Jon Mooallem

Instead of starting conversations with “How are you?”—an increasingly unfathomable question—try saying, “I am ready to empathize with you,” which is very beautiful and very normal.

YouTube video by Vanity Fair ILM's VFX Secrets Behind Star Wars, Transformers & More | Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair asked me to talk about visual effects, and it was my great honor to show off some of ILM’s terrific work over the years.

Todd Vaziri on Vanity Fair VFX
youtu.be/ERKEsIzTFas?...

the person whose xerox machine Daniel Ellsberg used for the Pentagon Papers was...lynda resnick, later of the pomegranate, almond, pistachio, and water Resnicks. they should've had a little postscript in the movie.

whole feed is fascism or baseball

hard to believe the robots aren't yet capable of checking the box that says "I'm not a robot"

They’re doing Meisner technique.

what if, instead of being brought to an end, "government shutdown" becomes endemic, like covid?

she also believed in Bigfoot. Extremely likable.

A thread of texts from the Orca Network, alerting of the whereabouts of particular whales in the Tacoma area

once we solve other problems let’s also encourage more services that text you about the whereabouts of whales

The GI Rights Network is a coalition of nonprofit NGOs that provide free and confidential information to American military servicemembers, veterans, and their families. If you have legal concerns about orders or your chain of command, you can reach them anytime at 877-447-4487

Did he just declare war on four American cities?

Also, it needs to be shit other than creating social media content. (Which is worthwhile in the context, because it's documenting state abuses.)

This is a golden opportunity for politicians to help revive real-life third spaces generally founded upon the idea of defending democracy.

the people who organize such things often *become* civil society leaders and politicians

Living in a Synthetic Society We need a sociology of AI interaction to describe and understand our weird future

Anthropic experimented with letting an AI run a little shop. It lost money, then went insane. I wrote about how the case illustrates the need for research on how the social world will be transformed by the massive increase of interactions between people and LLMs, and, crucially, between AI agents.

The next best thing is to put down your phone and go meet up with a friend or simply go for a walk without your phone and look at the trees and the birds and pet dogs

classic ’Missed Connection’

Marnie + Desi would have played the new white house rose garden club

I am genuinely concerned about what will happen if “Masked ICE Agent” is a Halloween costume or mistaken for one.

Wow, yeah, that wasn't so hard. Thank you. Was spiraling in a syllabically chaotic "snuggling at bedtime in the sheets" vortex

If the Ezra Jack Keats....

been working on this since last night, still nothing.

Michael Donaghy (1954-2004) on false raptures.

aaeraaaweaeaghgadhghghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh1!!!!1!2!@$!!#!!!@#$!@#$!#R%#@$%T$%WTter3p0ejghhoijnt3!!#!#!#!"

Let's all celebrate Bruce Springsteen's birthday today by celebrating Ray Charles' birthday today and John Coltrane's birthday today.

AI Overview: "Dental realism"refers to the philosophical debate about whether teeth exist independently of human perception, a concept rooted in metaphysical realism. While realism asserts an objective reality for teeth, idealist philosophies contend that teeth's existence is tied to our consciousness and perception. Philosophers use this idea, for example, to discuss the ethics of tooth extraction, examining whether a procedure impacts a real entity or merely a subjective experience.

When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions

go, little homepage popup and godspeed

Just heard about the Rapture.

Introducing GONDOS the blockbuster serialized novel!

GONDOS
The Novelization of
the Major Motion Picture ’Gondos’
by Jon Mooallem
open.substack.com/pub/gondos/p...

also how I feel about the America‘s Funniest Home Videos theme song, “America, America—this is you.”

open tabs are all jargon-drenched, impossibly dense recaps to catch me up on the preceding seasons of America I missed.