DCOber

My pal Danielle Koenig shared that her father Walter Koenig passed away last night at age 90. A performer whose kindness and warmth shone through the screen. He will be well remembered.

Not having seen the Nathan Fielder/Elizabeth Holmes doc, and wanting to avoid spoilers, every headline or mention of the doc is like "What Elizabeth Holmes levitation says about how honest she was to Theranos investors."

You're telling me that some of the first pioneers of film, a technology built around light, were named Lumiere? I'm calling bullshit.

MA has 9 statewide ballot questions this year. Be an informed voter! #mapoli www.progressivemass.com/2026ballot/

Anyone else schedule send emails and texts that you're kind of nervous to send? Or is that just my weird coping mechanism?

That NYT profile of the Hinojosa campaign drives home that school vouchers are a losing issue, and it's telling that they have long been favored by corporate Dems. Public money for public schools is an easy layup.

Took my nine year old to Coyote vs Acme. But don't worry. I gave her an hour long lecture beforehand on torts and supposed "tort reform."

Whenever a famous poet dies, poetry readers always post something like, "Yes, he was a mediocrity, but I found a few of his poems scanned reasonably well, and I suppose I can't completely discount his contributions to the form."

Going through Fleetwood Mac's discography, and it's absolutely insane that Stevie Nicks doesn't show up until ten albums into their existence. They have such a weird and wild evolution as a band.

Took my nine year old to Coyote vs Acme. But don't worry. I gave her an hour long lecture beforehand on torts and supposed "tort reform."

People who talk about AI in higher ed classrooms as a pedagogical rather than resourcing problem may be well-meaning but naive, but I also suspect a segment insists on treating it as a primarily pedagogical issue to avoid drawing attention to systemic underresourcing.

Working class Midwesterners are "real Americans" until they don't go along with dictates of billionaires, and then they're very quickly knuckle dragging morons.

I teach information literacy to students, and one thing I tell them when it comes to assessing a reliable source is to start with facts and not "objectivity" or "bias." The problem with Fox News isn't that it's conservative. The problem is that it lies to its viewers.

I'm just now discovering that there are four books in the Practical Magic series, and the fourth book, originally titled The Book of Magic, has been rechristened Practical Magic 2 in order to take advantage of the new movie. This sounds absolutely insane to me.

It's interesting how media only perks up when these tech dangers are from abroad, but seem asleep at the wheel when they're domestic. Is China shaping AI outputs any more concerning than what has happened with Grok?

I'm not sure if this Axios writer is aware, but if you don't want to read The Last of the Mohicans, there's a pretty good movie by Michael Mann you could watch.

There's something about students referring to homework and other class assignments as "deliverables" that rankles me.

I ran into this meme yesterday, and I'm kind of glad that people are now inadvertently complaining that the Odyssey movie is too much like the original epic poem.

mandatory reading

Commentary: “I’ve lived in Springfield, Ohio for 45 years,” writes Rev Carl Ruby. “I’ve seen the city go from an economic and population freefall to a thriving city. That miracle turnaround was thanks in part to thousands of Haitian people seeking safety.” ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/07/10/t...

If lit scholars were smart, then they would create a field where they studies disabilities. Too bad that's never going to happen.

As a former Clevelander, it makes me unreasonably angry that Metropolis, IL holds a Superman festival and even has a damn statue. The whole thing is some stolen valor bullshit.

American remake of Bicycle Thieves confirmed.

Two of my favorite Star Wars creatures is the trash can droid in the Jawa crawler and Yaddle. There's just something so relatable about being so tired you say, that trash can is a droid now or fuck it, we're putting a wig on Yoda.

All this talk of the new Odyssey trailer and historical accents goes to show that Kevin Costner in Robin Hood was just ahead of his time.

Complete Control - The Clash The High Party - Ted Leo Ceremony - New Order Drain You - Nirvana Your Name Is Wild - Guided by Voices Sister - Angel Olsen Waking on a Pretty Daze - Kurt Vile Non-Alignment Pact - Pere Ubu I Would Die 4 U - Prince Blondie - Dreaming

An obvious but often not discussed impact of AI will be the devaluing of an online degree.

When prompted for how AI can help entrepreneurs, I had a student mention that AI helped his cousin pivot his small business ideas over twenty times. I'm sorry, but if AI is giving you 20 bad business ideas, maybe it's not the next-level business tool people think it is.

So much of adult life is doing a task to avoid a more annoying task you also have to do.

Five nights at Freddy's? I'm pretty sure I'd be bored after five minutes.

This last week, I just up and decided to watch a few masterpieces. And Send Help shows that Raimi hasn't lost a step. #lastfourwatched #last4watched #letterboxd

My cartoon in the first issue of Now Voyager, a new print magazine dedicated to long form international reporting, photography and art. Plus cartoons!

Last 4 Watched #letterboxefriday

The original "Nice argument. Unfortunately, I have depicted you as Satan the Morning Star..."

I'm going to out myself as a defender of teaching kids cursive, but to make it applicable you also have to pair it with lessons on fonts, typography, graphic design, and general aesthetics. You have to put cursive in context for it to have any value to students.

I was too young for Cheers when it originally aired, but I always thought about going back and watching the series. It looks like I was really missing out.

Thiel is trying to do religious lectures while Andressen is flirting with postmodernism. And both are doing so rather poorly. I think tech people hate the humanities largely because they're jealous.

When will one of the Safdie brothers make a movie about Ea-nāṣir?

Remember when corporations and billionaires used to call themselves "job creators"? I haven't heard that one in a loooong time.

I just passed the living room and heard my wife explaining Traitors strategy to our eight year old.

how it feels taking public transit rn

Literally as I’m arguing with someone about whether AI companies are misleading people into believing their technology possesses God-like super-intelligence I see this monstrosity

It's somewhat depressing to see so much of the opposition to the War in Iran based on gas prices and not the death of over a hundred and fifty school girls, along with all the other innocent lives lost.

I am going to skeet about The Peanuts Movie again: It bothers me that Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Franklin all attend the same school as Charlie Brown, et al., because it's established series lore that the other trio lives in a different neighborhood.