Lord have mercy again: Matt Zoller Seitz writes about his mother-in-law, her two daughters, and living with loss.
Lord have mercy again: Matt Zoller Seitz writes about his mother-in-law, her two daughters, and living with loss.
A moving reflection from Audrey Watters. Lord have mercy.
Read Lydia Dugdale on the art of dying well—as distinct from physician-assisted suicide.
Nicholas Kristof, “These Internal Documents Show Why We Shouldn’t Trust Porn Companies”:
Within days of the article’s publication, Pornhub removed around 10 million videos, some three-quarters of its total, for which it lacked consent. Criminal investigations and legislative hearings began, and victims filed a series of lawsuits. And while I’ve written about terrorists, gangsters and extremists, I got more death threats after that article than from any I’ve ever written.
I know many others have made the same point, but a Rogue One “sequel” functioning as a simultaneous prequel to ROTJ and extension of Andor seems like such an easy win, with the potential for an awesome Star Wars film:
•Puts an exclamation point on Mon Mothma’s multi-film and series-spanning narrative arc;
•Finally fills in the gaps of ROTJ’s “Many Bothans died to bring us this information…";
•Make Lando the co-lead alongside Mon Mothma, and include the Battle of Taanab in the story;
•Donald Glover and Genevieve O’Reilly as co-stars, plus a host of other A-listers;
•Plus whoever performs and voices the Bothans;
•Back up the truckload of cash to Tony Gilroy and make it his final Star Wars project;
•Treat it as an event film like Rogue One, without making it one more suicide mission;
•Maybe even subtly tie it into what eventually happens in the Mandalorian and Ahsoka series/films.
Green light it yesterday. What are you waiting for, Disney?
Here are the details for the one-week course I’m teaching next month at Regent College in Vancouver; the topic is the doctrine of Scripture.
I had a slightly different take on the film (at least I think so, I’m still mulling it over), but Myles Werntz’s review of Warfare is worth your time.
Just over thirty years ago, in the New York Review of Books, Charles Lane published “The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve.'" Best read alongside the letters and replies from the author it elicited as well as Adolph Reed Jr.’s essay published just a month prior.
Last October Matthew Walther asked, “Is Social Conservatism a Luxury Belief?" I missed it at the time. Worth a read.
Mary Harrington, sharp as always on asymmetries and online gender discourse.
Samuel D. James, “How to Get People to be Friends With Machines in Three Easy Steps”:
Success for Meta’s AI friends is not going to be when people who have a lot of friends decide to add some AI ones, or when people who have no friends turn in manic desperation to robots. Both scenarios will happen, but neither are what Zuckerberg is selling here. What Meta is selling is a thermostat for your relational life. They’re selling control, curation, technological precision to let friendship and sex into your life at the moments you need it, and keep it out at the moments you don’t. Meta’s target user is someone who’s neither filled with joy nor filled with despair. It’s ordinary, emotionally regulated, career-prioritizing, self-care-appreciating, go-where-the-job-is-mobilizing average folks—the citizens of Big Digital who take the chances they get to reduce the friction between their emotional lives and their material autonomy.
The color scheme and aesthetics of the new Fantastic Four film are bright and upbeat in their retro style. Why then is every single piece of dialogue and acting—every facial expression, especially Pedro Pascal’s—so grave and melancholy? It’s a very strange choice, both for the movie and for the advertising.
I still remember reading the original Thrawn trilogy in my teens. If only Abrams had adapted those instead…
This list of “nonfiction” books is fine, but it raises two questions:
There’s no denying Brunson’s talent, especially in the clutch, but I’ve come to loathe watching him. He’s the Harden of the 2020s.
I swear, Silicon Valley just asks itself what parents of teens fear most about social media, then decides that’s just what the world needs and starts building.
Ezra Klein’s interview with Douthat is the first one I’ve heard that moves past superficiality into depth. Cowen’s and Sullivan’s were disappointing because they either assumed a hyper-skeptical, hostile posture or harped on minute details that avoided taking seriously the fundamental questions at issue. Klein even shared that he had a mystical encounter with the God of Abraham! One that brought terror, not consolation…
From Ryan Burge’s new book.
For my latest column at CT, something a little different: “How Dude Perfect Won Me Over."
Just learned about this from Phil Christman’s latest newsletter: In 1983 Richard Nixon wrote a letter to Robert Altman about his daughter’s love for Nashville. All right then.
Gotta love the competitiveness, physicality and feistiness all over the place in Round One. It’s like the NO LOVE LOST round. (Except for Miami/Cleveland, where Heat Culture went to die.)
Co-sign.
The officiating so far in this playoffs has been truly and memorably wretched. It’s ruining an otherwise fantastic set of series.
The bureaucracy of the Church of England would be terrifying if it were efficient.
—P. D. James, Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (1999), p. 142
Reading is so important, so necessary to the nourishment of mind and spirit that I feel that it should be as seriously ceremonial as a church service.
—P. D. James, Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (1999), p. 37