nathanieljams

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Dr. Whitaker's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (so far) on THE PITT (2025-)

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the white lotus s3e1 (2025)

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I was chronically online well before i’d gotten my first iPhone (an iPhone 3G, for those keeping score), but I’m pretty sure that my iPhone complicated some social media addictions, among other addictive behaviors.

I’d already been spending a good deal of time on various blogging and early social media platforms, and my phone just put it all at my fingertips.

I think Tumblr was the breakthrough platform for me, to be honest. It was a mix of longer, deeper posts with easier-to-digest quick posts. It was also a great place for me to discover new music, as the 00s were a prime time for music blogs.

I think Facebook’s status updates and Twitter’s microblogging drove things from being unhealthily online to being toxically online. I got lost in my own low-grade popularity, and my posts got lazier and more-likely to pander to an idea of popularity. I’d gotten headass in a bad way, and I couldn’t be peeled away from my phone.

All this is to say, after having been online in some way for a bit more than 25 years of my life, and having social media at my fingertips for about 16 years of that time, I feel like being a lot more intentional with my time and the tools I use. For work reasons, I can’t not have a smartphone.

For personal reasons, I’d like to have less smartphone access outside of the 40 hours a week dedicated to work. I’m seriously considering getting a second phone, a dumb phone, for my off hours.

While I’m barely on social media these days, I do miss the simplicity of not having access to fact check every conversation or quickly slake my curiosities—sometimes it’s nice to sit in not knowing things for the sake of conversation and feeding my imagination. It’s nice to not have the tools to be right all the time and just feel some sense of human error once in awhile.

When I *am* on social media, I really want to be intentional with who I’m following and where I’m doing that following. I’m simply tired of being inundated with utter bullshit and performative angst, as the internet I once knew was a place of joy and irreverence. Now so many people act like they need to be scions of whatever they believe in because the world is becoming worse and worse by the second—I prefer not to get my news in microblogging format, but from well-researched sources that deserve more than a scroll-through on a feed.

At some point, I’d just like to not use social media on my phone so that I can be in the moment more. I’m trying the Dumb Phone app—it doesn’t necessarily take social media away, but it at least re-focuses my phone for my own basic necessities outside of social media.

It’s a start.

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THE FRAMING. CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO OF HER. OH GOD.

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Often in shows like this when they have a black person in a position of power over a white cast, the media pretends there is nothing to this dynamic. I was worried it would be the same here, but they’ve actually started doing something interesting with it.

Milchick got his promotion because Cobel was fired. They didn’t let him earn it himself. It was a product of circumstance.

He was the one who had to do the dirty work handling the innies, while Cobel mostly sat at a desk giving orders. Now that he’s been promoted to Cobel's job, 'They' (whoever they is) continue to force him to do much of his old job still (apart from the child labor assistance).

They do not respect him enough to grant him the same courtesies they did Cobel. They won’t fix his screensaver. They made him run around town himself to fire/rehire the innies.

We see him in that scene where he's speaking with Natalie, and for a moment the veneer of ‘power’ and the Kier worship slips while he and Natalie share a moment of anger and fear. And suddenly they’re given a painful reminder of how they are seen by Them.

They are still othered, still black, in a soulless, corporate, white cult that sees them as so Far from their concept of God that ‘They’ felt the need to alter the very face of their God to help Milchick feel part of the cult and "see himself" in Kier.

And then They told Natalie how she should feel about being given this same "gift". Literally put the words in her mouth and forced her to recite them to Milchick. Natalie is the voice of The Board at the cost of her own voice.

I'm hoping for their backstories and that they continue to explore this dynamic. And that this show does it the justice it deserves.

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good god this whole album stopped me in my tracks today. i’m glad that i opted to go to a record fair on sunday instead of watching a game i had no vested interest in (go bills)…because the passenger seat records booth had this record in stock, and i haven’t been able to find it *anywhere* else to date.

ps. buy physical copies of your music.

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Snow patrol, Summer Wagner

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it feels weird to go from being chronically online to wanting to figure out how to be out there in the world without being so dependent on social media, only to do so at a time when the world is in collapse.

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Toy Stoy 3 (2010) dir. Lee Unkrich

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Internal IBM document, 1979 (via Fabricio Teixeira)

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for someone who often struggles to figure out what to say at any given moment, it feels awfully weird to have been approached by two different people to make podcast and/or video content in the last couple months. as tempting as it has been, doing a pop culture podcast *now* feels vastly different than what the pop culture landscape was like back in 2016-18.

that said, it is flattering to have had folks reach out to me—and it is slowly helping me realize that my opinions are valued in some way. i think, if i were to be some sort of talking head, i’d like to try to have ownership of it first before partnering up with some folks.

besides, my life is relatively chill right now and i’m just starting to find some community with vinyl DJs out here right now.

no decisions for now, just thinking about it. again, it’s nice to know people value you in some sort of way.

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