Sick Burns - 4/24/2026
My subscriber exclusive weekly round up has returned!
Everyone help me welcome back my weekly reading round up, which will compile all the things I've produced during the week, along with links to other things I've been reading and thinking about.
This piece is exclusively for subscribers and I encourage you all to hop in the comments and share something that you found interest in yourself from this past week.
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Katelyn Burns
My work this week:
It was a tough week over here in Burns Notice HQ. As most of you probably know, I lost my beloved cat Samwise late last week. We spent 8 years together and he genuinely saved me in some very dark moments in my life.
Watch for the Tuesday piece at The Flytrap this week for a longer essay about Samwise and how we walked through Mordor together.
Having said that, I did manage to get back on the writing horse and wrote about the Virginia redistricting referendum. I was prompted to write this piece by all of the conservative whining online about the vote. Gerrymandering has been a thing in the US for nearly as long as the nation has existed, but it was Republicans who refined the method and really abused the practice to cement impossible-to-overcome majorities in a bunch of states.
I have little sympathy for those crying conservatives. Democrats have tried to pass common sense fairness laws to reign in unfair districting practices for a decade and Republicans fought them tooth and nail. Now here we are, Virginia has one of the most extreme gerrymanders in the country, taking a 6-5 US House district split and turning it into a 10-1 advantage for Democrats.
Republicans made their bed, now they should lie in it.
Katelyn Burns
The other thing I released this week was a new episode of Cancel Me, Daddy. Christine and I had been looking for a reason to do an episode on Sam Altman for awhile and the New Yorker profile about him last week by Ronan Farrow finally gave us a good angle for it.
I like this episode a lot because our guest, Kat Tenbarge, is a rock star and someone who is very easy to talk to in a podcast setting. But I also want to point out the rhythm and chemistry that Christine and I are developing. Earlier this year, we refined the way we prep for episodes and Christine took on the majority of the work in researching for our episodes (I handle most of the back end production in return).
I think that prep shines through in this episode. Christine did a really good job defining the narrative arc of Altman that we covered and that allowed me to do what I think I'm good at: pull at threads of thoughts to expand the conversation.
Take a listen and let me know what you think:
Katelyn Burns
Lastly, I went on the I Hate Bill Maher podcast and it was delightful (except watching the actual Bill Maher episode in prep was torture)
What else I've been watching:
When I got home last week fresh from putting Samwise down, I was distraught and understandably emotional. I flopped on the couch and pulled up YouTube, desperate for something to distract me from the grief.
I found the perfect antidote.
Over the weekend, the streamer QTCinderella was hosting her annual "Master Baker" competition, wherein 6 streamers with no previous baking or cooking skill are dumped in a commercial kitchen with every possible ingredient and piece of baking equipment you could ask for and asked to bake a variety of things. No recipes or help allowed.
I'm not going to lie, this competition hard carried me through the weekend. It helped that the show featured a bunch of streamers I already knew of, like SuperTF, a former 2 time world champion in the Overwatch League (and a horrendous baker, it turns out).
The funniest moment for me came on day 2 when contestants were asked to make eclairs, and AustinShow, a popular gay streamer, created a ridiculous backstory for his creation with partner ExtraEmily. The story he made up was about a little boy whose mom was in a horrific car accident and was put on life support, but he kept her alive by feeding her bits of eclair in the feeding tube.
The only problem? One of the judges that week, Slime, actually lost his mom in a car accident when he was 18 years old.
Watch the clip below and watch Slime slowly real Austin in for the reveal. I was laughing so hard when this happened during an otherwise bleak weekend for me personally.
Other links of interest:
Here are some other stories that caught my eye this week.
-A former MrBeast employee filed a heinous sexual harassment lawsuit against the world's most popular YouTuber. The details of the claim and what MrBeast puts in his employee handbook in particular made my eyebrows raise so high, so fast, I thought they might fly off my forehead:
Doha Madani and Chloe Melas
-The Onion finally managed to acquire InfoWars, the accursed media home of conspiracy theorist and right wing sycophant Alex Jones. Here's a great episode of the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out with Onion owner Ben Collins about the whole affair:
-The midterm race for the Senate this fall is one I find extremely interesting. I think Democrats have an outside chance at taking back the chamber, though that scenario would mean winning in Texas.
But another traditionally red state Senate race had polling this week that raised everyone's eyebrows, including mine. In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola had a strong showing in an Alaska Survey Research poll released yesterday. The poll showed Peltola with a 7 point lead on the first ballot (Alaska has ranked choice voting), and would pass 50+1 on the 2nd ballot. ASR has historically shown itself to be an accurate source for Alaskan polling:
Andrew Stanton
Quote of the week:
"...fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again"
-George W. Bush, 2002
