8am: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? TELL US, GODDAMMIT 9am: Pete Hegseth's Warfighting to the Oldies 10am: K.A.$.H. 11am: Quack Tales with RFK Jr. Noon: A Charlie Kirk Remembrance (no quotes allowed) 4pm: The Most Dangerous Game ft. Brian Kilmeade 5pm: Sean Duffy Cries on the Subway

Every US comedian needs to go this hard, starting right now (& so do the behind-the-scenes teams who write the jokes & create brilliant clip montages like this one. If your job is to mock, to satirize, to parody and spoof, this is your time to shine. We have your backs (& we badly need the laughs).

congrats to @benmathislilley.bsky.social for capping off a legendary 11-year run at Slate. it's been an honor and a pleasure, and I'll very much miss working with you slate.com/news-and-pol...

I can't recommend highly enough that you read this coolly mocking letter from the judge about Trump's lawyers' 85-page-long (!) windup to their laughably flimsy lawsuit against the NYT. "Abundant, florid and enervating detail"! The whole letter is this good. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I am Spartacus (for real, would attend a public mockathon)

Just did this. Very easy to leave a comment.

On this week's Culture Gabfest Dan Kois joins Steve Metcalf & I to talk about the wildly popular limited series Girlfriend, the Spinal Tap legacy sequel, & the loss of Robert Redford--a story that broke just before taping, which I think made for an extra-open conversation. slate.com/podcasts/cul...

The tagline has a particular bittersweet quality now doesn't it? It also has a ring of truth for movie superstars... "Some say he's dead...some say he never will be..."

I'm catching up w/ the fact Rolling Stone laid off Alan Sepinwall, & I know on hearing about these layoffs we're supposed to wring our hands & be all "whither cultural criticism?," but sometimes a more salient question is "whither this publication's leadership"? This is just a dumb editorial idea.

♥️

I'm sorry to have only posted today in ways that somehow reference Redford's ludicrously handsome appearance, since I know he spent his career trying (with success!) to be much more than that. He was a wonderful actor, director, activist, philanthropist. But here's a very fun thread about his style.

i respect how every tribute to robert redford is at least a little bit horny

Has anyone ever worn a movie costume better than Robert Redford in his navy pea coat in Three Days of the Condor?

Contributing to anti-doomscrolling with Max Linder, the sparkling French comedian who inspired Chaplin and is the earliest known movie star with his name on a poster (circa 1909).

Pure joy. Watch to the end for the perfectly-in-tune dog howl

Judith Butler on being named to a list of UC Berkeley faculty & students provided to the Department of Education to be investigated for anti-semitism, w/ zero transparency about what they're being accused of or by whom. Pure McCarthyism & totally indefensible. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

How this political era feels if you're not in the sunken place.

Spinal Tap II may be a legacy sequel that didn't need to exist, but at least for Tap-heads like me, it's a sweetly nostalgic bundle of improv sketches w/ 3 leads who've been making music & comedy together for 40+ years. I may or may not still have "Hell Toupée" in my head. slate.com/culture/2025...

Spinal Tap II may be a legacy sequel that didn't need to exist, but at least for Tap-heads like me, it's a sweetly nostalgic bundle of improv sketches w/ 3 leads who've been making music & comedy together for 40+ years. I may or may not still have "Hell Toupée" in my head. slate.com/culture/2025...

To Americans: This is how it's done. To Brazilians: Parabéns, até que enfim, e viva Xandão!

First, we don't know who the shooter is or what their motives were, so let's chill on the handwringing "what does it all mean?" takes. Second, this piece never mentions the recent point-blank murders of a MN state rep & her husband. Why was that not Sunset on Democracy? www.vox.com/politics/461...

This explains it better than I can

RTing because I really want someone to get this burrito

Funniest possible person to say nothing bad happened when he was a kid as a result of everyone having guns

So 22 years ago a nefarious Democratic operative created a forged letter to insert into the birthday book of a child sex trafficker who had been Trump's very public close friend for decades, for the purposes of making Trump look bad in case he one day became president, is the working theory here.

what an abhorrent day to be literate and have eyes

Starting off the day w/ Trump praising wife-beating at a Bible conference & ending it w/ images of his drawing of a naked headless girl for Jeffrey Epstein & a novelty check for a "fully depreciated woman" has made for quite the Monday. I get it, we belong to the 1/2 of humanity that doesn't matter.

This whole festival (celebrating Filmspotting's 20-year anniversary) was a joy to attend, & I loved talking with @larsenonfilm.bsky.social about Satyajit Ray's 1955 masterpiece Pather Panchali, to this day one of the all-time great directorial debuts. Our convo is this week's episode of the show:

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oh my GOD

Doctors I trust more than RFK, Jr.:

This is #189 on the list of things wrong w/ this post, but: Chipocalypse? Or, even in the generous reading that that's supposed to be a "g"--Chigocalypse? I know y'all are dumb, but if you want to create a portmanteau word from the city you're invading & a movie title, "Chicagolypse" is right there.

What keeps haunting me about this idiotic "let's fix The Magnificent Ambersons with AI!" proposal is that the whole reason the footage vanished is because the studio didn't value & protect Welles' edit. The part that's missing & will always be missing is what _he_ would have done. You can't AI that.

Each new paragraph in this story is more jawdropping than the last, till by the end you are audibly gasping. Fantastic reporting & writing as well from @eminietfeld.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/the-ba...

1. People who like AI don’t give a shit about The Magnificent Ambersons 2. People who care about The Magnificent Ambersons and love it despite it not being the version Orson intended don’t want it to be desecrated and turned into AI slop So who is the even for?

Ben Franklin, flying a kite in a thunderstorm in 1752: Da fuq?

When we were naming our daughter, I remember saying about names that seemed too cute or girly, "how will that sound if she grows up to be, like, a judge?" Turns out it sounds perfect.

If you don't already know @bcmerchant.bsky.social's newsletter, bloodinthemachine.com (or his exceptional book by the same title), start w/ this week's post on the role of ChatGPT in a teenage boy's suicide. Not handwringing or doomy. Clear-eyed & essential. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-500-bill...

she looks nothing like him

This week's Culture Gabfest was really fun to record--the original panel was back w/ our favorite guest host, Wesley Morris, talking about Weapons (including a separate spoiler-filled segment on the ending), Highest 2 Lowest, & the "performative masculinity" pseudo-craze: slate.com/podcasts/cul...

JD Vance asking to be invited into a city feels really on the nose after Sinners

One of the CDC heads resigning is a scientist whose title is "Director of the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases." AKA the person in charge of public health in the face of novel viruses like Covid, someone with decades of practical experience in the field. To be replaced by ... 🤡❓

So many adults have to fail a child before he ends up 10 years old telling CNN about the mass shooting he lived through this morning

Is the challenge to distinguish whether or not Melania is AI?

a huge point that decorum-obsessed Democrats are missing is that everyone I know is literally boiling with rage 24/7 watching their country fall to fascism and desperately want to hear a politician acknowledge that and say "I am also angry"

the thing I love about Zohran’s campaign is that instead of “this place fucking sucks and I alone can fix it” his message is “being a New Yorker rules, we live in the best city in the world, let’s make it even better together” show some damn pride in the places you want to govern

This was a piece where the research was 5x more voluminous than what ended up on the page. I watched over a dozen Ozu movies, watched documentaries on him, read two entire books, & had the pleasure of interviewing superfan Jim Jarmusch (who said correctly that Ozu's magic is impossible to describe).

Behold my Oscar. Just want to run my hands through his expertly crafted Romantic-era wig

Can't imagine a pair of curators I'd rather have on this film series. Flagging some of the dates on my calendar right now.