The *credited* screenwriter
Cultural critic and historian, author, podcaster, non-Zionist Jew. Co-host: CHARM OFFENSIVE. Writer: THE METHOD: HOW THE 20TH CENTURY LEARNED TO ACT
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The *credited* screenwriter
I guess we’ll have to wait a few years to find out that it was ghost written by Agent Torture McMurder of the NSA or whatever
anyway it’s shocking that no one was able to predict that when the George W. Bush administration gave itself unreviewable powers to murder and imprison people, those powers were eventually going to get used intentionally on noncombatants
My main question about Kathryn Bigelow’s latest is how involved the national security state was this time.
lmao Willie
BREAKING: On a 2-1 vote, D.C. Circuit denies the Trump administration's request to let Trump fire a Federal Trade commissioner during appeals. Citing Humphrey's Executor, about the FTC: "To grant a stay would be to defy the Supreme Court's decisions that bind our judgments. That we will not do."
Read it three times, thanks. My annoyance is with how sentimental (and unscary) Del Toro’s forays into horror are, and it feels like this source material is triggering all his worst impulses.
Digging into this further… the narrator has no other listed credits or website or anything else… the company that produced it (“cicero marketing”) has a truly bizarre slate of books… I smell a rat!
I think I just listened to an audiobook narrated by an LLM-generated voice. Truly bizarre line delivery choices, odd pauses (for ex between “mademoiselle” and the character’s surname), mispronounced words etc.
Mary Shelley isn’t sentimental the way GDT is tho.
This is pretty much what i would have expected. Sigh.
Ah well nevertheless
We’re all waiting for this guy to weigh in
One of Nichols (and Nicholson’s) best films!!!
seth rogen in The Studio…the huge glasses, the silver beard…peak jewish eroticism
Okay phew!!!
Me as I bleed out from the gunshot wound after bringing a knife to a gunfight : I still have the moral high ground!!! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/o...
BREAKING: President Trump leaves the White House this morning.
Man, the things I don’t post.
BREAKING: President Trump leaves the White House this morning
As a former theater kid I can only imagine what the interior monologue of the ball kids is right before they run out into court.
I remember when quite a lot of people, including some who are mutuals me, insisted that this would never become the consensus.
BREAKING: President Trump leaves the White House this morning
Don’t be reasonable! Fight to win!
It’d be like if I was in sandwich research and then put cheese on a slice of ham without the bread and called it a sandwich. You’d be like “no, this might be a step towards a sandwich but it isn’t a sandwich”
Sure, but they are not actually artificially intelligent. They do not have intelligence. The goal of AI computing research is to eventually create actual artificial intelligence, which it has not yet.
I’m not saying these tools don’t have legitimate uses. Just like using Timesmachine or newspapers dot com is easier than a microfiche. But we should be careful to describe them accurately.
These tools can mimic (to some extent, with many faults) the outputs of human consciousness: language, images, etc. But they do not have the actual consciousness that created those things. They do this by stealing the work of conscious beings and pastiching it.
Companies name their LLMs Claude or whatever because they want you to think of them as things with consciousness. They do not have consciousness. They are sophisticated, energy-gobbling, programs. They’re tools.
If you are, like me, generally opposed to how Large Language Models are being positioned and used (and not regulated currently) one very simple thing you could do is to stop using the term “AI” to describe them. When you do, you’re buying into the linguistic and conceptual framework of your enemies.
I feel like there is not enough attention being paid to LONG STORY SHORT, which is the best tv show I’ve seen in quite a bit.
I went to see the Wizard www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/m...
"Air Force Communications Command," slide 16 of 24 [gallery]
There are at most two good bond movies and Sean Connery isn’t in either of them
graphic design is my passion
Yes the original people calling it a slur are idiotically buying into the idea that these glorified search engines have personhood
You can't have a slur against AI, but you can against the people who believe in AI personhood, and that one is "botlickers"
An example of how we’ve let LLM companies dictate the terms of this conversation. using this Image that implies machines and LLMs are capable of feelings and then using this term “slur” to describe insulting…a complicated search algorithm.
“1936 (Taylor’s Version)”
It’s often that a single year has one great movie in it and it’s not in English! (Zing!)
How the west was won and where it got us Catapult Turn you inside out
JUST GUTS
Gasped at the preview for the new Springsteen biopic... Couldn't BELIEVE T Ryder Smith is in it as a car salesman.
Amazingly for a franchise property it appears to be made by humans with an actual visual sensibility who have things they are interested in exploring in a meaningful way, which puts it miles ahead of most television.
Chili the relaxed queen
If a dude offered to help you write crappy memos and essays, and you found out they were also helping children kill themselves, would you keep working with that dude?
When I was a kid, there were only two movie lengths: one VHS tape long or two VHS tapes long
James Cameron’s estimated net worth is $800M
(Prometheus is pretentious incoherent nonsense)
Counterpoint: there are only two good alien properties, maybe three if you count Isolation, and so you might as well try to make the non alien stuff in your alien show interesting instead.
Do people not realize what sorts of incentives they set up for politicians when they say "I'll vote for you no matter what your policies are!"? All that does is tell them that yes, they can adopt the worst policies.
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
lmao jake
Here's my big Paul Newman question: How did he manage to drink that much and be that hot for that long? Like I saw him in the bathroom line at a performance of Chicago in 1996 and he *still* looked good.
All I ask is if you are going to run a red light you at least act ashamed and not flip me the bird as I am trying to cross the street
The idea in here is very clever, but the idea that adding more gamesmanship and complexity to voting will lead to improved outcomes is, I think, a little naive.
The honest answer is that the tv is right there. Sigh.
They do not accept that I have work to do today.
Isaac Chotiner interviewed Biden's close friend and last ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and in the interview Jack Lew explicitly defends Israel killing children. Lew's defense of this is so offensive that Isaac Chotiner interrupts him twice and then says outright that he's wrong.
💯
Man just wait until Geraldine hears about roads.
Just an incredible collection of AI slop accounts, pay-to-play follow farmers, and wizened Clinton Machine minions rallying behind Newsom as he tries to get elected president in August of 2025 like a total goofball
![Paulley Ticks@tomadelsbach.b... • 1d @ Joined Nov '24 BREAKING: GAVIN NEWSOM SAVES THE ENTIRE F'N WORLD!!! #GavinNewsom #DonaldTrump [some awful midjourney shit]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qjzrpzlcmir3bkss4b5nh6ox/bafkreih52kkoeffszk4j3tqyehvspy3k4c5v5pvyeulwxfui6ruu5hwsti@jpeg "Click to view full size")
![CHERYL @chery|2877.bsky.so. Follow Farming Joined Oct '24 So was Kamala, Hillary .... • 10h #Pinks #ProudBlue [AI slop of Newsom wearing a hat that says NEWSOM WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERY THING]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qjzrpzlcmir3bkss4b5nh6ox/bafkreielg6nbahaf6w356uos7r5hfpmtkggsjvtneotusu7jc6j3gjgsme@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Wow we really are just doing the 90s culture war playbook again.
Very rarely is the obvious so plainly said but it is worth reminding people that one of the reasons that liberal support for Israel has plummeted is the majority, if not all, of pro-Israel arguments today rest upon fundamentally illiberal premises. Liberals, at least serious ones, don't like that.
Important update from the Times on the chilling effect the Trump White House is having on museums: (Gift link!) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/a...
The Breeders
By this piece’s own logic, the Palestinians should refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist so long as Likud and its allies have not been “eradicated” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
I just watched RAPADO, one of the films credited with kicking off New Argentine Cinema, and I feel like there is something I’m missing. Clearly lots of people went nuts for this movie, but it seems very aimless and dull and uninspired to me.
"I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING STRANGERS ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN"
Sure, and that’s covered in the book too. I do not name and discuss every individual and organization who was part of the advocacy effort though, because there is only so much of the reader’s time one can take up!
There was a lot of activism to save all of the various fellowships from lots of different groups, but literature was successfully saved because of a specific GOP congressman and his wife!
Gonna cover Lighght?
There is not! Next book (The Perfect Moment: American Art, Censorship, and the Forgotten Origins of the Modern Culture Wars) is mostly about the visual arts and performance art.
Sorry to disappoint!
(It’d be better if panelists and the arts council also refused to meet, but I’m not holding my breath on that one!)
I also just want to reiterate: In its current form, the NEA is being used to further the ideological agenda of the ruling party and even if that party were liberal Democrats, it would still be wrong. Arts organizations should not work with or accept funding from the NEA in its current form, period.
Also, like many people following the NEA story, it remains totally unclear what the future of the agency is. Many of us thought it would be done away with because the original Trump 2026 budget blueprint called for that. It appears instead they want to use it to make propaganda.
Fun fact: The literature fellowships were the only arts fellowship that survived the last right wing assault on arts funding in the mid-1990s. The reason they survived? The wife of one (1) congressman convinced him they had to stay. (Look for the whole story in my new book June of next year!)
I just want to note, in the midst of my rage, that the idea that caving on trans kids in sports would’ve somehow prevented this or sapped the political will around this is nonsensical, and anyone peddling that shit has no place in Dem politics archive.ph/2025.08.21-2...
Getting in touch with my Jewish roots:
Everybody knows that facts don’t care about your feelings. What my book presupposes is… maybe they do?
The Democratic Party leadership when they see their voter registration numbers crumble:
Yeah, the logic is not confusing. It's the same as post-CU/SpeechNow Dem super PAC logic from Lessig et al - the court created this system, Dems can't disarm, no way to repeal it unless they take back power (for long enough to flip SCOTUS).
BREAKING: Kennedy Center cuts dance programming team as other top producers depart. My latest with @janaykingsberry.bsky.social. Read more: www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
Finally some good news.
Who can forget the Chinese new year tradition of giving loved ones money in a potato chip bag
Ikiru was amazing on the big screen to be clear but I can’t tell if it would’ve been better had the whole thing been told via the funeral with flashbacks of if the funeral sequence was like half the length.
It’s during that period where everything Jeff bridges is in is worth watching even if it’s terrible because he’s always great. (Even like the IRA bomber one or the remake of the vanishing)
The budget for Numan’s Cars album cover was virtually non-existent
What the….
Also there are… 16 other hours in the day where they can use phones!
Or perhaps hoping
If Democratic politicians do not fight this because it's a "distraction," it will simply happen. They need to get in front of every mic and say that we will not allow Trump to destroy American history. He wants a culture war? GIVE HIM ONE. There are no distractions. Have every fight.
There’s this teenager with an incredible voice walking down my street singing a medley of my heart will go on and I will always love you full out for the purpose of annoying her friends and it is amazing
Yeah! But I think he's really just telling on himself. He has no commitments beyond staying in the favor of the powerful and accruing power and wealth to himself, so he assumes that must be true of everyone else.
Yglesias is such a soulless, unprincipled ghoul that he literally cannot conceive of anyone having deeply held convictions.
omg.