The Media Martyrdom List
Plus: Your ChatGPT queries could fill 189 Olympic swimming pools, no one wants to work in factories & Marie Antoinette goes to Jared.
Terry Moran is out of a job. The veteran ABC News correspondent was let go this week after posting in a now-deleted tweet that President Trump and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller were “world-class” haters. The network cited the reason for terminating him—although it should be mentioned that his contract was already expiring, so there could be an eliminant of taking a dump at half court on the gym floor as you leave a horrible High Schools (please note, this is not advised by future colleges or the janitorial staff).
Personally, I’m not too worried about him. Based on my advanced scientific metrics and precise calculations, Moran, should this be his play, will be able to debut his Substack and gain hundreds of thousands of followers, as this is the way of all Main Stream Media Martyrs™️. They lock horns with their publication, they leave, and suddenly, they are making tons of money on Substack. Here are some of the hall of famers:
Jennifer Rubin with over 556,000 subscribers
Dan Rather with over 520,000 subscribers
Jim Acosta with over 303,000 subscribers
Ann Telnaes (former WAPO cartoonist) with over 100,000 subscribers
Tara Palmeri with over 15,000 subscribers
Ryan Lizza with… a lot of subscribers. Not all Substackers choose to flaunt their numbers
Honestly? Good for them.
Welcome to the Gist List—a news roundup, interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
🏭 Nobody wants to work in a factory anymore. (🔒)
📺 YouTube changes its moderation rules, going from RA to “cool mom” energy.
💍 Marie Antoinette’s diamond gets a Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry treatment.
💁🏼♀️ Bleach bums get HHS validation.
💧 How many Olympic-size pools are your ChatGPT queries filling, exactly?
The Gist List
Factory Work Is Overrated. Here Are The Jobs Of The Future (The Economist)🔒
Despite the bipartisan nostalgia, American manufacturing is a thing of the past, and good riddance. Americans have a confusing relationship with this issue. A recent Cato Institute–YouGov poll revealed that while 80% of respondents believe the country would benefit from an increase in manufacturing jobs, only 25% of them would like to have a manufacturing job themselves. In reality, we’d probably be better off chasing jobs like skilled trades and repair jobs and healthcare and support roles.
And it’s not surprising—it’s back-breaking, mind-numbing (albeit necessary) labor in many ways. What IS surprising is how many people forgot about how all the art and pop culture in the 70s and 80s made factory work seem like hell on earth. Almost every other Bruce Springsteen song featured a sad vignette of a factory worker just scraping by. The whole point of “The Deer Hunter” was how fighting in Vietnam was better than going back to work in the factory.
YouTube Has Taken Down 220 Million Videos Since 2018 (Sherwood)
YouTube is quietly relaxing its content moderation policies, making them more lenient on videos that partially violate community guidelines—you know, the greatest hits that would make your Thanksgiving dinner awkward: discussions on elections, race, gender, immigration, censorship, and more. YouTube used to offer an optional re-education camp training for those violating the rules, but now, it may not be necessary. Now, moderators are encouraged to keep controversial content up if it is in the “public interest” and the offending content is in half the video or less.
While some of the highest-profile takedowns may have been warranted, for example, videos that involved a copyright dispute or those that encouraged violence and illegal behavior. But it’s also fair to say that YouTube has removed and demonetized videos that push boundaries.
What I’m interested in is how this will affect people like comedians. On Funny You Should Mention, comedians often tell me that their YouTube content gets demonetized for jokes that get deemed a little too off-color. If the new rules work as stated, they might be able to get past the moderators more than before.
Marie Antoinette's Fabulous Pink Diamond Could Be Yours for $3 Million (Artnet)
Here's something you might want to buy if you have $3 million burning a hole in your silk-lined pocket: Marie Antoinette's Marie-Thérèse Pink Diamond. We're talking about a 10.38-carat pink rock that got smuggled out of France faster than you can say "peasant uprising." It’s now headed for the Christie’s auction block. It’s the epitome of French classiness, right? Something that belonged to the fated French queen that has a romantic backstory of being smuggled away and treasured by her only surviving child. Sounds well worth the cool $3 million.
And then you take a look at it.
Famed jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal, who must have thought, "You know what this needs? The aesthetic of a mall kiosk," reset the stone in a fleur-de-lis setting. It went from "Let them eat cake!” to “He went to Jared.” I look forward to the next Stradivarius Christie’s sold in a Guitar Center display case.
The Bleach Community Is Ready For RFK Jr. To Make Their Dreams Come True (Wired)
At first blush, this headline made me think, “Fox News anchors are going to love this!” But no, it’s not that “bleach community” (although maybe a little). After U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referenced chlorine dioxide during his Senate confirmation hearing—an industrial bleach solution that the “community” claims treats malaria, cancer, HIV, autism, and COVID-19 (yes, we’re back to drinking bleach again)—supporters are feeling validated in their use of it.
I suspect neither I nor the FDA needs to warn you not to pour yourself a nice cold glass of bleach, but in May 2025, the FDA’s 2019 press release warning against chlorine dioxide quietly disappeared from its website. While it may have been part of a routine archival of old content, as the HHS claims, the “community” is celebrating it as a victory and a step toward legitimization.
Sam Altman Claims An Average ChatGPT Query Uses 'Roughly One Fifteenth Of A Teaspoon' Of Water (The Verge)
In a new blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman estimated that every AI query uses “roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon” of water in energy consumption. According to my trusty ChatGPT bot, it gets over 1 billion queries each day, which, in relation to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, that’s about 13% of the pool or 86,843 gallons of water.
Of course, this can’t go uncontested. Altman didn’t exactly cite his sources, and the Washington Post estimated it to be closer to a bottle of water per query. If we do the same math (or if ChatGPT uses a 16-oz water bottle to do the math for me), that would be 189 Olympic swimming pools or 125 million gallons.
What I've Been Listening To: The Protocol
The Protocol is an in-depth podcast that unpacks the fraught, and now, highly politicized world of transgender medical care for young people by New York Times science reporter Azeen Ghorayshi and produced by Austin Mitchell. It’s not an advocacy piece, nor a screed, but a thoughtful, methodical examination of how youth gender medicine emerged and how it became entangled in America’s culture war industrial complex.
I’ll be very interested in how reviewers handle the podcast, as it doesn’t set out to affirm (sorry for the wordplay here) anyone’s ideas on the subject. In one episode, it explores the potential harms of the procedures, and in another, it interviews parents and children caught up in the legal battles against it. Also notable, the podcast doesn’t have any advertisers, which, considering its controversial subject matter, isn’t surprising.
There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.
Have a story you want us to talk about or an opinion you want to share? Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com or share your thoughts in the comments. We might give you a shoutout in our next newsletter or on the air.