Alex Burns

It’s fitting, then, that A24 and director Jane Schoenbrun have staked a large part of the movie’s experience on another relic of the pre-streaming era: the compilation soundtrack. The I Saw the TV Glow OST is the type of project you don’t see much of in 2024. It’s a who’s who of indie music mixed with a handful of rising artists, all providing... See more

Taken together, we can combine them into what we might call a hierarchy of information :

• Raw data: the endless stream of posts, likes, bot spam


• Information: headlines, hashtags, trending things


• Knowledge: the narratives we share and fight over.


• Understanding: recognizing what might not be real (or is hyperreal)


• Wisdom: systemic analysis, the ability to

... See more

Perfectionism perpetuates an endless state of striving. It’s an affliction of futility, an addiction to finding masochistic refuge in the familiar hell of feeling insufficient. It might not feel good, but it feels like home.

Part of what makes fall so accessible to Gen Z is that you can create content about it from inside your bedroom, with a string of orange LEDs, a hot beverage, and a few pumpkin throw pillows. Summer doesn’t offer the same accessibility: Conjuring summer on the feed means vacations (costly) or bathing-suit content (not everyone’s thing). Fall is a... See more

A fan of both Herman Melville and long-forgotten archives, Grann landed on the journals of a 16-year-old midshipman who was stranded with his crew members on an island off the coast of Patagonia. It was not the document’s descriptions of typhoons, shipwreck, or mutinies, however captivating, that convinced Grann the story of The Wager was worth... See more

Neo-cities : When do people start new cities vs. reforming existing ones? Is Singapore an urbanist paradise or technofascist dystopia? What can the US learn from Special Economic Zones? Can you do urban renewal right? What’s the difference between Esmeralda and California Forever? Why do most charter cities fail? How might they succeed?

At first blush, the Rodrigo-Carpenter dynamic doesn’t seem to be that different from the way culture has always pitted pop princesses against each other. Whether it’s Britney and Christina, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, Brandy and Monica, or Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, there’s always been an inclination that every female pop star needs a rival.