The Sunday Digest: Pardon the Interruption

Where we're headed, and what you should be reading this week

Jan 17, 2021

Happy Sunday!

A cursory scroll through our homepage right now will show you that we’ve published only a handful of articles since the last Digest hit your inbox. It’s true—even though there’s no shortage of outside news to discuss today, there’s usually a bit more to catch up with from our own bundled world at the end of the weekend.

We just want you to know that’s all part of the plan. We’re working on something big—and that requires all hands on deck while we hit the homestretch of making it a reality. So if we’re putting less out here, it’s because we’re building up a reservoir to share with you a little bit down the line.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re looking at an empty Digest this week! Below, check out a few new dispatches from the passion economy, and (as always) the news and writing that stuck with us most this week. It’s the Sunday Digest, and it’s not going away—so stick around, read up, and know there’s a whole lot more to come.

What We Published

The lowdown on this week’s output, including an article and a live conversation.

📝ARTICLES📝

💝 What Trump’s Deplatforming Means for Creators

in Means of Creation

Li and Nathan’s latest news dispatch from the passion economy and its surroundings rightly focuses on the bombshell news of a President’s multiple bans from various social media platforms. But, of course, musing on and lightly debating that massive piece of news isn’t all this installment contains. Read on for takes on Substack’s latest customization features, a fresh and popular resource for passion economy workers and thinkers, and a new essay on burnout from Homebrew investor Hunter Walk, and much more.

Read 🔒 (8 min)

🎥 VIDEO CORNER 🎥

💝 The MOC Community Hangout, with Li, Nathan and Adam

If you missed last week’s live conversation between our Passion Economy stalwarts, it’s now up in recorded form, and as a podcast here. Nathan and Li discuss the connections in their recent writing, the goal of Side Hustle Stack, and plenty more.

Friday’s conversation on digital celebrity, with Famous Birthdays founder Evan Britton, will be up Monday as a video and podcast!

What’s Going On

News you might have caught or missed this week, with takes from Bundle writers.

Why the Google Union is Different

Wired’s Aarian Marshall has a fascinating piece this week at the intersection of two major narratives right now. After announcing the formation of the Alphabet Workers Union just two days before the Capitol riots of January 6th, employees of Google’s parent company criticized the “lackluster” response of parent-owned YouTube to the presence of hate-driven content on its platform. This may be representative of the Union’s larger focus moving forward: “It wants to influence the company’s policies on social and other issues,” rather than attempt to bargain for higher wages, which is “not a top issue for most Alphabet workers.” All this makes the Union “unusual,” Marshall writes. As platforms of all sizes take pressure from new directions on a seemingly daily basis, this is an organizing initiative of note.

What We’re Reading

Our favorite writing from outside the Bundle this week

Screen Memories

For the (excellent) online magazine Real Life this week, Kelly Pendergrast took a long, rich, multifaceted look at something nearly everyone has a relationship with: the Screenshot. One of the most easily captured types of image, she argues, is also one of the most wrought with meaning: both a “memory tool” and an “archive of a life lived in the vicinity of screens” and, ultimately, a way we “process and frame the world.” Pendergrast’s focus is elastic, including modern art and state surveillance as examples of the screenshot’s ubiquity, and ultimately while it all together with personal experience. It’s an exhilarating and deeply useful read.