michael black

no you see i'm a journalist which means i make propaganda. propaganda can't be used on me

The question of our time is how do you artistically rebel — and win — against a totally flat cultural landscape? And before my readers, who I assume are all approximately 36 years old and very tired, say, “so what, who cares?” This does matter. I mean, just look around right now lol. You know things are bad when even OpenAI President Greg Brockman is posting stuff, like “Taste is a new core skill.” If people had taste, your company wouldn’t exist, Greg. But if everything is just attention now, and attention is completely commodified by algorithmic tech platforms, how can you push back against that? Well, I am slowly coming around to a theory on the new cool: You have to essentially pre-deplatform yourself. Culture right now is determined not by human teams of editors and producers picking and choosing what youth culture gets the spotlight, but, instead, by the unthinking algorithms that power YouTube and TikTok. Which means the only things that have the level of scarcity and danger required to be seen as cool by young people will, slowly, but surely, be whatever is unacceptable on those platforms.

A post so smart I'm almost afraid to share it.

www.garbageday.email/p/the-only-t...

“is there a technology that the left is excited about?”

Trains. We love trains, actually

I regularly see people wondering how it's possible that there are so many musicians and writers and film makers and artists from a tiny nation like Iceland.

And the answer is really simple: State funding for art education and artists. I literally get a salary from the government to write books.

heard this in peanut's voice

As Bernie Sanders Comes to California, Wealth Tax Opponents Intensify Efforts

Read this sentence slowly:

“Gov. Gavin Newsom, crypto executives and business leaders are ramping up efforts this week to stop the proposed wealth tax...”

gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

thanks for the recommendation, that cast is stacked, can't wait to

as a known mando hater I'm weirdly kinda amped for this

AI is revolutionizing the world! A Playstation now costs $5,000 and this is the last phone you will ever own.

Can’t believe we are still doing this

I keep thinking that someday I will become used to the hideousness of cybertrucks and they will finally blend into the background and every time I see one I am struck anew by how awful they are

liberal walking into the car dealership: i want the second shittiest car you have. i will buy it for literally any price

IF YOU'RE UNEMPLOYED IT'S NOT BECAUSE THERE ISNT ANY WORK JUST LOOK AROUND: A HOUSING SHORTAGE, CRIME, POLLUTION; WE NEED BETTER SCHOOLS AND PARKS. WHATEVER OUR NEEDS, THEY ALL REQUIRE WORK. AND AS LONG AS WE HAVE UNSATISFIED NEEDS, THERE'S WORK TO BE DONE. SO ASK YOURSELE, WHAT KIND OF WORLD HAS WORK BUT NO JOBS. IT'S A WORLD WHERE WORK IS NOT RELATED TO SATISFYING OUR NEEDS, WORLD WHERE WORK IS ONLY RELATED TO SATISFYING THE PROFIT NEEDS OF BUSINESS. THIS COUNTRY WAS NOT BUILT BY THE HUGE CORPORATIONS OR GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACIES. IT WAS BUILT BY PEOPLE WHO WORK. AND, IT IS WORKING PEOPLE WHO SHOULD CONTROL THE WORK TO BE DONE. YET, AS LONG AS EMPLOYMENT IS TIED TO SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROFITS, THE WORK WONT GET DONE.

the Black Panthers were right

This is what a rigged economy looks like.

kevin you're a treasure

wagner moura popped so hard I forgot I knew pedro pascal from narcos too

god I love alt text

medicare for all better cover eyes and teeth

All of my nearby dentists are either out of network or scam artists. Truly a healthy industry.

ChatGPT 5.2 v count to 100 Sure 1 2 3 456789 10 11 12 13 14 + Ask anything ChatGPT can make mistakes. OpenAl doesn't use Versant Media workspace data to train its models.

trivial in the text version, must just be a wrinkle with the voice version pre-prompted to give short responses

When will Republicans, veterans organizations, & retired military officers speak up about this? No president in the history of the Republic has done this. Yet Trump, Vance, & Hegseth do it constantly. It betrays the most important core value of our military-no partisan politics.

"I think what we identify is that in a rules based order, hypocrisy is vulnerability, and so I think what we are seeking is a return to a rules based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West, we look the other way for inconvenient populations ... "

Letterboxd screenshot Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Watched by Branson Reese 28 Apr 2022 Abrams isn't a man so much as he's an avatar of cultural entropy. If you make something popular enough eventually you will die or sell it off and and a person in thick rimmed glasses whose main artistic vision is that he loves to have meetings will take it and sandblast it until it's nothing. I hate to see this happen here but maybe it's good that this happened. Maybe every franchise should collapse into a version of itself that makes shareholders nod and shake each others' hands. We should learn to speak in a language that rich people who don't dream can't comprehend.

i often think about this review

Shapiro sucks. I forget why, but I learned something that secured it—oh right, he threw Kamala's campaign under the bus for looking into his ties to the IDF. At any rate, we don't want anyone with strong ties to Israel given AIPAC and its very apparent ties to our most useless DNC members.

Similarly, I think it was just cringe. Howard Dean was embarrassing, and we don't want to be embarrassed. We want someone who's bulletproof, who's cool.

I think it's more a projection of our fear than reality. Swap in Biden and we're in the same boat. Hilary and Kamala just arrived in time for the uninformed to vote for "something different". If they have any real shared debuff, it's that neither was esp. likable.

lash game on fire

hold on i gotta take this