Worth the Click + Watch 🖱️📺

It’s time for another round of things on my recent radar that I think are worth sharing! There’s a wide range of interesting things and, of course, there’s books.

“‘You nailed the AI slop of it!’ is such a harrowing compliment.”

The Devil Wears Prada 2 hired a real human artist to make its AI slop

The world I want to live in

Canada’s University of Calgary is out here breaking records on its 60th anniversary: “682 people dressed in dinosaur costumes.”

More art in the world

The Obama Presidential Center has commissioned original work from 30 artists. Even the building is gorgeous!

Whimsy as an act of resistance

Nicole Cardoza, at Reimagined: “These acts are disruptive because they disrupt us, and teach us how to feel more comfortable when we're moving against the tide. Getting familiar with this discomfort can help us feel more confident standing up against injustice and other forms of resistance.”

Enjoy the small victories

The Hollywood Reporter: ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Official Trailer: Film Saved From Warners’ Ax Reveals First Footage

Miss me especially with the “feminism” that wants women to get to behave as grossly as some men with zero consequences

Nicole Froio, at The Flytrap, Taking Feminism Back From Capitalism: “Lately, the word "feminism" feels like an optical illusion—the concept is evoked, ostensibly to make some kind of point about gender and freedom, but when I actually engage with it, ask questions about it, it simply disappears in a fog of self-serving justifications for behavior that essentially follows the status quo and re-entrenches patriarchy. In the last ten years, feminism has become many things it was never meant to become: a marketing strategy, an excuse for bad behavior, a scapegoat for the very gender oppression the movement intended to fix. It's a disappointing turn of events that risks rolling back decades of women's rights—but how did we get here?”

On the removal of benches (and the ever shrinking of third spaces)

Gabrielle Bruney, at Places, The Disappearance of the Public Bench: “To remove benches, or to curate who gets to sit, is to abandon the work of defining a civic ideal and determining, together, how to live up to it. When seating disappears, our relationship with public space becomes more grudging and utilitarian. Benches are symbols of hospitality, an invitation to participate in the civic realm.”

Watch 📺

Big Mistakes (Netflix)

This was a must watch for me because I love both the creators: Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) and Rachel Sennott (Bottoms; I Love LA). And it felt like an awesome blend of chaotic queer meets crime! Dan Levy, as Nicky, is once again playing opposite a sister that annoys him, Morgan, (with a second sister, Natalie, as a bonus) but this time he’s a minister who is publicly gay but meant to be celibate so he’s hiding his relationship. Natalie is helping their mother (Laurie Metcalf) run for office, while Morgan and Nicky are blackmailed into being organized crime gophers because Morgan has impulse control issues and stole a necklace that ended up being buried with her dead grandmother. It’s darkly funny, frenetic, and there is one scene that I did not see coming – which never happens to me in crime shows. Bonus for family drama and Elizabeth Perkins!

And recently acquired galleys I’m excited to read

Men Like Ours by Bindu Bansinath

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Our Nobles Selves by Kate Atkinson

Monster in the Mirror by Janasha Prabhu

American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee

Love, Like Apples by Jeff Zentner

The Haul by Gary Phillips

Crime Cube by Sybil Lamb

(Dinosaur post image credit: Photo by Siborey Sean on Unsplash)