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The Independent Variable

Posts on page 33

Now...

...I just gotta get Kottke to link to Foofaraw somehow... So if you're the magical person who got this site in front of Jason last week, this is directed at you. Go tell him about Foofaraw, a zine of surreal storytelling and worldly observations, which publishes some of the best short stories, novellas, wacky columns, webcomics, and soon, a giant anthology!

It's inspired by the likes of Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and McSweeney's, but also the New Yorker, with our regular columnists, weekly media guide, and more.

We could use a couple more paid subscribers over there as we raise the rates we pay to writers starting July 1st.

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January 2026 Featured Post Paid Post

January 2026

😵‍💫 Yeah, same.

Umm… so this happened… the godfather of linkblogging somehow came across this silly little site and linked to it… bringing over 4,000+ visitors…

I don’t ever go into the Ghost dashboard, so I had no idea until just now as I was getting ready to send out the first Little Letter of Nonsense this year (late as usual…)

🤖 Elon Musk’s X Restricts Ability to Create Explicit Images With Grok

It’s laughable it took this long.

The FBI and and anyone who has had their image created or depicted in an explicit manner should be going after Elon Musk, X, and use everything within their legal power to identify the people prompting Grok for these images and go after them using revenge porn and deepfake porn laws.

Only California, New York, and Virginia currently have deepfake porn laws on the books, but I’d still go hard after X as co-conspirators on disseminating revenge porn.

😞 I can’t do this

I got into the irony of 2nd Amendment fanatics saying they needed gun for if the government sent masked men into their streets yelling, “papers please”, only to then cheer for those masked men when they did take to the streets.

Things have been quiet around these parts and I apologize for that. Life, holidays, work, and Foofaraw, have taken up a lot of time and the news as of late has just been devastating. We’re invading countries, have a secret police asking people for their papers, shooting unarmed citizens in the face, storming houses without warrants, racially profiling people, deporting people without due process, supporting genocide, letting health insurance rates spike exponentially while sending billions to places like Argentina, and suing our own federal reserve—all while the president and his family make more money in the last 10 years than they made their entire lives—it’s devastating.

To even think about the news, let alone read it, feels like a herculean task—and that’s from someone with a good job, supportive family, and has all the privilege in the world as a straight white cis man. I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like for people worried they could be kidnapped or harassed at any moment because of the way they look.

I’m rambling at this point, but I feel stuck and sad and I don’t know what else to do. It’s infuriating talking to people who you know are decent people, but still can’t understand the harm this administration is doing.