An audio recording of the audience’s reaction to Star Wars in 1977, synced to the action of the movie. “This audio was recorded in 1977 when my mother took me to see Star Wars.”

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Approvingly citing Musk/X and Zuck/Meta, Substack reiterates its commitment to support Nazis, antisemites, anti-vaxxers, transphobes, and homophobes in spreading disinformation & hate under the guise of “free speech”.

Before he died in 2023, Paul Reubens conducted 40 hours of interviews about his life and career with filmmaker Matt Wolf. These interview form the backbone of Wolf’s two-part documentary series Pee-wee as Himself. The series recently premiered at Sundance and there’s no tr...

I missed this back in October: Venkatesh Rao retired his long-running Ribbonfarm blog. His post is an interesting read, kind of a tour through the era of blogs & social media that Rao believes is now in the rearview.

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The ACLU: Know Your Rights (or, what to do if you are questioned about your immigration status). “You have the right to remain silent and do not have to discuss your immigration or citizenship status with police, immigration agents, or other officials.”

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Nirvana Before They Were Nirvana: Watch Their 1988 Performance Recorded in a Radio Shack. “In those days the group went by the name of Ted Ed Fred.”

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Will Stancil on Bluesky: I don’t know how to say this any louder THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS MORE RADICAL, MORE FASCIST, MORE VIOLENT THAN ANYONE IN MAINSTREAM POLITICS OR MEDIA IS WILLING TO ADMIT OUT LOUD THEY ARE FULLY IN THRALL TO A MOVEMENT OF ONLINE NAZIS THAT WANT...

Season two of Severance is underway and while the first episode didn’t have an opening title sequence, the second episode debuted a new sequence. The season one intro was inducted straight into the Unskippable Intros Hall of Fame and season two’s intro is just as good. Once again, the titles were done by Oliver Latta, who was found by Severance producer Ben Stiller via his Instagram account.

Tags: Oliver Latta · Severance · TV · video

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Interesting: Ooni is coming out with a mixer that they say creates “stronger gluten networks” in your bread or pizza dough. “The stronger the gluten network, the more elasticity and extensibility you get in the dough.”

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America Wouldn’t Know the Worst of a Vaccine Decline Until It’s Too Late. “Should vaccination rates drop across the board, one of the first diseases to be resurrected would almost certainly be measles.”

Paul Krugman on “recovering my freedom” and why he left the NY Times after 25 years. “In 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive.”

Ebooks are now available from Bookshop[dot]org. You can read the ebooks you buy in the browser or with their app, but you can’t read them with an ereader (like the Kindle).

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The Louvre’s upcoming renovation & expansion includes a dedicated room for the Mona Lisa. “The Mona Lisa would be accessible separately from the rest of the museum…with its own ticket.” An estimated 80% of visitors come just to see the Mona Lisa.

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DC superhero Dreamer, Fortnite’s first out trans character (introduced in 2022), is available in the game’s item shop until Jan 31. Brb, totally buying this right now.

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Winners of the 2024 Close-Up Photographer of the Year. “Tadpoles devour the corpse of an adult female toad in Cantabria, Spain.” (Damn nature, you scary!)

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From January 2017, A.R. Moxon on Nazis:

Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is “Nazi.” Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?

Tags: A.R. Moxon · Nazis · politics

A 10-hour ambient cover of Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack, perfect for relaxing, focus, studying, or drifting off to sleep.

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I don’t know about you, but my brain is short-circuiting a bit from the news today, so I was glad to run across this video of Benedict Cumberbatch reading Ross Beeley’s letter published by McSweeney’s in 2011 called An Open Letter to the Gentleman Blow-Drying His Balls in ...

Back in June, I posted about the 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai coming out in theaters; here’s the trailer: I just checked and the 4K version appears to be out on streaming and 4K Blu-ray. The 4K Blu-ray is available from the Criterion Collection and inc...

Reupping this Jamelle Bouie piece from Dec: Now Is Not the Time for Surrender. He’s talking about Democratic politicians and they still are not doing much to oppose Trump. This is driving me *nuts*. Fight, you assholes!

The planned new spinoff of the CBS series “FBI” will focus on CIA agents and is currently titled “FBI: CIA”. 😂 Not even The Simpsons at its peak could have come up with something this nonsensical.

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The full trailer for season three of The White Lotus. “You will leave an entirely different person.”

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Director Denis Villeneuve steps into the Criterion Closet to choose and talk about a few of his favorite films, including Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, Steven Soderbergh’s Che, and Seven Samurai. At one point, he says, “We all look like Smurfs next to Fellini.”

Tags: Criterion Collection · Denis Villeneuve · movies · video

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“NBA greats think this D-II coach is a basketball genius. So why don’t you know who he is?” I love reading about stuff like this.

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I spent too long playing Neal Agarwal’s Simulation Clicker. “Stimulation Clicker takes players on the all-too-familiar journey from ‘this is neat’ to ‘this is ruining my life.’”

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ElevationLab is selling a waterproof AirTag case that provides 10-years of battery life. “Easy assembly: Discard AirTag’s battery and door, place on the custom contact, install AA batteries, screw shut.”

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TabBoo is a browser extension that adds “random jumpscares to sites you’re trying to avoid”.

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The New Yorker is 100 years old this year and part of the celebrations include an exhibition at the NYPL that showcases “founding documents, rare manuscripts, photographs, and timeless cover and cartoon art” from the magazine.

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In June 1971, the BBC aired a segment on a “mysterious” and “niche” sports imported from America called “jogging”. It’s in black & white, which makes it feel even older than it is, and they interview (while jogging!) Tory MP Ernest Marples, who says he often jogs to Parliament from his house in a lounge suit. This is something straight out of Monty Python…more interviews with people while they are running please.

BTW, Wikipedia has this to say about Marples:

In later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.

Once a runner, always a runner. (thx, dunstan)

Tags: Ernest Marples · running · sports · video

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A history of computer screensavers, from dumb terminal screen dimming in the 70s to flying toasters and beyond.

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