When an AI tool tries to identify cancer cells in Black patients, it often fumbles because it will only compare test results with those of other Black patients. Medical racism lives on in our algorithms.

"It takes some effort to remind ourselves that Rome was filthy, its grand structures smeared with feces and surrounded by long-collapsed slums. Romans shat into pots, over private cesspits, by tombs, by statues, in doorways, on roads." lareviewofbooks.org/article/filt...

I interviewed the author of bestselling book The Fort Bragg Cartel. We cover the potential for regime change in Venezuela, the unique rate of violence around US bases, our “low information” Congress, Israel’s influence on US army doctrine, and more ayeshaasiddiqi.substack.com/p/interview-...

If one accepts that the ruling elites are largely a (partially unconscious) death cult stuck in a nihilistic feedback loop, their full-scale commitment to AI reveals itself as climate change accelerationism, a mundane representation of the desire for endless murder and extraction

"Art which stays news, in Ezra Pound’s phrase, is art in which the question “what does it mean?” has no correct answer. Every narrative has, at least, a capacity to suggest a metanarrative, and art that “works” is highly suggestive in this sense" www.nybooks.com/articles/199...

"Mary woke to a faint buzz that seemed to come from just beside her. “I froze,” she told me. “I could not move. I could not scream.” A dark square hovered near the ceiling. ... If they could fly a drone to her bedside, they could see everything" nymag.com/intelligence...

If you think movies are over because a corporation might buy another corporation, I suggest pulling your head out of your ass and steering it towards the entire world of an art form that is barely a century old while within that infancy blooms a promise of the infinite

"Silence not only fails to support Ukrainian society. It normalises and legitimises an abnormal, criminal situation." www.equator.org/articles/the...

"The father, named Fei, told Spector that he was separated from his 6-year-old son Yuanxin inside 26 Federal Plaza and not told where ICE agents were taking him." www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/02/i...

"What kind of country is this?" mubi.com/en/notebook/...

“My novels have been influential and popular in Britain, where I am among the bestselling literary authors of the last decade. The disappearance of my work from bookshops would mark a truly extreme incursion by the state into the realm of artistic expression.” www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

"...when we see images of floods in Bengal, what we are looking at is not just the result of weather events: it is also the product of a project of terraforming that began in colonial times and has continued until the present day" www.equator.org/articles/bey...

“We have a 2000s housing bubble level of financial engineering on top of a 1920s level of private unregulated lending on top of something bigger than a 1990s internet (or 1870s railroad) level of technology and infrastructure build-out. It’s one bubble to rule them all.” prospect.org/2025/11/19/a...

let's fucking go

Some inspiring words on cinema in the streaming era from the Pope. Yes, THAT Pope.

"Susan had been calling the police on the community for two years." www.filmcomment.com/blog/intervi...

“I hate AI,” Gilligan says ... “AI is the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. ... a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires. I think they’re selling a bag of vapor.” variety.com/2025/tv/news...

Wouldn't have mattered if sliwa dropped out. Mamdani had an actual and in fact mandate.

can't believe outlets are running moral-panic headlines again based on flimsy anecdata from the *same* trade group (the national retailer federation) and sponsored by the *same* anti-theft company (sensormatic) that had to retract this *same* "study" just two years ago for being bogus.

I don't know how many more ways to say "you need to start fucking listening to the people who warned you that exactly this would happen." LLM/GPT-type "AI" recreate patterns in pursuit of matching statistical correlations on which they're trained. They make shit up. Do Not. Put this. In healthcare

All right, Bluesky. Do your thing. I've got two cats – a kitten and a young cat – clearly strays, bonded, incredibly sweet, and of course cautious. I want to help collect them, do the whole spay/neuter/whatever else they need thing, can foster them, can't keep them. Recs for LA?

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER: Contends with its meta-textual limitations and potential failures through exquisite character work, meticulously unsentimental plotting, and some of the most potent film imagery of the decade. A full heart of a film.

I hear the President has decreed that it is possibly a crime to refer to Americans as "fascists," but "fascism" is a word that has a relatively clear meaning that's worth understanding. Here's how an official publication of the US Army defined "fascism" in 1945.

HAPPYEND (2024, dir. Neo Sora): A deeply tender, funny, bittersweet engagement with the dystopia of state surveillance & violence, grounded within the themes of friendship & collective action. So aurally youthful & vulnerable, a film about transitions, a successor to Edward Yang.

Scoop: Status has obtained the termination letter The Washington Post sent to @karenattiah.bsky.social, in which it informed her that she was being fired for social media posts "about white men." Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/karen-atti...

Makes perfect sense that AI tech produced by techno-fascists would begin its violent spiral by targeting the same groups techno-fascists are historically invested in killing.

A whistleblower complaint says that the personal data of over 300 million Americans was copied to a private cloud account to allow access by members of the Department of Government Efficiency team.

Ten new favorites I watched for the first time in August.

"I hope I’ll continue to experiment and sabotage my own notion of what cinema can be." mubi.com/en/notebook/...

Sickening. Every journalist in America should think deeply about the fact that most American politicians are willing to accept and indeed facilitate the murder of our colleagues.

"Lessons learned by U.S. security forces in Latin America (not just in Colombia but ... in Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina & El Salvador), were incorporated into the creation of ICE by U.S. President George W. Bush. And support for ICE has been bipartisan." www.piratewireservices.com/p/ice-is-a-t...

"It is that moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself. This devil has no need of any dogma—though he can use them all—nor does he need any historical justification, history being so largely his invention." scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/the-e...

The fascist 2020s: We can't build Skynet, but we can sloppily recreate it in the aggregate.

It's 2019. I move back to LA and proceed to get so sick my stomach feels like a bad cut-up experiment. In that feverish state I see a tech giant's CEO suggest their competition is not other companies but sleep itself. I write a short story about it. www.amazon.com/Life-Its-Own...

SORRY, BABY (2025, dir. Eva Victor): Vulnerable, sad, deeply funny, and thoroughly alive. The film's patience and layered tonal balancing show deep emotional intelligence. Lets every actor shine. A fantastic debut feature, easily one of my favorites of the year.

Watched some recent, excellent, and under-seen films this past week– Fremont and Sister Midnight are both delightfully funny and emotionally complex, directed with clear and precise points of view, anchored by fully inhabited performances. You'd do well to rent/buy both.

"Who is it for, I’ve wondered, the “after they’re done with them, they’ll come for you”? Who looks at a Palestinian child and needs to hear that theirs could be next?" www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/com...

"Wars do not target bodies alone—they also seek to assassinate memory. The targeting of printing presses and publishing houses in Gaza is an attempt to uproot cultural identity at its intellectual core." www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1657...

"Audiences are getting dumber" is a classist self-fulfilling prophecy. It abdicates responsibility for treating audiences with respect so slop can keep on sloshing down their gullets. This fallacy protects the pipeline, not the people, and does a miserable job even of that.

via Greta Thunberg on her Ig--

"We waved the torn limbs of our children like desperate flags. We showed the world how our sons and daughters walk barefoot on scorched earth, how they go to sleep hungry and wake up haunted. We put our humiliation on display." arablit.org/2025/05/23/w...

"In the same way that COVID-conscious and disabled people celebrate each chain of transmission broken, climate scientists recognize that each degree of warming we avoid will be a victory." (author: Violet Affleck) yaleglobalhealthreview.com/2025/05/18/a...

THE BRUTALIST (2024, dir. Brady Corbet): Every film a building, both but parts of nature. Two names that come to mind the most are Kubrick and Visconti; a fine and deserved company to keep.