The dialogue in this scene is so crisp. Pay attention to how many times Tony and the men say "thing" and "the guy" instead of using specific nouns.
There are no concrete reference points in this conversation. It's just violence and fraud for the sake of violence and fraud, since time immemorial.
"time immemorial" typically means "hell if I know" in terms of whether someone knows the origin of something.
Which speaks to a lot of traditions - if you don't know where they came from or what context they best work in, why are you doing it?
One of my favorite conceits in The Sopranos is how the guys appeal to traditions that go back to "time immemorial" because they lack the knowledge and language to actually describe the things they're talking about.
Ash's acceptable list of Mom games:
Venba
Silksong
Alien Isolation
Horizon Zero Dawn
Returnal
i think a good question to ask is: why aren't there any "mom games" but "dad game" is a defined genre
just checking that we all remain aware that when the beauty aesthetics of women (both real and illustrated) veer towards 1) being dangerously thin and 2) looking unnaturally young, it's usually paired with the rise of fascism, glorifying an image of helplessness
okay
like I said, just checking
Technologies often take longer to reach full adoption than the discourse around them makes it seem, even in wealthier countries with more technology infrastructure. E.g., cable television finally got to 80% of US households only in 2000, with its peak at 90% in 2010. Global internet connectivity (hugely boosted through smartphone adoption) finally passed 50% in 2018, still very unevenly distributed between urban and rural areas, and smartphones have also been one of the most rapidly adopted technologies ever. But widespread global connectivity is a pretty recent phenomenon, its impacts are less than 20 years old, and it will still take a long time to reach true universal internet adoption.
load-bearing footnote for most of the things I write about music
Older internet slang was based around the neuroses of the American upper middle class - demonstrating control of politeness and vulgarity to mock social conventions, flaunting contempt for the less educated. AAVE outcompeted because it's more useful & relevant - it's how more people actually talk
Also, back when the dominant group on the internet was largely white, college educated American nerds, internet slang was formal/informal parodic wordplay (you, le ebin sir, have pwned TEH INTERNETS for today). Internet slang is now AAVE because now access to technology isn't just for the top 5%
"Housing unaffordability is an indictment of this country."
I experience housing-related depression and today has been one of those days. This is not a terribly hopeful piece, but it really helps to hear any homeowner acknowledge, in a realistic way, that change is needed.
Summary of the ELECTRIC WORLD ORDER argument I presented yesterday at Wesleyan university. Joint work with @katemac.bsky.social
'Iran War Shockwaves & the dawn of the Electric World Order'
(slides are publicly available here)
tinyurl.com/PolycrisisWesleyan
A picture of a library shelf with a small rolled up note on it. The note says “read this” in child’s handwriting.
A picture of the note unrolled. In the same child’s handwriting it reads “beware of the future!!”
Still thinking about this note I found in the children’s section of the public library when I worked there back in 2018. This kid tried to warn us…
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part.
mammals are so badass that the one that rules the ocean can't even breathe underwater
This was far too relatable and yet, maybe, just maybe, better things are possible
it used to be you were taking a huge reliability risk buying used... but the reality is that cars have become vastly more reliable in recent decades. 100,000 miles is just getting broken-in nowadays.
I have a new piece in Time Magazine about building a Wage Standard.
Link: time.com/article/2026...
The big secret about vibe coding is that it's exactly as meandering and mistake-prone as every other type of LLM, the difference is that because it can test and refine its own output (and summon up addl instances to do it), it can sometimes produce usable results as long as its tests are correct
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
Nothing says Friday like thirty 1950s bus tickets from Milwaukee. www.presentandcorrect.com/blogs/blog/g...
A typographic carnival.
I fucking love Raymond Williams’s Marxism and Literature. I found some Riceour helpful on metaphor. Habitations of the Veil by Rebecka Fisher on metaphor and African American poetics/lit was super interesting.
Jawdroppingly helpful. This is what we need to educate people about how our networks actually work—and are governed—under the UI.
One of the most persistent myths in energy is that high-renewables grids require months or even years of backup to survive “dunkelflaute” — those rare periods of low wind and solar output.
That claim is often far more ideology than analysis.
www.energyintel.com/00000194-848...
This is only tangentially related, but I remember going to Versailles and learning they didn't have toilets and that servants shat in stairwells and like Teotihuacan had proper plumbing 300 years prior. But ok.
I truly think it depends on the person. I watched a lot of TV, but I also spent a ton of time with friends, in person, face-to-face, in the real world. I'd argue that spaces for gatherings like malls, small event venues, etc. has had more of an impact on in-person going away than smart phones.
i wonder if AOC’s early clashes with the democratic establishment PLUS the unhinged reaction to her from republicans have given her some of the “both sides hate her so she must be Independent” vibe that goes a long way with low propensity voters
NEWS > COMMENTARY Germany's center left is on the brink of oblivion
All around the world, center left parties are desperate to find a solution to their unpopularity that isn’t giving up horrible neoliberal policies that everyone hates
NASA did this with despite a budget slashed to lemonade stand numbers so the government could subsidize 20 gazillion dollars of capitalist vanity projects that have gotten about as far from earth as a well thrown football.
The greatest
Background paintings by Kevin Dart for The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show (2015–2017), DreamWorks Animation Television