When I was a kid my mom smuggled a wedge of parmigano-reggiano back from a business trip to Parma. It was such a revelation that we didn’t even grate it on anything, we just sat there ravenously breaking off pieces and eating it straight. These days I buy the same stuff at Trader Joe’s for like $7

Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 20h ago

Food, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.

suspiciously green bananas is sadly one of the funniest things i’ve read in awhile

A genuine masterpiece of billionaire self-pity. Owner of a vast media conglomerate believes he’s been silenced; upset that people would make assumptions about him based on his public actions and not his personal beliefs; declines to specify what those beliefs are.

Steve Herman@newsguy.bsky.social · yesterday

"While I was silent, others were happy to write my story for me. No more." - David Ellison, chief executive of Paramount Skydance www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/op...

I don't even know what to say. This is real, this is true, so, like, thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. This took over 25 years to happen so if there's any lesson here it's either "keep at it, who knows" or "many people are divorced"

I had a pretty over-the-top crash-out a few months ago when someone accused me of using AI to write something. But goddamn, man. The smug self-satisfaction from these motherfuckers who think they’ve outsmarted you because they saw a TikTok about “AI tells” and don’t actually read.

Julian Sanchez@normative.bsky.social · 2d ago

Almost as depressing as people using AI to write: People who have apparently read so little decent writing that they believe utterly commonplace tools every minimally competent writer employs are AI tells.

There is a 99% chance I would not recognize the name Hasan Piker if some of my least-favorite members of the Democratic Party hadn’t spent the last half-year talking about him obsessively on every platform available to them.

Donie O’Sullivan@donie.bsky.social · 3d ago

"I am not going to be in the same party with Hasan Piker ... if he becomes a force in the Democratic Party, I am out of here," James Carville says on Fox this morning. Reminder: The Left Insurgency airs tonight on CNN at 8p ET.

I know this is just meant to be a thought exercise, but I wrote my 33 1/3 book in about a month after procrastinating on it for the previous five. You probably could too — I’m really not that smart. Give it a shot!

Stop Calling Me Frank@stopcallingmefrank.bsky.social · 5d ago

You have a month to write a 33 1/3 book about the album of your choice. Which record are you going to write about? (No previously covered albums allowed; new shit must come to light: see below.) (For all books in the series: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_1/3) (H/t @monostich.bsky.social

We absolutely need a Poptimism 2 entirely for pre-1954 pop music.

Ned Raggett@nedraggett.bsky.social · 5d ago

The way the history of pop was warped by boomer criticism/historiography into a hard dividing line between a supposed glop past and Elvis-and-everything-after with a rock focus was a massive reductive mistake that is still playing out.

I’ve run out of ways to talk about how much this guy sucks. www.wsj.com/business/med...

Exclusive | Newsom Expresses Concerns About State Antitrust Suit Against Paramount

The California governor has told people involved in the suit that blocking the $81 billion deal could harm Hollywood jobs.

wsj.com

Like the hypocrisy and the open corruption, the naked, brazen lying is itself aspiring authoritarianism. They aren't lying to cover anything up. They're saying, "We know we're lying. You know we're lying. And we know you know we're lying. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

BASH: But it peeled off. Why did that happen? BURGUM: It didn't peel off. There was vandalism. There was box cutters. There have been 7 arrests. BASH: There are photographs of people cutting a 350 foot gash in the reflecting pool? BURGUM: Dana, I'm not sure why you keep questioning it

The president spending weeks telling increasingly baroque lies that no one actually believes about something no one else even cares about, going so far as to call in the National Guard and have people arrested over it, then abruptly losing interest … just something the happens in this country now.

Scott MacFarlane@macfarlanenews.bsky.social · 5d ago

FLASH: Justice Dept seeks to dismiss Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn Trump Admin acknowledges: "Damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor"

Here’s how bonkers this FIFA situation is getting: the ex-Goldman Sachs guy on staff quit and said “damn guys, don’t you think we’ve got enough money already?” www.reuters.com/sports/socce...

Infantino's senior advisor Cordeiro resigns following proposal to sell FIFA stake

Carlos Cordeiro, senior advisor to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, resigned with immediate effect on Friday in protest at proposals to sell a stake in the World Cup, ​calling the plan "a bad deal for...

reuters.com

Andrew Barker@barkerrant.bsky.social · 5d ago

Even for FIFA this is getting insane. Infantino is really going to blow up one of the biggest, cushiest grifts in all of world sports just to squeeze a few bucks out of the Kushners. sports.yahoo.com/articles/gia...

Even for FIFA this is getting insane. Infantino is really going to blow up one of the biggest, cushiest grifts in all of world sports just to squeeze a few bucks out of the Kushners. sports.yahoo.com/articles/gia...

Fifa executive puts job on line in scathing attack of Gianni Infantino over World Cup plan

Fifa’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour has not followed senior advisor Carlos Cordeiro out the door but accepts he could lose his job by speaking out

sports.yahoo.com

what if we made an entire product out of the most abusive possible use case

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d ago

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

No shortage of shameless liars among this crew, but this guy’s willingness to cheerfully spout the most ridiculous horseshit you’ve ever heard without even a light coating of half-truths, all while making That Face, is pretty special.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5d ago

Hassett: "Data centers are very good for towns bc they create so many jobs & bring people in with high incomes that can buy houses & stuff like that. So if you take a sleepy town that hasn't seen much in the last 30 years & put a data center there, there are gonna be a bunch of happy residents."

finally, the Democratic party has a plan.

Pixar receives a $26.2 Million Tax credit to keep film jobs in CA, and immediately lays off 10% of its work force, after making over a billion from Toy Story 5, the highest-grossing film of 2026.

Pixar's Layoffs Came Days After Receiving a $26 Million Tax Credit. So I Wrote California Officials.

State tax incentives should create and retain jobs for Californians, not subsidize corporate layoffs.

amidamidi.substack.com

Ridiculous! Now, to unwind with a quiet game of solitaire…

Sarah T Roberts, PhD@ubiquity75.xyz · last wk.

Um... www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/b...

Honestly laughing out loud that 88-year-old shit-stirring Olympian Joyce Carol Oates looked up in the sky, saw the Batsignal, and headed to her laptop. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

Joyce Carol Oates Defends ‘Odyssey’ Against Translator’s Viral Slam: “Crude Language of MAGA Folks”

The celebrated author weighs in on Christopher Nolan's film: “No reason why Nolan, or anyone else, should not re-imagine/re-envision a classical hero.”

hollywoodreporter.com

“SK Hynix’s quarterly profit rose a smaller-than-expected 557%” definitely feels like a sentence that will be quoted incredulously in a lot of Econ books someday. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

SK Hynix’s Record Profit Misses Investors’ Lofty AI Expectations

SK Hynix Inc.’s quarterly profit rose 557%, but missed expectations, fueling fears that an AI boom that has propelled the semiconductor industry may be decelerating.

bloomberg.com

At no other point in my lifetime could I possibly imagine a broadcaster, of any ideology, looking at Ross Douthat and saying “now there’s a man who belongs on television.”

Oliver Darcy@oliverdarcy.bsky.social · last wk.

Scoop: I’m told that Ross Douthat is exiting The NYT and is expected to take a role at “60 Minutes.” News expected to be announced soon.

Treasured high school memory: an English teacher showing the Roger Corman/Vincent Price “The Raven” in class, and letting it play for a solid half hour before admitting she hadn’t watched it beforehand. youtu.be/d4lC7cMCrD4

The Raven (1963) ~ Pillory And Magic Scene | Vincent Price & Boris Karloff

YouTube video by SWORD OF RHUDAUR

youtu.be

Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · last wk.

Studio execs are going to want to adapt more poems for the big screen now

This is worth reading. Some razor-sharp put-downs, fascinating observations, and spot-on critiques. Also some fairly glib gripes where she seems to misunderstand Nolan’s field just as much as she believes he misunderstands hers. And that’s totally fine! You don’t have to pick sides here.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · last wk.

This review is like being Chotiner’d: “Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odysseyis not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely.” First paragraph, I’m dying www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

the thing about having actual principles is that when a politician I respect does some stupid shit I can just be like, “that sucks, knock it off” instead of inventing an imaginary world where I’m forced to defend stupid shit for procedural 4d chess reasons

Should I ever somehow find myself in conversation with the CEO of CVS, I’d love to tell him about the time I spent 12 minutes button-mashing and staffer-signaling to get the deodorant case unlocked, punctuated by the cashier telling me “I’d just buy all this stuff on Amazon if I didn’t work here.”

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · last wk.

As good as many of you said. I really appreciate the unambiguous point that this primarily a racist moral panic before unpacking the nuanced second-order explanations. dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to...

nobody should use twitter (you don’t have to use bluesky! just not twitter!) but very specifically journalists and entertainment reporters using it has been astoundingly corrosive for our civil dialogue, because we have completely lost any semblance of “saying this is unacceptable”

Ed Burmila@edburmila.bsky.social · 2w ago

It would help a lot if a lot of journalists and pundits weren't using Twitter as their assignment editor, several years into its transition into Stormfront.

I honestly wasn’t worried about AI replacing me until I learned it could also accomplish tasks like “got confused uploading files to Google Drive” and “gave up and downplayed its failure.” Probably faster than me too.

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 2w ago

The New York Times ran some tests to see if AI could replace an office worker and realized the fundamental flaw of LLM-based AI agents; they don’t follow instructions. The funny thing is how often AI bros excuse this by saying humans aren’t good at following instructions either. Computers got worse

This girl being 23 and on a five-year run of making pretty good pop music, proselytizing for elder-millennial-beloved bands, and having completely admirable politics is starting to seem a little suspicious. Like, what’s she actually trying to pull here?

Julie Cohen ❌👑@filmmakerjulie.bsky.social · 2w ago

At 23, Olivia Rodrigo is leading the way on being an artist/activist. Worth watching her new videos for the Center for Reproductive Rights. She's caring, committed and informed. Good 4 You, Olivia. I'm a fan. www.billboard.com/music/music-...

Weird Al seems like a real mensch indeed but it sucks so bad we all are surprised by a single rich guy going "hm I have enough money. I'm not gonna do anything shitty to get a little more."

When I started expressing sympathies for my friend who lost her 15-year-career at USAID for no reason last year, she very sharply rebuked me with, “I just lost *my job*, a lot of people are going to die.”

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w ago

‘I got carried away’: Elon Musk expresses regret about Doge and wading into Trump’s orbit