Literally 2 Cents About Content!

Alex and Liz take a look at Kate Manne's 2024 book, Unshrinking: How to face fatphobia. Along the way, they examine some of the key assumptions that drive widespread fatphobia in contemporary society, what the point of weight loss is supposed to be, the history of hazardous weight-loss treatments, and how Manne's book intersects with other publications by Ragen Chastain, Abigail C. Saguy, Paul Campos, and Paul Ernsberger.
Ragen Chastain on weight loss as a prescription
Chastain on how weight-loss studies are often deliberately misleading
Abigail C. Saguy's book.
Paul Campos' book and blog.
1989 debate over whether "obesity" is hazardous, with Paul Ernsberger taking the "negative" side.
Ernsberger's earlier catalog of hazardous "obesity" treatments.

Liz and Alex talk about streaming, why its business model is so lousy compared to cable, the social aspects of watching TV vs the isolation of streaming, how sports holds linear TV together, and why it feels more sustainable to support individual creators than to pay for a bundle.
Liz's website
Alex's blog
How the Criterion Channel works
The failed promise of binge TV
The life and death of Hollywood

Liz and Alex lay into their most despised words from the content mill industry, from "dynamic content" and "content management system" to "optimize" and "authentic." Also covered: video game DLC (that's "downloadable content," remember!), store brand sodas, and the 1990s web.
Liz's site
Alex's blog
The “and yet you participate in society” cartoon
Mastodon post on “data”
Rob Horning blog

Alex and Liz dig their claws into "AI," this time focusing on some recent hype-y conferences Liz attended in Chicago and Las Vegas. We also look at cyberlibertarianism, the difficulties that LLMs have with ambiguity (and why making them better at this could paradoxically make them worse overall), the costs associated with producing cutting-edge work, and the embedded biases of AI.
Alex's blog
Liz's site
We don't need generative AI 
At least the robber barons built things 
Is a neural network like a pocket calculator? “AI” and epistemic injustice 
Chatbot revolution? 

Alex and Liz talk about what really makes digital content different from physical and analog equivalents, and what distinctive ideological concepts—"everything's binary, monopolies are good, technology itself is the agent, users should be treated with hostility"— are uniquely embodied by it.
And even though everything digital seems ethereal and immaterial, it requires tremendous amounts of real resources—water, electricity, space—behind the scenes. We also dive into Leo Marx's famous "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept" essay, discuss Martin Scorsese's dislike of Marvel (and what it says about "content"), how the Hollywood strikes were spurred by the content-ization of movies and TV, and spew some weird facts about vinyl records.
Scorsese pieces: NYT (2019), GQ (2023)
My old "content"pieces: A spin on Marx's piece and the 5 core assumptions of "content" as a term.
Emma Thompson thinks "content" is a rude term.

Alex and Liz talk about the hottest topic out there—"AI," or "artificial intelligence" (quotes because we're a little skeptical of it being in any way "intelligent"), with a look at some recent essays that explore whether "AI" is agent or tool, its problematic uses in higher education, why Silicon Valley is so intent on building things ("AI" or otherwise) that they'd read about or seen in sci-fi (while also of course acting as if books, films, and other artistic endeavors are worthless, just like the rest of the humanities), and how Jonny Quest predicted the Apple Watch in 1964.
Alex's recent blog post on "the economy."
Liz's website.
Check out Liz's book at Barnes & Noble.
Rob Horning's essay, Pro tools.
The Emily Bender profile in New York magazine.
The empty brain.

Alex and Liz talk about their time at the content mill, how it was all about ghost writing, what techniques they honed by doing that (such as learning how to easily add 100-200 superfluous words to any article's intro), and how that overall experience influenced their personal writing. Liz talks about self-publishing her book and Alex talks about the histories and features of various blogging platforms.
Alex's blog about social media post-2016.
Liz's website.
Buy Liz's book!

Alex and Liz talk about Mastodon, the open social network that uses a federated design that works somewhat similarly to email. We also explain ActivityPub, the W3C-sanctioned protocol that underpins Mastodon and other services such as Pixelfed. Ever wondered what an "API" is? Curious about what Facebook was like in 2004? We've got you covered on these questions and others!Alex’s site: content-lab.agencyLiz’s site: lizmakesstuff.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit toosolid.substack.com

Alex and Liz talk about Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing," this time focusing on how information overload and context collapse make it difficult to do what you want to do. We also make a brief detour into "This is Water" (and its roots in "Infinite Jest"), discuss the toxicity of fandom, and how even works widely seen as "great" in a moment (your Booth Tarkingtons of the world, essentially) quickly fade from popular memory. Get full access to The Content Lab at www.content-lab.agency/subscribe

Alex and Liz look at "How to do Nothing" by Jenny Odell, talk about Twitter, TikTok, and Mastodon and their respective effects on our mental health, and even spin out a hot take on David Foster Wallace's legendary 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College.Liz’s blog: Lizmakesstuff.comAdam Kotsko’s stunning blog post, “The Moral Cost of Capitalism”: https://itself.blog/2023/02/28/the-moral-cost-of-capitalism/David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” commencement speech: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ Get full access to The Content Lab at www.content-lab.agency/subscribe