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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • Absolutely. “Legends” such as Madonna, who owes basically her entire career to standing on the shoulders of true giants, whose names are relegated to mainstream obscurity. Her whole oeuvre was just the store brand of music that actually came from somewhere and was about something. A less messy, politically bland repackaging, free from inconvenient politics and identities. Elvis for a new generation.





  • The computer may not be shitty, but the government that consistently keeps computers teetering off the edges of desks, perched precariously over buckets of water sure is. These types of “unprecedented” individual events are actually part of a blaring collection of events, which when viewed together comprise a blinking neon trend. To be fair though, the cause of this trend has only very recently been identified in 1896, so politicians haven’t had adequate time to prepare.








  • I’ve done it several times. When the bee wakes up it takes care of office odors. Something to do with airflow or something. Anytime my office gets smelly I just grab a bee from under the sink and pop it in the freezer for a bit. I’ve even taken a bee camping before by using a thermos. It wasn’t as easy to get into my mouth, but once I figured it out it worked great!




  • I recently saw the movie Titanic for the first time. It honestly made me pretty mad how directly it relates to the problems of the intervening years since it came out. In the movie: rich people are not to be trusted, the experts are ignored in favor of media coverage, the poor are trapped below decks, there aren’t enough life boats, by the time people start accepting reality it’s too late. It’s almost all too perfect. The iceberg can be global warming, or the pandemic, or the return of fascism, basically any of the major calamities of the past 10 years. And everyone saw the movie. It was a massive hit. And all anyone took away from it was that Rose gets naked. So both the movie, and the response to the message of the movie, are almost too on the nose.



  • 15 - “It Ends With Us” Worldwide gross: $350,986,018 Reported production budget: $25 million

    14 -“Twisters” Worldwide gross: $370,962,265 Reported production budget: $155 million

    13 - “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” Worldwide gross: $397,378,150 Reported production budget: $160 million

    12 - “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” Worldwide gross: $404,544,199 Reported production budget: $100 million

    11 - “Gladiator II” Worldwide gross: $406,644,901 Reported production budget: $250 million to $300+ million

    10 - “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Worldwide gross: $451,100,435 Reported production budget: $100 million

    9 - “Venom: The Last Dance” Worldwide gross: $476,368,152 Reported production budget: $120 million

    8 - “Kung Fu Panda” Worldwide gross: $547,689,492 Reported production budget: $85 million

    7 - “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” Godzilla in " Worldwide gross: $571,750,016 Reported production budget: $135 million

    6 - “Wicked” Worldwide gross: $586,301,620 Reported production budget: $150 million

    5 - “Dune: Part Two” Worldwide gross: $714,444,358 Reported production budget: $190 million

    4 - “Moana 2” Worldwide gross: $820,990,553 Reported production budget: $150 million

    3 - “Despicable Me 4” Worldwide gross: $969,126,452 Reported production budget: $100 million

    2 - “Deadpool & Wolverine” Worldwide gross: $1,338,073,645 Reported production budget: $200 million

    1 - “Inside Out 2” Worldwide gross: $1,698,765,616 Reported production budget: $200 million




  • That’s certainly part of it. But it’s also a nation trend in communication. Trump has done a brilliant job at weaponizing and popularizing clipped, terse, sparse, blunt, chunky, speaking. He’s basically made headlines into a kind of vernacular, where everything is at once overly explicit and yet open to interpretation. Like, tone over content, and difficulty to ignore over clarity. It’s less that he has invented it, and more like he identified it, but has used it as a form of lexical gamesmanship. Set the narrative by being the one that’s remembered, fidelity to truth be damned. And giving his black-hole-like ability to bend discourse to be on his terms, everyone is falling in line and speaking in big dumb wooden blocks in order to remain competitive.