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Washington, D.C.
Joined December 2020
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A ‘message to the West’
The weekend despatch: Someone’s one-hour hoax warning about bombs on European flights, in the name of a Russian group whose founder says it no longer exists. + Who’s Tyler Childers?
thesgnl.com/2026/11/members-…
When I say it ends’
Six in 10 U.S. voters against a war Trump started, with no real way to stop it.
thesgnl.com/2026/11/thursday…
Eris Drew and Octo Octa spent years DJing as a pair before they made a record together. As Alchemical Sisters. They recorded most of their debut album over a winter in the bedroom of their cabin in New Hampshire.
This is How it Should be Done
youtu.be/V2hozB6deJY?si=6IjX…
‘Dry Your Eyes’ Brian Leeds, from Emporia, Kansas, has recorded as Huerco S., Pendant, and Royal Crown of Sweden …
Dry Your Eyes youtu.be/cqLBvGCW3vE?si=DYlP…
Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart led The Olivia Tremor Control. They made two albums in the 1990s, and about 20 years ago, they started a third...
Doss died in 2012 and Hart in 2024, and the band’s surviving members finished the record from notes Hart left behind. The Same Place, a 27-track double album, came out October 23, and with it, one Elephant 6 band is done for good.
Halfway Down youtube.com/watch?v=YnExsamT…
The Signal retweeted
I interviewed Adam Przeworski about the state of democracy in America and in the rest of the world thesgnl.com/2026/10/hybrid-r…
The Signal retweeted
I interviewed William. E. Scheuerman about social acceleration and liberal democracy thesgnl.com/2026/10/social-a…
Felix Manuel, the London producer who records as Djrum, trained as a jazz pianist. For about the first two minutes of this track, he plays piano alone, and then the drums and percussion come in.
To Do What To Do youtu.be/4Jvx0kGwakU?si=25__…
One American businessman’s explanation to another that a foreign government is bribing him. How the Gulf's rival monarchies are paying to play in Western media. + What’s Elephant 6?
thesgnl.com/2026/10/members-…
Josh Johnson co-leads the Los Angeles band SML and is a member of the guitarist Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, named for a bar in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood, where the group had a weekly gig. "It Can Be Everywhere" youtu.be/mveMdHAnp4Y?si=JXC4…
Sophie Soraya and Hermie Hemlock, who go by The Nightclubs, make synth-pop out of the bleeps of old video-game consoles. Their new single is about making someone a mix CD, which they call “sharing a snapshot of your private universe.”
CD-R youtu.be/sDT7fi5aJ90?si=ifV7…
The Signal retweeted
Vital from @DanielLubetzky. Journalists have almost entirely ignored the obvious, in-front-of-one’s-nose extent to which Semafor is making its money as a Gulf influence operation.
I’ve had this weight on me for a while and felt the need to share it once and for all.
Years ago, the CEO and co-founder of Semafor, a media publication, approached me. He presumably wanted me to consider investing, because he spent a significant amount of time boasting about all of his supplemental sources of revenue.
I was stunned when he bragged about getting an enormous amount of money from the government of Qatar. The pretense was that he was receiving these funds to “train journalists.” I don’t recall the precise amounts, but recall that he acknowledged that the cost to conduct this “training” was a tiny fraction of what he was getting paid - directionally it was something like getting paid $2mm to conduct a “media training” boot camp that would cost Semafor $50,000 to execute. I pointed out that it sounded like he was being bribed - that nobody with proper intentions would offer to pay something that was 20-100X off market - and no entity pretending to be a journalism outfit should accept stuff like that, as it would compromise him.
He insisted that wouldn’t happen. But over the course of many years, I’ve observed how Semafor continues to receive government sponsorships and perform all sorts of “trainings” and “conferences” in partnership with Qatar, while providing very complementary coverage to the government of Qatar. This is downright unethical - and particularly unbecoming of an outfit pretending to be “training journalists”! The problem doesn’t end with Semafor.
The government of Qatar has been buying off media, education and other groups, with reports of how it deployed billions of dollars in the US higher education system. All of us who care about ethics should demand an investigation into these practices. Regardless of whether legal authorities choose to look into this, we as the people and the consumers should admonish such egregious behavior and ensure we avoid “media” publications that are so compromised.
Countless journalists risk their lives every day to expose abuses in power. Semafor does a disservice to the profession by undermining trust.
@buildersmideast @BuildersMvt
It takes a shark to cut through and draw attention to something that is happening not just in media but education, politics, business and even, sport ...
I’ve had this weight on me for a while and felt the need to share it once and for all.
Years ago, the CEO and co-founder of Semafor, a media publication, approached me. He presumably wanted me to consider investing, because he spent a significant amount of time boasting about all of his supplemental sources of revenue.
I was stunned when he bragged about getting an enormous amount of money from the government of Qatar. The pretense was that he was receiving these funds to “train journalists.” I don’t recall the precise amounts, but recall that he acknowledged that the cost to conduct this “training” was a tiny fraction of what he was getting paid - directionally it was something like getting paid $2mm to conduct a “media training” boot camp that would cost Semafor $50,000 to execute. I pointed out that it sounded like he was being bribed - that nobody with proper intentions would offer to pay something that was 20-100X off market - and no entity pretending to be a journalism outfit should accept stuff like that, as it would compromise him.
He insisted that wouldn’t happen. But over the course of many years, I’ve observed how Semafor continues to receive government sponsorships and perform all sorts of “trainings” and “conferences” in partnership with Qatar, while providing very complementary coverage to the government of Qatar. This is downright unethical - and particularly unbecoming of an outfit pretending to be “training journalists”! The problem doesn’t end with Semafor.
The government of Qatar has been buying off media, education and other groups, with reports of how it deployed billions of dollars in the US higher education system. All of us who care about ethics should demand an investigation into these practices. Regardless of whether legal authorities choose to look into this, we as the people and the consumers should admonish such egregious behavior and ensure we avoid “media” publications that are so compromised.
Countless journalists risk their lives every day to expose abuses in power. Semafor does a disservice to the profession by undermining trust.
@buildersmideast @BuildersMvt
What do Middle Eastern states want with European football clubs? Sarath K. Ganji on autocratic governments’ ambitious move into the global game.
thesgnl.com/2026/05/gulf-sta…
To put what @DanielLubetzky is alleging in a wider context, our editor @jjgould wrote about dictators investing in Western media for @JoDemocracy
journalofdemocracy.org/onlin…
