mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 01/10/2026nEwSLEtTer tImE 🌠 substack.com/home/post/p-...substack.comLucky number nineHas anybody seen my earbuds? 071
Reposted by mel thomasErin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 29/09/2026There is obviously a whole body of scholarship pointing in this direction so forgive me for saying something so obvious but the media needs to treat tech executives like the leaders of hostile governments because that is exactly what they are 010326
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 28/09/2026nearing the end of The Sopranos and reflecting on who i think is the most irredeemable, festeringly evil character on a show full of psychos 3150
Reposted by mel thomas💙🦋 @proofofhumanity.bsky.social · 26/09/2026finally got around to watching and enjoyed greatly 👍 it reminded me of the nostalgia re: recentish tiktok trend of using john mayer's "clarity," but mostly "no such thing" to recall early 00s monoculture and shared optimism/assumption of a better future 161
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026romance novel horseshoe theory is when i, a lover of the genre, regress to the neophyte's default contrarian position of "well what even IS an HEA, huh???" when the vibe of the discourse is getting too smarmy 080
Reposted by mel thomasGarth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 13/09/2026waiting for your fave mufo to log on 631633
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 10/09/2026last night at dinner i asked seth "who do you think is the most decent man on The Sopranos?" and we just kinda stared at each other silently for several moments 360
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 09/09/2026whenever i post critically about romcoms people will be in my comments telling me—often in good faith—that it's supposed to be funny and silly and therefore i shouldn't think about it too hard, and ????? imagine saying that about a funny thing a man made. imagine saying that about mel brooks 0150
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 06/09/2026gonna tell my kids this was A Clockwork Orange. gonna tell my kids this was Oppenheimer. gonna tell my kids this was Knowing (2009) starring Nicolas Cage 0141
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 04/09/2026i don't know anything about anime but my husband is watching Dragon Ball Daima, which to the best of my understanding is a program that bravely asks the question "what if all your favorite Dragon Ball guys got turned into lil babies?" 110
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 01/09/2026in hindsight maybe it wasn't clear from this post that my criticism of the Sopranos fandom is coming from inside the house lol. i am thoroughly and deeply Sopranos-pilled, and in case there was any doubt: www.patreon.com/pagemelt/pos...patreon.comblaming the MCU on Christopher Moltisanti | pagemeltAgain with The Sopranos, yes, but also a Red, White & Royal Blue Mafia AU fanfic (lol?), A Love Most Fatal by Kath Richards, Heated Rivalry 090
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 01/09/2026me: dang we spent a lot of money eating out last month. but no worries. we'll simply be more discerning about that going forward 😌 me one day later: let's go to to the cheesecake factory. yknow, for the bit 190
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 31/08/2026sorry i was weird and off-putting the last time we talked!! it’s just that that’s my truest, most fundamental nature 2184
Reposted by mel thomasRadley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 30/08/2026It’s mind-blowing that we have literal white nationalists in the White House carrying out unfathomably cruel, abusive, white nationalist policies, and the punditariat has spent the last two weeks debating if some people were too intemperate after a Black man was murdered by cops six years ago. 153109032685
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 26/08/2026heated rivalry fans get a bad rap, but my god, what a generative space. 46k fics. meanwhile the sopranos fandom, active for almost 30 years, has 500 fics and a handful of AI-generated meme accounts called things like stugots_deez_nuts run by edgelords scared to death of loving anything earnestly 3212
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 22/08/2026"AI is overhyped but it's good at searching for stuff." have you considered, lately, the relative nature of all things? how you considered the possibility that you are simply bad at searching for stuff 2300
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 19/08/2026honestly i think choosing to attend a 4-year college and majoring in “influencer” is more aligned with the ideals of a traditional liberal arts education than majoring in business or marketing 150
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 18/08/2026there's the old school enshitification model enabled by software just existing within capitalism, and then there's the new turbo-charged model where software is designed to be as labyrinthine as possible, forcing people to use the baked-in AI assistant to figure out how to do the most basic tasks 0111
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026oh you wrote a gay sports romance? should we have a press conference?? should we invite your gruff but unexpectedly supportive coach-slash-mentor 3151
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 16/08/2026annoyed by the youths and their slang!! not for the typical reactionary reasons but because when I search for "gardening" tiktok now assumes I want to watch a 20-year-old review their first store-bought edible 2100
Reposted by mel thomasBrandon Walsh @walshbr.bsky.social · 31/01/2026My hot take about the “students cannot read whole novels / watch whole films / etc.” is that they can learn to do it. None of us are born with attention spans suited for long media. It is a learned skill and can be developed with practice. 211702478
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 14/08/2026my favorite thing about the sopranos is the sheer number of episodes (including pine barrens, the most beloved episode of the series) that would work beautifully as romcoms if you simply added one (1) smooch at the end 070
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 13/08/2026logged in to hubspot at work and it said, "good afternoon mel" and i don't like that. frankly the time of day i'm experiencing is none of their business 190
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 13/08/2026picked up madeline miller’s circe because samantha morton was my favorite part of nolan’s odyssey (and it wasn’t particularly close). about a quarter of the way through, and i gotta say….... this girl is kind of a drip! like sometimes when everybody bullies you, there’s a reason, yknow 1110
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 07/08/2026seth and I stumbled upon this absolutely deranged use of our tax dollars while walking the dog this morning. we live in kentucky btw. approximately 800 miles from ground zero 2131
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 29/07/2026gotta appreciate the evil genius of the atlantic's business model. if it was 100% trash nobody would read it. instead it's 95% trash with an outrageously good ted chiang essay every few years 1150
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 26/07/2026reading Possession, a novel that won the Booker Prize in 1990 about the discovery of an extramarital affair between two Victorian poets, has made me realize how fuckin weird people have gotten about policing other people's marriages on the internet, even if they're fictional 4330
Reposted by mel thomasAlice Averlong 🏳️⚧️ @alice.averlong.com · 24/07/2026I have moved my gender into attack position 628030
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 08/07/2026one thing sci-fi authors from the '60s are gonna tell u (as the sky is raining fire and the surviving citizens of earth are evacuating to mars) is what the titties looked like 0223
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 07/07/2026i read and occasionally talk about romance novels online, so i have a good sense of the landscape, and i think a lot of the thinkpieces agonizing over why women dominate mm readership are missing one big and obvious fact, which is that not a lot of men read genre romance, period 1250
Reposted by mel thomasGillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 06/07/2026There's a part in the book "Careless People" where the author beats Zuck at Settlers of Catan, and he is absolutely wrecked by it. Someone pulls her aside to explain everyone else has been letting him win for years. I think about this a lot re: why tech bros think everyone will love AI chatbots. 24122463715
Reposted by mel thomasHugh Ryan @hughryan.bsky.social · 03/07/2026The idea that trans or nonbinary or third gender or queer people are somehow "hijacking" the "gay and lesbian movement" is shockingly ahistorical. The idea that sexual desire, gender, sex, the body, and identity are completely disconnected is a much more divisive and recent idea 135487
Reposted by mel thomasRusty Foster @rusty.todayintabs.com · 02/07/2026With this privileged voice, I can help change the puppy killing industry from the inside 1426
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 30/06/2026i'm sympathetic to the argument that people are only interested in hockey romance because it's a white people sport. it observably IS (derogatory). but also... have you watched a hockey game? men punch each other in the face with knives strapped to their feet. the drama is begging for narrative 1170
Reposted by mel thomasDan Olson @foldablehuman.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Where are all these modern mainstream movies with a bunch of gratuitous sex that people are wringing their hands over, asking for recreational purposes. 582569489
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 28/06/2026a pride month diptych for our age, presented with joy and delight: 1) the actor who plays THEE christopher "don't disrespect the pizza parlor" moltisanti unc posting a pride flag to his grid, and 2) naomi klein wearing a ball cap that says "I'm coming to the cottage" 2121
Reposted by mel thomasTits McGee @scientits.bsky.social · 28/06/2026‘Say yes and never do it’ Mel Brooks knew how to deal with the studios 141180925572
Reposted by mel thomasBethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 27/06/2026🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️ One milkshake to rule the boys, one milkshake to find them, one milkshake to bring the boys and in my yard to bind them 🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️ 284222498
Reposted by mel thomasRyan Hodes (The Stories We Tell) @thestorieswetell.co · 11/06/2026My latest, in which I talk about wearable technology, Ring's fascist puppy ad, perv-maxxing, smart glasses psychosis, transhumanism, white supremacy, and a whole lot of other cheery topics! Featuring a wonderful convo w/ @hypervisible.blacksky.appyoutu.beThe Rise of the Perv GlassesYouTube video by The Stories We Tell w/ Ryan Hodes 02710
mel thomas @pagemelt.bsky.social · 23/06/2026nothing but love and light to tom "spiderman" holland but for some reason the Algorithms That Be have decided that I care a LOT more about that time he lip synced to a rihanna song 10 years ago than I actually do 2150
Reposted by mel thomasRory @roryhume.bsky.social · 22/06/2026If you too want a connection between liminal spaces, Norman Rockwell, and Say Anything...(1989), this is the essay for you! 042