In this post-social media world, something I miss is having that space to just sort of think out loud about stuff to nobody in particular. So: here we are! ...
YouTube is a website that allows anybody with a Google account to upload videos; as such it has become the number one video streaming platform in terms of hours streamed (beating out Netflix, HBO, Disney+, and all of the others). It is no secret that the biggest channels on YouTube have an outsized gravitational pull. There is a symbiotic but contentious relationship between them and YouTube…
We're fast approaching the California License Plate Apocalypse! Just this weekend I saw a few 9Uxx000 plates out in the wild. By my count, this means we've got under 600,000 left before we hit 9ZZZ999 . California does already have a plan in place: according to LAist, we'll be flipping it around and using the format 000AAA0 going forward . But: how exciting! As LAist also mentions, it's forecasted…
★★★☆☆ I found myself in Powell's Books in Portland earlier this month, and one of my favorite things to do while I am there is look at their small collection of old 60s/70s paperbacks and entirely judge them on their covers. This time, I grabbed this novel by Ted White because of the cool astronaut on the cover, and because the back suggested some kind of interesting space mystery. Who doesn't…
Music videos are an incredible cultural index. Free from the traditional narrative and structural requirements of cinema, generally constrained to mere minutes, their only responsibility is to accompany music and this affords incredible formal breadth. They can be experimental, cheap, narrative, derivative, expensive, commercials, vanity projects: and with the proliferation of cheap tools for…
★★★☆☆ Jhonen Vasquez walked so that Andrew Hussie could run. I am absolutely tickled that this series ultimately introduces a whole cosmology and a framework of ethics a schematic science fictional "type of guy" for Johnny to be. Painfully and endearingly (two sides of the same coin) a product of the '90s, with all of the punk counter-cultural misanthropic over-the-top ironic gratuitous edginess…
★★★★☆ Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RuokaA6X7I I started watching Formula One regularly in 2023. Coincidentally, this was also the inaugural year of F1 Academy, an initiative by Formula One to get more women into higher racing series by providing a women-only Formula Four-level single-seater championship with (to some level) guaranteed sponsors, attention, and resources. The first year,…
★★★★★ To call this "riot grrrl for the twenty-first century" feels too cute but I cannot think of a better descriptor. Who Let The Dogs Out (2025) by the Lambrini Girls is hard, aggressive, confrontational, and punk as hell. Mad but not mean-spirited. Funny without undercutting itself. Music that makes you long for a mosh pit. Brat summer walked so that Who Let The Dogs Out could run. Bangers all…
★★★★☆ I have been living in the same apartment for many years. For reasons that are personal, emotional, ideological, philosophical, and deeply subconsciously instinctual, I find myself rearranging the furniture in my living space once or twice a year. I am as accustomed to falling into habit as I am repulsed by the idea of moving through life on autopilot. Regularly reordering my living room, to…
★★★★☆ Looks great, sounds great. Pretty solid hit ratio with the jokes. Some pretty clever incorporation of gameplay into the jokes; clever moments where a button press is a good punchline or a long direction-hold is good build-up. Was very mildly annoyed that I couldn't remap the controls (since it's a generally slow-paced stick+two buttons game, it would've been convenient to be able to control…
★★★★★ I recently became aware of Dev Lemons by way of the whims of the YouTube Algorithm -- a collab with someone else I've been watching for a while. I bounced over to her her Dev Limes channel ( Dev Lemons being her solo music project, Dev Limes being her silly channel) after listening to some of her music and realized that I had seen these thumbnails before. She has done a bunch of these…