🤯 The Frightening and Fantastic Worlds of James Tynion IV /// Humble Bundle

For anyone interested in reading some non-Marvel or DC comics, this is a great place to get started. Deoartment of Truth, Something is Killing The Children, and W0rldtr33 are all excellent.

🤖 Politico’s Newsroom Is Starting a Legal Battle With Management Over AI /// Wired

Union members say they believe the AI-generated posts were handled in a way that violates Politico’s correction and takedown policies. They also allege that one of Politico’s paid premium AI tools for generating policy reports has spewed out incorrect information in the past.

The people closest to it have to be the ones vocal about when it actually goes wrong. Not just because it’s their jobs on the line, but to show the industry (and the world) how poor the results can actually be when you start flipping these switches. The companies who treat their people like humans are the ones who will inevitably win because they’ll get the best people while the companies who go all in on AI will get ~productivity boosts~ but no human effort.

📺 ABC News to Launch Daily Short-Form News Program on Disney+, ‘What You Need to Know’ /// TheWrap

I haven’t thought about the daily ESPN show since the day they launched launched it, but I wonder if this means it’s been a success. Short form in an app not optimized for mobile just doesn’t seem like a winner to me.

💮 Chris Ware designs commemorative stamps celebrating 250th anniversary of US Postal Service /// The Beat

These are obviously some of the coolest stamps ever drawn and produced. Period.

☀️ Jack Dorsey’s latest app tracks sun exposure /// TechCrunch

Like other developers, Dorsey is riding the vibe-coding bandwagon. But instead of using Cursor, Claude Code, or Windsurf, he says he is using an open source coding tool called Goose.

Thoughts on AI and ~vibe coding~ aside, it actually seems like a pretty cool app—simple and effective. For it to be truly useful, I think it’d need Shortcut support or something to help automate triggering so you don’t have to constantly be taking out your phone whenever you go outside and back in again.

📽️ Inside the New Movie Theater Concept From the Founder of Alamo Drafthouse: Private Rooms, Gourmet Meals and Guest Attendants /// THR

The experience won’t come cheap: The four-person theater runs a cool $200 for a four-hour booking while the 12-person theater costs $600. Food costs $100 a person. If you want alcoholic beverages, that will be at least $50 more.

I absolutely love this idea, but I wish they had an option for couples. I could see dropping $100 for a movie night on a nice screen with my wife. The food and booze prices are also pretty crazy for a meal that’s probably not as good as a local restaurant. Still, excited to see if this can find success and evolve into new markets.

🦸‍♂️ Dean Cain Says James Gunn’s “Woke” Stance on “Immigrant” Superman is “Going to Hurt” Box-Office /// World of Reel

Cain criticized what he sees as a politicized reinvention of the iconic character, especially Gunn’s framing of Superman as an “immigrant” — a comment that’s ignited backlash among right-leaning pundits and fans alike.

How do you play a character for that many years and not realize you are playing a literal “alien?” Superman is someone who immigrated to America from a completely different planet and displays the ideals of being kind and serving others no matter what. It’s not woke, it’s just what the story has always been.

🤡 Musk makes grand promises about Grok 4 in the wake of a Nazi chatbot meltdown /// The Verge

Musk said he hopes to allow Grok to interact with the world via humanoid robots.

Great, so we’re going to have nazi robots running around now… best what the world needs. He also went on to proclaim his nazi AI is the smartest in the world. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time believing him.

☠️ kkkbye /// Instagram

A delightful little art project of a klan member being violently killed in new ways. Over and over.

📰 The New York Times Had To Work With A Eugenicist So They Didn’t Get Scooped By A Bigot /// Defector

The Times opinion department loves the occasional provocation for provocation’s sake, but the reportorial side considers itself at a further remove from culture-war concerns, as if it can only just ask questions. Of course, this is bullshit.

Such a weird non-story for the Times to take that really does make you start to question their decision making. Next thing you know, we are going to learn what Mamdani did for his 13th birthday or what he asked Santa Claus for Christmas when he was seven.

🧺 The Nuggets Are In A Standoff With Jonas Valanciunas And It Somehow Matters /// Defector

For basically the entirety of the Nikola Jokic era, the Nuggets have not had a backup center who could be described as a functional basketball player capable of setting screens, grabbing rebounds, playing out of the pick-and-roll, and putting the ball in the basket.

The Nuggets have made a ton of great moves this off-season, adding Cam Johnson, Bruce Brown, Hardaway Jr., and of course Valanciunas, who feels like the last piece that turns them into a real title contender again.

💸 Polymarket Rules ‘No’ on $237M Controversial Bet Over Zelenskyy’s Suit /// Decrypt

On June 24, Zelenskyy appeared at a NATO event in the Netherlands wearing a black jacket, matching trousers, and a collared shirt, an outfit described by numerous media outlets as a suit.

This kind of thing doesn’t surprise me and the fact so many people are willing to participate in an illegal and unregulated market like this is wild. The folks behind it have access to so much data and you have no idea if and where they are wagering their own money and how that may influence decisions like these.

🏎️ Apple bids for Formula 1 rights in US following success of Brad Pitt film /// FT

Analysts at Citi have previously estimated that F1’s next US broadcast deal could be worth $121mn a year, although that was before the release of the F1 film. Its total global media rights revenue grew almost 8 per cent to about $1.1bn in 2024.

It makes sense that it’s a sport Apple would want, but I’m surprised they are the only ones looking to snag this from ESPN. I wonder if they’ll do a similar arrangement with Sky or if they’ll want to control the entire broadcast. Also crazy that the US makes up 10% of the broadcast revenue given its relatively young popularity here.

📱 TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale /// The Verge

Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the General Services Administration says Oracle has reached a new agreement with the federal government that “is the first of its kind that provides the entire government with a discount on cloud infrastructure,” with a 75 percent discount on licensed software.

It’s weird when government deals start to feel this sketchy.

📚 Small Press SFF Might Sometimes Be Harder to Find — But It’s More Than Worth the Effort - Reactor /// Reactor

They are the classic underdog, and I feel like SFF readers could do a little more rooting for them. It’ll take a little effort on our part. It’s effort well worth making.

Enjoyed reading this as I continue to slowly build out the print side of Foofaraw Press. Support small presses!

🎥 Danny Boyle Calls Out “Cultural Appropriation” in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ /// World of Reel

Ah yes, nothing says progressive growth like retroactively throwing your own Oscar-winning film under the bus and implying it shouldn’t exist in today’s industry — the same film that launched careers, won over audiences across the globe, and let’s not forget, netted 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director (that one had your name on it, Danny).

This kind of thing is just weird. Why are we even talking about it? I get the idea of wanting people to be able to tell their own stories that they can relate to, but we should also have room for people to tell stories they are passionate about, even if they don’t reflect that culture themselves. And at this point, it’s more revisionist history than anything. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing for more diverse films from diverse filmmakers, but I fail to see how telling a story like this is cultural appropriation.

🖼️ Moe-dern Art — “Do The Artman” by David Cooper /// David Cooper

Just stunning. Truly stunning. Huge fan of the Mark Rothk-Moe and Hayao Moe-yazaki.

💬 Lynda Barry, Syllabus

Yet it survives your dislike! Astonishing!

Love this. Going to use it any time someone says they don’t like something.

🎲 Malik Beasley’s Gambling Scandal Arrives At Worst Possible Time For Malik Beasley /// Defector

If the allegations against him turn out to be true, then the league will have to confront the meaning of a nine-year veteran who played a key role on Eastern Conference playoff teams over the past two seasons manipulating games. It’s hard to imagine the integrity of the NBA being more compromised than that.

I have a feeling these things are going to be popping up more and more. Too many people becoming millionaires before they are legally allowed to drink combined with the cockiness of thinking you can get away with things. While things have vastly improved in the last decade, pro athletes have often struggled with managing their money, often with people who don’t always have their best interest in their ear. Every instance that becomes proven must be met with a complete ban.

📱 Fairphone Has a New Plan to Get You to Care /// WIRED

In an ideal world, Fairphone wants their phones to be “the last phone that you’ll have to buy”—and they’ll try their darnedest to make sure you’ve the software and spare parts to make this happen. There’s no planned obsolescence here. None at all.

I’d love nothing more for Fairphone to be successful, but I just don’t see the market fit, especially for a product you are supposed to buy once. If we look at just the techie’s who’d be interested in modding and/or upgrading parts in their phone, how many of those folks don’t want to be on the latest and greatest? And how much of the market does Apple have when it comes to people who just want a simple phone? And now that European regulations are going to push phone makers to make phones more repairable, that last part of the market is no longer theirs exclusively.

🤖 Grammarly acquires AI email client Superhuman /// TechCrunch

Can’t say I saw this one coming… AI in email, especially in a work context, feels a bit weird, no? No one has any privacy concerns, especially now that they are for sure just going to be logging every single keystroke you make? Superhuman, Arc, Dia, they aren’t actual products, just skins over existing products and somehow we pretend like they are million dollar critical infrastructure to the Internet.

🖋️ Writing and Interacting /// Nerve Endings Firing Away

You shouldn’t feel the need to own every word you say. After all, it’s the knowledge that you gain from saying or hearing those words that is more important.

While I’m kind of going against the advice here, I completely agree with Pratik. We shouldn’t have to write a blogpost and send a linkback to have a conversation online. Like a post, send a reply, or better yet, reply by email if it’s an option. Let’s just be human. Nothing is forever so stop worrying about “owning” every word you type.

📨 June 30, 2025 /// Letters from an American

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people’s money, and business owners treated their workers as they wished.

This whole letter from Heather is great. I pulled the above because it shows where we were and where we could end up. If you read further down in the piece you’ll see exactly where our deficit comes from (Republican tax cuts, duh) and how government spending has consistently been at 20% of GDP since the New Deal. Where do these idiots think the money comes from when someone uninsured gets rushed to the ER and can’t afford to pay?

🔗 Linkity Link

One of the links I came across from things to click, which is a clone of Clone.fyi, but better because Brad adds his own commentary to each link.

🖱️ things to click

Just stumbled across this blog and clicked through the entire 23 pages. Opened up way too many links that I need to check out now.