Stop listening to the strategists

New Panic World!!!!! This week’s episode features the royal reporter extraordinaire Ellie Hall, who came on to help us sort through all the conspiracy theories about Kate Middleton that started spreading earlier this year. You can check out the episode here or anywhere you listen to podcasts!

Thankfully, No One Normal Cares About Vice Presidential Debates

Luckily for us, no one is going to change their mind about an election while watching a vice presidential debate. As Votebeat’s Jessica Huseman wrote, last night was “exclusively for those of us who hate ourselves.”

In fact, it seems like former President Donald Trump wasn’t even really watching, considering he was posting about baseball player Pete Rose’s death during the debate (who, it should be noted, died earlier in the week). Though, Trump did fire off an unreadable — and bolded — longpost denying he’d enact a federal abortion ban.

I would not say it was a good debate. Vance did millennial face to the camera a bunch, lied through his teeth about everything he believes in, and had a couple gamer moments, getting mad at the moderators for factchecking him. And Walz, unfortunately, was stiff, awkward, and had more than a few gaffes. His line about befriending school shooters, while well-intentioned, was definitely a head-scratcher. It also seemed like he was told to be cuddly and friendly and didn’t call Vance a weird creep once. So, sadly, I’m about to say something here I thought I’d never say. I agree with Politico: Vance won.

The night was not a total waste of time, though. It was a good chance to get a clearer sense of how both campaigns currently understand themselves. As I’ve written before, Vance and Walz, rather than their running mates, are, in many ways, the most coherent reflections of their respective political parties at the moment. Trump will literally say and do anything that gets him elected — and keeps him out of jail — and Vice President Kamala Harris, for all the memes and donor money, still has trouble differentiating herself from both President Joe Biden and also the wider centrist lean of the Democratic establishment.

But let’s look at how Vance did first. (Also, let’s pretend any kind of normal electioneering still matters to Republicans right now and they aren’t just planning on stealing the election no matter what happens.)

As writer Ashwin Rodrigues wrote, “JD Vance has the face of a man caught between eras. He looks like he wants to segregate a My Chemical Romance concert.” Which is funny, but I actually think it’s, also, a pretty concise summary of the Republicans’ major issue right now. Conservatives know they screwed up massively with Project 2025 and Vance spent a lot of his energy last night distancing himself from all of the extremist ideology he has gone on record supporting in the past. And because mainstream US media is finally doing the barest minimum of factchecking, he couldn’t even use the Springfield, Ohio, moral panic as a distraction. Which left Vance fairly toothless, but, also, decidedly not as weird and unpleasant as he usually is. The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel accurately compared Vance last night to the liberal fears of a DeSantis presidential campaign from a few years ago, writing, “People were talking about DeSantis and saying, 'imagine a candidate who is as shameless as and MAGA as Trump but has like a MODICUM of tact' (turns out that wasn't DeSantis).”

Which makes it all the more bewildering that Walz never did anything to challenge Vance’s toned down facade last night. Writer and podcaster Robert Evans had a great thread on the debate last night, writing, “Walz keeps instinctively acting like JD is a normal politician. This is a tactic. Vance wants to be normalized. Frustrating that Walz keeps falling for this.” I have to assume the vast difference between the no-nonsense “looking at this fucking guy” Coach Walz that America was first introduced to and the wet tissue we saw on the debate stage was the result of the same Democratic strategists that wanted Harris to be nicer to Trump supporters back in August. In fact, Geoff Garin, literally the guy that told the Harris campaign to drop the “weird” line, thought Walz did pretty well last night. As one X user posted at Garin during the debate, “he did what you wanted and it sucked bro.”

While Garin’s West Wing brain may have been soothed by last night’s political pointlessness, every other Democrat should be, at least, a little worried. When it comes to chasing the mythical middle-of-the-road voter that beltway hacks continue to fetishize, right-wing extremists like Vance are getting a lot better at pretending they’re walking back plans for a nation-wide Handmaid’s Tale reenactment. So it might be time to start being aggressive again. You know, if you want to win, I guess.

The following is a paid ad. If you’re interested in advertising, email me at [email protected] and let’s talk. Thanks!

Want a buck?

It’s clear that you all like simple and straightforward, so let’s get to it. You can get a Garbage-Day-only dollar off today’s Meh if you go here:

meh.com

I know, a dollar isn’t much, but our crap’s really cheap already. Other than this, I don’t really do ads or other marketing. I’d rather make the thing as cheap as I can for everyone. But Garbage Day readers are cool enough I’m willing to lose another buck to get you all to take a look. So, uh, take a look?

A Good Post

I Finally Figured Out Where Those Home Remodeling Videos Come From

@homedesign369

Little John turned his 0m2 room into a functional house! #roomdecor #housedesign #homedesign #littlejohn #bedroom #bedroommakeover

I am very excited to say that I made my debut in the pages of WIRED this month. I wrote about my strange journey into the dark heart of CGI home remodeling videos on TikTok this summer. I won’t spoil the ending of the piece, but I’m relieved to say I finally know where all those “Little John” videos come from and it’s much funnier than I ever imagined.

You can read the whole piece here!

AI “Artists” Are Coming For The US Copyright Office

Jason Allen is the bozo that “won” an art competition at the Colorado State Fair in 2022 with an AI-generated piece titled, “Theatre D'opera Spatial”. He tried to copyright his “art” and was told by the US Copyright Office that he couldn’t. They have a minimum amount of human involvement required to qualify for a copyright and decided his Photoshop adjustments weren’t enough.

Last week, Allen filed an appeal against the Copyright Office, arguing he “spent between 5 and 15 minutes each time four images were generated to review them, determine which instructions were followed by the AI, understand how they were interpreted, and decide what to add or delete in his next set of instructions to achieve his desired output.” You should read a bit of the filing, it’s extremely funny.

Look, a few years back, I asked a bunch of lawyers and experts why you shouldn’t be able to copyright AI works and the reason is actually very good. Ignoring the fact that you’re copyrighting material that’s already copyrighted that you just asked a program to randomly reassemble for you. If you could copyright AI-generated work, you could essentially copyright everything, infinitely, forever. Even random assortments of colors. It would fundamentally break copyright as a concept. Which, you know, part of me loves the idea of, but I acknowledge is not exactly ideal.

Here Comes The Inevitable Moo Deng Backlash

I was once told by a writer that specialized in viral animal content (it was the early 2010s) that while it seemed easy to put together fun lists of cute animals, the most important thing was to not accidentally walk into a situation where you were promoting animal abuse. Is the animal’s tail wagging? Does the zoo seem like it’s a real conservation project? Is the animal fat in a cute, harmless way or are they morbidly obese, etc. All of these were questions that he would ask while making the listicles. And he told me that these questions became trickier to account for when dealing with animal content from outside of the US. Not because zoos or pet owners outside of America are worse, but because you’re always going to be missing context.

And so, I’ve sort of been waiting for this issue to rear its head amid the global Moo Deng phenomenon. It was part of my initial research actually before I featured anything involving the little pygmy hippo in this newsletter. Moo Deng lives at the open-air Khao Kheow Zoo in Thailand. It does not look like a zoo you might find in the US, but, at least, based on what I could see, is a real state-funded operation that cares for its animals. And, most importantly, the zoo seemed surprised that Moo Deng has gone as viral as she has. Which is always a good sign when you’re trying to discern whether an animal is being exploited for views.

This week a furry and self-described “leftist Appalachian veterinarian” going by the name @doggtism on X walked into this rats nest, however. They wrote a very viral thread accusing the Khao Kheow Zoo of mistreating Moo Deng. They’ve since deleted their thread after Thai users began correcting them, though. And if you want a good thread of responses, you can find them here. But the TL;DR is that Khao Kheow Zoo is legit, pygmy hippos are incredibly endangered, and Moo Deng is living her best life. But the crowds going to see her need to chill the fuck out.

Are You Yangmaxxing?

Some Stray Links

• “Bobbi Althoff on Exactly How She Got Rich—and How Rich, Exactly”

• “Introducing User Magazine”

P.S. here’s a good TikTok.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***