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Philly being Philly:

Within the first three weeks of the delivery robots’ arrival in Philly, videos emerged of people sitting on them, graffitiing them and eventually kicking one over.

And it’s not just Philly:

A quick web search produces a long list of examples of people being filmed or filming themselves attacking robots.

Buy why?

In Ouellette’s dissertation, “From Fiction to Friction: Abusing Autonomous Mobile Robots,” she created conditions to try and find out what motivated… See more →

“I’m not mad, just bewildered,” says Kate Beckinsale about halfway through Tiptoes, a deeply weird cinematic act of little-people advocacy. You might assume she’s talking to the agent who got her the lead in this well-meaning misfire, but the line is actually directed at Matthew McConaughey, who plays her fiancée, who as it turns out is the only Matthew McConaughey-sized person in his extended family, all of whom are otherwise affected by dwarfism. This includes… See more →

Anil Dash makes the case that we’re running out of time to save the last vestiges of the open web from the big-tech robber barons’ multifaceted (but mostly AI-shaped) rampage, which probably isn’t news to anyone who actually understands what’s at stake, but his post does a good job of enumerating and describing the threats for those who don’t.

Creators who fight hard to stay independent are often choosing to make less money, to go… See more →

Yesterday, for the first time, I closed my site. Any page you visited turned you away with this message:

This site is closed on Sundays. I’m trying to avoid screens at least one day out of the week, and this is my way of encouraging others to consider doing the same. I’d apologize for the inconvenience, but I think in many ways modern expectations of convenience have gotten way out of hand, don’t you? Feel… See more →

A watch list for progressive masochists from Becca Rothfeld’s “The MAGA Theory of Art” in Art in America.

Just as Weimar and Nazi films pandered to white-collar workers who refused to confront a new economic reality, evangelical films pander to a rural class that clings to an outmoded notion of small-town affluence—and thereby to a bygone socio-economic order. They present the rural as a refuge from modernity, a realm that economic history has happily bypassed. To… See more →

A project has been in the works for a couple years to replace a number of Notre-Dame’s stained-glass windows with contemporary designs, which has unsurprisingly caused an uproar. While the arguments for and against generally take familiar shapes—whether historic architecture should accommodate modern expression, whether these decisions should be top-down or community-driven—one functional aspect of the kerfuffle caught my attention:

The windows’ light gray, non-figurative glass allows more light to enter the cathedral, achieved via… See more →

I was at a funeral today and felt all the appropriate funeral feelings but I also could not stop thinking about Coffin Flop

As is often the case in low-budget filmmaking, Killpoint is the underwhelming product of one guy spreading himself too thin, with main man Frank Harris writing, producing, directing, shooting, and editing. But he leaves the acting to the actors, and his stable is surprisingly deep (a cast of more than 100), if not all that skilled. Stilted performances are the name of the game, which is to be expected from the Hollywood hopefuls with empty… See more →

If you see only one motion picture featuring a pregnant teen being chased through the woods by a second pregnant teen with a kitchen knife, make it this one.

I only counted three crowns?

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