Here’s the trailer for Bugonia, dir. by Yorgos Lanthimos & starring frequent collaborator Emma Stone. “Two conspiracy obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.”
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Entries for August 2025
I Am An AI Hater. “But I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
Dan Wang on his forthcoming book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. “China is an engineering state, which brings a sledgehammer to problems both physical and social, in contrast with America’s lawyerly society…”
A group of 15-20 families in South Portland, Maine have installed landlines for their kids instead of giving them cellphones. The landlines “helped their children become better listeners and more empathetic communicators”.
These contact lenses give their wearers the ability to see infrared light, even with their eyes closed. Sign me up!!
A collection of kooky-but-rideable bikes (treadmill bike, pull-up bike, etc.)
Light pollution has lengthened birds’ days. “Their day is almost an hour longer. They start vocalizing about 20 minutes earlier in the morning and they stop vocalizing about 30 minutes later in the evening.”
Hear a Prehistoric Conch Shell Musical Instrument Played for the First Time in 18,000 Years. “The shell may have had more range, and been more comfortable to play, with its mouthpiece, likely made of a hollow bird bone.”
Kevin Kelly recently published a guide called “Everything I Know about Self-Publishing”. “The way I approach publishing today is with as much self-publishing as I can handle.”
“The world’s biggest frogs build their own ponds” is art as a headline because it sounds like an adage your grandfather would tell while fishing one afternoon, but also oops the adage has now been corrupted by grind culture tech bros.
“More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.”
Just wanting to let y’all know the cops have never had to chase a bear out of my ice cream shop, though I suppose that’s what an ice cream shop would say if they had had to have cops chase a bear out of it at some point.
Are the AirPods Pro 3 coming soon? Here’s what the rumors say. “Apple is said to be testing a faster audio chip that drives ‘much better’ Active Noise Cancellation than the already‑impressive AirPods Pro 2 manage.”
This hilarious commercial for a 90s mail-order punk CD is for a compilation with hardly any punk music on it.
McSweeney’s Author Cards, Collect ‘Em All!
I love these author cards from McSweeney’s in the style of baseball cards.
For years you’ve seen athletes, web-slinging superheroes, orcs, and pocket monsters get the trading-card treatment, while you’ve sat in your room hoping upon hope that the heroes of magical realism or giants of New Journalism would get their own. The wait is over, friends.
They have three sets: the first set is a part of their 74th issue, series 2, and series 3. The authors featured in the sets include Octavia Butler, Judy Blume, Lauren Groff, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, George Saunders, Sarah Vowell, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent. It’s nice to hear that ordinary citizens still have some power and some sense in wielding it.
“The evidence for millionaire tax flight is scant. If high earners were truly fleeing high taxes, low-tax states would be swarming with millionaires. Instead, the highest concentrations of millionaires are found in high-tax states.”
A thoughtful post by Philip Bump on the careful use of your power. “[Substack authors] have transferred their power to a company that has used it to promote toxic rhetoric in the guise of ‘having a debate.’”
Rock guitarist Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) has made a playlist called Fuck ICE, “a rocking little soundtrack to enjoy while you drive those bastards out of your neighborhood”. Springsteen, Public Enemy, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, etc.
Artist Amy Sherald: Censorship Has Taken Hold at the Smithsonian. I Refused to Play Along. “History shows us what happens when governments demand that museums perform loyalty. Nazi Germany weaponized them. So did the Soviet Union.”
“Welcome to the Atlas of Space — an interactive visualization to explore the planets, moons, asteroids, and other objects in the Solar System.”
Silicon Valley is full of wealthy men who think they’re victims. “I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity.”
The Art of Street Typography
I don’t know exactly what my expectations were of how lettering is painted on city streets, but this was not it. The level of precision and artistry is surprising.
Reminds me of this video of a hand-lettering master at work.
Update: Sure, he’s using a vehicle, but this guy is pretty good at line painting as well.
The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz profiles Patricia Lockwood. Regarding her forthcoming novel: “‘I wrote it insane and edited it sane’; it is a collaboration between two different people, both of whom happen to be her.”
The Armed Takeover of US Cities by the President Is Not a “Distraction”
Jamelle Bouie on Democratic politicians who maddeningly cannot recognize and acknowledge what is going on in the country.
From my perspective, the story of American politics right now is that the president, who fashions himself a kind of king of America, is attempting to barricade himself in the capital by unleashing a military occupation on its residents. And he’s promised to extend this military occupation to other cities and other states that he views as political opponents.
That to me is the big story of American politics right now: a mad king openly exerting tyrannical power over Americans and threatening further tyrannical power against other Americans, all under a pretext of crime reduction.
Dan Froomkin of Press Watch: “The top story of the moment is the one story that our most influential newsrooms won’t touch: That the United State has become an authoritarian state.”
I disagree with Quentin Tarantino on what his best film is. “So I think Kill Bill is the movie I was born to make, I think Inglourious Basterds is my masterpiece but Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is my favourite.”
TMAP is a screen reader-friendly tool for creating tactile street maps. Raised lines and textures represent roads, pedestrian paths, and railways.
Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers? “Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. A new book argues that there was something in the water.”
Video: “Environmental police in Rochedo, Brazil stumbled on an unexpected sight: thousands of orange-and-black bumblebee catfish scaling the slippery rocks behind waterfalls on the Aquidauana River.”
Christian Marclay, Doors
Now showing at the Brooklyn Museum (through April 2026) and the ICA in Boston (until Spet 1, 2025) is Christian Marclay’s Doors. Like his masterpiece The Clock, Doors is a film montage, this time of people in movies opening and closing doors.
In Doors (2022), Marclay stitches together hundreds of short film clips featuring the opening and closing of doors. More than a decade in the making, the moving image collage draws from nearly all genres of narrative cinema ranging from French New Wave to Hollywood blockbusters. Carefully edited by Marclay, the visual narrative follows actors entering new spaces, with each door marking an editing point and transitioning between films and soundscapes. The work suggests a labyrinthine journey where protagonists get lost and found again. Marclay describes the video as sculptural – a “mental architecture that the viewer might or might not follow and get lost in.”
The film is 54 minutes long but runs in a continuous loop. These videos feature some footage from the film; this one shows five minutes and this one four minutes:
Here’s Marclay on the process of making the video:
It’s quite difficult to find scenes in cinema showing an actor entering a space and then going into another space. I needed two doors: The actor enters one space and then leaves through another door — so it’s one room to the next room to the next room to the next room, and every time a different actor in a different film. It’s a strange choreography to edit. The door has to be opened in a similar way and at the same speed to make it believable. If someone is running and then you see them peek slowly through the door on the other side, it doesn’t look realistic. I also had to match the motion of pulling or pushing the door. To make things even more complicated, that door is hinged on one side and that has to match, the hinge and the door handle. If done well, the viewer gets sucked in and fooled by these editing tricks. So you see an actor in color in the ’80s entering a black-and-white film from the ’50s, and you know it’s not the same actor, but your mind wants to believe that it is. The trick is to create a flow, an illusion of continuity.
Doors brings to mind Christopher Nolan’s Inception (“a mental architecture that the viewer might or might not follow and get lost in”) and the doorway effect (“The doorway effect or location updating effect is a replicable psychological phenomenon characterized by short-term memory loss when passing through a doorway or moving from one location to another.”)
P.S. The Clock is showing at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, starting at the end of November and running through Jan 18, 2026.
American Millennials Are Dying at an Alarming Rate. “In 2023 there were about 700,000 “missing Americans” — those who died in 2023 but would be alive if they had lived somewhere else.” And it’s not a pandemic thing.
21 Ways People Are Using AI at Work. A high school music teacher used the prompt “make it more Gen X” for helping her write rejection letters that were direct and “thoughtful, but didn’t sound like Mr. Rogers on molly”. 😂
Still one of my favorite McSweeney’s articles: E-mail Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone. “[email protected]”
From John Ganz in Nov 2024: “a list of things I thought the fascism theory of Trumpism predicted could happen”. Many have come to pass. The obstinance in recognizing what’s plainly happening here is upsetting — it wasn’t hard to see it coming.
“We’re seeing an escalation of authoritarian power on many fronts that has grown unmistakable.” Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a “Five-Alarm Fire”.
How to Make Sense of Trump’s Voting Rights Chaos. “It matters that when the president reaches for a strategic distraction, he chooses one that matches Project 2025’s goals.” (Maybe DC’s occupation is, in part, voter intimidation?)
Full Match: Barça 5-0 Madrid (2010 El Clásico)
The other day I was surprised to learn that several years ago, FC Barcelona streamed the entire match of their Nov 2010 5-0 dismantling of Real Madrid to YouTube and you can still watch it in its entirety.
The El Clásico match was notable not only for how much Barça dominated the game1 but also for who played (Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol, Busquets, Abidal, Villa, Valdés for FCB; Ronaldo, Di Maria, Benzema, Özil, Xabi Alonso, Sergio Ramos, Casillas for RM) and coached (Pep Guardiola for FCB and José Mourinho for RM).
I remember watching this game. Messi didn’t score because the Madrid defense was trying to put him in the hospital but he assisted on two goals and famously walked off the pitch near the end of the match, right past Cristiano Ronaldo, looking at the scoreboard and grinning.
The teams met four more times that year, in just a span of 18 days: a 1-1 La Liga draw, a 1-0 Real Madrid victory in the Copa del Ray final, and a pair of matches in the Champions League semis that ended with an aggregate score of 3-1 in favor of Barça, who went on to a dominating 3-1 win against Man United in the final. That 2010-2011 Barcelona club is considered one of the best club teams of all time.
- From ESPN’s game commentary: “It’s hard to articulate just how excellent Barcelona have been tonight. The way they knock the ball around so audaciously is thrilling to watch. Xavi and Iniesta have never looked like ceding control.”↩
James Dobson Is Dead, Was A Monster. “The world is a much worse place as a result of his life’s work; it would be a better place had he never been born.”
Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad. “It is worth taking the time, in light of the president’s recent words, to revisit some of…the first-person accounts of formerly enslaved people discussing the myriad horrors they endured.”
“For many, the idea of a ‘frog sauna’ might sound bizarre,” but this simple solution is saving some Australian frogs from a deadly fungus.
Has anyone tried these replacement memory foam ear tips for AirPods Pro 2? Greedy for (even) better noise cancellation and sound quality…
The Four Players That Span the Entire History of the NBA
Yesterday I posted an incredible fact about LeBron James: he has played against 35% of all of the players that have ever played in the NBA. Wondering about the Great Span of the NBA, I looked for the oldest player from LeBron’s rookie season, then for the oldest player in that player’s rookie season, and so on.
What I found is that just four players span almost the entire 79-year history of the league: Bob Cousy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Willis and LeBron James.
- The NBA was founded in 1946
- Bob Cousy, played 1950-1970 (14 seasons)
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, played 1969-1989 (20 seasons)
- Kevin Willis, played 1984-2007 (21 seasons)
- LeBron James, played 2003-present (22 seasons)
What’s more, all four are still alive: James is 40 years old, Willis is 62 years old, Abdul-Jabbar is 78 years old, and Cousy is 97 years old. Collectively, the four of them have either played with or against almost all of the players that have ever played in the NBA. Incredible.
Is It Time to Move On From Dr. Seuss? “Isn’t 65 years of Green Eggs and Ham enough? What new books will become beloved for generations? ‘We need to let go of the idea that the lone white male author represents the pinnacle of children’s literature.’”
Cognitive resistance training is the defense against slop and brainrot. “Every hard task you delegate is a rep you didn’t do, a pattern your neurons didn’t carve deeper.”
The Hand-Painted Storefront Signs of Detroit by Ron Miller
Ron Miller is one of the most prolific sign painters in Detroit. Photographer Andrew Anderson has collected dozens of images of Miller’s signs from Google Street View.
Ron Miller has been painting signs since 1978. He loves adding color to the neighborhood with his work. He has no website, no email and works all by word of mouth in Detroit.
Anderson also made a map of the locations of Miller’s signs. And here’s the man himself:
(thx, jordan)
John Roberts and the death of rule of law in America. “The Supreme Court was never intended to function like this. Never before has it entertained such challenges from the President, and never before has it decided them so flippantly.”
Israel Says It Killed a Hamas Commander. It Killed a Pulitzer-Winning Journalist. “The Israeli military made no attempt to obscure this brazen strike on civilians, which is a war crime.”
Daniel Day-Lewis stopped acting in 2017 after Phantom Thread. He’s unretired to star in a film called Anemone, co-written by Day-Lewis with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who also directed. Here’s the trailer.
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