Robert Joseph

‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities – and society at large

I feel seen www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

Facebook post from Kaleb Horton, September 18, 2017: Toys R Us is probably going out of business this year. I'm fascinated by the collapse of retail, because what it really signifies is the collapse of the 20th century. The reason I pushed to profile guys like Harry Dean Stanton, Merle Haggard and Chuck Berry, was that writing about them is a way of writing about the 20th century, and how different it was from where we are now. How shockingly different, in retrospect. The migration out of the south, the descent of the Dust Bowl, which was a Biblical plague; the millions of people who were killed during World War Two. Monoculture, and the idea that a great episode of a television show would be seen by *half of all people.* The arrival of flight, and the end of horses. Homes without electricity. Coming of age without computers, without television. Listening to the radio for entertainment. The 20th century was a long time ago and it's a ghost now. It's a ghost you see in the places you wouldn't expect. It's seen in towns that were bypassed by the freeways, the dusty little towns out west that still have old diners and motels and payphones. It's seen in the places that we left, places where mines shut down, places where tourist attractions died off. It's seen in Bakersfield with Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and it's seen in Roswell, which stubbornly maintains the relics of the '90s UFO boom. Things like that won't be around forever. Someday owners will die and towns will burn and they won't be rebuilt. And it's difficult to suss out what those things are, because they're on roads, physical and metaphorical, that we no longer travel.

The ghost sightings happen in stupid places, unexpected places, and uncool places. A few months ago, I went with Marie to the Toys R Us on Victory Blvd. in Burbank, which still looks exactly like it did in Back to the Future in 1985 somehow. It's not nostalgia that you see there, it's just a customer base and economic model that's aging and won't be around a lot longer, and it's *boring.* There's no reason for anyone to ever go to Lancer's, the little diner by that Toys R Us. Because it's not good. People go there out of tradition, and old habits. 80 and 90 year olds go there. We were lining up for a Nintendo, which is still a hard thing to keep stocked in stores. Toys R Us was actually the best place to obtain one, because it's no longer a place children beg their parents to take them to. When we went in, wham, there it was. The ghost of 1996. I was 8 years old, for a fraction of a second. The feeling wasn't nostalgia, it was a kind of temporal dislocation. A confusion. But it wasn't an immaculate 1996, it was a fading 1996. It was lonelier than I remember it. It's time for Toys R Us to go out of business. It was time ten years ago, fifteen. There are reasons to be nostalgic about the 20th century. We weren't plugged into so many wires, so many screens. We were a little bit closer to the process of manufacturing and agriculture than we are now. We made more things by hand, and our goals as people were uniquely audacious and driven by mad, desperate power that was temporary and had to end.

But the 20th century was hopelessly cruel and soaked in blood. The 20th century gave us flight, but it also gave us bombs that can end the world and Richard Nixon and his evil sidekick Kissinger and it gave us new mutations of slavery and race and class subjugation and it gave us useless, disgusting monuments to Confederate slavers and traitors and cowards. It gave us President Trump, who wouldn't exist today without New York City's collective cocaine addiction in the 1980s. I want to find the ghosts, not because I miss the past -- the good old days can't return because they're imaginary and what you really miss is youth and if you're lucky a warm feeling of safety -- but because I don't even know what things we'll lose, or when we'll lose them, or how long we have to document them. I know ghosts when I see them. Toys R Us for the mundane side and the Salton Sea for the widescreen wasteland side. But I have absolutely no idea how many there are. I figure people go first, then places. Those are the things we have a limited time to physically document and historically examine and preserve on film. The ideas will go away much slower, and some of them may be eternal, like cold wars. But those are a lot less fun because you don't get to drive to them.

And now I'm just spelunking around and here's this Facebook post by Kaleb Horton from September 2017. It was three months after MTV dumped its freelancers. I'm sure it would have been a piece there; instead he posted this on FB just to have it written out: Toys 'R' Us as societal microcosm.

I may have gone off the I Think You Should Leave deep end with this discovery…

Honorable mentions: The Inland Sea (Lucille Cara, 1991); Ritual in Transfigured Time (Maya Deren, 1946); Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil, 1967); Gugusse and the Automaton (Georges Méliès, 1897)

Favorite first-time viewings of films in February:
Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Fellini, 1965)
At Land (Maya Deren, 1944)
Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025)
The Addiction (Abel Ferrara, 1995)

Next thing they’re going to say to keep your thermostats set to 55 degrees at night

These dogmatic bozos getting their hands on Warner Brothers is a real “I buy you out, you don’t buy me out” situation

The first major administrative decision this regime made was letting Taylor Sheridan—the one showrunner your conservative dad knows by name—walk to Comcast without a counter-offer.

I just watched a film lost for over a century on my phone. It’s not all bad out there!

The Searchers (1956), directed by John Ford

Twin Peaks (1990-91), created by David Lynch & Mark Frost

every shot-on-video, made-with-a-camcorder horror movie that's just some teenage friend group fucking around in the woods with some fake blood and a monster mask contains more artistic merit, human joy and creative light than anything AI has ever made or will ever, ever make

#LastFourWatched trends: serial killers, animal sacrifice (real and simulated), and stylish cops #LetterboxdFriday

And The Naked Gun. Love the new Naked Gun. Hope my Intro to Film class loved it too

Including two Maya Deren shorts, and two (vastly different) stories about the experiences of pets #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

Love to see a professor of civil discourse conduct himself like the abusive card dealer played by Billy Bob Thornton in Tombstone

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

m.youtube.com/watch?v=4KOK...

the pervasive AI, sports betting, and crypto commercials during the super bowl are bleak

I doubt this has happened before: 11 of this weekend's top 15 movies were made independently, inc. 4 of the top 5. There is nothing holding down overall grosses and attendance more than the fact that studios have forgotten how to do what they used to do, which is to fill the pipeline with movies.

Eowyn in The Two Towers: the patriarchy sidelines me but the guy I like is giving me all the signals
Juliet in Juliet of the Spirits: my husband is unfaithful but at least I’m in touch with the spirit world
Phyllis in Double Indemnity: I must kill my shitty husband
Thana in Ms .45: all men must die

The films of my #LastFourWatched include characters that encompass the spectrum of dissatisfied women #LetterboxdFriday

Grading background music

I get my news from a reliable source.

As a actor and dancer, Leni Riefenstahl struggled to expand her reach...

Honorable mentions: F1 (Joseph Kosinski, 2025); The King of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson, 1972)

Favorite first-time viewings of films in January:
Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino, 2022)
The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton, 1928)
The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021)
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta, 2026)

To that list, despite all of the author’s wrongdoings, you could still add both Deathly Hallows movies

“But this ship can’t turn around!”

I know this isn’t the most glaring reason this is a poor analogy, but..yes, you do! The Titanic wouldn’t have taken an entire night to turn around!

I’m late to the party, but The Worst Person in the World is a special film
#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched