Opinion | Hollywood’s Superrich Supervillain

"Earlier this month, he entertained a small group of around 30 Hollywood bros (yes, all men) — including the producer Jason Blum, the actor Sean Penn and the billionaire David Geffen — at his house in Beverly Hills to watch a game and have dinner." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/o...

Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job The FBI director has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

Kash Patel’s colleagues are alarmed by what they say is erratic behavior and excessive drinking, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. More than two dozen people she spoke with described his management failures and conduct that could harm national security.

“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...

What Does Lena Dunham Want to Tell Us? Her new memoir captures the cost of being an impossibly popular target.

In her new memoir, “Girls” creator Lena Dunham “has actually learned from her garrulous and unfiltered excesses—she’s got stories to tell in ‘Famesick’ that blow the roof off, but she’s wielding them with precision this time around,” Sophie Gilbert writes:

As the father of a middle schooler I have seen the rebellion against AI forming there — even using “that’s AI, bro,” not indicating something is literally AI, but that something is metaphorically so — it’s sus, it’s bullshit, it’s bad weird

I think about this cover a lot

I Guess We're Just Waiting Around To See If This Demented Psychopath Kills Everyone | Defector There is a particular indignity that comes from living in America, derived from the experience of waking up in the morning to see reports that Donald Trump has said something profoundly evil, and…

"We made one of the dumbest, most evil people this country has ever produced the President—twice!—and this is the consequence." defector.com/i-guess-were...

For me, the question isn’t whether generating art with AI is good or bad. It’s just definitionally impossible. Art is what humans create to express the nonliteral. An algorithm, however much data it has, has no sense of the nonliteral. It might make something that pleases you, but it can’t make art.

AI-generated image that's supposed to say Trump presidential library but is glitched out in the way that AI does words sometimes

Did I say presidential library? I meant PRESIDERFPIAL EIRRAABG

Want to feel old? The Lindy West Modern Love episode came out 28 days ago.

The Surprising Reason for the New Homophobia Americans are burned-out, frustrated, and hunting for scapegoats.

This is brilliant, rigorous, and enlightening. Puts together so much I hadn't quite aligned. www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

#weekendplans

Did you ever see the TV movie with Fairuza Balk and Tim Curry

This horrific story gets worse when you find out how this young woman originally came to the US: as a 17-year-old on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane

Margaret Thatcher once declared that “there is no such thing” as society. She always insisted that what she meant was that “society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.“ Trump, however, and the Trumpified Republican Party, might actually subscribe to the way her critics understood her point—that society doesn’t exist, and that therefore none of us has any responsibilities or obligations to anyone else, other than the ones we choose to have. Life is more complicated than that, especially when you’re trying to make war on a state that can close a strategic waterway that is crucial to the world economy. The Trump administration seems to have neither anticipated nor planned properly for the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil is transported. Iran has begun firing at ships in the strait, dissuading commercial traffic from transiting it. Energy prices are almost certain to rise, but so are prices on other products—you need energy to transport goods to meet global market demand. The possibility that the war might destabilize the world economy either was not part of the Trump administration’s plans for this capricious, ill-advised, and arguably unconstitutional military venture, or was not taken seriously. American war planners seem to have not factored in that, despite being adversaries, the U.S. and Iran are interconnected in vital ways that waging war on Iran would disrupt.

Wrote about how MAGA is a rebellion against the reality of interdependence, and how that led the Trump administration to completely ignore the potential fallout of going to war with Iran. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Friendship, on Demand AI chatbots offer relationships that are low effort, completely personalized—and hollow.

and with so much empathy for the loneliness many people are experiencing, and the difficulty and time it takes to make human friendships, many of the experts I spoke to were not convinced that AI is better than nothing. It could end up being worse than nothing.

www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

The Forgotten Female Pilots of World War II The WASPs risked their lives flying for the Army. But for decades, the U.S. government refused to recognize their military service.

for the April issue, I wrote about my amazing grandmother, the forgotten women pilots of World War II, and the nature of progress: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Unambiguous example of the Kardashian curse

The Women Leaving the New Right Defectors say the movement has dropped the pretense of protecting women and is now openly “cruel and fickle.”

“You almost don’t realize what’s happening until five years later,” Anna says, “when you look back and you’re like, Oh gosh, I was being used.” She also blames herself: “I was too frivolous with ideas.” nymag.com/intelligence...

Oh no www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...

Ayatollah Khamenei's son owns £50m London flats overlooking Israeli embassy Luxury Kensington apartments linked to Mojtaba Khamenei spark security fears as experts warn the properties could be used as a potential surveillance platform

Of course he does www.standard.co.uk/news/london/...

Incredibly depressing chart lol. Barely moving the needle!

I get hangovers from extroversion now

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints.

One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

The kids don't know about the Amanda Bynes poster hastily airbrushed to avoid implying she endorsed peace

Two photos. The first shows Catturd tweeting: Name one US inspired regime change that hasn't ended in absolute disaster The next tweet shows him posting an AI illustration of Khamenei turned into a pile of dust. It says "I'm eliminated."

Two tweets. The first shows Laura Loomer promoting her show, where she says "A message has been sent that we are not interested in going back to the way politics were prior to Donald Trump, prior to 2016. We don't want warhawks. We don't want any more Neocons. We want American First. Period. End of discussion." The next tweet says: Today is a great day. Our military is amazing. @PeteHegseth is an absolute killer. Now you see why the Deep State worked so hard against him. It’s great having a Sec War who has Infidel literally tattooed on his body. He actually gets it. God bless him.

Two tweets. The first shows Will Chamberlain tweeting: The Republican Party is no longer the party of regime change and endless wars. If you want to be its standard-bearer that is a non-negotiable position. The next tweet shows him posting "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead." The tweet has a USA flag attached.

Two tweets. The first shows Gunther Eagleman tweeting: "Warmonger Lindsey Graham just rushed to Fox to advocate for U.S. involvement as soon as he could. He is also pushing for a US-backed regime change in Iran. I would like to renominate Graham to get a one-way ticket to the frontlines of every war he wants America involved in." There's an attached video of Graham speaking. The next shows Eagleman tweeting: UST IN! President Trump is HARD AT WORK all weekend after the massive strikes on Iran! He’s already on the phone with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte! Trump is a machine!" There's an attached video of a news segment about the war in Iran.

manufacturing consent through lowly paid influencers

Claims of 40 dead after an Israeli airstrike on a elementary girl’s school in Iran
www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

Meta Says It Cares About Kids. New Documents Tell a Different Story. For years, employees acknowledged a problem with potential child groomers, but prioritized growth over fixes.

NEW: Documents viewed by @michaelscherer.bsky.social and @kait.bsky.social give a candid look at how Meta approaches the issue of child safety. For years, it dragged its feet on features that would help prevent groomers from targeting kids, explicitly prioritizing growth and engagement instead.

I recently discovered something that has markedly improved my experience of daily life: if you Google something and add “-ai” after the search term, it gives you search results without the AI overview

Kash Patel chugging beer.

Pete Hegseth chugging champagne.

FBI Director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth establish a joint task force in the lead-up to war with Iran.