during the covid shutdowns I tried getting back into photography but was frustrated that I couldn't take pictures of birds with my old camera and lenses, so I saved up for a bigger lens, and then an even bigger lens, and now it's like my main interest lol

A white breasted nuthatch, eyes-closed, sitting on the fingers of an outstretched hand

In my mid-20s I had a close encounter with a white breasted nuthatch that was disoriented and hopping around in an intersection outside of my job, so I shooed it onto the grass and it hung out with me for a few minutes. A birder coworker identified it for me and recommended I get a monocular (cont)

Commentary! the Musical is truly an all-timer. you hate to hand it to em

When I was a child I assumed that mimicking Lumière’s French accent meant I was speaking French. I’ve since learned better yet am once again unsure.

What I love about this (and a lot of beetle moses comics) is how yes, there's a really good visual gag, but ALSO the emotions behind the gag are rendered so lovingly. Look at the expression on the dude's face in panel 1! The clasped hands! It's honestly very sweet!!

"WE'VE LEARNED NOTHING, YOU'LL VOTE FOR WHOEVER WE TELL YOU TO VOTE FOR"

This is one of the best pieces of pop culture writing I've read in the past couple of years. These excerpts are great but you need to read how the build to that last one. Goddamn. Thank you @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social and @popheist.com

Occasionally need to repost this Astro Boy panel where Dr. Ochanomizu's butt looks like the Bernie Sanders logo.

i love starting with "lots of strange reactions to this game" and following that up with the strangest reaction yet

people who say this act like if they weren't at the airport they'd be at home curing cancer. what exactly are your big plans for your extra 45 minutes at home you fuckin loser

genuinely sick as hell

apollo justice: ace attorney is a 2026 period piece

Being disappointed with this movie for not fleshing out the relationship before The Incident...I simply have no idea what would lead someone to have this expectation. Let alone think it would be somehow improved in doing so

Kind of shocked at how multiple reviews of The Drama have hinged on "this movie isn't the imaginary one in my head that's interested in exploring something completely different"

Superman is awesome and if you can’t find a way to tell a good Superman story without it being boring, sincerely, skill issue

The idea that this show expects you to recognize the nuance of this—that Mohan WAS allowing her personal life to distract her from providing care, but that her panic attack is not her fault and Robby is an asshole for getting on her case about it—is exactly why it has fandom accounts so mad

Mohan apologized to Robby for letting her mom distract her from work. Which she did! She had her phone on her with the ringer on and kept answering it, for hours! The show trusts you to understand that Robby getting mad at her for her panic attack is a projection on his part!

People in the Pitt fandom will say anything. "Mohan apologized to Robby for having a panic attack". No she didn't. That isn't true

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

"they're replacing it with a version that only works on windows 11" even worse

Ok Amazon removing support for older kindles AND shutting down the PC app is an act of war. You simply cannot do these two things this close together

On January 10, 2022, the Knicks played the San Antonio Spurs at the Garden. It was Pride night. Richards was there, attending with a friend. An 18-page report prepared by Eversole's Threat Management Group and reviewed by WIRED shows just how closely she was being monitored. 07:10:20 // CAM 0241 // scans her ticket to section 102, Row 8, Seat 5 07:11:14 // CAM 1434 // goes up terrace escalators on level 3 to level 6 concourse 07:12:52 // CAM AC10 // hugs usher Appendix A of the report has a screenshot of the embrace, with Richards circled in red. 08:08:58 // CAM 1093 // talking with F&B worker at the Draft Kings Bar 08:10:49 // CAM 0512 // pays for the drinks 08:31:19 // CAM 0485 // eating at a table It goes on and on. At 8:48 pm, camera 0489 spots another quick hug with an MSG “membership experience executive” (there's a grainy photo in the report's Appendix N). Two minutes and two seconds later, the same camera captures her heading into the women's bathroom. Her exit is noted after precisely two minutes and five seconds.

The owner of MSG and the Knicks compiled this kind of second-by-second surveillance of a trans woman while they were in the arena. They're doing this at all venues owned by James Dolan of perceived enemies. Crazy, crazy shit.

www.wired.com/story/madiso...

Flamigosis 🦩

a short freewheeling (and free!) post about The Pitt fandom and what their deal is open.substack.com/pub/capybaro...

If you get mad at THE PITT for not doing what you wanted THE PITT to do, you should try writing your own shit. I mean it! That's an impulse you can put to use instead of just being an entitled fan acting like art exists to meet your desires.

When your father is a professor and your mom directed Salaam Bombay

it’s really sad and confusing to watch the fandom attempt to make The Pitt into something more complicated than what it is and what it, in fact, needs to be: a simple way for Noah Wyle to deliver to me secret messages containing the instructions for my missions

the pitt season 3 episode 1, scene 1: robby rides into work on his motorcycle, returning from his sabbatical. in his new sidecar sits baby jane doe, wearing an infant-sized motorcycle helmet

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...