One guy tried, unsuccessfully, to blow up a plane with a bomb in his sneakers, and everybody had to take off their shoes at the airport for the next 20 years. Chatbots have a collective body count equal to Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez, and they're trying to put them in schools.

Philip Pullman update: I finished the Rose Field. Everybody on Reddit who hated it suffers from the same imagination problems Pullman diagnoses in the book. The ending is weird as hell and I don't know if I even like it but that seems beside the point, it's keeping me up thinking about it.

Guy getting on the M104, to the bus driver: “Sir, is it not free? Because the mayor said…” His friend: “fucking God, just GO.”

"If you want to know who took all of your money, it's the people with all of the money." I keep thinking about this post and how it's one of the best, most succinct messages Democrats could use in 2026 campaigns.

people think moby dick is a stern adventure novel heavy on the plot. i can't emphasize how much it's not. it's supergay chaos with 3 plot points. there's an entire chapter that's just a chowder recipe. sometimes it turns into a play. the main character is covered in whale dinension tattoos.

Bedtime reading update: Anne of Green Gables was such a smash hit with my daughter that we decided to take a chance on the sequels. First of all, thank you Brooklyn Public Library for the Libby app, being able to snag library books from the kid's bedside is wonderful.

It is kind of wild living in the United States after rap went mainstream, while having a working memory of what it was like before that. Doubly so because while a lot of vernacular like “baby mama” was popularized, the stigma attached to the communities closely identified with it remains.

I finally started reading Earthsea

Head canon: the spooky Ark of the Covenant music is diegetic and comes from the box.

"Time travel is real and possible, but everyone who tried it ended up dead in deep space" is not the least plausible thing I've seen today.

Older kid and I are reading the Rose Field by Philip Pullman. Reviews on Pullman Reddit were scathing and I don't see why, it's as challenging and excellent as all his other books. I don't doubt that he leaves some loose threads but dream logic is his whole thing.

You might think it would be charming to have a guy practicing cello at your airport gate but see, you're imagining a better cellist

Who is that condescending jazz guitarist with the Iberian accent and how do I get him off my Facebook feed

Once in a while I try to read about the history of Western European music theory and while it's mind-numbing in the particulars, I do think it's good to know that it has a history

The amount of “this is clearly about oil” posting across all platforms as story after story comes out where the oil industry is saying that the oil isn’t worth extracting is making me feel a little insane

I was wondering how this might all turn out to have been my fault

Instead of whatever this is, we should have a government getting lots of new homes and apartments built, lots of clean energy built, lots of high speed rail and transit and bike lanes built, human rights for everyone, economic & healthcare opportunities for all, & innovation that leads the world.

finally, we're living through precedented times

The rate of global mean sea level rise has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

One of my ambitions for teaching music theory is to make learning key signatures less of a drag, ideally with a song that takes you through them in a singable way. Here's my best effort at that so far, we'll see if the NYU kids are into it. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/itazm...

On the bus in San Francisco and a guy brought his entire blender to drink his smoothie out of

Well, it was either all this or another black person in a Star Wars movie

You should be embarrassed to be a member of congress and issuing anything other than impeachment resolutions. You're in the model UN. They should give you legos and a propeller hat

with all of the stories about the rise of solar energy we’ve seen in the last few months it kind of feels like America is doing regime change in order to secure the rights to billions of dollars in blockbuster gift cards

I'm going to be presenting at ISME this summer on pop theory and aural skills. Who's going to be there?

Being an American feels like getting on a school bus and then your bus driver decides to do a drive by

It’s generally assumed that “Moby-Dick” has a canonical start date in December 1841, so there’s a good chance that Ishmael has entered the AME Zion church (then on South Second St, three blocks from the water) and the preacher he sees is Frederick Douglass. 🐋

If, being incredibly charitable, you didn’t intend to make a CSAM robot, not immediately turning off the CSAM robot when you find out you accidentally made a CSAM robot should still get you put in the magnetic boots prison from Face/Off

the pictured 1X NEO humanoid "robot" is remotely operated by humans rather than actually automated, a fact that might have provided a hint at why Americans aren't falling head over heels in love with "AI"

Here is the editor of Tablet agreeably reposting someone calling nonwhite NYC immigrants "worthless biotrash." It's astonishing how quickly this stuff has escaped containment

Once you look for, "does this [article / op-ed / claim by a politician] consider the 80% of Americans who live in urban areas to be real Americans?" you will see it everywhere, because the answer is usually "no."

So the Silicon Valley guys are genuinely concerned about whether LLMs are conscious and about their welfare? I have some bad news for these geniuses about chickens, pigs, fish...

BREAKING: Explosions felt across New York City as full socialism begins

Hey if you haven't seen it! youtu.be/GvCmeuJyT9g?...

It's astonishing how much Miles Davis imitated Ahmad Jamal. I knew he was a fan but I had no idea how big a fan he was. vinniesperrazza.substack.com/p/listen-to-...

I wrote a lot of stuff this year ethanhein.substack.com/p/things-i-w...

Look, one tech bro needs to take one for the team and actually read Lord Of The Rings so he can turn it into a podcast form that the others can understand. This can’t just keep happening.

orcas have the chance to do the funniest thing

I Love LA is amusing at times but it really makes you appreciate the achievement that is Hacks

the fact that there is free parking at all in manhattan is wild to me

Isiah Whitlock Jr, best known for his role as Clay Davis on “The Wire,” has died. He was 71

"everyone grieves differently" Erika Kirk:

Game of Thrones update: finished the series. I get why everyone is mad about the ending, but I think the only problem with it is that they were obviously under time pressure. People who are mad that the narrative got wrapped up with a bow? It's a narrative. That's what narratives do.

You guys ever heard Odetta's version of "Mr Tambourine Man"? It's so cool. Extremely slow 12/8, bluesy seventh chords, phrasing like Billie Holiday. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOEP...

The NYC equivalent of all those interminable rural-Trump-supporters-in-diners articles.

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

Got my kids hooked on Balatro, either I am the worst dad or the best dad