Ian Denning

Maybe the most helpful piece I've read about understanding American political discourse in 2025

Congrats to the Seattle Nintendos

they just announced this is the last baseball game ever

I think this is the truest baseball tweet for me

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

The Portland frog backing down an army of jackboots

When your custom character appears in a cut scene

Lincoln Center in New York

Title card for "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" at the New York Metropolitan Opera

Escaping from the airtight vessel known as New Jersey to see how this is

So cool that whenever someone asks the president, “did you eat the Lindbergh baby” he’s like, “no but I’d be allowed to, I have the right to, I might do it later”

Hard to really get into horror movie season when it's 83⁰ and humid outside, but Lord I am trying

Who's writing middle-aged millennials better than @somers.bsky.social?

Page from March 1997 Scientific American featuring Brewster Kahle’s article 'Preserving the Internet.' Text describes the Internet Archive’s mission to save digital information. Includes a photo of a Smithsonian exhibit with 1996 U.S. election web memorabilia.

In 1996, Brewster Kahle wrote "Preserving the Internet" for Scientific American. Nearly 30 years later, it’s striking how many of his predictions about digital preservation came true—and how many challenges remain.

Let’s compare 1996 vs 2025 🧵

“Lee Greenwood for Super Bowl halftime show!” says the idiot

lmao this dolt is beyond parody.
yeah Lee Greenwood, totally appealing to all audiences. you nailed it buddy

If I have to use AI tools at work, I might as well use them to force an AI influencer to recite Taylor Holmes's 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling's "Boots."

43. Do I, on some level, want to be haunted by my own fiction—in a Rube Goldbergian method of self-destruction—somehow unconsciously craving the very anxiety my story generates in order to obliterate all potential forms of pleasure that writing my story confers?

Waiting for notes from my agent like

🙃

"We created the ambiguously menacing creative consulting firm from William Gibson's novel 'Don't Create the Ambiguously Menacing Creative Consulting Firm'"

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

If Isaac Chotiner asks you about your friendship with Henry Kissinger, you are already dead.

The whole back half of the interview gets even weirder when you realize Star Wars doesn't refer to the Strategic Defense Initiative Star Wars but to Star Wars Star Wars

Tumblr post from every-lemon Sep 8 so my spouse is part of a weirdly intense but mostly benign men's workout group that meets at like, 5:30am outside every day, even in winter. they do a lot of burpees and lugging cinder blocks up hills and stuff. they take turns leading the workouts and tomorrow is his turn. I asked what he was planning. he handed me a sheet of William Carlos William poems from a large stack he'd printed. I said "what" and he explained, helpfully, "it's a William Carlos William themed workout." I asked what inspired it and he said "l've been planning this for months."

Follow up tumblr post every-lemon Sep 9 it was a smash hit. a dozen guys showed up (more than usual). spouse brought a red wheelbarrow and they took turns bringing cinder blocks up the hill with it. then they broke up in teams and did a relay with an "icebox" (cooler filled with 40lbs of ice). at the end he opened the cooler to reveal it was full of beach plum lacroix and all the guys cheered. they drank sparkling water as he read 'approach of winter' out loud. he was home by 6:30am.

dudes rock

"If you create things for the public, you will get yelled at by dumbasses. Indeed, this is the primary experience of being the sort of writer that I am. If you make a joke, they won’t get it. If you use sarcasm, they won’t detect it. If you exaggerate for effect, you will be taken literally, and if you try to be understated, you will be accused of a contemptible lack of urgency. If you make a reference, it will not be understood; if you choose one topic, they will wonder why you didn’t choose another; if you try to focus on one thing, they will ask why you didn’t focus on something else. Your high-minded arguments will be dismissed as inscrutable, your simple arguments will be dismissed as unsophisticated, and you, personally, will be dismissed as the sort of lightweight who should try getting a real job. Ever thought of that?"

Bookmarking this excellent @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social piece www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/getting-ye...

Gentle reminder that in the late '50s, the U.S. government did not censor comics. Comics companies censored themselves.

Not sure why that crossed my mind today but there it is...

Just incredible schadenfreude happening here

ah, well

hayao miyazaki refusing to go to the american premiere of howl until he found out bacall was gonna be there at which point he adjusted his tie & vanished in a cloud of dust headed for manhattan is possibly the most relatable thing dude has ever done

Arthur Sze named 25th U.S. poet laureate Sze is a poet with a lot of acclaim — he's won the National Book Award, was a Guggenheim fellow and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. He aims to promote interest in translated poetry in his new role.

25th U.S. Poet Laureate, first Asian American to hold this honor. A big hell yeah for Arthur Sze today!
www.npr.org/2025/09/15/n...