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Russell Brandom

Russell Brandom

Policy Editor

Writing about the web, the culture, the law, the movies, and whatever else seems interesting. Always looking for stories. Send me something! PGP key/sig: https://keybase.io/russellbrandom/

What’s wrong with US broadband?

The Verge and Consumer Reports collected 22,000 internet bills to find out how Americans are getting online. They paint an ugly picture.

Twitter is different from Tesla and SpaceX.

As Elon shifts Twitter’s work culture into “hardcore” mode, it’s worth remembering just how different the company is from Musk’s other holdings.

As we said in our video two weeks ago, lots of people genuinely believe in the mission of Tesla and SpaceX, and are willing to put up with grinding conditions to be a part of it. After two weeks of chaos, it’s hard to imagine anyone at Twitter feeling that way.


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What if Q made a drop and nobody noticed?

That’s what happened last week, as Vice’s David Gilbert highlights the muted reaction to last week’s four separate drops from the mystery conspiracist. Even within the world of Qanon, the response has been muted at best.

It’s not that people are coming to their senses exactly; they’ve just stopped caring about some rando on 8kun.


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The next billion dollars.

Mukesh Ambani isn’t a household name in the US, but he’s one of the richest and most powerful people in India’s growing tech scene.

In a series of annotated illustrations, Rest of World lays out how a single man ended up with major stakes in three video-streaming apps, two shopping platforms, a phone, and more than a dozen different retail ventures.


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The face that launched a thousand layoffs.

If you’re tired of seeing Elon’s face on the homepage every morning...just imagine how our art department feels.


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America has sent a Kingdom Hearts fan to Congress.

Another tidbit from the midterm elections: Maxwell Alejandro Frost will be representing Florida’s 10th District in the House of Representatives. A former organizing director for March For Our Lives, Frost will be the youngest member of the 118th Congress.

Also, he tweeted about Kingdom Hearts once.


The Facebook Live candidate lost bad.

Doug Mastriano won his primary in the PA governor’s race by building a following on Facebook Live, an unusual approach that proved surprisingly powerful in the state’s deep-red regions.

In the general election last night, however, Mastriano lost by more than 12 points — a huge margin in a state that Biden barely won in 2020. Maybe Facebook isn’t the political powerhouse we thought it was?