BREAKING: In exchange for his support, Mayor Mamdani has appointed Curtis Sliwa Rat Czar and Underking of New York, whose writ shall run anywhere the sunlight does not touch

I published this story about Pancho Villa, The Punitive Expedition, American imperialism, The Mutual Film Company and cinema as mnemonic device. I want to thank Sarah Broderick for choosing this piece and helping edit it and Yosh Haggerty for helping publish it.

My brother got me these unusually cinematic graphic tees for Christmas, The Red Shoes ('48) and Cure ('97)

My daughter drew The Thing poster

What I'm reading now and a tiny sketch of a tiny Gabriel García Marquéz head

Francis Ford Coppola was 68 when he released Youth without Youth. Ethan Coen was 67 when he released Drive Away Dolls. What I'm saying is Ethan Coen is the Coppola Youth/Tetro Zone.

Peppermint björk

Going to knowingly make a mistake

I hate to do this because it's just so dumb but The Last Jedi is good because they edit people yelling at each other on the bridge well, that's all Star Wars is, it's people on a bridge yelling at each other, that's what gets you a B+

sunday afternoon chores don't stand a chance when lying on the couch is the vibe

🎶That spell mannish boy I'm a man I'm a full-grown man I'm a man I'm a rolling stone I'm a man I'm a hoochie-coochie man🎶

no one has even bothered trying to convince us there’s a threat from Venezuela. no weapons of mass destruction. nothing. just a war of choice because why not.

Not quite the Altuve

We got a splendid harvest of pecans this season and my wife turned them into this most splendid pie!

It is very funny that this Pope is just going to get jerseys from now on. Everyone decided that's what this Pope likes and that is it. It's like if your grandmother got you a puzzle for Christmas one year and you said you liked it so your entire extended family is like "oh that's the puzzle kid"

In high school I carried a paperback of The Sun Also Rises in my back jeans pocket

cop car in god we trust ass font

I’m out here canvassing for Zohran with noted Galaxy Quest star Alexander Dane

Nobody condescends to anybody when posting about Star Trek because basically we assume we're all equally experts on it, why else would you be here

Who's solving the Louvre robbery? Right answers only

I've been reading The Forge lately. Thought this story was really good.

Now reading

cause he's gonna knock off fort knox

Just taking this opportunity to reflect on one of my favorites: the escrow skit

Dude who looks just like Stephen King at the local House of Pies joyfully digging into the Friday special pecan pie fudge sunday

When Trump finally puts 100% tariff on those Texas-shaped waffle makers, he's done!

An excellent essay by Brandy Jensen on Melvyn Bragg. Exactly my sentiments. The first short story I published was an extemporaneous reaction to hearing In Our Time ep. on Holbein and the Tudor Court

Woody Guthrie’s guitar has been taken in for questioning

Saw this morning that Melvyn Bragg was retiring from In Our Time. Really can't express how much joy and fascination Mr. Bragg and In Our Time has brought to my life. I hope he has a long fruitful retirement. Really the end of an era.

History buffs ignoring the unsubstantiated glee by arguing about the particulars of George "Snapping Turtle" Meade's pursuit of the enemy after Gettysburg of something

In that Jeffries clip, the fact that the distraction isn’t from another thing the president is doing but instead simply from his general unpopularity is impossible to wrap my head around. Don’t focus on the unpopular things Trump does, Jeffries opines, but only his ambient a priori unpopularity!

These bastards are such poseurs. Real heads drive across state to eat cube steak at Piccadilly’s

Not sure I've ever seen an actual barbie up close, but now I have a daughter and so some family member has given her a barbie. My first response to her inhuman body proportions was that she'd be a terror in the lane. I've been dunking on other dolls all day. Grabbing rebounds. Et cetera.

Great @griersonleitch.bsky.social ep out this Sunday. The agonized fugue of Tim Grierson's review of Highest 2 Lowest, and the fact that somehow they wished the Weekend at Bernie's vacation sequel they theorized in a 2016 ep into existence with Nobody 2

Tech guys: I’m gonna chop me and my friends heads off and upload is to the cloud Scientists: We’ve got this drug that cures a bunch of diseases Tech guys: Don’t need it! We’ve got it all under control!

Something just occurred to me: although I can name a lot of single-author compendiums of movie reviews, is there a scholarly anthology of movie reviews over the sweep of cinema history?

The root of all knowledge is language acquisition, the most noble pursuit is that of foreign tongues, & one of the most difficult for adults; I tend to be suspicious of people who believe otherwise; the root of the conservative attack on education is (& has always been) an attack on multi-linguality

Have missed a few "now reading" posts, so making it up

BREAKING: Gov. Greg Abbott (R) just asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove Rep. Gene Wu (D) from office by Thursday — for joining a walkout to block the GOP’s redistricting power grab. If Abbott succeeds, no Democratic lawmaker is safe for protesting. From: @yuniorarivas.bsky.social

*me greeting the morning sun* the sun: Cody, today's NOT a good day to form an opinion online

As a cis guy my opinion of ("liberal") cis folks talking ("abstractly") about ("the politics of") trans kids in sports on here is that (usually) they are doing exactly (or only slightly obliquely) what they do in the right wing media sphere, creating more hysteria and validating hateful rhetoric.

"Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X on Saturday. "They are expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction & screensmoke." www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-...

Whilom Dafoe

This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

Love Discovery 5.8 "Labyrinths" just going ahead and doing Borges' "The Library of Babel"

Now reading, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Confucius's Analects, from the library

Sometimes I fantasize going back to Michigan to open a restaurant named "Texas Stuff", that sells items they didn't have a lot of in Kalamazoo, kolaches in the morning, barbacoa tacos in the afternoon, chicken fried steak and spatzle and potato salad in the evenings (also vegan options)

Maybe the most bizarre reference to Texas in all of Borges I've seen so far (P.901 of his complete works) is him calling The Battle of the Alamo "that other Thermopylae".

"Jonathan Caravello...was reportedly “piled on by multiple agents all at once” as “he tried to help a man in a wheelchair” who was having difficulty moving after...[ICE] agents threw canisters of tear gas" our colleague is still missing as of the last info I got dailynous.com/2025/07/12/p...

conspiracy theory (factual)