Ryan Eric Dull

YouTube video by Eros Moby Dick (1956) - Father Mapple's Sermon

No idea if the rest of the John Huston take is any good, but Orson Welles kills the sermon. Apparently did the adaptation himself

A lot of people’s instant response to cyclists and vegans both is, “They think they’re better than me!”, so they’re immediately looking for ways to cut them down to size.

Excellent work by new NYT headline writer Werner Herzog

It’s like an incredibly gnarly schoolhouse rock.

A newspaper clipping that reads: "Noisy, Hungry Frogs Sadden Farmer's Life. They scare his cattle and they also eat his flannel shirt."

If you think today's news headlines are horrific, check out this one from 1906. Chilling.

A screenshot of a New York Times update that says: In Grand Central Terminal, Leon Chang, 26, of Brooklyn, said he had not heard of congestion pricing and asked what it was. When explained it was a toll for cars entering Manhattan, he then asked “What do you mean? What is a car?” Walking outside, we showed him a vehicle parked on the street. He gently touched the hood of the car. “You wish to forbid these majestic beasts from entering the city,” he said in a wistful tone. “It is a folly of man. The desire to tame the world around us.”

where does the new york times even find these people

Have bots gotten really wild for anyone else over the last few days?

And to Tiny Tim — who did NOT die; who says that he will never die; who dances in light and in shadow and is a great favorite. He never sleeps, Tiny Tim. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die

Not sure I understand the theology at my kid’s daycare

Gotta sharpen the knife, polish the knife, dress up extra nice every day to impress the knife. It’s just so much hassle

I watch over and over again Kobashi’s little startled beat when he steps through the curtain and the crowd just explodes

It’s such a weird feeling. When a gacha game is constantly trying to get money from me, I’ll eventually feel manipulated and quit. But when Slay the Spire sets my whole day on fire, it’s like, “you guys made The Entertainment and it costs fifteen dollars. Hats off, I guess.”

From Hilary Mantel's memoir, Giving Up the Ghost: "[The spot] is, let us say, some fifty yards away, among coarse grass, weeds and bracken. I can’t see anything, not exactly see: except the faintest movement, a ripple, a disturbance of the air. I can sense a spiral, like flies; but it is not flies. There is nothing to see. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to hear. But its motion, its insolent shift, makes my stomach heave. . . . It is as high as a child of two. Its depth is a foot, fifteen inches. The air stirs around it, invisibly. I am cold, and rinsed by nausea. I cannot move. I am shaking. . . . I beg it, stay away, stay away. Within the space of a thought it is inside me, and has set up a sick resonance within my bones and in all the cavities of my body."

The easy read is that she's anti-Catholic because she's English. But the real Mantel-heads know from her memoir that she's anti-Catholic because she was possessed by an evil spirit as a child.

A charming, noble-hearted dog and the book A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Man, nothing better than the first twenty pages of a scifi novel before you know what any of the nouns mean. Teixcalaan is demanding a new ambassador? Oh man, the Councilor for the Miners seems pretty cagey. Oh shit, and Yskandar’s imago-machine is fifteen years out of date??

The moral of the exorcist is, "we need more combat-ready priests, stat!"

I feel like catholics should make more of this! If the devil is physically entering the world to turn children into anti-catholic novelists, that could really boost the prestige of both catholics and novelists.

From Hilary Mantel's memoir, Giving Up the Ghost: "[The spot] is, let us say, some fifty yards away, among coarse grass, weeds and bracken. I can’t see anything, not exactly see: except the faintest movement, a ripple, a disturbance of the air. I can sense a spiral, like flies; but it is not flies. There is nothing to see. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to hear. But its motion, its insolent shift, makes my stomach heave. . . . It is as high as a child of two. Its depth is a foot, fifteen inches. The air stirs around it, invisibly. I am cold, and rinsed by nausea. I cannot move. I am shaking. . . . I beg it, stay away, stay away. Within the space of a thought it is inside me, and has set up a sick resonance within my bones and in all the cavities of my body."

The easy read is that she's anti-Catholic because she's English. But the real Mantel-heads know from her memoir that she's anti-Catholic because she was possessed by an evil spirit as a child.

A beautiful poster of a beautiful detective

Hanging proudly in our home

Whenever I read a nonfiction book like this that comes up with a really readable way to spool out a ton of technical information, I wonder if its structure could be replicated in speculative fiction, procedural fiction, etc. This one could be a short story, maybe, or a framing device for a novel.

Ping Pong: The Animation is incredible. Short, too

In The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, after hearing about a massive & deadly scapegoating, the narrator asks why the peasants didn't attack the landlords, their true enemies, & is told, "When your real enemies are too strong, you get weaker enemies," & every day I think about this & also see it

Extremely cool book! A series of stories in which McPhee travels through a wilderness with one person who’s trying to develop it and another who’s trying to preserve it, and they all have a meandering, combative conversation. He’s such a sympathetic writer - everyone is beautifully drawn.

It's an apple tart we can all be proud of. The world is ennobled to have such a tart in it.

Tried the Jacques Pepin apple tart recipe @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social recommended a while ago. So easy! What a thing!

“Once upon a time” from five other languages…

5. When animals talked and people kept quiet (Catalan)
4. When snakes wore vests (Iberian Spanish)
3. When potatoes were pale blue (Brusselian)
2. Long long ago, when goat hair was grey (Kazakh)
1. In the old times, when wishing still helped (German)

The Corridor from NER 41.2 Buy the issue in print or as an ebook lex Greer was ready for a change. His job in Baltimore was directionless and his relationships were stale and more and more he felt himself pulle…

Hi all! I’m Ryan. Here’s a story I wrote for @newenglandreview.bsky.social about a guy who wants to get through a narrow hallway so badly that it destroys his life. www.nereview.com/the-corridor/

Slobs versus snobs is one of the central stories in American culture since at least, like, Andrew Jackson! It’s very easy to imagine your enemies are all sneering patrician dipshits who hate you for being unsophisticated

God, or the thing man once learned to call “God,” is laying burning insights into my fevered mind, whether to enlighten me or to destroy me, I cannot say. You can read all about it in my short story, “You Can Always Find a Bargain at the Slime Factory.”

Amet consectetur egg sandwich

A photo of a Japanese bar’s sign in which a cheerful bottle is kicking a brain in its nuts

Maybe the best logo I’ve ever seen