So far, after the first 3 episodes, #AlienEarth has been one really cool ride! Love that they’re expanding the world & universe of the show like that!
Very Online
🔈🎸 The new All Time Low song “Oh No!" that dropped today is so freaking good! Can’t wait for the album to be released and to see them live this fall!
Simple and to-the-point, I love this new ad campaign to support our French Women’s National Rugby Team ahead of the Women’s Rugby World Cup
Honestly truly didn’t need a study to confirm this, but I guess it’s always good to have data to back up street-level facts…
…The study did not answer the question of why Americans were reading less. But the authors suggested some possible explanations, including **increased use of social media **and other technology, or more time spent at work because of economic pressure.
The decline in reading could have implications for Americans’ learning, relationships and overall well-being, the researchers said.
“Even though reading is often thought of as more of an individual activity, when we read stories, we actually form connections with characters”
🏀
John Wall’s speed, with or without the ball, registered as a whole other thing, something uncanny and exhilarating and miraculous. (…) John Wall was fast more or less the way Steph Curry is good at shooting three-pointers. (…)
…The sound of the team’s in-arena announcer’s drawn-out JOHHHHHNNNNN WALLLLLLL is the backing track to some of the most fun I ever had watching professional sports in person. Basketball as a whole, too, benefited from having in it a guy who, for a time anyway, could break games more or less the way the Road Runner broke Wile E. Coyote’s traps, by sprinting straight through them at the speed of sound.
🏀 My point gawd announced his retirement yesterday:
Thank you John Wall, Washington Wizards and DC legend! His peak years with the Wiz were arguably the last time that the team was relevant, which is very sad to point out. We’re gonna need a jersey retirement ceremony and everything. Someone tell owner Ted Leonsis to get on it!
Day two: back to back
My First Five Steam Purchases (after reading the related article on The Verge):
- Torchlight
- Team Fortress 2
- Portal 2
- Poker Night
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Plants vs. Zombies
⚽️ “This is Stadio”, this is Football.
📰🎙️🎧 NYT: Where have all my male friendships gone 😢
🏀 #Eurobasket25 France vs Spain:
Very excited to start this show later this week… reviews have been very positive so far! 👽🫀
Alien: Earth establishes some of its most compelling ideas about what happens to people when their lives are defined by their relationships to technology.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Americans might also be hypocrites.
“What’s a smut peddler to do these days?” - The Verge
The Power of Politeness | The Atlantic
8/7/25
The idea of Kindness being Punk, continuing to grow and get good traction. I love it!
When you become less polite, the alteration in your conduct can make you less happy, more depressed, and angrier about life.
(…) One study [allows] us to infer that you inherit some politeness from your parents partly through your genes, but more through how you were brought up. This also implies that you can become more polite with good influences and by cultivating positive habits.
Researchers (…) showed that being polite to others raises happiness and lowers anger. (…) Being impolite is more like scratching at your poison-ivy rash. Giving in to the urge makes things worse.
(…) I see politeness as today’s punk rock because it so transgresses the spirit of our times. And like punk rock, when you empower yourself with politeness, you feel exhilarated. It is the ultimate exercise in freedom: the freedom to be the person I want to be in the face of a cultural tyranny.
…because the American audience had not seen the original, they believed they were seeing something for the first time. Even though it already existed.
(…) To me, Baohaus and the gua bao was a vehicle to tell a story about where my family was from, but you could only say so much through a restaurant.
(…) if there’s one thing I learned the past decade it’s that perhaps the immigrant story was actually best told in a kitchen where the line is immediate, direct, and physically digestible.
Misogyny in women’s sports — like in society – is often subtle. However, in this instance, the message being sent by the people throwing these sex toys on the courts is loud and clear.
🎥 Dìdi (弟弟) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🛹
Wow this really took me back!
Ah yes the only civil war I’m happy to watch from the sidelines…
“The Politics of Fear” :
Trump was, from his formative years, a spoiled bully. (…) “Little Donny” was a pigtail puller, an unruly loudmouth who tormented his teachers and hurled insults and rocks at other kids.
🏀 🇫🇷 I know it’s just a test, but very much excited to see France 🇫🇷 play against Montenegro 🇲🇪 tonight and check out how this newlook team pairs together… 🏀 #FIBA #EuroBasket
🎥 Marvel’s Thunderbolts* | ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Aka “Thunderbobs: saved by the group hug!”
Lunch is the Thanksgiving of meals, neither underwhelming nor extra luxurious, adapting easily to various contingencies and configurations. It is what you make of it.
The EU sets up regulations pushing for transparency in online advertising. Next thing you know:
Meta will stop running political advertising in the EU from October, criticising “unworkable requirements” under a new European law designed to increase transparency in digital campaigning.
The sound you hear at a distance are the thousands of Zuck-pitched violins. Or as we say in France:
Spain strikes me as the neighbor buying the cheapest stuff possible, regardless of quality. From my experience, what I’ve seen and witnessed when working with Spanish people or companies — including locally— cheap price is the #1 criteria.
This is what happens when you compromise over quality.
2022-2025 RIP 🪦 👼 🌾 🍚
I swear if you want to be successful as the leader of a nation, just look at whatever this administration does and do the exact opposite
Updated my /now page :)
My wife has been sharing some of our most personal cultural stories over on her newsletter
