"Instead of causes, biology is repeatedly about propensities, potentials, vulnerabilities, predispositions, proclivities, interactions, modulations, contingencies, if/then clauses, context dependencies, exacerbation or diminution of preexisting tendencies." I potentially quite liked this book.

"brought him memes that encouraged him to keep going." How is this real life?

If you suppress something that needs to be expressed, only grief and pain will ensue. Spider-Man learns this the hard way in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a phenomenal portrayal of loneliness and heartache, but also of bravery and honor. Holland was born to be Spider-Man. Great movie.

Choices define the unfurling of our lives, but they don't necessarily have to define us in perpetuity. The world I want to live in is also filled with grace and understanding. Boyne's book beautifully explores this. Ambitious in scale and scope, while ultimately evincing intimacy, humor, and heart.

If you're someone who has any modicum of affection for the moviegoing experience — the thrill and awe of seeing a movie in the theater — then seeing a movie in true IMAX 70mm is something you have to experience at least once.

Nolan's "The Odyssey" is grand and spectacular, but where it triumphs is in the intimate moments, often on the face of Damon's Odysseus (let's go, Best Actor!), a much more remorseful character than his book counterpart. But a good choice as a representation of man's hubris and need for humility.

Hierarchy, newsroom tension, fatherhood, and even life and death are explosively explored in Hideo Yokoyama's 2003 book (translated in 2018). As a former journalist, like Yokoyama, I was enthralled by the newsroom scenes and how decisions are made, especially when covering a world historical event.

He tells us all the time how much he doesn’t care. Good job electing this person again, Americans.

When a pugilist and a philosopher meets ruffians, rascals, and villains in 18th century London, I'm all in. This is such a compelling, gritty, often times jovial and hilarious, Sherlockian romp through a city on the precipice of monumental change, financially and socially. Dark horse favorite read.

Incredible caption.

I had high expectations because Olivia Wilde said it was their “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” one of my all-time favorite films. This lived up though. A movie that can survive entirely on intelligent dialogue performed exceedingly well is my jam. Also, genuinely, repeatedly laugh-out-loud funny.

While I wasn't expecting nor desiring a paranormal thriller, given the usually grounded Natchez, Mississippi setting, Iles is such a propulsive and fun writer, I devoured another of his novels over the course of a few manic reading sessions anyhow.

With a deeply defined cast of characters and the unforgettable setting of the Adirondacks, Moore's book is a triumph of thriller and thought. A phenomenal book. I don't think my review can do it justice.

One of the most enthralling books I've read in a long time, horrifying and hilarious at various turns. As McCurdy remarks during her mother's funeral, there has to be levity or it would all be too much. And life is so damn absurd as it is — within an absurd industry at that — that one has to laugh.

As long as that dinner is still happening with Trump, fuck all the way off.

I ate a lot, including enough cheese to set back the federal stockpile, tried too many cocktails, bought eight books, went tubing for the first time, enjoyed a magic show, and had an overall blast in Lake Geneva. I especially enjoyed the family time. I can't take these opportunities for granted.

Visiting Yerkes Observatory is so much more than "where Einstein visited" or the large telescope. It's science! It's architecture! It's female empowerment! (One of the women, Nancy Grace Roman, is getting a telescope released in her name next month!) And it's a community that saved its observatory.

If you need a session of nature therapy, one of my new go-to recommendations is going to be the Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford, Illinois. Lovely and calming. Then, stick around for the cucumber mule at the Fresco at the Gardens restaurant inside.

If you want to feel more hopeful about America, more girded against the inclination to give into doomsaying, Lincoln is your salve, which means make an effort to at least spend a weekend in Springfield, IL. But also, it was a powerful ode to the importance of history. I loved it.

We need more philanthropists like this.

O'Nan wasn't going to use a death to propel the story forward. The mundanity and beauty of life, in equal measure, under the shortening runway of his life, is the story. And it's quite lovely in that way, to be an observer of this quiet contentment with life at the last "arc" of it.

Insane.

He’s always here to defend the rapists.

Fuck off.

Wokeness has been around longer than we realized!

Great way to spend the Fourth.

Spotted at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, @profmsinha.bsky.social 👀

One of the most patriotic, and long-standing American pastimes, is to mock the president. Lincoln got it from the South (racist), but from the North, too. Most didn’t age well, as Lincoln rose to historical greatness, but the *freedom* to mock is — relative to human history — a radical idea.