Ben "Jammin'" Verschoor

this is like

the thesis statement of our times

Viewed in (alien) isolation and on a craft level Alien: Romulus is basically fine, but in the context of its series and the broader film industry it's one of the most creatively bankrupt franchise endeavors I've ever seen, and I've seen Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.

John Bolton is throwing his monkey's paw against the wall

Kraken Becomes First Crypto Firm to Win Access to Fed’s Core Payments System The decision means the industry is a step closer to becoming integrated into the mainstream financial system.

The @federalreserve.gov just granted a crypto company—Kraken—access to its public payment services for the first time.

More evidence that crypto’s success is not as an *alternative* to the existing financial system but to capture the existing payment infrastructure.
www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

It's been so sad to see the situation in Ecuador deteriorate over the past three years, and I feel this is going to make it even worse.

There's been a lot of debate within the Democratic establishment about what rhetoric to use via ICE.

Well, an incumbent doesn't lose by 48 percentage points very often—and her vote on collaborating with ICE was the defining issue here.

You don't have to love all of these movies, but you do have to understand that a studio that makes Sinners and One Battle and Mickey 17 and Wuthering Heights and The Bride and Weapons grasps its responsibility to filmmaking and its own history and tradition in a way that David Ellison does not.

Imagine Jim Messina on his deathbed, pondering how he spent his precious later years, and he looks off into the middle distance, takes a pitiful breath, and mutters as he closes his eyes for the last time, "all my apes gone"

"The proposed deal has attracted a lot of criticism, largely because it sucks. That’s a broad statement, so let me be more specific: It only sucks for every affected industry, the United States, and humanity as a whole."

“This deal endangers our democracy by giving a family of pliant billionaires even more control of vast swaths of our news coverage, TV stations, and movie studios,” said Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of the watchdog group Free Press. Footnote: Note that the watchdog group Free Press is not the same as the Bari Weiss–helmed conservative news outlet The Free Press, which is controlled by … the Ellison family.

I knew what this footnote was going to be, but that just increased the anti-satisfaction of clicking it. It's like opening the Christmas gift you know is a Super Nintendo, except it sucks

Oh no... Italian

@number8axel.bsky.social 's tears make me stronger

Calling AI "slop" has been one of the most effective instances of the public rebranding a product and it pisses them off.

The English can testify to how well this strategy works

I can't stress enough how eager (what remains of) local media are to have a man-bites-dog story. With just some research, organization, and gumption, a standard "Platner says yada yada yada at local diner" headline becomes "Platner grilled at local diner about Nazi sympathies"

I can't stress enough how eager (what remains of) local media are to have a man-bites-dog story. With just some research, organization, and gumption, a standard "Platner says yada yada yada at local diner" headline becomes "Platner grilled at local diner about Nazi sympathies"

This feels like a speedrun of J.K. Rowling discourse, which is largely online and involves online behavior (tweets, follows) and only gets reported on in the context of how it affects *her*. Some intrepid Mainers need to force the issue at Platner's campaign stops, where cameras are rolling.

Are people on the ground in Maine sharing this with mainstream dems? Do offline resist moms know about this stuff? I just can’t understand the polls when this man is so open about his Nazi leanings.

I think the best chance of this being stopped is the regional oligarchs deciding they don't want to sacrifice their shiny, expensive citadels. Surprised that MBS is going along with it given how much blood money he's spending to turn Saudi Arabia into a cultural destination.

Sing it!

A lot of Chinese blockbusters draw from literature and myth, whose popular appeal is in their foundational place in the national culture. The closest thing the US had last year was Sinners' use of blues and Irish folk music, an actual cultural tradition rather than IP owned by megacorps.

Mise en Screen: Episode 07b: Ne Zha 2 Full Spoiler We get into the nitty gritty details of the back half of Ne Zha 2 as well as dive into the cultural war between the US and China and specifically China's rapid gains in dominating the worldwide box of...

@number8axel.bsky.social and I did a deep dive on the Chinese Box Office last year. Big takeaway was that China's film industry is self-sustaining, whereas American blockbusters' depend on foreign box office. If other countries stop watching our movies the effect will be apocalyptic.

Last year's plain-to-see, but still largely ignored news story concerned China's big (as in $7 billion USD) 2025 box office. This year it's something like: Why the Chinese Box Office Doesn't Really Need the US Audience. I've pitched that story, but somehow it's not popular yet.

People are dragging Klein, but there's an important implication here that should not be discounted: if a story is only circulating online, particularly here, and not breaking through in standard coverage, then the people who are not very online (read: the vast majority of people) have no idea of it.

Trump last year. A generic guy who sucks

The original Disneyland Trump animatronic, very clearly a hastily repurposed Hillary robot in a wig and a suit

Trump recently. He looks like shit, because that’s what he is

Disney’s new Trumpbot. It has kind of a “slaveholding founding father” vibe

The Robotic Duplicate of Dorian Gray

No one should be using ChatGPT or partnering with OpenAI for anything.

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

TBH a NYC-DSA SIO should announce that they're primarying Schumer today.

Operation Enduring Freedom was already a stupid name, Epic Fury is even worse, just gamer-brained posturing

It's too specific to be an accident but also completely pointless except as symbolism--but I just noticed that the initials for this operation, Epic Fury, are the same as the operation that kicked off the War on Terror in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom.