Jonathan Gardner

@chaykak I feel like I would have enjoyed tea, cake and mortality

I've been sent this lovely monthly hyperlocal newsletter Broadly Speaking published by Broadview Senior Living, in Westchester mailchi.mp/020f765625e0/e…

I want to write about the AI startup equity secondary / proxy market, is anyone actively trading in that area and want to talk about it? or think it's too hyped? DM or email kyle_chayka@newyorker.com

@chaykak Apparently we all have to start clipping

marketing — it's kind of a fake way that people try to grab your attention, when you think about it — and it's happening on the internet

Joe Lim estimates that 90 percent of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise, and he should know. For three years, Lim ran a company called Floodify, which at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social-media accounts used to drum up attention on behalf of paying clients. The point of this kind of marketing is that nobody is supposed to notice it. But lately, the machinery has started to show. In April, Justin Bieber headlined two consecutive weekends at Coachella. Coachella is the biggest stage in pop music save only for the Super Bowl, the kind of event that in theory generates its own attention. And yet on both weekends, a Discord server writer Lane Brown had been monitoring hosted paid campaigns for Bieber’s Coachella performances, offering clippers — people who are hired to turn a song, trailer, interview, stump speech, or whatever into short, social-media-friendly fragments — as much as a dollar per thousand views. “On social media, popular opinion is being formed, measured, and manipulated all at once, and every signal the platforms produce — a trending song, a backlash, a talking point, the feeling that ‘everybody’ is suddenly talking about the same thing — can now be fabricated by unseen actors with hidden agendas,” writes Brown. “Everybody is doing this now,” Lim says. “And if you’re not, you’re behind.” Brown reports on how the same techniques are now being used to fool people on every app they go to in order to find out what other people think, not just in music but across entertainment, politics, consumer products, and celebrity gossip: nymag.visitlink.me/w6Bu9N

If you are not clipping, what are you even doing?!

@kaleighf 1000000% linkedin.com/pulse/you-cant…

One thing I’m learning about what makes for a good employee advocate/SME on a platform like LinkedIn: they have a clear POV, can speak confidently about their subject, and generally, they are an extrovert. It’s really hard to get shy ppl with wishy-washy POVs on board with this work, and even if you do, they will struggle to be consistent with it because it makes them uncomfortable.

A Redditor is trying to sell a database of 150,000+ poop images and the associated user-reported data that he harvested from an app he created where users upload images of their poop:

new @NewYorker column, on the rise of hyperlocal neighborhood email newsletters, solo shoe-leather operations telling you what's going on on your block. In Brooklyn alone there's the Carroll Gardens Times, the Court Street Journal, the Grand Army Gazette, the Boerum Bulletin...

Dunkin is re-entering #Canada for the first time since 2018. It has a strong franchisee that knows the market, and I'd never bet against it. Still, this is 1 of the few markets where McDonalds isn't #1. Tim Horton's owns Canada; will be interesting to watch this play out.

A month before the first World Cup soccer match takes place at Met Life Stadium across the Hudson River, only 25% of the available rooms in New York City hotels have been booked for the six weeks when matches will be held. thecity.nyc/2026/05/12/wor…

‘News providers are going to have to be more prepared to liberate their talent. To strike a “new deal”, with a compelling offer that outweighs the value of going it alone in the new “talent economy”. ‘ theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

CD Baby's new Stages Selects program will provide 10 indie artists with priority distribution, DSP marketing, and release planning throughout 2026, led by President Molly Neuman. digitalmusicnews.com/2026/05/11/dow…

Straight line from speaking at Marketecture Live to massive success, LOL. BranchLabs raises $26 million (!) series A to activate pharma data. Question for the group -- is this the largest ad tech A round in history? branchlab.com/insights/branc…

@jefielding @alex I expect we may see more of this. linkedin.com/pulse/ai-expos…

Founder closed a $15m Series A (top tier VC) and 6 months later, plans to return the cash to investors. Feels like long term, Claude will displace the product / erode the value. This is really happening, most people are not talking about it, it’s kinda wild.

Idea: An anonymous “vote to end meeting” button on Teams where if 50% of people press it, the meeting ends immediately.

There are billions of $ invested in pre-seed to series B companies. AI will help you see if those are good bets or bad. "AI Will Expose You. Is Your Business Ready for It?"linkedin.com/pulse/ai-expos… on @LinkedIn

Me: This movie is garbage. Boss: Again, this is a Zoom meeting.

$TTD is getting treated like the business completely broke. I don’t think that’s true. I think what really broke was the narrative. For years this was viewed as an elite hyper growth compounder. Now growth is slowing, margins are compressing, and suddenly the market is questioning everything. That kind of perception shift can destroy a stock very quickly. But one thing I always try to remember is that businesses usually do not fundamentally change overnight. Real changes take years, not quarters. We all get overly excited or overly pessimistic reacting to small changes in quarterly numbers even though the long term picture is usually much different. Stocks can move in two ways. The actual earnings power of the business can change. Or the multiple investors are willing to pay for those earnings can change. A lot of the time the multiple moves far more violently than the business itself. Right now this stock is definitely hated and honestly deservingly so. Growth is slowing and investors no longer view this as an untouchable compounder. But if growth stabilizes and eventually reaccelerates, there could be a lot of upside here simply because expectations have collapsed so dramatically. So when a stock gets crushed like this, the real question is not just “were the numbers weak?” The better question is, “did the long term earnings power of the business actually permanently change or did investor perception simply swing too far?” 🌹

User Advisory: There’s a chance this article will significantly impact your MLB viewing experience. On the other hand, if you already find yourself constantly taking note of glowing backstops, well then welcome. This post is for you. club.sportico.com/p/mlb-backstop…

Scott Simon built up over 1 million followers on Twitter/X as he authentically shared his life on the platform over the years. X never responded - not once - to his requests for help after his account was hacked. scottsimonspeaks.substack.com/p/hacked-by-cr…