Friday’s The Daily Whatever Show was stacked, and our guest — Dissent in Bloom — was nothing short of phenomenal.
We opened with her origin story, which always hits harder when you hear it from her directly: she’s not a traditional journalist at all, but a working nurse, a mom, and someone who started reporting because the news kept leaving out the parts that mattered. Between understaffed shifts and a healthcare system that runs people into the ground, she’s somehow become one of Substack’s most vital investigative voices.
And then we got into her nursing reality, which shaped so much of Friday’s conversation. She talked through her brilliant “America, I Am a Nurse and I’m Begging You to Listen” essay — written in a moment of exhaustion after a brutal shift — and the broader crisis: the political attacks on nursing degrees, the impossibility of advancing without loans, the burnout, the physical toll, and why the system keeps pushing nurses to the breaking point.
It wasn’t just analysis; it was lived experience, and you could feel it in the room. It’s a must-read:
Then we moved into the Fucked-up Friday story showdown — our weekly ritual of picking the most fucked-up thing that happened this week. We had some wild contenders, but Dissent wiped the floor with us.
🔥 Lawrence’s Story — The Supreme Court Greenlights Texas’s Gerrymandered Maps
Lawrence went first, choosing a deeply structural and extremely on-brand Fucked-Up Friday story: the Supreme Court’s decision to authorize Texas’s highly discriminatory redistricting maps.
Source: US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps
🔥 Dana’s Story — The Dell Family’s “$250 Gift” That Exposes the Billionaire Class
I followed with the story about the Dell family giving away $250 “savings accounts” to select families in a PR-salve pretending to be generosity—while simultaneously fighting the exact policies (like fair taxation) that would materially help people.
This was billionaire determinism, manufactured virtue, and a tiny drop in a bucket they themselves helped empty. TAX THIS IDIOTS INSTEAD. Gah.
Source: Michael and Susan Dell commit $6.25 billion for investment accounts for kids
🔥 Dissent in Bloom’s Story — The Seven Billionaires Controlling the Global Media Ecosystem
This is where the win happened.
Dissent laid out—calmly, thoroughly, like a nurse used to giving families hard truths—the story of seven billionaires who effectively control the majority of global media, backed by pentagon ties and intelligence-adjacent money.
Source: The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons
It was no contest.
This was the winning most fucked-up story of the week.
Dissent in Bloom was an absolute powerhouse of a guest. She’ll be back, we hope!
Thank you
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