I wrote about this in my Screen Time book, but, in the summer of 2021, there was a viral hysteria about UFOs on twitter. I got sucked in. Despite the fact that I knew better, the algorithm produced a kind of irresistible whirlpool designed to reel in people whose anxieties easily took that form. 1/x

I’m never going to talk about my lawsuit ever again, so if you want the gossip, here’s your chance: @adriandaub.bsky.social and I talked about the Epstein files as a document of Me Too backlash on @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

I only learned this today.

I believe you if you tell me it all adds up as an aesthetic experience, but I have to say, I don't know that I've encountered a film that comes off worse at the Random Clips Floating Around the Internet stage than MARTY SUPREME does so far.

Everything else aside, I would urge folks not to just assume we will see a return to traditional departments and majors. The critical and creative disciplines will be rebranded as “innovation” as institutions pump money into new units and programs in the scramble to remain relevant.

Uncle Boyardee Who Can Recall His Pasta

"It is a sign of a fatally limited imagination to assume that we can only ever desire the pittance to which we are currently reconciled." www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

in the near future original human writing is going to feel like prewar steel (via @thelincoln.bsky.social's excellent newsletter counter craft) countercraft.substack.com/p/surfs-up-i...

So many antiwoke arguments are premised on the notion that the Democratic party doesn't exist dgardner.substack.com/p/weimar-ger...

getting word that the new WUTHERING HEIGHTS movie omits the scene where Heathcliff drives a car that's shaped like a big t-bone steak while being pursued by a pack of happy puppies while the old man looks on from the upstairs window flanked by his wife and proclaims "Express beef delivery"

CALL FOR PITCHES @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not. Details below!

Anecdotally, I haven't met a person who's had a positive interaction with, say, an AI customer service bot. The party who says that it seems like a weird idea to build our entire economy around something this janky and buggy will seem like they're telling the truth. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...

lol

The Atlantic should do an essay about how one consequence of grade inflation is that we're all still talking about Quentin Tarantino as if he's a person who's made a great movie in the past sixteen years.

"Tell me you know nothing about the Muppets without telling me you know nothing about the Muppets."

The current regime took a week to abolish USAID, which is three times as old and was not in the news every day for brutalizing children

Please enjoy my most viral tweet of all time shared anew every year by dozens of slop aggregator accounts far and wide.

I'm going to win.

"...you just have to start. Roughly, badly, not how you picture, and probably different than where you’ll end up, but the value — in a writer’s case — is in writing and in turn, giving somebody the choice to read you." @wtevs.bsky.social www.basketballfeelings.com/p/degradatio...

shut up and play the hits

The Post's announcement named Book World as a discrete entity being eliminated, which led to a lot of kind words, all of which are greatly appreciated. But other critics weren't in a section entirely eliminated (though what will remain of it, I have no idea), so I've seen much less about them. 1/2

I log back into x twice a year for the trade deadline and NBA free agency, and while, yes, it is an unhinged soup of conspiracies I've never even heard of, and a space for anti-semites to experiment with the power of AI, it is also a place where Sixers fans talk about the team like absolute maniacs.

FYI, if Giannis had been traded, I was going to post, "this isn't a trade, it's a conscious untetokoupling." But they didn't trade him.

WaPo shuttering its sports section during the trade deadline as Shams Charania tweets out NBA front office press releases that he's run back and forth through Google Translate five times is a real snapshot of the industry rn. Thank goodness for Defector.

there isn’t a better Books desk in the country than the one at the Washington Post. I’m not really sure there’s anything else to say

One loosely organized review publication —drawing on editors now looking for work, the many newsletters out there, with one centralized subscription plan. A coop of sorts. Something in between a magazine and a newsletter

Seconding this, with perhaps adding in some room for arts/books coverage.

the $75 million Jeff Bezos set on fire for that Melania propaganda piece could have funded most independent newsrooms for literally decades

Lili Loofbourow is one of the best TV critics alive. Becca Rothfeld is one of the best book critics alive.

Please don't report this as a straightforward business story; it's a story about coercive social transformation being imposed by people so rich they've ceased to see the rest of us as legitimate stakeholders in our own lives

In addition to sports, the Washington Post is killing its book section, suspending its Post Reports podcast, restructuring its metro section, and shrinking its international footprint.

Saw someone say James Harden job hops every two years like a true millennial and I really enjoyed that post.

"Prolific swap" is a world-historically great Shamsism.

I'll go further! I have never liked Neil Gaiman's work very much, and the temptation is there to smugly say, "SEE??!" now that his shittiness has come to light. But I didn't dislike his work because I could tell he was terrible; I disliked it because it didn't work for me! That's a different thing.

A lot of centrist Democratic pundits would simply have become Republicans by now if Trump hadn't soiled the brand so bad. They advocate for Democrats to "strategically" adopt or avoid criticizing right-wing ideas even when it isn't good strategy because they agree with those ideas!

This is very true and I’m old enough to remember how in 2004 Bush’s reelection strategy depended on going after Kerry on his status as a veteran and war hero, supposedly his biggest asset.

I hadn’t known this. Two men who were accused of sexual abuse on the Shitty Media Men document that I created back in 2017 reached out to Michael Wolff for help as they looked to sue me, and Wolf forwarded their concerns to Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein offered to help. www.jmail.world/thread/EFTA0...

For lunch today, I think I will have a tuna salad version of a club sandwich!

CHOTINER: And the pizza place, what’s it called? ME: Dominos. CHOTINER: Right. And you can order from your laptop? ME: Yeah. Well, I can also use my phone. Sometimes that’s quicker. CHOTINER: And all the food in your fridge and pantry. When do you eat that? ME: Now hang on a second,

Vaccinate your kids, you friggin nuts.

And most of the major media did not take it as seriously as they should have because they were also often ridiculed by Gawker etc. An entire century thus far of reactionary politics from people getting owned online.

Translated "it's fine if they're slaves or indentured servants"

Calling up your Dem senators and thanking them for doing this is how you encourage them to hold the line, no matter how low your estimation of them is

Was surprised how many people noticed the abundance of influencers WB invited to the WUTHERING HEIGHTS premiere. I used that to talk about influencers as celebrities, their lack of transparency on the pay for play model, and trying to be "honest" in their reviews. thefilmmaven.com/wuthering-he...