Apparition

Always grimly fascinating to imagine what Hegseth and a lot of Trump's other looks-the-part-on-TV hires think their jobs entail

Crichton is such an interesting case, simultaneously a novelist and a Hollywood presence for most of his career. Everything he published under his own name from 1969-1995 got a feature film.

Nowhere near as prolific as King, but I cant think of many other authors Hollywood has trusted in that way

Oh that’s interesting, I didn’t know that but it makes sense. I i remember it coming up overtly in at least one episode but it sounds like a missed a bunch of other references

I dunno where you are in the series but let me just assure you that this does keep happening and the fact that nobody really talks about it doesn’t mean it stops happening. The second X-Files movie has a C-Plot about Scully and Christian numerology

PLURIBUS (2026)

Yeah, my understanding is that periodically draining batteries to zero is old advice NiCad batteries. It's unnecessary for modern lithium batteries and can even be damaging. That 20-80% range seems like the way to go if you wanna play it as safe as possible

Focusing on IEDs feels like the administration's trying to dust off old messaging from the occupation of Iraq to retroactively drum up support for this war. So, so many articles back then arguing that explosively formed penetrator IEDs could've only come from Iran

Long time, first time; this is a wonderful piece. I'm still worried about Arraez's defense, but damn if this story doesn't immediately make me feel like he belongs on the team

"ChatGPT, how can I distance myself from this war while making my bloodthirsty dad sound persecuted?"

The cover of Dinosaur Jr's "I Bet On Sky", with fun stoner art and the band's name set in Arnold Böcklin, an ornate Art Nouveau typeface.

*Squints quizzically. Googles.* Oooooooh, the Dinosaur Jr. font!

Even if you follow trans rights closely you might be surprised how rare it is for a cis reporter to do a story like this, interviewing trans people about the impact a new bigoted law is having on their lives

Selling supplements and workout gear has gotta be a steadier revenue stream. I think stuff like being a solid conversationalist can be taught but I bet it’s not nearly as profitable.

Oh envious! I just showed it to a friend for the first time and was glad to see it held up

Honeydew melons seem pretty bad! I don't love blueberries either, they can be chalky and bland, but I've also had enough blueberries to respect that how they're used matters a lot. Honeydew only ever shows up as fruit salad filler. What is the good honeydew recipe?

Dog house

Totally, TaleSpin's credits do a great job conveying how they want to show to feel, rather than how it strictly does. On the plus side I was surprised on rewatch by how great the art design looks. Like, I'd always attributed my love of Art Deco to Gotham, but really it's Gotham and Cape Suzette

It's true and you're right to say it. So many 80s cartoons look just awful. In retrospect two-thirds of Batman: TAS looked a bit rough depending on which studio was drawing it, but one third of it looks as amazing as we remember

Probably, though the thing with Kurosawa of course is he has dozens of films that beg to be shown in film classes. Maybe the professor was in more of a Sanshiro Sugata mood that week

The quotes around “understanding” are so telling. These dudes want woman who know nothing about the world but who can mother them when they have big feelings about the world. It’s practically gnostic; men toiling in material muck, demanding comfort from women they chain to pedestals

Those nicotine stained drapes add the perfect touch

My podcast app just started supporting individual episode covers. It was so fun to suddenly see all your cool covers that I never knew were!

Teen girl in hospital bed reading from her little clam shell

Is there a technology the left is excited about?" It's called the clamshell e-reader from It Follows, and I've been waiting for it since 2014

Yeah! This is harder to remember than it should be because period stories hardly ever capture the outsider status of old counterculture in the right way. Liking grunge wasn’t something that made unpopular kids secretly cool when people got to know them, often it was part of why they were uncool!

2010s Roger Deakins was tapped into very powerful magic. The year before Skyfall he shot In Time, a little sci-fi heist movie that made basically no impact on the culture. It’s gorgeous. Style for days.

That's weird, she just told me that she didn't even race today.

I once got so into optimizing an editing workflow that I ended up reading a whole wiki on bash scripting, all of Python’s docs, and most of ffmpeg’s man page. At no point while I was accidentally teaching myself how to program did it occur to me that ffmpeg stood for anything

Right? It’s the logo being the exact same that gets me. They want us to believe that the original Zima logo is so iconic, so perfect at selling clear malted beverages that it became that era’s Coca-Cola, a logo completely out of time

I remember someone mentioning this once while criticizing the show and I assumed they were joking

The outcome they want is for trans people to have no public visibility. Bathroom bans offer the same Catch 22, they only serve to make it less safe for trans people and anyone who's the least bit gender-nonconforming to appear in public

It’s livestreaming to the pendulum’s GoFundMe page