Jeff Bernstone

Frederick Wiseman Dies at 96: The Documentary Legend Was One of Cinema’s Greatest Masters Wiseman's 50-plus year career started with a bang, "Titicut Follies," and only got better.

Yeah, I know. 96 years old is a long ass time. So is purgatory. Some people wear a mask of empathy as a token of penance. Frederick Wiseman didn't have to. Empathy was his very DNA. RIP to a Titan among mice. www.indiewire.com/news/obituar...

INSOMNIA “Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.” Friedrich Nietzsche

INSOMNIA New piece on substack open.substack.com/pub/jerrysta...

Born #onthisday in Wisconsin in 1868, the US photographer and ethnologist Edward S. Curtis. Here's his circa 1914 series depicting the ceremonial dress and masks of the Kwakwaka’wakw, an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast — https://buff.ly/39BjsLO

"February 16, 1896. – The idea of a special handwriting belonging to the planet Mars occurs for the first time to Hélène’s astonishment in a Martian semi-trance."

A psychology professor spent 5 yrs attending the seances of the medium Hélène Smith: publicdomainreview.org/collection/f...

A table entitled The Smith Smyth Television Nexus. Clip and Save. The table has four rows, each beginning with the name of a musician, and ending with an arrow pointing to the next row, suggesting a logical flow. The table reads as follows. Fred Smith, bassist for the band Television, who is not to be confused with ... Fred Sonic Smith, guitarist who played with the band MC5, and who collaborated with and married ... Patti Smith, poet, author, and musician of the band Patti Smith Group, who collaborated with guitarist Tom Verlaine of the band Television, and is not to be confused with ... Patty Smyth, singer-songwriter who performed with the band Scandal, and who was briefly married to Richard Hell of the band Television, who played alongside ... return to beginning.

Friends and gentlebeings, I hereby give you this handy reference guide to the Smith/Smyth Television Nexus

Anti-Convention: Richard Hell on Godlike • Protean Magazine Richard Hell's novel Godlike has just been re-released with a new afterword by New York Review Books. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory as a novelist and street poet, the sometime...

Richard Hell's novel Godlike has been re-released by NYRB Classics. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory, the inevitable Rimbaud and (Tom) Verlaine comparisons (and other noms de plume), the New York School poets, and his fearlessness of influence.

proteanmag.com/2026/02/13/a...

That time ‘Harold and Maude’ ran at Edina theater so long that people picketed Local nonfiction: Minneapolis writer John Gaspard, who was an usher at the Edina venue, wrote a book about the historic run.

Fans mourning Bud Cort might be interested to know there is a new book, "Held Over: Harold and Maude at The Westgate Theater,” about the film’s 115-week run at the Minneapolis-area cinema in 1972-74.

Gift Link:

www.startribune.com/john-gaspard...

A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web From small publishers to US federal agencies, websites are reporting unusual spikes in automated traffic linked to IP addresses in Lanzhou, China.

Swarms of bots linked to IP addresses in Lanzhou, China are absolutely flooding the internet.

An absolutely fascinating story from our Made in China newsletter this week, by @zeyiyang.bsky.social

How COYOTE Almost Got Slopped by AI The sordid tale of the freelancer who never was.

Aided by genAI models like ChatGPT, “writers” hoping to get paid for fake stories have become an even bigger problem for publications big and small. One such writer almost pulled one over on COYOTE — until @soleilho.com, who is a nerd, spotted a key idiosyncrasy.

On the other hand, one roommate telling another to "Go rip off a 3 year old kid if you want food," may be the funniest insult I've heard all year.

"Living in a dilapidated death trap builds character" is something the 20 year old me would've said to the me in his late 40s.

So does black lung.

(And if you're reading this in the greater Boston area, this ain't one of Smilin' Anwar's properties, either.)

YouTube video by username19237 Pumping Iron - Unseen Footage - Bud Cort

Periodic reminder that PUMPING IRON was originally conceived as a documentary about Bud Cort getting jacked.

The mass market paperback is vanishing The mass market paperback — born in 1935, boomed after WWII — is vanishing from airports, drugstores, and groceries.

For those of you who were keeping up with the mass market mess, here is a more informative article.

Trade paperbacks cost only 30c more to make and are priced $18-20 now, where mass market paperbacks didn't sell at $12. So... there's your answer. It's about margins.

boingboing.net/2026/02/10/t...

Bud Cort Dies: ‘Harold And Maude’ Actor Was 77 Bud Cort, who starred in 1971's Harold & Maude, died in Connecticut following a lengthy illness at age 77.

Still haven't gotten over Uncle Floyd. Now I gotta get over Bud fucking Cort: deadline.com/2026/02/bud-...

I've known people who have worked at Gallup. I've relied on Gallup as a benchmark of objectivity for over 20 years. To say this doesn't reek of some Mafioid-esque extortion tactics is to be the human equivalent of an ostrich.

I used to know a guy named Gizmo. No, really. That's what he called himself. He used to smuggle his own bread into restaurants cuz he assumed he'd be charged extra if he didn't. Sometimes, I wonder what happened to him. Then I realized he wasn't the brightest bulb in the world. It happens.

YouTube video by TVCopernicus Copernicus - In Terms of Money

Meeting this man who—as he'll scream at you—does not actually exist was one of the most life altering experiences I've had. I don't know why I thought of him this morning. Then I realized he doesn't exist. Nothing exists. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftix...

Failing to appreciate the beauty and wonder that was the Pricemaster makes you a soulless, inhuman monster. Don't fall into that trap.

ICE grabs woman charged with performing illegal eyelid surgery in Allston, lawyer says
www.universalhub.com/2026/ice-gra...

#Boston

Woman caught poaching endangered abalone, hiding it in her pants: Officials Wildlife officials in California caught a woman poaching an endangered species and hiding it in her pants.

Don't stick endangered mollusks in your pants. Doing so can be expensive:

"Under state law, abalone poaching can carry penalties of up to $40,000 in fines and one year in jail."

Woman caught poaching endangered abalone, hiding it in her pants: Officials - ABC News share.google/bGPDs29faCX1...

Detox or jail: A shift in approach at 'Mass. and Cass' has health experts worried A shift in official strategy at Boston's beleaguered "Mass. and Cass" neighborhood is pushing people into addiction treatment, say health experts, who worry the new tactics will lead to more overdose ...

A shift in official strategy at Boston's beleaguered "Mass. and Cass" neighborhood is pushing people into addiction treatment, say health experts, who worry the new tactics will lead to more overdose deaths and disease.

Palantir, Peter Thiel and the Epstein files The files have pushed a powerful surveillance contractor back under the spotlight

If the Mandelson-Epstein affair shows anything, it is how urgently Britain still needs a proper reckoning with Russian interference in its politics 👇 citizensreunited.substack.com/p/palantir-p...

MrBeast is buying a banking app geared toward teens YouTuber MrBeast's company is buying the banking app, Step, as it looks to expand beyond media and chocolate bars and into fintech.

What could go wrong.

As AI enters the operating room, reports arise of botched surgeries and misidentified body parts Medical device makers have been rushing to add AI to their products. While proponents say the new technology will revolutionize medicine, regulators are receiving a rising number of claims of patient ...

“Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Yale universities recently found that 60 FDA-authorized medical devices using AI were linked to 182 product recalls, according to a research letter published in the JAMA Health Forum in August.”

Some people will do just about anything to stay in the public view. Or at least, alive.
That doesn't necessarily mean they should.

Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti “In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this,” one worker wrote on Slack.

NOW the Silicon Vichy lumpendweebs are crying? Too little, too late. You knew what exactly what Tortoise Tooth Thiel was capable of when your starry eyed ass got in bed w/ him. Hope dem big ol' 401Ks can still soften your complicity, you sad fucking puppets. www.wired.com/story/palant...

Cultural stagnation implies an existing culture. There is none. Only redundancy and self signification. Not a projection upon the external, but a cognitive flaw.
Cultural stagnation implies an existing culture. It no longer nor will it ever exist. Ta ra ra boom de aye.

Longtime N.J. comedian, pianist ‘Uncle Floyd’ has died, family says Floyd Vivino died Thursday night after a two-and-a half years of health complications. The 'Uncle Floyd' show was a staple on televisions in New Jersey for more than two decades.

Just when you thought 2026 couldn't get any worse (and it's only January): RIP Uncle Floyd www.nj.com/entertainmen...

Statutory Damages: The Fuel of Copyright-based Censorship Imagine every post online came with a bounty of up to $150,000 paid to anyone who finds it violates opaque government rules—all out of the pocket of the platform. It's not a fantasy, it’s close to

Statutory damages turn copyright litigation into financial Russian roulette, stifling artistic and technological progress at the edges of fair use. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

Man Who Had Managed Mental Illness Effectively for Years Says ChatGPT Sent Him Into Hospitalization for Psychosis John Jacquez successfully managed a mental illness for years, he says. Then ChatGPT reinforced delusions, spiraling him into "AI psychosis."

The complaint “argues that GPT-4o is a ‘defective’ and ‘inherently dangerous’ product, and that OpenAI failed to warn users of foreseeable risks to their emotional and psychological health.”