Normalize calling LLMs "WordGuesser2000". Perhaps then people will understand how idiotic their delusional thinking is. And I'm not being mean - there are cases where highly educated word guessing has its place. Just not in 99.9% of business decisions, for starters.

Beside myself to see my book in this company. Thank you so much to everyone who nominated it. Thank you @coffeehousepress.bsky.social

Last Year At Marienbad/This Month At The State Fair

Writers, if you ever needed a sign it's time to move on from dystopian fiction, here you go

📣 📣 📣 📣 📣 NEW RUSSIAN CIRCLES KLAXON 📣 📣 📣 📣 📣 (Unfamiliar? Instrumental post/metal trio, monumental.) youtu.be/qrb64_QFetU?...

Day one of our final mix at Park Road Post in Wellington!

I have been informed that this is the wisdom of @clairewillett.bsky.social ! Credit where credit is due.

This has to be the weirdest remake ever

What's frightening about this is not that it's GFC-level job lows - dipping near COVID lockdown levels - but this is PRE-the inevitable AI bubble bursting. UBI now or riots later. Increasingly convinced those are the options.

Today is a big anniversary day for my first feature, JAKE. 24 June 2009, we began principal photography. 24 June 2013, we had the cast and crew screening. 24 June 2014, we had our public premiere. To celebrate, I've made it free on Vimeo for a wee bit. vimeo.com/1203609792/0...

I interviewed free jazz pillars William Parker and Daniel Carter about Vision Festival 30, the state of improvised music, and getting a phone call from Sonny Rollins: oldnew.substack.com/p/the-old-ne...

Got this from my library after it popped up in my feed and it's a great read, the sort of gleeful and careful evisceration that both reveals hidden truths and dismantles entrenched stupidities that seem to be embedded in our society's magnetic north at the moment

Also, now up on the Patreon: The latest make-me-watch-something poll! Free subscribers can vote as well as paid, and I'll make the subsequent review free for all as well. So subscribe! You don't even gotta give me money! (But it'd be nice if you did)

Today I made a ref to Trump's "Algae Czar" looking like a Batman villain (and 60's, not like even Nolan cool). Then it hit me. Like a Bot test for Democracy, can you tell who's a cartoon villain vs *actual photo* of someone directly connected to the current sitting president of the United States?

This is a harsh but real look at a career that isn't really a career

Kiwi cinephiles (or documentary obsessives): anyone have any tips for DocEdge films of note this year? It opens tomorrow and AMERICAN DOCTOR is the only film that I know much about. (An acquaintance made FINDING HONK, which I'd like to see but sold out before I could get tickets.) Docedge.nz

Today's chart after ACT got another $150k👀 The game is rigged, although funny when you think ACT are only polling at around 6% #nzpol

Also reminded that Hipkins could shoot someone in the face and Labour diehards would find a way to blame the Greens.

Occasionally people ask me why I don't like Hipkins. Might just laminate this and put it in my wallet.

After nine months of hibernation, my movie podcast with @thebmovievault.bsky.social and Darren "fuck social media" Waugh, Ludicrously Specific, has returned. Listen if you like white nerdy guys talking about cinema that ranges from Godfrey Ho to Mikio Naruse to (Greek guy Darren couldn't pronounce)

Hysterically, this site shows that Claude thinks I made EXISTENCE. Meanwhile, Mistral thinks EXISTENCE director Juliet Bergh was in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

Fantastic news. Rattle is one of our great cultural treasures.

It's been a while, but holy shit, a new Ludicrously Specific episode, hot off the press! Join us for a roundtable discussion about the movies we've been watching this year. ( and hear Steve get very angry about talking mice and rapping dogs!) dougdillaman.podbean.com/e/53-nine-mo...

This reminds me how much I love The Timekeepers of Eternity - the version where they photocopied (!) every frame of The Langoliers and screwed with the edit. One of my favourite experimental horrors, and I’m just noticing apparently it’s now fully available on YouTube…!

What I would love to see in the Greens tax discussion: 1. Repeated comparisons to other countries. NZers are very insecure and we need to be told that everyone else already has tax-free thresholds, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes; the phrase “it’s a bit embarrassing” is NZ kryptonite.

Those who read the tea leaves for possible NZIFF titles might note a few titles listed as coming out "July 29" (aka opening day in Auckland) on Flicks' Coming Soon page. Glad we're apparently getting ROSE OF NEVADA after ENYS MEN was overlooked. And SILENT FRIEND! www.flicks.co.nz/coming-soon/...

Technically, DISCLOSURE DAY isn't set in the future, but it reminded me of this list. boxd.it/10OdO

Grateful to Cowboy Junkies for putting out a 2xCD best of their 21st century output. I already knew there were a couple gems on OPEN, and then lost track and missed eight records, and haven't had the fortitude or time to pan for gold. tidal.com/album/523551...

MUPPET HIGH RISE

Hello, TRASHATHON!

Ok this looks kind of awesome!

THE CHRISTOPHERS is the first Soderbergh post-"retirement" that would approach my top tier. It's no SOLARIS, OUT OF SIGHT, THE INFORMANT!, SCHIZOPOLIS, or THE LIMEY (no particular order), but it'd certainly make the second 5 of the 31 I've seen. Amazing what working with a great script can do.

This!!!! I shouldn't feel guilty going to a gig and not drinking (as I did last night) because "that's how a venue makes its money". It's a broken model from the ground up. (Just one of many broken models in the arts we have inherited that need reinvention.)

But on the bright side, we gave poor struggling battler Robbie Williams a shedload of money!

This is one insane week for music in Auckland. Given budget and stamina (and the ability to occupy multiple places simultaneously) I'd have already seen Mei Simones, Kelly Moran, The Descendents, & be going to Acid Mothers Temple on Friday. As is, I'm "settling" for Chat Pile and Beastwars tonight

WALL STREET: "Greed is good." MR. FREEDOM: America, fuck yeah! WARGAMES: Computers help us win wars!

Two notes on TOY STORY 5: * I should have expected that it wouldn't have been so anti-tech as the previews made it out to be. But I didn't. * Living creatures having poreless skin but molecular hair simulation - particularly on animals - feels like "we gotta do *something* to show off!"

Can you guess the Takashi Miike film from the last half of the final sentence of its plot summary on Letterboxd? "... as bloody violence ensues, the body count reaches excessive proportions." (Hint: it's not DEAD OR ALIVE.)

On chapter 118 of MOBY DICK (pg 512/600) and the titular character still hasn't appeared. I know better, but it would be hysterical - and quite fitting to the book, honestly - if he never did.

Well, that was a fucking ride.

Roses are red Some flowers are silk You are a cunt Go choke on raw milk See? Autistic people can write poems!

My Letterboxd stats inadvertently showcase the four types of glasses-wearing directors: 1) I'm amiable! Cuddly! 2) I WILL CUT YOU 3) Take me very seriously. Please. 4) Staging mayhem is fun! (BTW I really like to fucking love all of these guys, not a dis track, but look at these head shots!)

Listening to the new Prolapse album and was about to post that I can't believe I didn't know they had a new album out and then wondered if I briefly knew and forgot. So I searched "prolapse". Top tip: don't do that. (Although I suppose it was educational.)

PSA: BLAZING FISTS, Takashi Miike’s recent MMA juvie delinquent drama, is now free to stream on YouTube (With ads). Watching now…reminds me of BIG BANG LOVE: JUVENILE A, Miike’s fantastic men in prison romantic drama. This is more conventional, but still p good. youtu.be/YmBKrRtP8gM?...

I haven't seen The Furious, but I have seen a lot of other movies by the artists that made The Furious. Here's a quick guide that may also double as a history of 21st century East Asian action cinema. www.thechinesecinema.com/what-to-watc...

Came home with an overwhelming pile of @deafcrocodile.bsky.social to watch (on top of the pile I already had, lol). Hard to know where to start (campaign for your favourite!), but I settled on the Barta shorts and so far they are a freaking delight.

Survival Research Laboratories reunion.

I thought the world cup was going to be a nightmare, but I forgot that we actually love when people like us

Just got to see a double feature of THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE and PHASE IV (director's cut) on the big screen after landing in Auckland from America at 5.30 AM this morning, which was some massive sleep deprivation nirvana viewing. Plus a terrific NZ short, TERMINAL LAKE. Good to be home.