PicoBlog

It felt like a flashback to a better time. I was in Strange Daze books in Barrio Logan when Andres, one of the proprietors, handed me a DVD. “Have you seen this?” “No,” I said. It was the uncut special edition of Ichi the Killer directed by Takashi Miike in 2001. “Take it,” he said. “You have to see this.” The film came with a blurb that read like a warning: “Ichi is probably the Citizen Kane of arterial spray movies, or at least the Casablanca.

Last month, Huffington Post ran a piece titled “We Love Simu Liu, But He’s Not The Only Talented Asian Thirst Trap In Hollywood,” by writer Ian Kumamoto. The piece focused on Liu’s casting in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie adaptation. “We love Liu, and we’re all for an Asian king thriving,” Kumamoto wrote. “All we’re saying is, we don’t want a predominantly white Hollywood to gatekeep sexy Asian male representation…when there are so many other attractive and talented Asian men who deserve to be seen,” before embedding some of the alternative fan casting that people had been sharing on Twitter, including the likes of Manny Jancito and Jackson Wang.

Everyone agrees it’s not a good thing when Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents arrive at your door with representatives of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) in tow. They aren’t there to congratulate you on a job well done. This simple fact explains why the appearance of agents of the IRS and TTB at the doors of the Northern California hub of the largest wine and spirits wholesaler in America last Friday spurred a good deal of discussion over what Southern-Glazers had done wrong.

I've been thinking about thought lately. More specifically, I've been thinking about the purpose of this journal, in which I offer my so-called "Thoughts Mostly About Film." That purpose is not – despite the frequent certainty of my tone – to make definitive arguments. Nor is it to provide qualitative assessments of movies (ie. "100 Movies You Have To Watch Before You Die!") as I believe that mission often leads to confusion: what we’re talking about when we talk about the greatness or awfulness of a film is usually not the film itself but what we mean by "

A big part of the reason I left Austin was, ultimately, access to art. We had two great museums there, but there’s no denying LA is a hub of art in a way that almost blows my mind. I feel a little drunk on it, as if the world is hallucinogenic, art and music and books everywhere I turn. I realized I haven’t done enough sharing of that, so I wanted to send out a list of the art I’ve been running into lately.

On this drizzly 21st of May 2024, King’s Parade in Cambridge looks much the same as in the photograph above, if a little rainier and considerably less crowded. This is the first of a special two-part post marking the anniversary of 21st May 1897, a notorious date in the history of Cambridge University, when a vote to award women the title of degree became a hugely contested issue. (Part 2, ‘The Women in the Photograph’, describing events that took place later that day, will follow shortly.

Some years ago, I invented a law, like Godwin’s or Poe’s. The law stipulates that the more often an individual accuses others of being “putrid mutts,” the more likely they themselves could be described accurately in those terms. This is not merely an argument about projection. For those of you who are not working-class Australians, it is difficult to articulate the wealth of connotations that figure of speech carries, and how using it implicates the individual.

Not all that long ago it was quite fashionable to opine that Elon Musk was the new Henry Ford. This wasn’t, by the way, a statement about either car magnate’s political or personal views, though these days that particular comparison is a little more prevalent. No, the idea was that in the 21st century Elon Musk would do for electric vehicles what Henry Ford did for motor cars in the 20th century.

Hi, it’s Charley, and this is Untangled, a newsletter about technology and power. Last week, I wrote about a new category of crypto project — Decentralized Physical Infrastructure or DePin — and how everything is a Ponzi in crypto, until sometimes, it’s not. I suspect that you’ll hear much more about crypto this year. Media coverage follows price action, and the token prices of many crypto projects are approaching all-time highs, with industry catalysts like the ‘Bitcoin halving’ around the corner.