***First thing’s first: Justice for Mahmoud Khalil Fund and contact page for Congressman Jim McGovern. Good coverage of Khalil’s completely illegal kidnapping and detention in The Nation. Please share any news about local demonstrations in the comments or at billshaner@substack.com and we’ll update here as they come in.****
We talk about Khalil’s horrible situation briefly, then get to the show we had planned: an interview with author Joanne McNeil!
I think we can all agree that the internet is worse than it ever has been—a statement true of both the World Wide Web and the Weird Worcester Web we all hold dear.
McNeil is an author, journalist, internet historian and native daughter of Mean Worcester (Brockton). She joins us to break down how a community such as ours can steel ourselves against enshittifications future while correcting the enshittifications past.
McNeil is the author of two books: the internet history Lurking and the near future sci-fi novel Wrong Way. You won’t regret reading either, trust me. You can buy them through this outlet’s new Bookshop.org online store (a feature of that site Joanne tipped me off to when I asked her what links to use for her books.) Turns out, we get a small percentage from Bookshop for every book sold through our page. So I made a page! Go to our new store and buy baby buy and put some hard-earned Internet Cash into the pockets of both Joanne and the Worcester Sucks team.
Also: Joanne’s Bluesky piece in Filmmaker and the Nieman Lab piece on journalism predictions for 2025 and her author page with links to many more of her writings.
Other stuff:
Cory Doctorow explains “enshittification”
Woo Havurah Purim Spectacular! 3/15 7PM Hotel Vernon
Sample post of Vermont’s Front Porch Forum
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—Outro music: “The Govt Knows” by Knower
—Intro music: “Roaming The Cosmic Winds” by Mystic Realm, Worcester-based dungeon synth project by Kevin Fitzgerald. Check out the full album, Forsaken Kingdom, on the Mystic Realm Bandcamp.
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