It’s been a while since I delivered on my resolve to share the work of other writers. Let’s dive in on some recent and not-so-recent good reads.
I always used to complain about L.A. being a city that goes to bed early — back when I would ride the bus, I’d frequently go straight from work to a screening, then find no place open to eat afterward. In an age of shrinking and overly monetized social spaces, where people are becoming more isolated, the problem is getting worse. Liz O, one of my favorite writers to read and to work with, diagnoses the problem with specifics:
When the clubs reopened after lockdown, my nightlife friends and I often talked about how people were acting kind of strange. At the time, I thought there was a class divide happening between the work-from-home crowd and the people who actually have to go to a place to do a job. Now, I think that’s part of it, but the divide is much more nebulous and based on how much you have to interact with the physical world. Also, that division probably started a good decade before COVID hit.
The world that the billionaire class is building is, essentially, a virtual one. Think of the crap that inundates our feeds on the daily. In between the barrage of headlines and hot takes that leave us angry and afraid is the wealth, wellness and beauty content designed to play on our insecurities, the highlights from parties and concerts that trigger FOMO and the seemingly wholesome viral clips that are really ads for
betting sitesprediction markets . Put this all together and you have a mess so overwhelming that it feels impossible to do anything but stay in bed and continue scrolling. On top of that, today’s tech makes it possible to spend most of our time at home. We don’t have to leave unless there is something big to experience, the event that you can pay off in installments, the new viral food thing, the much-needed vacay to the same destination where all of your favorite influencers vacayed last month, More importantly, these are all things you can share on your socials. They’re not experiences so much as they are content opportunities to enhance your personal brand. All this is by design, it’s how the attention economy works and it’s how the billionaires continue extracting the lifeblood from society.
Dave White dives into the reason American Weetabix isn’t what it used to be. As a half-Brit, I find this a story that is important. I also still want Jason Statham to star in a Weetabix movie.
If you are a North American Weetabix enjoyer, your box came from Canada until fairly recently. Sometime in 2025, they shut down production in that country and moved operations to Kenya – for an even worse bad time, just go to PostConsumerBrands.com to read all the racist comments about that situation. And by “go,” I mean “don’t.”
Clearly, the move was made to cut costs and to exploit Kenyan labor. In the long run, though, it has also made the actual food worse. The pucks are somewhat smaller, they now come in plastic sleeves instead of paper, like before, and the formula and processing has changed, which has altered the flavor and consistency. The formerly highly-textured product, one that took its time to mush up in the bowl, is now a chunk of compressed sawdust that dissolves the moment it touches milk. The flavor had that little malt kick. Now it has the idea of malt. A nudge. Someone walked through the factory near the ingredients and said, “Malt,” and then they were vaporized.
There’s nothing to be done except observe and complain. It’s too late to force the hand of Post Consumer Products. Some corporate board of deciders will kill the next thing, and then the next. Something you like that not enough other people like. No one eats whatever it is, anyway. It’s done. It’s over.
I liked Supergirl, and I’m way over the usual hating, but this analysis of why it failed actually makes some points, and isn’t just “DURRR I can’t find blonde girl hot because wimmin ruin da pew-pews!”
Snyder doomed his universe, because the heart and soul of any superhero franchise will always be children. For a superhero franchise to exclude them, it’s like cutting off one’s arm.
Superhero fans are made in childhood. When they grow up, then they can be sold Watchmen and Black Label comics, but they are made in childhood. Disney understands this, which is why they make sure never to push the boundaries too far with their main films. For streaming shows like Daredevil or Fox collaborations like Deadpool, they’re willing to push, but the main films have always been soft PG-13 films.
Supergirl pushed its PG-13 rating by poisoning the dog, and the film paid the price at the box office.
Lucien Greaves, in defense of “blasphemy,” points out the way religious “tolerance” can be taken to absurdity levels when the religious figure is a real, verifiable bad guy.
And what would you have said to a North Korean defector who would burn a picture of Kim Il Sung? How would you respond to them if they publicly decried the Kim cult as a dangerous and oppressive fraud? Would you admonish them for their thoughtless insults against those who find meaning in their faith and belief in the divinity of the Kim dynasty? Would you accuse them of merely trying to disparage faithful North Korean people? Would you accuse them of hate speech and protest that the state should intervene to prevent their creation of an “unsafe” environment for those who practice “Kimilsungism”? Would doing so make you feel as though you were bravely defending victims of thoughtless shock peddlers who delight in offending innocent believers?
I confess, I know there are some crazies in the Democratic Socialists of America, along with politicians with whom I agree more than any others. I’m okay with having some fringe people in the party to move the Overton window and espouse policies with no chance of happening, like eliminating all police. Nathan Newman breaks it down in a way I can understand.
You’d think AOC is DSA’s flagship endorsement. Nationally, she isn’t. While New York City chapter continues to endorse her, in 2024, the national leadership stripped its endorsement from her. The reason given was that she was too soft on Israel, and even, horrors, took part in a forum on antisemitism.
So the national DSA decided that AOC, one of the strongest voices in the House for Palestinian rights and a member who has spent more political capital on that cause than almost anyone in Congress, was too much of a Zionist ally to back. That judgment basically summarizes how insanely sectarian the majority of DSA national leadership is at this point compared to the pragmatic, sane politics of NYC’s chapter.
A parademic breaks down the way the movies lie to you about what CPR can do, and how that applies to Mitch McConnell.
The first ten or so compressions aren’t that bad. The skin shifts over the bones, and you can feel where the ribs connect. I use my back as a hinge when pressing down, trying to let my body weight do most of the work.
Once you get halfway through the first round of compressions, you start to feel the bones under your palm shift. That’s the warning sign. It’s the point when things are going to get worse. Not for the patient, but for the provider.
Once that give and shifting of the bones starts to happen, it is usually only a couple more compressions before you hear the cracking. Once you hear the cracking, that’s when you have to steady your stomach.
Whatever you do, don’t look at the chest. Not now. Not after the first crack. Because the first crack brings a second, third, then a large snap. That snap sounds like a fresh tree branch being snapped in half.
The ribs break. If you are lucky, they break near your hands. I’m usually not lucky, and they break near the opposite side of my hands. Once they break, there is a moment while you continue to push up and down on the chest that you can feel the ribs grinding on top of each other. It’s important to remember not to throw up here.
And those have been some of my latest fun reads!
What have you bene liking lately? Drop some links in comments below.
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