Writing a scholarly book about pop culture sometimes means spending 3 hours looking for a quote from Lloyd Bridges (from a skin diving magazine no less) then contextualizing it, then deciding not to use it. What treasure hunt will happen today?
Dr. Cindy Conaway
@drcindyconaway.bsky.social
Professor of Digital Communication and Media Studies at SUNY Empire State University. I study Seinfeld and Digital Humanities.
Does anyone have access to Daily Variety from 1972? There's an article with Lloyd Bridges I need for my research and my university library cannot get.
Finally got ahold of some good heirloom tomatoes and made gazpacho last night. There’s watermelon in it too—which was amazing.
As we go down the Creative Arts Emmy list, we’ve been watching a lot of documentaries. Shooter did not care as much as we did for the ones about Martin Short, John Candy, Mel Brooks, Martin Scorsese or Jayne Mansfield (all good!) but he was mesmerized by Ocean with David Attenborough.
I just looked in my wallet and my money for this ticket is already gone
Kevin Daly@kevinddaly.bsky.social · 2w agoThis looks DELIGHTFUL.
The Ellisons want to MAGA-ify your movies and TV with this Paramount/WB merger. This will make the movies suck way, way more. But they don't care. Experts I spoke with said their goal is political domination, not making movies. www.salon.com/2026/07/20/p...
Paramount/Warner Bros. merger will make media more MAGA — and more boring
Larry and David Ellison's political ambitions will suck the joy out of TV and movies
salon.com
Shooter loved The Reluctant Tourist episode one. He was over it when we watched the Emmy-nominated season 3 episode though (the one with Prince William).
I don't know if you've seen another very recent article on What's On Netflix about the season 2 drops and how it's about something a bit more logical than it seems and a byproduct of the views metric. www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/top-10-...
Is Netflix Facing a Major Season 2 Crisis? Inside the Viewership Drops for 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' and 'Beef'
We dive deep into Netflix's viewership metrics to reveal why hits like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Beef are experiencing major sophomore slumps.
whats-on-netflix.com
There's been a ton of chatter about Netflix's so-called "engagement" problem. I talked to several H'wood insiders about how much of the narrative is real--and what's being blown out of proportion. My latest #Buffering, up now at @vulture.com and in subscriber inboxes www.vulture.com/article/how-...
Panic! At the Netflix
Viewership drops, C-suite shuffles, fewer hits — are things as bad as they seem? “This is a group that’s running out of levers,” says one TV exec.
vulture.com
Book recommendation request: what's an exciting book on technology published during the past year, which graduate students would productively wrestle with? This is for my seminar on technology and innovation, in Georgetown's Learning, Design, and Technology MA program.
Your brain was never designed to doomscroll this much.
Alison Hoens@physioktbroker.bsky.social · 2mo agoIs the human brain designed to cope with ongoing bad news? “Problematic News Consumption (PNC) — a pattern of news engagement that results in preoccupation, dysregulation and disruption to daily functioning”🧪 www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...
I do love that AI inadvertently confirms that our brains work like a muscle, too — use it or lose it. In this way relying on AI is like using a robot to lift weights, like running a marathon in a Honda Civic. You get nothing out of it.
Michael Nabert@sustainablesong.bsky.social · 2mo agoResearch confirms that the more skilled professionals like doctors and software engineers rely on AI, the more their skills degrade. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
maybe your cat is meowing because they're trying to figure out what your deal is
I like that “Widow’s Bay” is from a “Parks and Recreation” writer and answers the question, “What if they made a whole show out of the Pawnee City Hall murals?”
i’m no financial expert, but it looks to me like they’re organizing a hedge fund
New: I wrote about everyone intently watching the long process of removing Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center and how it revealed our insatiable thirst for accountability — and for his humiliation.
The night the letters came down
A marathon livestream of Trump's name being removed from the Kennedy Center was a rare moment of monoculture.
thehandbasket.co
When I lived in NYC my bird finger wore out from all the Voldemort buildings—the Voldemort SoHo was right between the subway and work. So happy when the name came off of that.
Seems unfair that the funniest host in SNL history also gets to be the first trillionaire.
I tried going to a local Mexican restaurant for the great salad with chicken and fresh corn I had there once before. They don’t have it anymore! Nachos had similar ingredients in different proportions but no corn. #sorrynotsorry
Rivals season 2 is fun so far. I’m having concentration issues and the amazing luxe sets and frumpy 80s clothes got me to focus for a while.
I just finished Shameless and am looking for something similarly mid but involving that my husband won’t want to watch as he tends to watch good stuff “in the cultural conversation” with me, but fall asleep about 90 minutes earlier.
I worked on this along with many other folks, and I hope the AI skeptical and curious alike will give it a read. It includes questions to ask yourself as you think about AI's role in your research process, ranging from accidental use to open engagement. We also have scenarios to work through.
Modern Language Association@modernlanguage.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe MLA AI and Research Working Group's new "AI and the Humanities: A Framework for Language and Literary Scholarship" offers questions and case studies on AI literacy, human-centered expertise, and responsibility and ethics to guide discussion and reflection. mlaai.hcommons.org/ai-and-the-h...
Hey, guess what? @utexaspress.bsky.social is having its annual summer sale. What a great time to pick up ✨Gold Dust on the Air✨as your summer beach read 😅. Grab some other UT Press books while you're at it! 40% off print and 50% off ebooks with the code UTXSUMMER. utpress.utexas.edu/9781477329276/
Working on the Seinfeld spreadsheet of over 40,000 media items Seinfeld alums also worked on. Man there was just so much time filler on TV! So many awards shows and tributes/roasts, and clip shows and behind the scenes featurettes!
This looks awesome! A data viz course from the authors of Data Feminism, @laurenfklein.bsky.social and @kanarinka.bsky.social. So excited to teach with these materials! openvisualizationacademy.org/courses/data...
Alberto Cairo@albertocairo.com · 2mo agoBIG NEWS in the Open Visualization Academy: openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/data-femin... We're launching 'Data Feminism for Data Visualization' by @laurenfklein.bsky.social and @kanarinka.bsky.social #dataViz #infographics #dataVisualization #dataJournalism