Mezentine

Gonna throw this in the broth tonight, get a soup going.

Anyway they also covered “What’s the Matter With Kansas”, a book I found super formative, and I was normal about it. Skill issue.

It landed in this spot for me where it didn’t have the supporting data to be a work of social science, but it didn’t have the ambition to be a really strong work of theory, I was kind of annoyed that it felt like it was playing to my biases.

People are arguing that the book is a work of theory and the hosts missed the entire capitalist critique, but that’s kind of the problem: I recall the book kind of assuming the audience brings in a framework of hostility to consumer capitalism and leverages your instinct to go “Yeah marketing sucks”

I did not expect how many people who listen to If Books Could Kill would turn out to go to the mat for Bullshit Jobs, a book I read back around when it came out and I recall finding pretty frustrating and poorly defined at the time. The fact that it’s very hard to assemble supporting data matters.

“You have to have conversations with your loved ones, saying that we just live in a government system that dehumanizes people,” Chavez said. “But if I’m able to ever change that, one way or another, I’m going to, and I’m going to make sure that the voices of our community are not left off the table”

Rev. Jesse Jackson to be laid to rest at Oak Woods Cemetery, 'part of the city's unrivaled historic fabric' The 173-year-old cemetery — solemn, historic and picturesque — will be the final resting place of the Rev. Jesse Jackson this week.

Today's column looks at what will be the final resting place of the Rev. Jesse Jackson: 19th Century landscape designer Adolph Strauch's solemn and picturesque Oak Woods Cemetery on the city's South Side.

Every time I worry about revisiting an episode of this show it ends up surprising me. Its limitations are visible, it has a very narrow lens on the world, but it seems like most of the time they were trying to do the right thing.

The “she can’t speak English” jokes stay mostly to the realm of mutual incomprehension, although I think as jokes go that’s always going to be fraught territory. And Rob’s realization is that she’s an artist, and he knows a place that will pay her to paint. It feels very deliberately structured.

We just watched the episode of Dick Van Dyke where Rob accidentally hires a maid from Spain and I forgot that this was a story about immigration where, after half an hour of hijinks, Rob wins by saving her from deportation when he realizes he can help her get a job in town.

Golden Age Superman stands head to thigh alone in a panel black at the top and red on the bottom where Superman stands pointing at the reader as he says, "Be wary of unscrupulous operators of gambling games--they are always on the look out for unsuspecting victims."

Third airport.

Okay I totally forgot about the sick as fuck masked orc who speaks for Sauron. This guy fucking rules.

The most impressive feat of this movie is that I genuinely believe Frodo and Sam might be marching to their deaths. They do not expect to make it back.

An orc calls out “Don’t you know we’re at WAR.” but what is an orc’s life when they’re not at war? Are they ever not at war?

This is the best fantasy battle sequences have ever looked.

This movie pays off like a slot machine. I am so much higher on this than I expected, honestly.

This entire Shelob sequence is incredible though. What a fucking great set this cave is.

Return of the King Extended, part 2: of the Umbarans invading from the south are rather “ethnic” coded aren’t they?

Kristi Noem misattributing a paraphrase of Rudyard Kipling to George Orwell really does sum it all up huh

Get fucked Kristi

Mar 4 2026 BlueSky post claiming that it explained why we bombed a school in Iran "INFORMATION THAT IS A DECADE OLD" and had A Claude chat answer as its source

Hey guys this is not a viable source. Besides the fact that any AI system being used by the government presumably has access to more updated date (I sure hope). Claude is not a person, it can't answer questions about why it did something, it confidently lies, it doesn't have access to other's state.

ICE taking steps to close detention center at Fort Bliss, document shows Preparations to shutter Camp East Montana in El Paso come less than eight months after facility’s opening, according to an internal ICE document.

Success! Close all of the concentration camps.

“Preparations to shutter Camp East Montana in El Paso come less than eight months after facility’s opening, according to an internal ICE document --- ending a tumultuous experiment in large-scale detention where three detainees died.“

Passersby in West Ridge Nature Park

know I’m AI-posting a lot today, but holy shit read the linked lawsuit for this. this is probably the worst of these so far, by far (contingent on the brief being accurate, which isn’t guaranteed). the other ones were people with existing ideation not being stopped, this actively pushed him.

Incidentally this is actually a good example of the way that machine learning with text works kinda, in that each word is plausibly similar to the word that comes before and after, but it goes from saying “I will be more diligent” to sounding like it’s gonna take over the world.

It was mostly just a job except I aged like 20 years in a decade.

I founded a multi-million dollar water bottle brand.

"[W]hen I speak with my fellow students ... they are afraid to write their beliefs on papers because they don't trust the university that it would keep those papers and their thoughts away from the government. This is chilling speech."

They’re still a fairly small minority in this country and when the illusion breaks and it turns out there isn’t actually a broad popular base for ethnic cleansing and paramilitary goon squads it’s going to drive some of them insane.