Ken Klippenstein Announces Plan To Lose His Mind

“Ken Klippenstein Announces Plan To Lose His Mind” reports @swolecialism on Bluesky after the newly self-employed journalist posted a grievance-drenched Substack jeremiad roasting his former employer The Intercept and congratulating himself for quitting to start a newsletter. The post is enjoyably messy, even by the high standards of past Intercept departures, but getting to the good stuff does require that the reader wade through a lot of “we have Aaron Sorkin at home” type rhetoric on the high-minded pursuit of journalism and “the elites frog marching us through” something something. In his new project on the Nazi newsletter platform, Klippenstein promises:

Klippenstein, who is not a Krassenstein, will be joined by editor William Arkin who allegedly edited this very post, which includes a current org chart for The Intercept meant to illustrate “how top-heavy it has become with business hires,” a description Choire didn’t agree with.

The post gets more interesting after that, with several behind the scenes tales of hot gritty newsroom drama which will appeal to the kind of media sicko who reads Tabs, and which largely feature in the role of villain Klippenstein’s arch-nemesis, Intercept general counsel David Bralow “who” allegedly “resembles a Catholic priest caricatured in one of Martin Luther’s tracts, living well off the generosity of his modest parishioners.” Ok?? Also included is a PDF of an email thread that lays out The Intercept’s source protection checklist, which is as careful and thorough as you’d expect from an organization that would like to avoid sending any more sources to jail. Editor Arkin’s response is “this sounds like a joke to me,” so I guess keep that in mind if you’re considering leaking anything sensitive to this new venture.

All that said, Today in Tabs is institutionally pro-quitting, so I do wish them success, and however much media liability insurance they’ve purchased, I hope it’s Kenough.

Also Today in Bees:

The BeeBeeC reports that “A little girl said monsters were in her bedroom. It was 60,000 bees.”

Also Today in Media:

Unlike tool of the billionaire elites Max Tani, who will never count as an impact point as long as he insists on frog marching us blindfolded through a sanitized world of make-believe, Today in Tabs can fearlessly and EXCLUSIVELY report that the Onion article Ben Collins failed to plant in the Semafor media newsletter was “Girlfriend’s Eyes Peeking Up Over Torso During Blow Job Like Gator In Bayou.” Corporate shills in the pocket of Big Gator may try to hide the truth, but I never will.

Parker Molloy: “Boy, I Sure Was Wrong About Tucker Carlson's Post-Fox Fate.” I’m so glad Tucker Carlson died before Trump’s second run too!

The Wrap’s Umberto Gonzalez reports that The Rock “was late an average of seven to eight hours per day” on the set for long-delayed dumb Christmas movie RED ONE, and also gets into the whole pee bottle thing. Until today I didn’t know The Rock had a “pee bottle thing,” but now I do, so now you have to know as well. That’s newsletters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They found the “Everyone Knows That” song, in a porn from 1986. That link is to The Guardian and is perfectly safe for work, I’m sorry it’s often so difficult to tell.

The Rabbit R1 is another useless AI assistant that can’t do anything, according to Marques Brownlee who seems tired of reviewing the broken junk that tech is putting out lately. Allison Johnson played “Are you smarter than just googling it?” and found that: no.

“Newly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius” confirm that in his final hours on earth, Plato was still a dick:

And Finally: I haven’t written much about how University administrators and cops have been treating the student anti-war protests because it’s difficult to be funny or entertaining about things that actually make me furious, and I’m sure you’re seeing it everywhere else already. Fortunately David Roth wrote what needs to be said.

Today’s Song: “Revolution (B-Boy Anthem),” by Zion I

A couple people have mentioned recently that I link to a lot of stuff that’s paywalled, which is kinda just how media is now that we’ve decided as a society that Google and Facebook should have all the ad revenue. But if it helps, last year (which is canonically 2022) I wrote a whole post about the best ways to access paywalled stories, and most of it still holds up:

Robble robble!