🗳️ We still don’t know who’s gonna control the House of Representatives. It seems like most journalists/pundits/etc. think the Republicans will take it, but by, like, a squeak. There’s a hopeful handful who think the Democrats may just barely hold it, though. We held the Senate, though! We’ve got the Senate, 50-50, with the VP to break ties. If Warnock wins his December run-off vote against Herschel Walker, then we’ll have the Senate 51-49, which means we don’t have to share power in committees anymore, so McConnell can’t block nominees or tie things up in committee as he has been doing. It also means that Sinema and Manchin have just a teeny bit less power, and that’s also good. So if you have a spare buck or two, maybe throw it Warnock’s way.
🏛️ Meanwhile, Democrats in the House are looking to check a few items off their To-Do List in the remaining session. For example: Protecting equal marriage rights and raising the debt ceiling (important so Republicans can’t take it hostage next session, if they take the House).
🦤 A little more Twitter drama: Musk just had one of his companies, SpaceX, buy a great big ad package from Twitter, which is kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul, I think.
🦤 Speaking of Twitter ads, I had some weirdness over the weekend with them. I subscribed to this advertising blocklist a few days ago. The list blocks all of Twitter’s major advertisers (kind of a “half-protest, half-screw Musk” thing), and the maintainer is adding new advertisers to it as fast as she can. Last time I looked I think the list was over 800 accounts? I don’t see ads on desktop because I use an adblocker, but between the blocklist and advertisers in general fleeing Twitter, I’ve seen a marked decrease in the amount and quality of ads in the Twitter app (where I can’t use an adblocker). I can’t tell if something is breaking down or if Twitter’s ad inventory situation is so dire they’re having a hard time finding ads to serve me.
🦤 If you’re trying to keep up with the slow-motion train wreck that is the death of Twitter, here’s a great timeline site slapped together by some readers of Today in Tabs.
📱 The government’s coming after TikTok again. Look, I love TikTok. I will happily kill hours scrolling TikTok. I love it so much I have rules about when I’m allowed to open the app, just so I don’t waste my whole literal day on the damn thing. People are doing some seriously cool stuff on this app. But it is absolutely egregious spyware and you should definitely not have it installed on any device. Of course, apps like Facebook, Instagram, the Amazon store apps – none of them are a whole lot better… but at least they’re not reporting to a hostile government. Probably.
-fin-
Notes & Thoughts 