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July 7, 2026
YouTube Videos That Are Better Than the Platform Deserves

June 2026

Gregiffer runs the Pop Arena YouTube channel and the Nick Knacks documentary series, which breaks down classic Nickelodeon shows with true behind-the-scenes and history-of content. It’s pretty much tailor made for people who watched this content as 7-10 year olds in the 90’s. Impressive stuff.

Pop Arena is on:
Patreon, Ko-fi, Bluesky, Discord, Tumblr, and TVTropes

June 17, 2026
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book reviews – BookMarks by Literaryhub
The Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Sophie Mackintosh’s Permanence, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism, and Jayne Anne Phillips Small Town Girls all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

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Movie Podcast – The Filmcast
The 2026 Summer Movie Wager

It’s time once again for the annual Summer Movie Wager! Our friends Peter Sciretta, BJ Colangelo, and Germain Lussier return to the show to stake their claims along with the Filmcast crew, on this summer’s box office. Come back at summer’s end to find out who will take the prize as the winner of the 2026 wager. You can play along at thesummermoviewager.com.

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article – Nieman Lab
Why unions are struggling to protect journalists’ rights in the age of AI

Earlier this month, the union that represents Associated Press journalists said that more than 120 staff members received buyout offers, just as the company expressed its intention to pivot toward AI and video. But changes are going beyond potential job cuts. AI adoption is widespread and journalists are protecting themselves from becoming collateral damage in this new era of disruption.

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News – publishers weekly
Hachette Employees Seek to Unionize

A supermajority of 600 Hachette Book Group employees in the U.S. and Canada have signed to join the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild-CWA Local 32035, of the AFL-CIO, and launched the Hachette Workers Coalition (HWC), per an announcement Monday.

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explainer – Indy Week
An Explainer on the Controversial License Plate Reading Cameras Deployed Across the Triangle

Flock cameras capture six to 12 images of each car that passes, noting the car’s make, model, color, and “unique features like roof racks and bumper stickers,” according to the company’s website. That information is then stored in a central database, along with data from tens of thousands of other cameras across the country, creating a widespread network for tracking drivers.

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Features – INDY Week
“Power to the People, Y’all” Revisits a Revolutionary Winston-Salem Chapter

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s new documentary short looks back on the first Black Panther Party chapter to be established in the South, and how its legacy lives on today.

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See more North Carolina Links →

News – inside higher ed
Virginia Tech’s Growing Pains

Josh Moody: [A controversial proposal by the VT Board of Visitors] also aims to address a problem most college leaders would envy: Virginia Tech is growing and needs more beds for its burgeoning freshman population. (Last fall, VT enrolled 38,995 students across all of its locations and welcomed a freshman class of 7,088.) The decision to shut down LLCs would reallocate “all available on-campus residential hall beds to first-year undergraduate students and first-year transfer students,” according to the resolution. Restricting limited housing stock to first-year students would ultimately push others off campus and into the private housing market.

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Commentary – substack – mypowergrows
Protests, Whither Thou Goest

A “smol bean” defense of protesting.

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tech commentary – Android Authority
I’m never buying another Kindle, and neither should you

If anything, the move is a sharp reminder that when you buy into the Kindle ecosystem, you are effectively renting access from Amazon. The company is using security updates as a justification to move users toward newer hardware, but the reality is that many of these devices are still perfectly functional for reading text. By cutting off the ability to re-register them, Amazon is creating a massive wave of e-waste and forcing an upgrade cycle that many users simply do not want or need.

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Business Features – The Assembly NC
Brought to You By Japan, But Made in Mebane

America’s growing appetite for the fruity, slightly sticky, seriously chewy candy prisms has fueled 20% year-over-year growth for the company’s U.S. division. The demand for HI-CHEW is so great that Morinaga cut the ribbon on a second, $136 million facility at the site on April 21.

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Tech News – REST OF WORLD
RedNote chases U.S. expansion after its “TikTok refugee” moment fades

The company is now opening offices in Palo Alto and New York, and hiring for its “founding teams” in the U.S., according to job postings on LinkedIn. The positions include a recruiter, an algorithm engineer, and a community growth manager. || Viola Zhou

Entertainment Blog – Why So Blu?
Criterion Announces July Releases

The Elephant Man (1980); Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1973); Hud (1963); The Crying Game (1992); Cruel Story of Youth (1960); The Love That Remains (2025); [Collection] I’ll Remind You of Everything: The Films of Mike Mills (Beginners, 2010; 20th Century Women, 2016; C’Mon C’mon, 2021)

Commentary – Shelterforce
How Public Banks Can Meet Public Needs

In 2020, the nonprofit organization Action Center on Race & the Economy published a study showing that state and local governments pay $160 billion in annual interest on the money they borrow. Banks owned by cities, counties, regional authorities, or states—better known as public banks—would enable local governments to recapture that money by borrowing from themselves.

April 16, 2026