As we wait to see whether Pope Francis will pull through, one more plug from n+1: “The Resurrection Appearance at Parque Lítico La Movediza” by Tom Bubul. This is from the Fall issue. The cover blurbed it as “Pope Fiction.” It’s… that.

(Also, check out Bobul’s website; that’s my jam!)

Erin Kissane’s latest essay, “Bad shape,” builds on her work around Meta’s role in the genocide of the Rohingya, and backs up a bit to look at social media writ large. She ends up arguing that the last fifteen years suggest that “platform corporations are structurally incapable of good governance, primarily because most of their central aims (continuous growth, market dominance, profit via extraction) conflict with many basic human and societal needs.”

I especially liked this passage:

A tractor structurally can’t spare a thought for the lives of the fieldmice; shouting at the tractor when it destroys their nests is a category error. Business does business. The production line doesn’t stop just because a few people lose fingers or lives. And what is a modern corporation but a legal spell for turning reasoning beings into temporarily vacant machines? We know this, which is why we have OSHA and the FAA and the FTC, for now.

Boy, it’s a terrible, terrible political moment! I’m not focusing Lightplay in that direction right now, but I want to shout out three publications that I have been finding essential in these times: Jason Kottke’s kottke.org, Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day, and Rusty Foster’s Today in Tabs. I’m sad that these publications—a “cool stuff” linkblog and two roundups of Internet/literary/shitposty drama—have had to pivot to covering the democracy beat. But with the big newspapers treating the ongoing coup with a stance I would describe as “blasé chic,” these three writers are doing key work in curating stories that, taken together, help me understand the big picture.

Kids say the darnedest things; it’s a fact universally acknowledged. Nevertheless, my two-year-old calling a Cybertruck a “Diaper Truck” might be an actual sign of genius.

New poem about AI just dropped: “For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” by Joseph Fasano. Some relevant lines:

I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?

This question also goes out to people using AI to generate “content” that ends up getting published alongside words by humans! (I found this on kottke.org.)

More and more I feel that the 2024 election was our Brexit: a razor-thin decision (Brexit: 51.9% v. 48.1%; ’24 election: 49.8% v. 48.3%) that will, among other bad things, leave us poorer and less safe for decades to come.

This isn’t the last chapter. More will be revealed. But: the knife cut bad.

Love this, from the proceedings of the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1975:

A SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CHRONOLOGY:

1. WILD ENTHUSAISM
2. FEVERISH ACTIVITY
3. DISILLUSIONMENT
4. TOTAL CONFUSION
5. SEARCH FOR THE GUILTY
6. PUNISHMENT OF THE INNOCENTS
7. PROMOTION OF THE NON-PARTICIPANTS

(Via my dad; specific text via The Big Apple.)

Well, I looked it up and now know that the right-facing Washington is a design by Laura Gardin Fraser—she designed the initial quarter but it was passed over for a design by someone else (a man). They changed over in 2022 for the American Women Quarters Program. I shoulda looked at the obverse.

To whoever flipped George Washington on the quarter: why?

I find it hard to blog while my nation’s democracy burns. Hard to do anything, really.

Of course that’s what the arsonists want: stunned silence, inaction.

Can’t give in—won’t give in—but man, this era sucks.

Getting up well before dawn—everyone else asleep—and writing in your journal for a while. The small pleasures.

To this person flying an American flag, a Trump 2024 flag, and a Mexican flag, I can only say, good luck.

This sweet Braun travel alarm clock arrived today. A decade ago I had an even smaller, more modest Braun. I loved its friendly little beeps. Somewhere I lost it. In the intervening years I took to using my phone as alarm. Now, partly inspired by this Craig Mod post I’m back on that alarm clock life!

People say the internet is getting worse and worse, but there’s no way I’m not clicking on this.

A day of ill portent but then right at its end my partner and child and I walked out onto the bluffs over the ocean and watched a knife’s edge horizon occlude the sun, and right at that last moment of day a faceted jewel of emerald light rose up, held for a long second, then winked away, into night.

Last night I walked around, and this flag, illuminated by a ring of wan LEDs, made me sad.

Old Glory, flaws and all, deserves better than this. (“This” meant in the broadest possible sense.) I feel sadly reminded of a similar walk, and other light observed, two-and-a-half years ago.

Someday this moment will pass. Soon, I hope.

Our little family recently came into possession of the book The Night Riders by Matt Furie. First published by McSweeney’s McMullens (their children’s imprint) back in 2012, it was reprinted in 2020 (I think) in support of Furie’s campaign of lawsuits and publicity as he attempted to reclaim his character Pepe the Frog from the gibbering goons who had hoisted the character onto their message boards as a symbol of hate. I love this book.

Wordless, its 48 pages follow Pepe and his friend, a rat, as they eat dinner (insects for Pepe, lettuce for the rat), go for a bike ride, encounter a dragon, hassle a subterranean bat friend, go for a swim, escape a giant crab with some help from two Lisa Frank-ass dolphins, and watch the sun rise.

Furie’s style is zine-y and outsider-y, funny but also sharply observed. It does that thing I want all art to do: makes me feel I am experiencing the world through someone else’s sensibility. Though the content is fantasy, the work often feels intimate, even voyeuristic, like you’re pawing through your stoner buddy’s sketchbook while he’s in the bathroom.

The feeling of reading The Night Riders echoes back a memory: a spring evening, riding down the backstreets of Cambridge and Somerville on the orange street bike Thalassa willed to me when she graduated, smoking a cigarette as I coast, the chain slipping clickily off the freehub, the warm evening breeze billowing through my blazer, the pedals slipping under my dress shoes, and me feeling like a bird on wing, like my feet might never again touch the ground.

Whomst among us has not had their wealthy bride revealed to be a vampire ready to feast upon them?

(From Steve and Alan Moore’s newly released grimoire, The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic (so far it’s great (no, they’re not related)).)

David Lynch

1946 – 2025

Fix your hearts or die.

Now it’s dark.

Silencio.

Bitcoin mining is SETI@home for assholes.

Arecibo lies in ruins but they’re reopening Three Mile Island to power a chatbot.

Dystopia, sure, but does it have to be this stupid?

Is part of the popularity of Substack and other newsletters simply the absence of pop-up banners, autoplay videos, and all the other crap that make online news sites nearly un-useable?

(Thinking of this article on wooden satellites: amazing story, painful to read.)

Nothing but respect for my president.