Can you please tell Clay you may be interested in his service but only if he agrees to make his pitch live on a Second Sunday call so we can all listen to Moynihan ask him about their terms of service in his Jesse Jackson voice?
Rush Limbaugh used to have a bit called The Justice Brothers where Jesse Jackson and Brother Al would yell at each other through bullhorns. It killed me.
I vote for mailbucket once a month. I mean, practically speaking, there are 8 billion people in the world, only one of them is Matt Welch, and he's the one who has to do the mailbucket assemblage, that's statistically almost identical with nobody has to make the effort--only .000000000125th of humanity has to do it! So, get crackin, Welch! The other 7,999,999,999 of us are waiting for this to be a regular feature.
I’ll do it; I’m young(er than the three of you) and NY(State-based); every job I’ve had since I was twenty involved being persnickety but very nice about it, and I can start NOW.
Ah, the TEACHER! I applaud you for actually attending a conference. I can't bring myself to go to them here anymore - if I hear another (covert or overt) DEI talk while the speaker searches the audience for any perceived skepticism so they can decide who hates the children after all, I'm going to take up heroin. (That said, I did meet Junot Díaz once at a conference...and he was electrically hot in that weird author way.)
Carl Hiaasen has made me laugh out loud while reading more than any other author ever. And Dave Barry makes rank as one of the best storytellers. So with that in mind, I'd likely have bitten the bullet and gone given the chance. (Our district has been on the "teachers teach teachers" track the last several years so they can spend the bloat on new tech for the 12 people who can't wait for the next...we even have a "gaming" PD available so you can get points and "buy" things in the shop that you don't really own...like lazer pointers.)
And to your point: Using phrases like "parental rights" to sidestep dialog in an open forum makes my eye twitch. If someone is going to speak about a topic (Bard grad included), have the foresight to have answers on the opposition of your opinion. It's a tell for fucktardery when someone is unable or unwilling to do that. In sum, I'd be happy to ring in the ears of would-be know-it-all authors who walk away thinking I'm an asshole. I am. But at least I'm the asshole in the classroom, not the one trolling school districts to talk about my books and how great I am. Good on you, Mandy.
Letter writer here! Like I said, mostly a great conference, plus I got to abandon my family and hang out in Key West for three days. And THANK GOD for Dave Barry, who is old and famous enough to not give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks, which meant he happily talked shit about Joe Biden even as many sphincters were visibly clenching.
The Bard dweeb was something else, but to Welch’s point, I can’t really be disappointed in someone I have no expectations for. Much more disappointing was one of the authors on the panel, an extremely well-known author whom, given her history, you would *think* might have some experience actually arguing this point.
Tell me it was someone like JK Rowling or Judy Blume - those two I can take. If it's Margaret Atwood, who wrote one of my favorite essays of all time, "Alien Territory", I admit my faith in writers will be shaken to the core. Anyone else...might not care at all.
The best way to handle this is not to register for the conference and attend no official events, but to travel to and stay at the host hotel, attend the hallway track, and organize unofficial side meetings, all sans mask. This way you still benefit from being on-site and getting meals and drinks with other attendees but the organizers can't make you do anything because you're not actually an official attendee: you're just a guest at the same hotel. And if you're super obvious about it, it's a giant middle finger to the people making these idiotic decisions.
Hi, I'm the letter writer. I'm not sure that's such a great plan. The conference center is a private facility, and they can eject anybody they want. So my access to the "hallway track" seems like it'd be limited. And the conference furnishes breakfast and lunch, and almost everybody goes to the lunches. So I could have fun dinners with my friends, but most of the time I'd be by myself--which kills much of my motivation of going to the conference.
Also, the conference overlaps with Reason Weekend this year. So maybe I'll just go to that instead!
Fair enough. The success of this strategy depends a lot on how the conference is structured and whether the conference center is a separate wing or scattered throughout the hotel.
The conference I regularly attend maintained this idiocy through the first meeting of 2023 at the behest of a vocal minority. Once they ended the mandate in mid-2023, mask wearing dropped to under 10% of attendees, shocking exactly no one who was opposed to it in the first place. I continued attending throughout this period, but put as little effort into complying as was required to avoid getting hassled, my modus operandi for mask mandates pretty much everywhere since mid-2021 (not coincidentally right after vaccines were widespread).
I recently attended the American Baseball Coaches Association convention in Dallas. ~12,000 attendees. I saw zero masks...not approximately zero: exactly zero.
(Phenomenal convention by the way, for anyone involved in coaching baseball at any level, youth through Division I.)
Yeah, I'm down for more mailbuckets! Your audience actually goes places, and does things. I'd love to read more of the long form bullshit calling stuff. And that piece from Japan by Dan was interesting, too. So the international audience is always fascinating, even when it comes from places we're already familiar with.
As for Clay... well I'm sure you guys get your fair share of e-mails about business opportunities that are good for some belly laughs. That "acceptable use policy" is a joke, right? I mean, most of it is just follow the law, and good practices on how not to defraud your customers/audience. But then they slip something like this in, which would exclude them from hosting something as massive, and successful as Joe Rogan. Or even something as positively good as that, such as The Fifth Column. I should think that Clay would know you've hosted individuals on your program who have been banned from other social media sites for violating this very rule that many of these places have adopted recently. It is so broad, while everything else on that list is pretty explicit.
Hi Dan, I am in Tokyo every six months or so for my business. Would love to meet up with another Fifth fan! I plan to arrive mid-end of April and stay for 4-5 weeks. Alas, I am not fluent in Japanese but can say some basics, enough to get around. Would be fun!
Hi Catherine, It would be great to get together when you're here. There must be some other members of the Fifdom we could scare out of the woodwork here to join us. Stay in touch!
Matt, Thanks for including my note from Tokyo in the Mailbucket - tickled to have made the cut. Sooner or later I'll fire off something shorter and perhaps of wider general interest in hopes of having you read it on the podcast and thereby attaining immortality. In the meantime, if you'll forgive my inexperience with my new favorite Nazi-sympathizer platform, can you suggest a way for me to identify other Fifsters here in Japan so I can try to get some retardation started over here? Thanks, Dan
Can you please tell Clay you may be interested in his service but only if he agrees to make his pitch live on a Second Sunday call so we can all listen to Moynihan ask him about their terms of service in his Jesse Jackson voice?
Seriously, please 🙏
Rush Limbaugh used to have a bit called The Justice Brothers where Jesse Jackson and Brother Al would yell at each other through bullhorns. It killed me.
I kept reading expecting a “j/k” at some point. It’s so hard to decipher clown world from parody anymore...
Awesome mail bucket, perfect combination of sincerity, insight, sarcasm, and sass -- in pretty much each note!
I vote for mailbucket once a month. I mean, practically speaking, there are 8 billion people in the world, only one of them is Matt Welch, and he's the one who has to do the mailbucket assemblage, that's statistically almost identical with nobody has to make the effort--only .000000000125th of humanity has to do it! So, get crackin, Welch! The other 7,999,999,999 of us are waiting for this to be a regular feature.
I may in fact be in the market for a paid (personal) summer intern, depending....
I’ll do it; I’m young(er than the three of you) and NY(State-based); every job I’ve had since I was twenty involved being persnickety but very nice about it, and I can start NOW.
Ah, the TEACHER! I applaud you for actually attending a conference. I can't bring myself to go to them here anymore - if I hear another (covert or overt) DEI talk while the speaker searches the audience for any perceived skepticism so they can decide who hates the children after all, I'm going to take up heroin. (That said, I did meet Junot Díaz once at a conference...and he was electrically hot in that weird author way.)
Carl Hiaasen has made me laugh out loud while reading more than any other author ever. And Dave Barry makes rank as one of the best storytellers. So with that in mind, I'd likely have bitten the bullet and gone given the chance. (Our district has been on the "teachers teach teachers" track the last several years so they can spend the bloat on new tech for the 12 people who can't wait for the next...we even have a "gaming" PD available so you can get points and "buy" things in the shop that you don't really own...like lazer pointers.)
And to your point: Using phrases like "parental rights" to sidestep dialog in an open forum makes my eye twitch. If someone is going to speak about a topic (Bard grad included), have the foresight to have answers on the opposition of your opinion. It's a tell for fucktardery when someone is unable or unwilling to do that. In sum, I'd be happy to ring in the ears of would-be know-it-all authors who walk away thinking I'm an asshole. I am. But at least I'm the asshole in the classroom, not the one trolling school districts to talk about my books and how great I am. Good on you, Mandy.
Letter writer here! Like I said, mostly a great conference, plus I got to abandon my family and hang out in Key West for three days. And THANK GOD for Dave Barry, who is old and famous enough to not give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks, which meant he happily talked shit about Joe Biden even as many sphincters were visibly clenching.
The Bard dweeb was something else, but to Welch’s point, I can’t really be disappointed in someone I have no expectations for. Much more disappointing was one of the authors on the panel, an extremely well-known author whom, given her history, you would *think* might have some experience actually arguing this point.
Tell me it was someone like JK Rowling or Judy Blume - those two I can take. If it's Margaret Atwood, who wrote one of my favorite essays of all time, "Alien Territory", I admit my faith in writers will be shaken to the core. Anyone else...might not care at all.
Also, who gives a fuck about Bard College anyway.
It was, in fact, Judy Blume. How’d you guess?
Shit. What a bummer. I was just thinking about female authors who'd been banned/questioned. Those gals came to mind...at least the ones who are alive.
Thank you, Matt!
For Larry:
The best way to handle this is not to register for the conference and attend no official events, but to travel to and stay at the host hotel, attend the hallway track, and organize unofficial side meetings, all sans mask. This way you still benefit from being on-site and getting meals and drinks with other attendees but the organizers can't make you do anything because you're not actually an official attendee: you're just a guest at the same hotel. And if you're super obvious about it, it's a giant middle finger to the people making these idiotic decisions.
Hi, I'm the letter writer. I'm not sure that's such a great plan. The conference center is a private facility, and they can eject anybody they want. So my access to the "hallway track" seems like it'd be limited. And the conference furnishes breakfast and lunch, and almost everybody goes to the lunches. So I could have fun dinners with my friends, but most of the time I'd be by myself--which kills much of my motivation of going to the conference.
Also, the conference overlaps with Reason Weekend this year. So maybe I'll just go to that instead!
Fair enough. The success of this strategy depends a lot on how the conference is structured and whether the conference center is a separate wing or scattered throughout the hotel.
The conference I regularly attend maintained this idiocy through the first meeting of 2023 at the behest of a vocal minority. Once they ended the mandate in mid-2023, mask wearing dropped to under 10% of attendees, shocking exactly no one who was opposed to it in the first place. I continued attending throughout this period, but put as little effort into complying as was required to avoid getting hassled, my modus operandi for mask mandates pretty much everywhere since mid-2021 (not coincidentally right after vaccines were widespread).
I recently attended the American Baseball Coaches Association convention in Dallas. ~12,000 attendees. I saw zero masks...not approximately zero: exactly zero.
(Phenomenal convention by the way, for anyone involved in coaching baseball at any level, youth through Division I.)
Love this! It’s a great addition!
We’re just being spoiled at this point.
We deserve it.
Yeah, I'm down for more mailbuckets! Your audience actually goes places, and does things. I'd love to read more of the long form bullshit calling stuff. And that piece from Japan by Dan was interesting, too. So the international audience is always fascinating, even when it comes from places we're already familiar with.
As for Clay... well I'm sure you guys get your fair share of e-mails about business opportunities that are good for some belly laughs. That "acceptable use policy" is a joke, right? I mean, most of it is just follow the law, and good practices on how not to defraud your customers/audience. But then they slip something like this in, which would exclude them from hosting something as massive, and successful as Joe Rogan. Or even something as positively good as that, such as The Fifth Column. I should think that Clay would know you've hosted individuals on your program who have been banned from other social media sites for violating this very rule that many of these places have adopted recently. It is so broad, while everything else on that list is pretty explicit.
Matt, PLEASEEEEEE tell me you actually sent that response to that jabroni trying to poach all y’all from Substack.
Nah. He'll find it, if he's good at his job. I work for you, not him.
I think his sales pitch already established that he is not, in fact, good at his job.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Someone on here should send it to him!
Oh, Clay.
For Dan:
Hi Dan, I am in Tokyo every six months or so for my business. Would love to meet up with another Fifth fan! I plan to arrive mid-end of April and stay for 4-5 weeks. Alas, I am not fluent in Japanese but can say some basics, enough to get around. Would be fun!
Hi Catherine, It would be great to get together when you're here. There must be some other members of the Fifdom we could scare out of the woodwork here to join us. Stay in touch!
Great!
Matt, Thanks for including my note from Tokyo in the Mailbucket - tickled to have made the cut. Sooner or later I'll fire off something shorter and perhaps of wider general interest in hopes of having you read it on the podcast and thereby attaining immortality. In the meantime, if you'll forgive my inexperience with my new favorite Nazi-sympathizer platform, can you suggest a way for me to identify other Fifsters here in Japan so I can try to get some retardation started over here? Thanks, Dan
I mean, you already have! Also the Chat function here can be useful in organizing people for meatspacey things.
Thanks Matt!
Hello @Buzen, are you here in Tokyo too?
I’m stoned reading all these in my head as the voice of Gob Bluth, thinking, “these poor bastards.”
Holy shit I’m doing basically the same exact thing right now!
I love reality confirmation.
Gentlemen and all fellow Fif'ers, I'm delighted to share the Sergei Loznitsa interview that was mentioned here now that it's released: https://1984today.substack.com/p/episode-107-sergei-loznitsa-on-totalitarianism.
Just getting to this, What a treat Matt, thanks. Looking forward to the possibility of more of these