ling ma's severance was a novel that kicked me back into the habit of reading for fun, so i was excited to get my hands on her new short story collection, bliss montage. a woman lives in a house with her one hundred ex-boyfriends; a college professor discovers a portal in her office; a woman learns how to have sex with a yeti. all of her stories have an uncanny, dreamlike quality to them, punctuated by vague and often sudden endings.

i've been listening to so far...the best of, a greatest hits album by sinéad o'connor. an incredible powerhouse.

an artist makes poor financial decisions, then is pushed out of the studio he created by powerful investors—a bitterly familiar story. claydream is a documentary about will vinton, a filmmaker who envisioned himself as the walt disney of claymation. will vinton studios (of california raisins fame) was before my time, so this doc was an interesting/often exasperating slice of animation history that i knew little about.

subprime attention crisis is a book published in 2020 that compares economic recessions with contemporary online advertising. its basic thesis is that the algorithmic advertising model simply doesn't work, and it's going to come crashing down. it's a bit of a dry read, but has ideas about the future of the internet that we're beginning to see right now—and it has an incredible cover design.

i'll always love stories about coincidences and seemingly unrelated narrative threads coming together. the edge of heaven begins its focus on turkish immigrants in germany, then moves back and fourth between the two countries, featuring a cast of characters whose lives intertwine due to circumstance. it's a film about several tragedies, but the theme of people connecting across cultures keeps it from feeling truly despairing. the main actor, baki davrak (pictured above), has such sad eyes—i could stare at them all day! the kind of movie that makes me ache.