this isn't merriam-webster, but i reckon it's when you're motivated by something other than what you should be.
say you come out of the cinema with your friends and you start raving about how many of the shots were inspired by some french new wave guy.
maybe you're authentically stoked about the cinematography (the pretense), but maybe you mostly just want to sound smart about movies because of how it affects your status in the group.
More Perfect Union released a video on automated truck drivers (which are now on the roads in Texas.)
They argue:
Is automation necessarily anti-labour? Is it possible to automate jobs while protecting the people who do them?
When people say "the problem is education" they tend to mean "I want everyone to have the same beliefs as me, but persuading adults is too hard."
I think it's naive to assume that agreeing on a national curriculum is any easier, but assuming that you could, it's even more naive to assume that students would internalize the lessons you want them to.
For example: in high school, I didn't understand our English curriculum's emphasis on literary analysis essays. They seemed mysteriously tautological: fill in the essay template to demonstrate to the person marking you that you can fill in an essay template.😱
Laura C by Big Supermarket is a song about Tomb Raider. I love it.
Part of the reason why, is that I cannot reliably hear the downbeat in the right place. There is a clear "right" way to hear it that my mind can snap into if I try, but most of the time I hear it spasmodic style.
belgian ISP Telenet remade a music video straight from the top of my childhood. it's cool/inspiring/funny to see how things have changed.
i saw superman yesterday. the plot is that lex luthor is up to no good.
(there will be uncensored spoilers throughout the rest of this thing.)
the film has a lot of funny movie logic, but basically does what it needs to do. i liked how perfunctorily the monsters of the week were treated, the excessive number of times superman stops what he's doing to stop something from falling on someone1, and lex luthor's technique of beating superman by micromanaging bizarro from a mission control center with a walkie talkie.
i'm talking that toy block, developing sense of agency shit.
i challenge you to roll three sixes for no reason.
In 2019, a large chandelier was installed underneath Granville Street Bridge, to aesthetically enhance the area. It was controversial at the time - a symbol of what's wrong with luxury condo development.1
I used to work near Granville Island, so when I visited Vancouver in early 2025, I wanted to walk around my old stomping grounds and pay the chandelier a visit.
I walked to where I remembered it being installed, and discovered it had been removed, presumably for maintenance reasons. Disappointed, I went home and lamented to my sister.
smerching is when you're looking for an emoji.
usually we smerch because we can't remember which drawer the emoji we're looking for is stored in (is 💦 nature or human?), but sometimes also because we're not quite sure which pictogram best conveys the tone of what we're trying to express, and even less frequently because the emoji picker we're using isn't on the latest unicode version and isn't showing 🫨 even though we swear we've looked everywhere.
"museum of thirst"
ostensibly an exhibit about the history of water and plumbing. it takes an hour to walk through. there are salted snacks at the start. heaters are turned up high. there are water fountains and vending machines throughout, but they're all out of order. there's a stationary bike that powers a water pump, but no matter how hard you pedal you're always just a bit short of getting water. thirst-generating pictures everywhere of sweating glasses of icy water, etc.