Bungie leadership committed to restoring specific content to Destiny 2 that had previously been removed, though they did not provide a definitive list of names or a specific release timeline.
Category: Media
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The Next Chapter for Bungie?
Bungie leadership committed to restoring specific content to Destiny 2 that had previously been removed, though they did not provide a definitive… Read more →
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my mom’s angry playlist has two songs and no skips
The Bitch Is Back. You Oughta Know. apparently i inherited a very specific approach to emotional regulation. Read more →
i started making a playlist of songs my mom used to listen to when she got pissed off, and so far it has two entries: “The Bitch Is Back” and “You Oughta Know.”
a short playlist. a clear position.
somebody replied that “You Oughta Know” had been their big breakup song and that i was making them feel old. my mom was born in 1961. she was simply a big fan of angry power walking to Jagged Little Pill. the album had applications beyond its original target demographic.
i love that this is a detail i get to keep about her. not a grand statement about what she taught me, or a polished anecdote with a meaningful ending. just my mom being pissed off and putting on Alanis. extremely recognizable. no additional explanation necessary.
sometimes the song should also be mad
“You Oughta Know” does not arrive with a calming suggestion. it gets directly into being furious and stays there long enough to make a point. i can understand why someone would want that in her ears while walking with purpose.
there’s a kind of relief in a song that doesn’t ask you to be the reasonable person yet. maybe you will be reasonable later. perhaps there is a perfectly good explanation. for the next few minutes, however, Alanis is available to argue.
and then there’s Elton.
“The Bitch Is Back” has a different kind of swagger. even the title announces that we have moved past the discussion portion of the afternoon. i appreciate the confidence of a song that introduces itself like somebody has been waiting nervously for its return.
those two songs together tell me more about the playlist i want than padding it out to a respectable length would. i’m remembering what she actually listened to. i don’t need to manufacture a definitive thirty-track portrait of her because an app has space for more tracks.
she gets to be funny in the memory, too
i’ve written about using playlists to say things. this one is a little different. i’m not trying to send a carefully coded message. i’m trying to hang on to a detail that makes me hear her as a person.
when you miss someone, there’s a temptation to make every memory gentle enough to put on a sympathy card. but i don’t only miss an abstract, saintly version of my mother. i miss a specific woman who could be annoyed, funny, and ready to put on a song about it.
the angry power walking belongs in the record. so does the fact that remembering it makes me laugh.
i might remember another song later. for now, two is enough. you could put this playlist on repeat and have a very efficient disagreement with the entire neighborhood.
Featured image: livepict.com / source. CC BY-SA 3.0.
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mahna mahna remains a complete operating system
a man in a green suit begins with one little noise, two pink creatures answer him, and television becomes briefly perfect. Source:… Read more →
a man in a green suit begins with one little noise, two pink creatures answer him, and television becomes briefly perfect.
Source: YouTube
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a playlist is an email you can make someone not answer
the power of a playlist is that it can say too much, and nobody has to type back “thank you, that is… Read more →
a playlist is a deeply efficient way to make your feelings somebody else’s administrative burden. you can sequence three songs perfectly, give it a title that is normal enough to deny in court, and then hand it over like you are not trying to communicate anything at all.
Image: YouTube the best playlists are not encyclopedic. they are specific enough to make a case. this is the walk home in bad weather. this is the drive when you need to become somebody with better posture. this is the song you played seventeen times because apparently the day needed a witness.
there is mercy in the format, too. a playlist does not demand an immediate response. it can sit there, quietly insisting that the third track matters. perhaps they listen. perhaps it becomes part of their own weird little afternoon. both outcomes are survivable.
Image: YouTube anyway, if i have ever sent you a playlist, please understand that i was behaving with extraordinary restraint.
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the housewives anniversary trip is a hostile group project with luggage
seven veteran Housewives, five cities, one traveling jurisdictional dispute, and Teresa waiting patiently for the next euphemism to receive technical support. Read more →
there are television shows with plots, and then there are television shows where seven women who have each spent years learning how to seize a scene are placed on a bus and asked to celebrate institutional history.
ultimate girls trip roaring 20th might be the best tv show I’ve ever seen? just everyone hating everyone and about every 16 minutes they have to explain a sex euphemism to teressa
The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th may be the best version of the second thing Bravo has ever made. everyone hates everyone, every city supplies a new ceremonial reason to reopen an old wound, and approximately every sixteen minutes somebody has to explain a sex euphemism to Teresa Giudice.
this is not a criticism. this is the format achieving consciousness.
the trip has no neutral territory
The Roaring 20th cast takes the anniversary trip on the road. Photo: Bravo. The season’s official structure is a tour through the franchise’s history: Orange County, Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Miami, and New York. Bravo describes the core cast as seven “franchise-defining” Housewives—Lisa Barlow, Porsha Williams, Kyle Richards, Luann de Lesseps, Vicki Gunvalson, Teresa Giudice, and Gizelle Bryant—with other familiar faces appearing along the route.
on paper, this is an anniversary celebration. onscreen, it is a traveling jurisdictional dispute. every stop gives somebody home-field advantage and everybody else a fresh opportunity to resent it. nostalgia arrives carrying a seating chart.
the casting is almost mathematically hostile. these are not seven people selected because they will naturally bond. they are seven people selected because each believes, with years of supporting footage, that she understands how a Housewives scene is supposed to work. put them together and every lunch becomes a writers’ room where nobody has agreed who is showrunner.
everyone is producing, including the person denying she is producing
episode six, “Cockies and Conversation,” is where the machinery becomes especially visible. the Miami stop includes an argument about Lisa being late, another argument about whether Lisa talks to bloggers, Vicki’s gastrointestinal situation, Luann interrupting a toast about sisterhood, and Porsha repeatedly trying to redirect traffic like the only crossing guard assigned to an eight-lane intersection.
Lisa Barlow during “Cockies and Conversation.” Photo: Bravo, via Vulture. Vulture’s recap describes the cast as reaching the point in a vacation where everyone is exhausted and patience has become a limited natural resource. that exhaustion is exactly why the episode works for me. nobody has enough energy left to pretend these conversations are spontaneous, but everybody still has enough professional instinct to keep the scene alive.
Gizelle introduces an accusation. Lisa rejects the premise. Teresa locates Lisa almost immediately when she leaves to cry. Luann enters each silence like she has been summoned by a small bell only she can hear. Vicki tries to deliver a toast while the room behaves as though the toast is a public comment period.
the show is not hiding the labor of reality television anymore. it is letting us watch seven veteran employees conduct an increasingly hostile peer review.
Teresa is the audience, somehow
Teresa’s role in all of this is essential because she keeps reacting to language like it has arrived without documentation. somebody says something filthy. the group pauses. Teresa processes the phrase. a colleague provides technical support. television resumes.
after twenty years of Housewives, this is the kind of ritual the franchise can now build around itself. the joke is not simply that Teresa does not know a euphemism. the joke is that everyone else knows she will not know it, the editors know we know, and the explanation becomes a tiny recurring ceremony. oral history, but make it deeply unhelpful.
the anniversary works because nobody can behave at it
Bravo’s official language promises nostalgia, heartfelt revelations, effortless humor, and “larger-than-life dynamics.” that is accurate in the same way “weather event” is accurate. the appeal is not that the women gather to honor twenty years of television with dignity. the appeal is that dignity keeps booking a later flight.
Roaring 20th understands that the Housewives legacy is not a collection of isolated iconic moments. it is a workplace culture. alliances, grudges, catchphrases, self-production, selective memory, and the unshakable belief that the other person should apologize first have all been standardized across franchises.
so yes, everyone is hating everyone. the trip keeps moving. Teresa will require another definition shortly. this may be the finest commemorative programming the institution could have produced.
Sources and image attribution: Bravo’s official Roaring 20th first look; Vulture’s episode-six recap. Promotional and episode imagery from Bravo, used editorially for commentary.
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streaming has turned watching tv into unpaid market research
streaming has trained viewers to treat every premiere like a performance review—and every show they love like an unpaid internship. Read more →
last night, four days after The Paper dropped its entire second season, I started watching because I wanted to. I also started watching because some small, unpaid Peacock employee living inside my brain had begun shouting that the show needed my numbers immediately.
this is a strange new relationship with television. I am no longer simply deciding whether I feel like watching a show. I am being asked, or at least gently haunted, to demonstrate that the show deserves to continue existing.
the premiere is now a performance review
The Paper released all ten season-two episodes on Peacock on September 9. That is convenient if you want to spend a weekend at the Toledo Truth Teller. It is less convenient if your preferred television schedule is “eventually, after I finish the other eleven things everyone released on Thursday.”
A weekly show can slowly become part of your life. A binge release arrives like a pallet on the loading dock. Please process the complete shipment while it is still considered culturally fresh.
Netflix’s 2026 engagement report artwork. Image: Netflix. Streamers do not all disclose the same decision-making formula, and one household pressing play four days late is not a tiny executioner standing beside a cancellation button. Still, the industry has trained us to understand viewing as a vote. In its July 2026 engagement report, Netflix described engagement around the moment someone chooses a title and stays to watch; it reported more than 97 billion hours watched in the first half of the year.
The numbers get enormous very quickly. Nielsen’s 2026 midyear streaming report ranks successful shows in billions of minutes and describes a new class of originals through their measured viewing. That is useful industry data. It also means viewers now encounter television surrounded by the language of quarterly results.
Nielsen’s top overall streaming titles for the first half of 2026. Image: Nielsen. fandom has become an unpaid internship
If you like a small comedy, a queer show, a weird genre series, or anything else that does not arrive pre-certified as a global event, watching can feel less like leisure and more like constituent services. You watch early. You let the credits run. You tell friends. You make a post. You consider putting “stakeholder engagement” on LinkedIn.
The platform does not need to send a push notification saying this program’s continued employment depends on you. We have seen enough beloved shows vanish after one or two seasons to write the notification ourselves.
And because the actual renewal calculus is private, there is no moment when the assignment is complete. Was starting within four days fast enough? Do I need to finish this weekend? Does rewatching help? Was pausing to make dinner an act of industrial sabotage?
I would like to return to merely watching television
I do not want every show I like to become a civic obligation. I want to watch The Paper because Sabrina Impacciatore is doing something ungovernable on my television, not because I have appointed myself to Peacock’s programming committee.
But I did start season two. four days after release. while publicly complaining about feeling forced to start season two.
the algorithm will be pleased to note that its employee remains highly engaged.
Images from Peacock/NBCUniversal, Netflix, and Nielsen, used editorially.
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Yash traded Drew the veto for two promises and a future problem
after roughly twelve to fourteen hours, Yash handed Drew the #BB28 veto in exchange for safety promises. this should age calmly and… Read more →
live-feed spoilers for Big Brother 28 through Sunday morning, September 13.
Yash and Drew stayed attached to a movie-promo lie detector until approximately the end of time, and then Yash traded the veto away for two promises. this is the kind of decision that looks either visionary or deeply embarrassing depending on which thirty seconds of Thursday you freeze-frame.
what happened
Yash’s Week 10 nominations were Barrett, Drew, and Melody. Dee and Devens joined them in the final veto draw, and the competition turned into an endurance marathon that ran somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve to fourteen hours.
Hamsterwatch’s September 12 live-feed recap has the drop order as Dee, Melody, Devens, and Barrett, leaving Drew and Yash. At roughly 2:48 a.m. Pacific, Yash accepted Drew’s pitch and dropped, making Drew the veto winner.
Yash Patel and Drew Campbell with fellow houseguests. Photo: CBS, via AOL. In exchange, Drew promised:
- not to vote Taylor out if she is on the block Thursday
- not to nominate Yash during Drew’s next HOH, either initially or as a replacement nominee, even if keeping that promise means sacrificing Melody
the deal is stranger than it first sounds
Yash is already HOH, so the veto did not offer him personal safety. It offered control. Because Dee’s BB Bribe protects Dee and Devens from a Yash nomination this week, Drew using the veto on himself appears to leave Taylor as the only available replacement nominee.
So Yash effectively allowed the sequence that puts Taylor on the block, then bought a promise from Drew not to evict her. very normal. structurally elegant. no loose wires visible anywhere.
But the deal makes more sense if Yash believed Drew was going to outlast him anyway. Dropping without a deal gives Drew the veto and Yash nothing. Dropping with a deal gives Yash one vote protecting Taylor and possible safety during a future Drew HOH. The question is not whether the deal was perfect. The question is whether Yash sold something he was already about to lose.
Drew Campbell. Photo: CBS, via Parade. Drew got the cleaner end of it
Drew gets immediate safety, the power to force a replacement nominee, and a deal that asks him to protect Yash only during his next HOH. The Taylor promise matters this week, but it is still just one vote in a week where the final nominees are not settled until the Block Buster is over.
The most interesting clause is Melody. Drew reportedly agreed that Yash’s safety would hold even if Melody had to go up instead. That is a future loyalty test Yash may never need to collect, but Drew agreed to it while exhausted and inches from winning the veto outright. contracts signed inside endurance competitions should probably come with a three-business-day rescission period.
For now, Drew has the veto, Yash has two promises, and Taylor has the privilege of possibly touching the block as part of someone else’s protection plan. My final-seven rankings already needed revision; they have now filed the paperwork themselves.
Photo attribution: CBS promotional and episode imagery, used editorially via AOL and Parade.
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a party photograph became a painting, and then became a memory again
Jordan Sullivan’s American Communion turns one 1998 Galveston balcony photograph into a small argument about memory, community, and what a camera preserves… Read more →
i stopped on American Communion because the painting looks like a memory that has already decided what it means.
Eight hotel balconies stack into a rough grid. People lean over railings, look up, look down, and occupy the architecture like the building has briefly agreed to become part of the party. In the upper-right corner, a man reaches down to pour a drink into a cup held up from the balcony below. It is an absurdly precise form of community service.
Jordan Sullivan, American Communion, acrylic on canvas, 2026. Shown for commentary; image via the artist and the originating Tumblr thread. Then the Tumblr thread supplies the photograph.
The source image was taken at the Kappa Beach Party in Galveston in 1998. The balconies are there, the people are there, and the cross-floor beverage delivery is there. Sullivan did not invent the composition so much as recognize that a snapshot had been quietly carrying one around for nearly three decades.
The post had passed 51,000 notes when it reached me, and i think part of the response comes from the satisfying click between image and origin. The painting feels mythic; the photograph says, no, somebody really did this. Somebody looked over a railing, assessed the distance, and decided gravity could help with hospitality.
The 1998 Galveston Kappa Beach Party photograph that inspired American Communion. The photographer is not identified in the circulating archival post; image reproduced for commentary via Tumblr. a photograph is not the opposite of a painting
Sullivan changes the scene. In the photograph, a group of younger women occupy the lower balcony. In the painting, the raised cup belongs to one older woman. Faces soften into color and gesture. The hotel becomes less a particular building than a vertical neighborhood that exists for exactly one pour.
That is not a failure of documentary accuracy. It is the work. The photograph records who was there; the painting asks what the exchange can hold after the names are gone.
Sullivan describes American Communion as part of his ongoing American Psychosis series. His broader portfolio repeatedly turns found-looking American scenes into something between evidence, dream, and indictment. This one lands differently. The title makes a tiny party maneuver sound sacramental, and the painting earns it. The cup passes through open air like a secular ritual: i have enough, you are within reach, hold still.
the internet is also an archive, unfortunately
The Tumblr commentary frames the original as an iconic image in Black conversations about ’90s nostalgia and socializing before phones. That context matters more than my own recognition of the scene. I did not attend this party, and nostalgia is not improved by pretending every viewer owns it equally.
I also do not want to make the photograph perform the usual anti-phone morality play. Cameras were already present; that is why the moment survived. People in 1998 were not more authentic because the upload button had not yet been installed in every pocket. They were simply living before each gesture arrived with a distribution plan.
The important difference may be that this image feels observed instead of produced. Nobody appears to be demonstrating community for an audience. The photographer caught a social system already operating: balconies became porches, strangers became neighbors, and one plastic cup briefly became infrastructure.
The thread also exposes the internet’s strange archival bargain. The photograph can circulate widely enough to inspire a painting, prompt recognition, and bring thousands of people into a shared memory. It can do all of that while the photographer’s name falls away. Preservation without provenance is still a kind of loss.
There are more formal archives around the edges. An account devoted to the Kappa Beach Party’s history dates the event to 1982. Galveston’s own historical foundation documents a much longer Black relationship with the island’s waterfront, including the segregated beach, Black-owned businesses that served visitors, and the people who fought to open public accommodations. The 1998 party did not materialize on an empty strip of sand. It belonged to a place with a deep, contested history of who was allowed to gather, rest, and be visible there.
American Communion does not explain all of that, and it should not have to. It gives one ordinary, ridiculous, generous gesture enough weight to survive another format. A photograph became a painting, the painting sent people back to the photograph, and the internet briefly remembered that reposting can be more than moving an image around.
Sometimes it is how a picture finds its story again.
sources: originating Tumblr thread; Jordan Sullivan; artist portfolio; Galveston Historical Foundation’s Black history archive.
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the backlog is not a moral failing, it is a library
a backlog is only embarrassing if you believe every game you own is waiting beside the door with a tiny clipboard. Read more →
there is a specific kind of guilt that arrives when you open a game library and see the little grid of unfinished things. not a dramatic guilt. nobody is injured. it is more like the feeling of owning three unread books and briefly suspecting you have committed a crime against literature.
Image: PCWorld i am trying to reject the premise that a backlog is a to-do list. a to-do list is where i put things that will make somebody send another email. a game library is where i put worlds i may want to visit when the actual one has asked a little too much of me.
the Steam Deck is especially good at this distinction. it does not make a game into homework just because it is portable. it lets a forty-minute wandering session be enough. a game can be a place you return to, not a project plan with an estimated completion date.
Image: ShortCircuit on YouTube there are games i will finish, games i will quit with affection, and games i will keep installed because i like knowing they are nearby. that is not failure. that is a library doing its job.
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#BB28: the final 7, ranked after tonight’s eviction
After tonight’s #BB28 eviction, there are seven left, and my rankings are now Barrett, Taylor, Melody, Drew, Devens, Yash, and Dee. this… Read more →
after tonight’s eviction, we are officially down to seven, which means i can no longer pretend these rankings are provisional in any meaningful way. they are still emotional, reactive, occasionally petty, and almost certainly going to age badly, but at least there are fewer people to be wrong about now.
as always, this is not a power ranking. this is a deeply scientific measurement of who is currently contributing the most to my enjoyment of #BB28.
1
Barrett
somewhere between “i Might like him” and now, this apparently became a full investment. not necessarily the cleanest path through the game, but consistently one of the people i actually want to watch do things.
2
Taylor
an absolutely wild climb from my early-season “she’s fine, probably?” position. she has somehow become one of the people i most trust to make the room she’s in more interesting.
3
Melody
from “still not clear on who this is” to third place is, frankly, the kind of character arc i appreciate. she has had one of the better late-season rises for me.
4
Drew
still irritatingly likable. i have spent basically the entire season waiting for that to stop being true, and here we are at seven.
5
Devens
still good vibes, still solid television, still occupying a strange lane where i enjoy him without ever becoming fully Devens-pilled.
6
Yash
i have, against all odds, moved beyond the haircut note. character development for both of us.
7
Dee
the funniest possible endpoint after starting the season at number one. i do not dislike her, exactly. i have simply reached the point where everyone else left is currently giving me more.
so that’s the seven. Barrett at the top, Dee at the bottom, and a truly irresponsible amount of room for this to change before i have even finished emotionally processing tonight’s episode.