NN: tl;dr

One-minute summary of No Nichols (NN) posts on certain sorts of support for Israel

This concerns multiple posts coming at you soon. Crank the speed up to 2x and you’ll be through in one minute. A transcript follows, and then another short recording.

Rough Transcript:

I need to address the tl;dr dynamic here. If Tom, or anybody on Tom's side, thinks ugh I'm not engaging with all that—certainly, that's fine. Interpersonally, intellectually, that’s your business. I don't have any claim on you, and I realize that.

The only thing I’ll say is that there’s an asymmetry in intellectual discussion. It’s easier to create a puzzle or a mess than it is to clean one up. So it could be that you are incorrect or confused on something, and I can untangle it, but it’ll take a little time. If you choose to just swat it away as too long, again it's totally your right. But it could be sort of cowardly or lazy or something. But that's for you to judge.

I have a lot recorded on “from the river to the sea.” If you're willing to just let that one go, cool, I don't think it should have been that central to start. But if it's central to you then okay I've addressed it.

A main part of my response to our disagreement is to say hey your whole structure is weird. You're going about this in a strange way. To be pushing against these protests against extreme brutality, against thousands of people dying, against so so many bombs—to push back on that with “well, somebody wrote something in chalk.” “I don't like this chant.” I think that's just really confused. And it takes some doing to work out the whole landscape, and a more sensible way to go about things. Not trying to be long-winded. Just you gave me quite a task, Tom.

2) Not about money, not about Tom, not promotion, not stupid:

Rough Transcript:

One sort of hostility or trolling I've gotten recently is “I'm not looking at your shitty Substack!” or “quit trying to promote your Substack!” Maybe it's shitty, but I'm not trying to promote it in the sense of trying to get money or whatever. I guess I am trying to promote or get attention in a sense. But I'm just trying to share the fucking ideas. So you're well within your rights to ignore them, but I'm not trying to get your money, or to promote in a standard capitalist sense. Just trying to talk shit. So enjoy, or don't, your choice.

Another thing worth addressing is something along the lines of like “you absolutely freak, why did you write and record so much about this stranger journalist?” To which I would have three responses. One would be that it's not really about him. It is about broader things. How I'm parsing psychology and writing, it's not just him who thinks and writes those ways, right? These are features of the world. And I mean, I'm a writer, finding some shareable way to formulate shit is what I'm always trying to do. So he was just my opportunity in some ways.

Second, another way he's an opportunity, he's got a platform. He's famous, he's successful. Way to go, Tom! So yeah, I mean I truly do appreciate him interacting with me on Bluesky and Twitter. That's pretty cool.

And then third would be that within those interactions, and maybe also somewhat within his writing, he's not just disagreeing with me or with others. This is probably a broader thing, but let me just talk in terms of Twitter and Bluesky. It's not just saying you're wrong but saying you're wrong and stupid. It's like well, no, actually I'm not. We're playing on the same playing field, we take ourselves to be playing by the same rules, and he's like you're doing it wrong. I'm like no dude you're doing it wrong. If that makes sense. So that's why they're so damn much. Thanks. Cheers.


Thank you for your interest friends and enemies and internet strangers.