IDK if other people have a name for it, but this to me is called YouTube Face

One thing I'd love to tell websites developing their interface: I should not have to have a multi-part conversation before trying to open one page on your damn site

In my American Studies class I do a mini-unit on film analysis to set up CITIZEN KANE, and in asking students to pick clips from movies they love to analyze with formal film language, one movie strikes me now as much better directed than I ever remembered: THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER.

I can think of few things more indicative of how terrible things are for writers now that someone of MZS's deep experience and skill is getting laid off. Truly obscene stuff. Will be looking at the bookshop!

I’ve seen a lot of people present their galaxy brain theories. But I’m pretty sure they thought it would be really easy to drop some bombs, secure surrender, install their puppet leader and move on in 2 weeks with minimal negative effects on them. They thought this because they’re stupid.

As shit as relegation feels, the same reason we're in this mess is the same reason it doesn't hurt as worse as I expected: the Lewis family have proven they cannot do what needs to be done to build and consistently maintain a top-flight Premier League team. A drop with them is inevitable.

J.D. Vance is no different. This is a terrible take. He never had different ideas. Every Republican is exactly the same. They want America dumb and poor so they can be easily controlled workers for wealthy Republican donors.

A great @videodrome.bsky.social find: Ivan Sen's 2023 desert noir LIMBO, starring an against-type Simon Baker. Sen shoots the Australian outback in a bleach-bone black and white, which renders that country like a distant moon. boxd.it/dqdW8B

Makes sense. He looks like a guy that would be friends IRL with the Ravens Fan character that Stav Halkias plays

*direct to camera, in the bunker* I suppose it's time to tell Eva that the chickens have come home to roost.

With its split-down-the-middle critical response and people involved in its making, BRIDE! is bound to be a reclamation project in the years to come.

I do not understand why, in the year 2026, we still have websites for hotels that list one price and then tack on all the fees at the end. I promise you that your customers will like you more if you do a per night price inclusive of all bogus charges like restort fees.

A great piece. The amount of "I moved right because there's no room for questions on the left" types who actually make the move solely out of personal grievance is... pretty high! Norm Podhoretz a famous example. inthesetimes.com/article/form...

After spending a good amount of time driving in America, you see why our car culture is this solipsistic: driving instruction doesn't teach you to think about yourself as part of a larger transit network, it just teaches you to minimize liability.

If I had the time and got paid the money to write a polemic, it'd be "Against Efficency." Not a virtue in and of itself, but in late capitalist society it's become a deity.

I've rooted for Tottenham for 6.5 years, following them more closely in the last three years (from Kane's final year on). I'm no flighty American fan: in tribute to my late British cousin who made me a Spurs fan, I've got the badge tattooed on my arm. But despite being a newer fan, I can say this:

On the one hand, Platner is proof that any Democratic candidate positioning themselves as progressive will get a million times more scrutiny than any centrist would. On the other hand: the Nazi tattoo lol

it’s only an echo chamber when it’s the left. when it’s the right they call it some bullshit like the Agora or the Town Square

i don't think it's radical to say that every person involved in this decision making should be sent immediately to the Hauge

One reason why we should reject the "Trump winning in '24 means that OBVIOUSLY America is just MAGA," apart from the statistical lie behind that claim, is what this bumper sticker illustrates: a large number of Americans, speaking frankly, have completely idiomatic and idiotic political beliefs.

I fully believe that in America, a country famously bad at recounting (let alone understanding) accurate history, a person like Platner would not know the meaning of a tattoo like the SS-associated one he got, on the basis of "skulls cool." But getting the tat is one thing. KEEPING it is another.

The "meritocracy" exposed: Internal emails reveal how the Trump administration hires legal interns "GPA is not a strong factor," by Judd Legum So, not the best people. open.substack.com/pub/populari...

And yet I have a funny feeling this kind of thing won't matter for the "sorry, I had to vote Trump because egg prices" people come the next election, since only Democrats are ever held to account for this kind of stuff.

It is crazy Lee Edelman didn't include 28 WEEKS LATER as a case study in NO FUTURE.

When the Iran intervention turns into a disaster (it already is, but even more so), we cannot let the quote unquote reasonable conservatives act like this was Trump's looniness and not a policy that they've wanted for decades, and now have an easy shield in Trump.

Seeing Matt Walsh melt down over the obvious moral and intellectual failing by the right in trying to justify the Iran attacks makes you realize... he must not be getting the same checks that his other talking head colleagues get, huh

The frustrating thing about the Spurs being in a relegation battle is, as a fan, obviously I want us to stay up. But our ownership and leadership ABSOLUTELY deserve relegation, and in fact may be emboldened by staying up under the delusion that our "bigness" insulates us from going down.

I made a bingo card

That new SCARY MOVIE trailer plus that weird edgelord “there is a rock” song circulating on TikTok really confirming that we’re fully regressing to the Bush years, huh

I know that I sound like a broken record but I think once this society was ok with accepting mass covid deaths just to be able to eat at Applebees then all bets were off.

I don't say this derisively as it's not even my fave movie of 2025, but: if PTA doesn't win The Big Oscars for ONE BATTLE this year, then he's never winning them.

Just finished, after slowly reading for many months, Cormac McCarthy's SUTTREE. Bascially, THE PASSENGER is a photonegative of that novel, except unlike the perambulating SUTTREE it has the setup of a novel with a plot, only to forgo it. Bobby's abandonment of the world more legible than Suttree's.

The US’s crimes in Iran yet another imperial event that confirms these lines from Cormac McCarthy’s THE PASSENGER.

Dan Simmons in his later years turned, regrettably, into a reactionary crank, but to leave a book as astonishing as HYPERION as a legacy is a feat any writer would strive for. Will always hold that novel close.

This is the only line I can think about when I hear “vote Blue no matter who” reasoning. ESPECIALLY when that reasoning is deployed pre-emptively, before an actual left challenger has the chance to upstage Boring Centrist #23.

Honestly, even if Twitter wasn’t a cesspool of Nazis and misogynists, the sheer number of people who reply to every Tweet by asking Grok if it’s true would be enough to drive me off that platform.

I've been trying to think of other options because I can't tell if it's just because it's also my favorite album of all time, but it really is this. Such a perfect embodiment of the sonic world of TOGETHER WE'RE STRANGER.

First rule of Annotation Fight Club: You can never be too obvious. As I always tell my students: Annotate! Remember! Underline! Remind yourself! Create a trail of lead/ink on the page! Talk to the text! Interact! This is what is to be alive!

I think the Helms comp is a bit uncharitable, but my take on the Harper piece is this: if Mellon had been engaged in the funding conspiracy Harper alleges, but in service to a “revitalization of the classics,” then his piece doesn’t get written, or at the very least the Atlantic doesn’t publish it.

“Does the Bodo/Glimt dark horse campaign in the Champions League give a little buzz for a SENTIMENTAL VALUE upset at the Oscars?” -me if I was a Ringer podcaster

My jam of 2026 so far is a couple decades old, but it rocks. Part of me is glad no-man, my favorite band, is a cult favorite that I keep like a secret to myself, but at the same time they really deserve a bigger audience. no-man.bandcamp.com/track/coming...

As far as celebrity would-be presidential candidates go, Stephen A isn’t even the most interesting experiment. I’m convinced that Bobby Flay could run as an independent and win on a “calabrian chiles for all” platform and get Reagan ‘84 level numbers.

these people treat being called racist like it is a slur, and treat slurs like they're mere differences of opinion

Look, Spurs are in a bad place, undeniable, but anyone who acts like this wasn't a gleam of improvement against Arsenal when (a) at one point we should have been 2-2 tied were it not for PGMOL bullshit, and (b) Tudor's dealing with a way more injured lineup than Frank did in November are nihilists.

If Gabriel got fouled there then Gabriel has committed a foul on every single attacking set piece he's participated in this season

The utterance of "A.I.'s inevitability" is one of the most stark pure performatives I've seen in my time working in higher ed. Every time it is uttered, it is clearly not reporting a fact about the world but instead actively trying to create the reality it narrates. We can and must refuse.

Thankfully have a work obligation. Even with a new manager bounce, I'm just not in the spirit after the dreary Frank era to watch our hobbled squad go up against Arsenal. Even if we wanted the opposite game plan Frank had for Arsenal, Tudor doesn't have the guys.

Feels like this is the season of the late bailout goal in the Premier League. Can someone smart at statistics tell me if that’s true

Every single element of life is either more deadly, more expensive or more inconvenient (often all three) today than it’s been in decades & it’s purely because our robber baron overlords decided to dedicate the entirety of the US apparatus to doing barbaric & culturally suicidal white nationalism