Read this while scrolling Bluesky between runs of Slay the Spire and thought “Well of course they’re doubling down then. They’re getting tilted” and I’m torn between thinking this was a great insight and thinking it was the most gamer-brained thing I’ve ever typed

self-loathing existentialist making up a guy to get mad at

Long shot, but does anybody know why there are a bunch of people honking their horns in apparent celebration in my Munich neighborhood? I’ve googled the usual suspects (“German elections,” “Turkish elections” and “FC Bayern games”) and I’m all out of ideas

During the long German spring break my husband and I are watching two movies a week. Recent viewings include The Long Goodbye, Barry Lyndon, Blues Brothers, and The Italian Job. Tonight’s was Big Trouble in Little China. Basically every week a new movie that could easily become my whole personality

You want me to "lock" in? The thing that heed martin?

Just watched Citizen Kane for the first time and it was so good I’m furious. Things that everyone agrees are obviously good shouldn’t actually be that good. My actual favorite movie now might be Citizen goddamn Kane. Can you imagine anything more fucking embarrassing

I forgot that the worst days on Bluesky occur when horrible news has dropped and everyone has to announce what they think is the moral of the story, or the obvious tidy solution, or the counterintuitive reason everyone else’s reaction is wrong, because just saying “oh god this is horrible” is boring

My doctor’s office in Munich offers appointments in Spanish, English and (of course) German. Luckily they have hit on the perfect tv programming to play in the waiting room for such a linguistically diverse population: an endless loop of episodes of Mr. Bean

EDITOR: “Good draft post, but I see you say that she’s the ‘first woman of color’ to win—it’s actually a less specific first than that, so you can just say ‘person’” POSTER: “You got it boss”

AI: *bombs a hospital* AI ETHICS: It's also more likely to assume a doctor must be a man and a nurse must be a woman :((

So grateful to @bransonreese.bsky.social that as my husband and I watch this tv show whose characters keep reminding each other of obvious facts about their shared setting we can mark each occasion by yelling at the screen “A world of skeletons! I know!”

Loving that the new Bridgerton season sticks to the series’ traditional directorial vision on which the protagonists act like they’re in a big-screen period piece, the secondary cast acts like they’re in a tv costume drama, and Eloise specifically acts like she’s in a Nickelodeon live-action sitcom

Yesterday I finally listened to the Bruce Springsteen and Billy Bragg Minneapolis songs, and tonight I find I’m re-listening to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Charlie on the MTA,” and I guess I think our moment’s artists could go a bit punchier with their earnestly topical neofolk ballads

Almost exactly a year ago I bought tickets for the Munich performance of the Stardew Valley soundtrack orchestral concert series. That concert is tonight. To ensure that this will be truly a Munich experience, the city has thoughtfully scheduled a public transit strike for today as well

There’s sort of an imagined meme version of Chotiner who destroys interviewees by bamboozling them with detailed knowledge of obscure but damning facts about them. This completely misrepresents the far more interesting method by which he ACTUALLY destroys interviewees

I dreamed that I was talking to an actor who said “I was in that famous movie, ‘Mi Mamá,’” and I said “You mean ‘Y Tu Mamá También’?” and they said scornfully “No, that’s the sequel” and I felt like a real philistine for not even knowing it was a sequel

I’m learning today that Louise Perry and Louise Penny are different people and wow it has cleared up a LOT of confusion

English history is tricky because Becket is arguably the Thomas most famously killed by a King Henry and Henry VIII is definitely the King Henry most famous for killing a bunch of Thomases and, yet,

My two siblings in Minneapolis both participate in ICE Watch because they love their friends and neighbors and community. It is necessary and generous and courageous work—and I already know how the administration will be talking about it all month, it’s already unbearable, I already want to throw up

There are generally powerful social norms against eating three sugar cubes a day, but if you simply put them in a mug of tea first it becomes completely normal and allowed. Just a little life hack from me to you

My husband is explaining his grocery-bag-packing process in considerable detail but he forgot the word “fragile” so he’s emphasizing that the positioning of eggs is difficult because they’re “weak to crack damage”

Having a lot of fun with The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. Unfortunately the story so far feels kind of fascist. Luckily I'm promised it has lots of twists and turns and subversions and inversions and big reveals. Unluckily the twists seen so far have mostly made it even more kind of fascist

Incredible that I first saw this shared by people I follow in English and Comp Lit departments and it rapidly spread to, like, everyone who’s ever read a book. Makes me a little wistful. Imagine posting “tell me your most unhinged philosophical opinion” and getting sports podcasters in your QRTs

Came out of One Battle After Another yesterday feeling unsure how much I’d liked it, worrying that I’d set my expectations too high beforehand. That evening my partner and I kept mentioning things from it that were stuck in our heads. This morning I can’t stop thinking about it. PTA’s done it again

I put Books #3 and #4 in this series on hold at the library at the same time because they both have massive waiting lists. Book #4 came in first. Today, three days before I have to return Book #4, Book #3 finally arrived. A miracle from the gods of libraries in general and of Libby in particular

I have not really followed the recent Epstein stuff but this is making me lose my mind. How did it take a CBS SPECIAL INVESTIGATION to notice that the “raw footage” had A CURSOR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN

Sending increasingly angry emails to the New York Times insisting that I should be able to count 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as a “movie of the 21st century”

Got the holy trinity of evaluations from the NYT Games robots today

Music and Lyrics is a great romcom because it knows how annoying both its protagonists are and it only asks you to believe that they are exactly annoying enough for each other. This is enough to outweigh its hideous misunderstanding of literary academia. Also the Adam Schlesinger original soundtrack

Finally watching Andor Season 2. I love how Tony Gilroy was obviously like "This series has classic characters named Luke and Ben, so here are my new characters: Cyril, Edie, Deirdre and Lonnie" and Disney was like "nice try, bucko" and ran them through the Registered Trademarkable Namifier

Important work in philosophy of medicine is being done on bluesky

New article I'll be sending to US friends and relatives who are like "How lucky you are to be over there in Germany, avoiding all this horrible fascism!"

Every morning I get on Bluesky and scroll until I realize that I'm clenching my teeth really hard and then I take a break from the news until my jaw relaxes and my heart rate goes down and I forget and open the app again. It's a really healthy system with no side effects

Last night it was actually raining outside but I couldn’t hear it well enough from my bed so I still had to play my rain noises app on my phone in order to fall asleep. You win this round, Baudrillard

Finally saw The Beekeeper. Had heard lots about its theme of bloody vengeance upon scammers who target the elderly. Had heard less about its theme of bloody vengeance upon the shithead tech mogul whose fraudulent exploitative business practices have come to shape the US presidency. Much to ponder

Got on bluesky this morning in the sincere joyous expectation of a whole feed being FULL of excitement about today’s HISTORIC NYT Spelling Bee, as if I’d forgotten about the entire rest of the state of the world

Got a few questions for the NYT about how they decided, of the facts mentioned in this news alert, which ones did and didn’t deserve mention in the headline

I'd like to thank Mike Schur for ensuring that whenever I mention TM Scanlon's "What We Owe to Each Other" in a course at least one student's face will light up and when I add "you know, like from The Good Place" they will enthusiastically nod

Is there a Zoom setting that shows a little preview of what my video will show before I turn it on when I’m already in a meeting (as it does before I join a meeting with video on)? Or must I always appear onscreen wearing an expression of horror at the sight of my own face from an unexpected angle

My husband put on the Phoebe Bridgers Christmas album after work and it was so beautiful and so wintry and so devastating that I started crying and am now watching “White Christmas” as emergency counter-programming

Imagine someone hands you a fake ID and you’re like “Nice try buddy. I need to see your REAL license” and the guy says “Fair enough, officer. Here you go” and hands you one that says LUIGI MANGIONE

Finally beat Metaphor Refantazio. A lot of reviews said it had a thoughtful progressive important message for our historical moment. Felt very disoriented by the possibility of an Atlus game with coherent politics. Relieved to report this is not the case. Most batshit politics yet. 11/10 game

Husband was out of town last night so you know what that meant—putting on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Complete Recordings and reading janky manga scanlations on my iPad until 2am

Feeling increasingly opposed to generative AI purely on labor rights grounds and feeling increasingly weirded out that this seems so far down the list of mainstream objections to it

Happy first snow of the year from Munich !!

My brother- and sister-in-law just introduced me to cryptic crosswords so during the NYT Games boycott I channeled my post-election anxiety into mainlining the Guardian archives and did like four quiptics a day. Coming back to regular crosswords yesterday I felt like a god genius

Read a new academic book that included an explanation of a certain social phenomenon. It's the exact explanation given by a 90s historian. It cited the same primary sources as the historian—but didn't cite the historian as the source of the explanation that ties them together. Frustrating!

Dreamed I was arguing with a guy who thought “structural racism” was a concept coined by the Huffington Post. I’d try to reference real sources and he’d be like “Yeah yeah, I know you like Arianna, but—” and I woke up so mad. Potential here for a powerful real-world troll tactic

Hopped back on this app when I got the email about them adding DMs, but they do NOT seem to have added the ability to DM a post from the timeline—either to a mutual (as when sending one’s husband a cute animal picture) or to oneself (as when sending oneself an article to read later). USELESS to me