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kelly pendergrast

@kellypendergrast.bsky.social
3.4K followers 648 following 1.3K posts

technology // aesthetics // labor // shapes writing: kellypendergrast.com working: antistaticpartners.com

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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 2h
Damn i just heard the opening bars of Gillian Welch's Revelator and it activated me like a sleeper cell. Up there with Farewell Transmission in terms of lifechanging alt country guitar lines
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Pretty pumped about our new research project, about people's experiences with once-ubiquitous technologies & what happens when they disappear. First up: the landline. We just expanded the project website big time! Take a look & get in touch if you might want to collaborate: www.everyobject.org
everyobject.org
Every Object an Archive
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
the self healing cutting mat in this Claude ad??? Stolen valor!!
Screenshot of a Claude ad on instragram. A man sits in front of a desk covered by a green cutting mat.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We have just added UK shipping as an option (for a limited time) — I'll be in Scotland mid Oct on vacay and will do a mailing run from there for any UK rectangle fans. Get your orders in now! xoxo
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
At last: Four Essays about Rectangles! A small book bringing together 4 essays by me & Anna about the most important shape of the 20th C (C21 shape is TBC). Feat: Geofoam // Kardashian pantry // Stanley tumbler // Judd concrete. $11. Please buy one: antistaticobjects.bigcartel.com/product/four...
A small bright yellow book held up in front of a wooden fence. The book title is "four essays about rectangles". Below the title are black and white drawings of four empty rectangular forms. The authors are listed at the bottom of the cover - Kelly Pendergrast and Anna Pendergrast.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026
Some folks will claim that this is hyperbolic, but what I wish people would understand is that tech initiatives like this serve as a means of eroding consent and lower the barrier for the persistent capture of people’s image, voice, data, or whatever else a gadget can glean.
pcmag.com
Apple's New Siri Recap Turns Every Apple Watch Into a Mass Surveillance Nightmare
Apple's always-listening AI feature promises neat summaries of your daily conversations, but it forces everyone around you into a nonconsensual recording experiment.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Banning myself from writing about California again for a long time (once I finish edits on this new essay)
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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Basically, whether or not you like AI at work will depend on how much power you have; to decide how and how not to use it, to avoid being terminated by an AI-enthused manager, and so on. It further underlines what's long been evident: AI is for the bosses.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Jimmy Wu continuing his career as @bayareacurrent.bsky.social's in-house chronicler of the Bay Area tech right's most venal and dimwitted gatherings bayareacurrent.com/sfs-tech-cae...
bayareacurrent.com
SF's Tech Right Debates the Ideal Dictator
Putrid vibes reigned at SF billionaire-funded Hamilton Society debate.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
wish i could eat the color blob on the Calculation of Volume cover
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Bay Area Current @bayareacurrent.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
People love to shit in Waymo cars... and more. We know because we spoke with one of the workers paid to clean them. bayareacurrent.com/theres-a-lot...
bayareacurrent.com
“There’s a lot of cleaning up poop”: A Depot Worker on the Human Labor Behind Waymo’s “Autonomous” Vehicles
Human feces isn’t even the nastiest thing they’ve found in the backseat.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I content that food has gotten ~too good~ and this is unnecessary and frankly stressful. It's time for a return to NORMAL FOOD. Not mid food, not bad food, but normal food that is decent, tasty, unhyped.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Anna and I are mayyyybe starting to resurrect our dormant Untitled Presentation project (a weekly slide journal we started in 2018) and I was skimming some old slides. So much I'd already forgotten about the covid era, (eg from Dec 2021): docs.google.com/presentation...
Screenshot of a chaotically formatted slide. An image of a hand with the thumb and forefinger stretched out as though grasping something or showing a size of about 3 inches. Above the image, pink text reads "Thinking about how the universal (?) bartender/door person hand signal for “can I see your ID” now means “can I see your vax card (...and ID to verify it)” Sometimes instead of one hand you get a 2 handed gesture to indicate the 2 cards, or a double-emphasized single hand gesture (this AND that card)..."
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
LOOKING FOR MEN! We have a couple of demographic gaps in the interview research for our Every Object an Archive: Landline project. Are you a 50- or 60-something man in the Bay Area willing to chat for 45min about your experience with landline telephones? DM or email me! www.everyobject.org/about
everyobject.org
About — Every Object an Archive
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I think it's quite tragic that all monetized podcasts are video now. I have never watched the video of a podcast, but when I listen I can sense the presence of cameras in the presenters' voices. Their to-be-looked-at-ness is audible.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
You know how it's sadly strategic to dress nice for the doctor (esp for women, POC, fat ppl). Well I saw on my new NP's profile she's a powerlifter who does street medicine, so I dressed nice for her & fucking nailed it—first thing she said to me was "how can i help a fellow dead moon fan today" 🌚
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Wonderful opportunity to purchase four of my hit essays packaged into one very cute book. The rectangle is the most important shape of the past 100 years imo. Buy now and support more writing about shapes. You will look chic reading this on the bus. antistaticobjects.bigcartel.com/product/four...
Yellow book cover, with the title "FOUR ESSAYS ABOUT RECTANGLES" written in a calligraphic font. Below the title are four hand-drawn rectangular containers, and below that the author names "Kelly Pendergrast and Anna Pendergrast".
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
The funniest thing about the Odyssey that no one is talking about is that Odysseus's soldier bros spend most of their time doing a lazy cop tactical pose with their hands hanging off the neckline of their armor like this.
Stock photo / AI generated photo (?) of a cop guy wearing a bunch of tactical gear and grabbing onto the neckline of his vest with both hands, elbows hanging, in a kind of "cop at rest" pose.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Feels good to learn nothing about the San Francisco AI billboard companies — i just pretend to be on vacation where the inscrutable affairs of the locals are none of my business. Vercel? I guess there's a big community of versatile celibates around here. good for them. PostHog? Not on main!
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Everyone saying "So much potential in West Oakland - we just need more businesses to invest here" for the past 2 decades... well the monkeys paw is curling!!! New Bezos AI warehouse coming to a few blocks from my house. www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco...
bizjournals.com
Project Prometheus, Jeff Bezos' stealth AI startup, finds a home in the East Bay - San Francisco Business Times
Jeff Bezos' physical AI startup, Project Prometheus, signed a massive lease in West Oakland.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Who will bring this series to the Bay Area??? Screen Slate always taunting me with glimpses of NY's superior cinematic environment. Please I need to see all these films. www.screenslate.com/articles/hol...
screenslate.com
Hold Everything Dear – John Berger and Cinema
The work of writer, thinker, broadcaster, and occasional actor John Berger spans television programs, films and countless published works ranging from essays, novels, poems and non-fiction. Film Comme...
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Somehow brainwashed myself into going to SW Wisconsin for vacation instead of like, Greece. Meaghan Garvey partly to blame.
Paper boat of fried cheese curds held up in the foreground as a field of corn blows in the breeze in the background.Google Maps screenshot showing a 9 minute drive from just north of a town called Ontario to a destination called Scenic View Bulk Foods. There is a warning above the directions showing a tornado watch.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
My dad (retired physical therapist) also just revealed Sam Neill (rip) was a patient of his in 1977?? starting to feel like he’s making these career stories up
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Since I can remember Sam Neill has been celebrated as a kiwi legend (a new zealander starring in jurassic park?? 🇳🇿🇳🇿🥹), and so as an older teen discovering that half his filmography is absolute pervert roles was SUCH a thrill. NZ's dennis hopper in a way (but with good politics)
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Has anyone kirkified that pic of the Kirk shooter
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
No more $18 glasses of chenin blanc, we we desperately need a RETVRN to the popina - ancient roman wine bar for the plebs with simple snacks and opportunities to be scurrilous and immoral en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popina
en.wikipedia.org
Popina - Wikipedia
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Unbelievable how dull and hackneyed the AI "taste" conversation is. As though the literary critics hadn't been hashing this shit out for literal centuries!!! "taste, steadily more inured to old stimuli, will constantly ask for more stimuli, ever stronger and more violent" — Schlegel, 1797 💅
From On The Study of Greek Poetry (1797), Friedrich Schlegel:

“The dominion of the interesting can only destroy itself and is therefore a transitory crisis of taste. But the two possible catastrophes facing it are very different: whereas art is prevalently oriented towards aesthetic energy, taste, steadily more inured to old stimuli, will constantly ask for more stimuli, ever stronger and more violent: it will waste no time in passing from the piquant to the amazing. The piquant is that which convulsively excites numbed sensibilities, while the amazing is a stimulus and a goad for the imagination. Both are harbingers of imminent death. The vapid is the miserly nourishment of impotent taste, while that which produces a shock within the bosom of the public (in its eccentric, repugnant, and horrible modes) is the final convulsion of taste in its death throes (…)

Beauty is so far from being the dominant principle of modern poetry that many of the most splendid modern works are clearly portrayals of ugliness, so much so that one is obliged to admit (unwillingly) that there exists an immense richness of  reality at the peak of its disorder and there is a desperation caused by the excess of energies and the conflict between them whose portrayal requires an equal, if not a greater creative power and artistic wisdom than that which is required for the portrayal of that richness and those energies when they are in perfect harmony. (…) The public, even the most cultivated, wholly indifferent to form and exclusively athirst for content, asks only that the artists provide interesting individuality. As long as it produces an effect and that this effect is strong and new, the public is indifferent to the ways an materials that bring this about, precisely because that same public is indifferent to the harmony of the single effects in a completed whole.”
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Ok my question is why tech guys and VCs hate wearing tops that open all the way up. Luxury knit polos, quarter zips, henleys — what are you scared of little bro??
Mark Zuckerberg looking like an absolute smug cunt wearing some of the new dickish Meta glasses and an oatmeal colored knit polo.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Just here to update my “Rick Rubin is a loser hack shilling shit with pissbrains” thread
Screenshot of a Polymarket ad featuring Rick Rubin
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Found an amazing investment company
Screenshot from Linkedin showing the profile for a complany called "MCM Prime" which claims to be "thematic, factor-oriented investing, based in Redwood City CA
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
if you ever make the mistake of looking up a late-period mark kozalek lyric you'll be faced with something like this & never do it again. I guess he's probably the first person to rhyme "brothers quay" with "randy quaid"
San Francisco days
Pouring rain
East Bay grey
Movie day
Spalding Gray
Brothers Quay
Dennis and Randy Quaid
Summertime
Stormy sky
Trapped inside
My baby crying
Same old crutch
Broken clutch
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
32 oz Nalgene clearly the designated water bottle of the 2026 Marxist Literary Group grad student demographic
Projected poster for the 2026 MLG conference with the text "Theory an dPractice at Square One. 2026 Annual Conference, Marxist Literary Group"nalgene water bottle sitting on the ground under a tableanother nalgene water bottle sitting on the ground under a table, beside a backpackAnother nalgene water bottle sitting on the ground under a table, beside some feet
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
has someone made a horror movie about digital twins yet?
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
When academics say "the poetics of _____" what do they mean? I've pretended to understand for too long.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Gwyneth said sorry Oakland you're not brand-aligned "The company has billed the new branch as “Berkeley” but it is operating out of the Adeline Food Hall in Oakland with delivery service to Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville available Monday through Saturday." oaklandside.org/2026/06/09/g...
oaklandside.org
Gwyneth’s goop launches ‘Berkeley’ location in Oakland, and a favorite Fruitvale shucos vendor opens its first brick-and-mortar
A running list of restaurants that have recently opened in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, and beyond.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
In the same way a 14th century peasant would probably digest a dorito just fine, I am confident that I could glimpse codex computer use and come away unmoved.
Twitter user @pradyumna writes “i think if people outside the Al bubble saw codex computer use they'd freak out”
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Just found out my dad was a stevedore at the Auckland docks as a teenager ... why do parents tell you nothing
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
How is there a track from GBV's Alien Lanes that only has 1116 plays on (sorry) Spotify???
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Saw Backrooms, which was utterly unsuccessful as a narrative film but evocative as ... something else, maybe a piece of gamer conceptual art. I enjoyed it on the same level as this cursed booking dot com ad that I got served up a couple years ago.
booking dot com ad that shows a strange and creepy swimming pool with lots of weird angles and a scary clown water toy floating in the middle.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
JPG lives! I worked with JP at UCSD and he was, along with my advisor Babette Mangolte, one of the two old french tyrant-savants who ruined my life for 3 years. JP is an absolute asshole blowhard letch AND YET undeniably a certain genius. Good read: www.screenslate.com/articles/aga...
screenslate.com
Against the Idiom: A Conversation with Jean-Pierre Gorin
This week’s impressive multi-venue retrospective “Why? Because… with Jean-Pierre Gorin” is one of those retrospectives that is at once divinely inspired and something of a no-brainer, long overdue in ...
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Before even exiting the 16th/mission BART station I saw a guy walking with his open laptop presumably doing AI agent stuff or whatever, and a hot guy telling a hot girl about his work problems with AWS storage limits fml
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Who makes the sexiest glasses frames?? I just got my first prescription (for weak as hell reading glasses) and I'm ready to go ham middle aged style. Need to look incredible while looking at a restaurant menu in the dark.
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Nathan Spannaus @orientastic.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
It’s not new, but this @kellypendergrast.bsky.social piece is the most interesting thing I’ve read in a while dilettantearmy.com/articles/mer...
dilettantearmy.com
Merchandizing the Void
Kelly Pendergrast on Khloé Kardashian’s massive stage set of a home pantry, grids, spreadsheets, and the wife as home manager.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
So, i finally saw the full Backrooms trailer. Need to know if the director child has read Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves or if that is one ancient text that has NOT been passed down to the youth
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
NEWS FLASH: tight tshirts for men are back for summer 2026!! Airism OUT, heavyweight boxy fit OUT, cropped JWAnderson oxford OUT, dredge up your 1982 vintage marathon promo tshirt boys, i want to see this on all physiques. Thanks.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
One of my all time faves at the Roxie in a couple of weeks. Slightly insulting to include it as part of "Bleak Week" (Sembène too funny for that) but nonetheless - roxie.com/film/black-g...
roxie.com
Black Girl
Co-presented by the San Francisco Black Film Festival! In Ousmane Sembène’s landmark debut feature, a young woman’s journey abroad becomes a quiet descent into isolation, as the promise of a new life…
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Reyna @reynabeast.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Search engines are normally allowed to crawl websites because they offer something useful in return: Directing more traffic to the website in question. If the classic "show a bunch of links" search disappears from Google, it won't be a benefit and there's no reason to still allow their crawlers.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
There should be a paid "shazam premium" option where it doesn't open up a big-ass full screen logo, and instead has a small subtle popup so as not to alert people nearby to the fact you're an uncultured rube.
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kelly pendergrast @kellypendergrast.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
No more giving money to youtubers to make films ok - the experiment is not paying off
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