guy's politics or, like, stance on, on AI is that, like, oh, it's gonna be this abundance thing, and, like, work is gonna be over, which I certainly don't believe. Um- Mm.
But it was, I don't know, I guess it was just kind of pithy. I mean, I think go to any school and turn it into a party school. Mm-hmm. That's that important to you. That's kind of what you're supposed to do.
Any school could be a party school, yeah. Yeah. If you're not lame. [laughs] Well, I wanted to tell you about this other piece that I have curated on Clone right now. Mm. I... It's from the MIT Press Reader, which
I don't know if that's- I don't know if I've ever read her. Yeah. Well, I know what MIT Press is. Yeah. I've got some of their works. I guess this is what their online presence is called. Um,
it's this guy Daniel Temkin-He's the author of 44 Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code, and the piece is called The Hacker Folk Art of Esoteric Coding. Hmm. Um, he's basically talking about folk...
Like, it's kind of like the outsider art and folk art equivalent of programs where some of them have appli- actually been implemented, and they're almost like inside jokes among programmers where it's like code as more of like performance art, but within the environment.
So it's not like performance art, um, in the sense of like making a consumer app that only sends the word yo. It's like something that you could only understand if you were also a coder- Mm-hmm...
or if somebody explains the concept to you. And then others are just like kind of ideas. So like you know how Sol LeWitt, his artwork was, um, instructions for the artwork. For wall drawings and such. So anyone- Yeah...
could do the wall drawing. Yeah. So it's kind of the code equivalent of that. And he talks about this coding language that I have actually known about for a bit and been interested by, um, for obvious reasons.
So this is t- I, I'm not 100% sure on like what the definition of esolang is. I think it's like- No, I'm not too sure... I'm guessing it means co- code as language. Okay. Mm-hmm. So one of...
The first one, the first esolang I fell in love with, he says, was Piet, which is named for Piet Mondrian, and, um, okay, so it's pronounced Peet. I'm obviously- Peet... pronouncing that wrong. Mm-hmm. Sorry.
Like the bottom. Um, and Piet programs are written as a progression of colors in orthogonally pixelated images resembling mosaics or lo-fi graphics. Um, so I just think that's so cool.
I really am so interested in, as a non-technical person, the mixing of code and culture and code and artwork and all the possibilities there, and I really enjoyed reading that.
Um, it made me think like, I should learn to code just so I can get all these- Yeah... inside jokes. You know, I did- Five Coding's not gonna give you that... Five Coding's not gonna give you that. I, I did
computer science like 101 or 102 or whatever- Mm... in, in school. And what I... It was fun, and sometimes I, I think back on, on what could've been. I wouldn't have to be podcasting, right? I'd be, I'd be rich maybe.
Uh, probably not. But what I remember is like the one assignment I remember is like making a flag and making it wave- Hmm. Ah... in like C++ or something. Somebody who's listening- Mm...
to this is like, "That's not how you do that." But, um, but yeah, I think- [laughs]... I think we were using C++, and I think we were making waving flags.
Um, and- One of the idea- ideas for the clone T-shirt that I tried to sell Josh on was, um, they have like the C++ instructions for that first Apple, um, processor image, which was where it said- Mm...
like, "Hello, world." Yes. Or like, "Hello." So that's famous 'cause it's like the first thing they showed on the Mac. Mm-hmm. But I wanted to just print the code instructions for that, like, on the back of the shirt.
Hmm. It would've been fun. I like that. And he was like, "No." I love a back of the shirt print. We decided to do- Yeah, I should've known... global coffee house aesthetic meets pomo instead. Hmm. What's pomo?
Mm, postmodern. Oh. But it's- I thought... I was thinking like of missing out. Like, but what's the P? Well, factory pomo is technically like it's the thing- Purity of missing out...
that kinda looks like the Ayn Rand cover, but there's- Hmm... like some overlapping aesthetic signifiers with the Global Village Coffee House.
'Cause like Global Village Coffee House still has like those figures that look like a little bit like more like stone figures, but they also have the sort of like pipe player stick figure guys. Mm-hmm.
Anyway, um- Life is Good. So sick... it was all sort of happening in the same era. Oh my God, Life is Good. I found my Life is Good daisy hat the other day. Oh, sick. Yeah. I ha- I still have that.
I'll wear it on the pod at some point. Um- I just bought Emma an old Life is Good shirt on, on eBay, speaking of buying- I love that it's like-... things on eBay...
old enough that that's a good camp thing- That it's cool now... to wear now. I was... I mean, in, in elementary school, I was dripping in Life is Good.
That was like, for like Christmas, I got- [laughs] You were dripped out?... like a Life is Good T-shirt. I was dripping. Life is Good- Were you dripped out in Big Dog? No. Big Dog's gotten really political.
No, no Big Dog. [laughs] No, I was... My, my drip was [laughs] my drip was khakis. Um, this is elementary school, mind you. Yeah. Khakis, um, Life is Good long sleeve shirts.
I didn't wear a short sleeve shirt to school until fifth grade, and then a fleece vest. That was the drip. Can we call this episode Dripped Out in Life is Good? [laughs] Dripped Out in Life is Good.
Life is Good Dri- Life is Good Drip. Life is Good Drip. Life is Good Drip. Life is Good Drip. Um, that's [laughs] really funny. Um- Should we end it there? Life is Good. Life- Drip. Life is Good, semicolon, Drip.
This has been Drip Land. Thank you for listening. [laughs] See you next week.
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