fall

Face Wars

Happy September to those who practice

It is that time, I am ascendant, everything feels perfect. The equinox is still a month away and yet fall started last week, maybe you heard it / felt it / smelled it. The blanket is in the balcony box, springing out for early-morning coffee. Sprigs of thyme are drying on clothespegs. I’m powering through Ranged Touch’s unit on J.R.R. Tolkien, halfway through Fellowship as of now, the most autumnal novel written in the English language. I bought my birthday present early, Shin HotToy with her pumpkin-orange lightsabre. I went to Fan Expo on a Saturday after stopping by the office for a few hours. I got my TIFF tickets, all 9 of them, all in the back half, because that’s where I live now.

And: the end of my current contract is in sight, and for the first time in living memory I was proactive and intelligent and did not book a trip for my vacation, because I’d rather spend October home, reading, baking, and smiling.

I watched my first horror movie of the season. In August! Of course, I could be called upon to watch horror movies all year round (and am), but the intentionality hits different. I was reading David’s Sunday Night Scaries as I usually do and was drawn to this excerpt in particular:

‘comfort horror,’ the kind of low-stakes low-friction but still vaguely chilling movie you can watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon, with some mild suspense regarding the perils of the characters, perhaps the occasional frisson as someone bares their fangs or is impaled on a pike, and a feeling of shivery satisfaction as the story reaches its end. They have the feel of old-world fairy tales at this point.

Now, I watched Sleepaway Camp, so I don’t think I nailed the “mild suspense regarding the perils” part, but I dig what’s being described here. The older the movie, the more accessible the myth; not quite campfire stories, because those are never scary. Perhaps, instead, something you heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone, that sends a bass note through you whenever you draw it up, because it’s far enough away that it might be true.

(A.)s you like (I.)t

I’ve spent the summer as adjacent to A.I. as I’ve ever been. I’ve scarcely used it myself and whenever I have done, the results have been exactly as shitty as you’ve been led to expect. (Asking Jira’s onboard A.I. to reformat a workspace for me; watching it torture itself through twenty minutes of thinking on the subject before laying out its plan for what it was going to do and asking me whether I should proceed; when I said “yes,” watching it think for another minute before replying “oh, no, I can’t do that.”)

But I’ve been working with people who use A.I. a lot more than I do (or ever will), and (particularly as crunch time has come upon us and more and more cognitive load is being offloaded, by some, to the Claudes and Geminis of the world) what’s been interesting is watching them become walking A.I. hallucinations, in human form.

I mean, it’s really, really noticeable. They aren’t operating in the same world as the rest of us, which does not mean they’re [insert Bradley Cooper Limitless meme] operating on some greater plane of awareness thanks to their cybernetic force multipliers.

No, it’s more like: their brains seem more and more prone to inventing things that could reasonably be true, but aren’t predicated in fact; and they’re so exhausted that they kind of don’t bother with the mental check of “wait, did that happen, or did I just think it did?” It’s like working with a bunch of folks who dream about the job every night, then wake up thinking the work of the dreams happened yesterday.

I, on the other hand, was told recently that I have a great evil laugh, owing to my penchant for finding catastrophe hilarious. (I have been laughing a lot.) I decided to figure out what my supervillain name would be and, because Googling something at work automatically brings up the A.I. results even though I’ve shut those off everywhere else in my life, I was confronted with this:

Aside from the obvious — the environmental impact of this unasked-for search; the wage theft of the millions of writers whose inspired connections prompted this one — I must concede: no notes.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Tippet Studio is closing shop. I also heard that Weta is officially out of the miniatures business. Pragmatically, I might say it’s amazing any of this went on for as long as it did. Emotionally, I’m in mourning.

The Harry Potter shit list

Updated August 26, 2026

Rupert Grint
Kit Harrington
Nicholas Hoult
Bel Powley
Tim Horton’s
Peter Serafinowicz
Warwick Davis
Lambert Wilson
Anton Lesser
Andy Greenwalt
John Lithgow
Janet McTeer
Nick Frost
Paapa Essiedu
Simon Pegg
Johnny Flynn
Daniel Rigby
Bertie Carvel
Hugh Laurie
Tom Felton
Matthew McFadyen
Riz Ahmed
Mark Addy
Michelle Gomez
Keira Knightley
Alex Hassell
Iwan Rheon
James McAvoy
Ruth Wilson
Bill Nighy
Cush Jumbo
The New York Times
Francesca Gardiner
Jon Brown
Mark Mylod
Casey Bloys
David Zaslav
J.K. Rowling

More Days of Thunder

Here are some other things going on this week, last week, and every week:

Good article on why a lot of visual media looks like low-contrast slop these days. (A/V Club)
As one of the founding writers of the internet, I concur with every syllable of this piece. The internet is a good thing! Make it legible again! (Aftermath)
These guys put out a “Lake Ontario” chocolate bar seconds after dumbfuck McGee did his dumbfuck McGee thing. I bought several. (Peace by Chocolate)
N.D. Stevenson has a wonderful face. (Substack)
Somehow wrote a whole piece about translation last week and never managed to include this piece about The Odyssey. (I also haven’t read the translator’s screed about the movie. I’m behind!) Overall I feel sorry for anyone who isn’t ready to spend now till Oscar night talking about Nolan’s movie; that’s a four-star flick on my ratings scale, but wow, interesting. (Bright Wall / Dark Room)

And finally: