Daniel Carlson

@danielwcarlson.bsky.social

364

Followers

325

Following

1925

Posts

Lapsed film critic. Writer, reader, bearder. Seen at Musings (Oscilloscope), Bright Wall Dark Room, Plex, several others. Sucker for ’90s country. Hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.

https://authory.com/danielcarlson

Posts Replies Media

You can’t “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”: that would mean you’re lifting yourself off the ground, defying physics. It was meant to be a sarcastic phrase describing an impossible task. But people are dumb, so it morphed into a generic and cheesy aphorism about inspiration.

okay it's time for a prompt post: respond to this post with a correction to a common misconception about something you know a lot about. if you feel like it, boost your response. (please use a kindly tone about it, otherwise i, your prompt curator, will get anxious.)

This was the best we ever had it.

"Here’s everything we think we know so far." Journalism!

Think about how hated you have to be for someone to try to assassinate you and for the overwhelming public reaction to be “eh, surprised it took this long”

DIE HARD is one the best Hollywood action movies ever made, full stop. It does not matter that everyone knows this. Sometimes the best is just the best.

'Die Hard' was released on this day in 1988. For @vulture.bsky.social, I wrote about how it was far from a sure thing: www.vulture.com/2018/07/how-...

How Die Hard Changed the Action Gamewww.vulture.com They said an overpaid TV comedy actor didn’t stand a chance against Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Eastwood. They were wrong.

Got my power back. It was out for a week because of Hurricane Beryl. Incredibly grateful that my father-in-law had installed a generator in his house this past spring; without that, we'd have had nowhere to go.

People say “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” like it’s a law of nature or something. It’s just a line a guy made up! It was just his opinion! Yeah, some stuff makes you stronger. Some stuff makes you weaker, or sadder, or meaner, or quieter, etc. Life is complicated!

Impossible to overstate the degree to which this certain flavor of 1980s sci-fi shaped who I was as a child

Buying a car in America sucks for many, many reasons, not least of which is that dealers can make up fees at will. prospect.org/power/2024-0...

Escape From the Boxprospect.org New technology and old tactics have made buying a car a death march of deception. Jase Patrick, who spent 15 years in the business, reveals the dealer secrets.

The best information cycle was daily newspapers: a condensed list of the last 24 hours of stuff, with the latest notes. That’s the most updates our brains can easily process and build on. All-day barrage = noise, pure clutter.

Burn it on the surface of the moon

COOL NEAT

Stoned out of my tree, watching the first and best JOHN WICK, trying to will a different world into existence

Just turned off the motion-smoothing on my father-in-law’s TV. He’s currently out of town. Do I leave it fixed, or return it to its horrendous prior state?

Reposted by

Daniel Carlson

By definition, a “utility” is a service that is vital for basic survival. For this reason, they used to be regulated. But of course, the neoliberal GOP and “third way” Dems did away with all that. So now, Centerpoint is not obligated to, you know, provide power. They just generate profit.

Elder Millennial here. This was my introduction to Shelley Duvall. My sister and I loved renting these tapes. We had favorite episodes. I still remember Robin Williams in “The Frog Prince.”

All episodes of Shelley Duvall’s FAERIE TALE THEATRE are on Internet Archive, if you’d like to enjoy the second act pivot that made her iconic for ‘80s and ‘90s kids. archive.org/details/fgtd5r #ShelleyDuvall

I soured on BOJACK HORSEMAN after a while (I’d rather you just go to therapy instead of making a maudlin cartoon about why you won’t go to therapy), but so many of its sight gags were A+

Reposted by

Daniel Carlson

In a wildly ironic turn, The Washington Post's new climate-focused AI chatbot often declines to answer questions about AI's growing environmental footprint -- even though the paper has done some terrific reporting on the subject! For @futurism.bsky.social futurism.com/washington-p...

Washington Post Launches AI to Answer Climate Questions but It Won't Say Whether AI Is Bad for the Climatefuturism.com The venerable has a new AI chatbot, designed to answer climate questions. Why won't it answer prompts about AI's growing climate footprint?

Reposted by

Daniel Carlson

idk what the right thing to do is but it's pretty telling to me that the people in politics who I respect like AOC and Bernie are saying "we gotta make sure the leaky rowboat doesn't sink" and the people drilling holes in the bottom are like, Scott Peters

Like my feeling since Biden wrapped up the nomination has been that Biden is a leaky rowboat we've all been crammed into, and while being on a leaky rowboat sucks I'm rooting for it not to sink and annoyed at the other people on the boat who are seemingly determined to drill more holes in it.

This makes me want to resubscribe to the NYT just to cancel again.

I'm no ivy league fail upward brunchlord news professional, but I feel it's generous to call conspiratorial fascism (managed by a sociopathic manbaby with a fourth grade reading level) "disruptive" that's kind of like saying nuclear annihilation is "modifying"

AWESOME. IT'S RAINING AGAIN. COOL. STILL NO POWER FOR 1 MILLION PEOPLE. REALLY ENJOYING LIVING ON THE GULF COAST DURING GLOBAL WARMING. VERY FUN

That parenthetical is like an assassin’s bullet.

Fly Me to the Moon, a ponderous rom-com set against the backdrop of the 1969 Apollo 11 launch, has problems so big the fake-moon-landing hoax subplot isn't even the worst of them. For one thing, who casts Channing Tatum as an uptight aeronautical engineer who can't dance? slate.com/culture/2024...

Channing Tatum and ScarJo Made a Rom-Com About Faking the Moon Landing. Houston, We Have a Problem.slate.com Fly Me to the Moon is a $100 million disaster.

Co-signed. It’s incredibly frustrating to live here and feel held hostage by nutjobs.

A simple reality I must live with is that, as a lifelong Texan, my vote for anything higher than mayor has never mattered.

Reposted by

Daniel Carlson

I spoke to Caroline Suh and Cara Mones about their Louis C.K. documentary SORRY/NOT SORRY. Before 2017, Suh had been a fan, while Mones wasn't that familiar with his work. Did making the movie change their feelings about the comedian?

The Filmmakers Who Want You to Remember What Louis C.K. Didwww.cracked.com The directors of the documentary ‘Sorry/Not Sorry’ discuss the fallacy of cancel culture, the invisibility of the comedian’s victims, and what it’s like to be a fan who feels betrayed by his lack of c...

I want to share with you the beauty of something I just discovered on Facebook. Friends, say hello to PROJECT ALF

House without power since Monday 5 a.m., staying at in-laws (generator) w/ dog while cats left behind in hot dark home, still have to work—yes, I am getting very stoned on this Wednesday night

The original JOHN WICK is still perfect DTV action-trash. Knows what it is, doesn’t try to posture above its station. The best of the lot.

Reposted by

Daniel Carlson

Book

I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't have a dog in *any* fight. I don't fight dogs.