This meme briefly made me fear I haven’t seen ten live acts in my life. On reflection I’m relieved to announce I think I’ve seen EXACTLY ten: Neutral Milk Hotel Beyoncé Dolly Parton Janelle Monáe Esperanza Spalding Lizzo Cécile McLorin Salvant The Mountain Goats Carly Rae Jepsen Death Cab for Cutie

Bad news: it’s “Ignition (Remix)”

Tonight’s movie night pick was Escape From New York—a movie that we went into knowing it inspired Metal Gear Solid and that still managed to surprise us with the extent to which it is just straight up a video game on film

I’ve feared this movie would try to do a “naturalized,” “grounded” version of the Odyssey without any supernatural shit—à la Troy (2004)—and this trailer seems intentionally cut to exacerbate this fear. Why the tease at the end? Why show Charybdis but not Scylla?? Give me the monsters you cowards !!

My nightstand always includes (1) pacey sci-fi book that eventually gets too scary, requiring a switch to (2) Jane Austen book that eventually makes me too second-hand embarrassed for the heroine, driving me to (3) Terry Pratchett book I’ve reread so much I eventually lose focus, returning me to (1)

As a novice German speaker in Munich, I hate that when I see a passer-by with a great outfit I don’t know how to compliment them. Today over drinks I asked three fluent speakers how to do so. Each of them immediately—varying only in how well they hid their horror—replied “We do not do that at all”

A dozen hours deep into Titanium Court, an opinion is forming that is as unshakeable as it is hard to precisely describe: between the absurdism and the perplexingly insistent baseball theme and the ineffable aesthetic of 2000s-era techno-optimism……I think this game might, somehow, be a JonBoisLike

I guess I’m not surprised by a would-be Trump assassin who’s not all that far left, because I don’t think you have to be all that far left to think Trump is as bad as Hitler, and I don’t think you have to be all that far left to think positively of Hitler’s fate in, say, “Inglourious Basterds”

Chat, Am I Brewed?

Business idea: extremely online craft brewery selling beers with names like The Uh-Oh Y’All Gettin’ Kinda Hazy IPA. That’s actually the only name I have right now so part of the business will be hiring people who can think of some more

In D&D your character has a “level” that is an integer. Each spell also has a “level” that is an integer. You may assume there is a simple function between the level of your character and the level of spell they can cast. Do not assume it aloud or nearby experts will laugh so hard they choke and die

When Cameron Winter sings that “There is only dance music in times of war,” do you think he means that (1) there is no dance music when it isn’t wartime or (2) in wartime, there is no music that isn’t dance music

Realizing my favorite works of 21st-century fiction about artificial intelligence might be @flantz.bsky.social’s “Universal Paperclips,” @jonbois.bsky.social’s “17776,” and Isabel Fall’s “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter”—unfortunately three of history’s hardest texts to put on a syllabus

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”

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