I can't believe there's an actual surviving photo of the Project Orion nuclear space battleship model that they showed JFK and apparently freaked him out.

"Our enemies are cruel and disgusting and are winning" doesn't actually logically suggest that the way to beat them is to become cruel and disgusting in turn. The world doesn't work that way.

Dog of the fog.

So did everyone just sort of get tired of doing a silly Halloween name on their social media profiles?

Eric Berger always words his space articles very cautiously, but the subtext here is terrifying: NASA is gonna very possibly get astronauts killed because Trump wants a moon landing before his term is done. arstechnica.com/space/2025/1...

So MAGA Twitter discovered three years after the fact that there was a same sex kiss on Camp Cretaceous and...hey, how's everyone's day going?

I am discovering in middle age that I have apparently developed the music taste of a teenage stoner in 1985. I spent an hour today listening to Blue Oyster Cult's "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (co-written by Michael Moorcock!) & muttering "this is deep, man."

My favorite hiking buddy.

"Well, they may be terrible human beings but at least they won't live fore-- HEY!"

Pitching big, splashy, prestigey genre television in 2025 is murder so fuck it, I'm finally gonna write that pilot about a smart ex-cop who lives in an airplane hangar with a monkey and solves crimes.

I BITE THE WATER!

Really excited about this one. Hope we find the right home for it.

A great day for an adventure.

Crazy to think that even the 3rd Avatar might not end up having the biggest box office of 2025. It's a multipolar world in movies, too.

R.I.P. to Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, who I somehow did not realize until today was also in The Man Who Fell to Earth...

At the Oregon Donkey Sanctuary with a donkey named Loki…

Happy 84th birthday to the late David Warner, one of those fantastic British actors who worked so constantly that he did both classics and junk, but always made whatever he was in better through his presence. Oh, and Time After Time? A classic!

Fake news. There are no golden retrievers in hell.

Los Angeles people: July 4th is of course the peak of lost pet season. Here's information on where to call and what to do if you come across a cat or a dog spooked by fireworks and separated from its person.

Anyway, stay safe out there…

I deeply love America and normally hate the "I'm only patriotic when the last election went my way" thing, but I just don't feel much like celebrating today when masked men are snatching people off the street in my home city.

It took me a while to realize when you all were talking about Skeets, you didn't mean Booster Gold's robot sidekick.

"Man, this is the greatest gig in the world, being alive. You get to eat at Denny’s, wear a hat, whatever you wanna do.”--Norm Macdonald.

I feel like the ICE raids and how they've disrupted the fabric of ordinary life in America's second biggest city would be a bigger news story if they were happening to this degree in New York or DC. So many of the conversations I overhear are sharing news about who got grabbed and where.

R.I.P. to Harris Yulin, who had a long and distinguished career but whom I remember best from Clear and Present Danger where he and Henry Czerny were the Lennon & McCartney of sinister Washington D.C. bureaucrats.

I keep getting email solicitations for something called Gutter Savior and keep being disappointed that it’s not actually about a cool messiah from the streets.

Taking out a huge chunk of Russia's strategic bomber fleet deep inside Siberia with smuggled drones launched from trucks is insanely audacious. 21st Century warfare is changing before our eyes.

No lie I'm less angry at Elon for his political interference than I am at him for fathering a bunch of kids he'll never actually be present for as a parent. A father doesn't mean contributing 23 chromosomes and a checkbook.

A friend decided to tag along on our hike. In a nearby tree, two ravens croaked out a warning to every creature in the vicinity: "Hey, watch out, predator close by!"

It is unfortunately illustrative of Bluesky's limited reach that the Elon-Stephen Miller rumor everyone here is pushing (apparently started by an account that's basically the left's Laura Loomer) hasn't broken into the wider culture at all the way the Vance couch fucking one did last year.

I like that they haven't really been able to make cherries a year round fruit like they did with bananas and grapes. It makes late spring through mid summer feel special when they start showing up in the market.

The lesson for storytellers from this mega-viral video is that human as pack animals will never, ever get tired of stories about characters maneuvering for hierarchy and status within a group (family, gang, government, whatever.) We'll even be mesmerized when animals do it.

Help me support families in Gaza! I'm raising funds for the Middle East Children's Alliance to provide urgent aid to children & families in Gaza. Please give now to provide medical aid, clean water, food, psychological support, and more. secure.everyaction.com/P2P/L41t0naU...

The Times asked me to do a little thing for them, which was fun. Maybe my parents will think I'm a real writer now.

When the producers head off to Cannes to try and sell your projects but you're still in the Valley:

"If your movie is about a Wolf Man, you don't want to spend pages and pages where the characters are saying 'What do you think did this, a coyote?'" Today's writing advice.

A really concerning thread. The board going against their own trial committees' recommendations is the most concerning part to me, and the main reason I voted against the proposed sanctions in each case.

My ride’s here. Which button do I press to play Creedence?

I would really love to migrate my social media presence to here but does anyone here ever talk about anything besides politics?

Good golly, it's Polly!

Fog from the ocean kept it cool this morning.

Anonymous WGA Member:

So, WGA members, how are we feeling about those new employment numbers?

Great news for Southern California wildlife.

I always get mad when I see an annoying social media post & recognize the annoying poster who wrote it because it means that somewhere in my brain are a couple neurons that aren't learning a new language or thinking deep thoughts but remembering "oh, that fucking guy."

One of the Tree People volunteers found a cute lil’ baby tarantula while we were out restoring native habitat. An auspicious sign!!

While I think people on this website are sometimes too quick to use words like "fascist" and "authoritarian"...Bukele offering up the El Salvador prison system as a low cost gulag/black site for the US is a legitimately frightening turn of events.

Leggy supermodel.

Help! The great Sky Wolf is devouring the moon!!!

Happy “day everyone finally freaked out about COVID” 5 year anniversary, everyone.