iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 4h

To be fair, if a building in an R5(CW) zone casts a shadow for more than two hours on the summer solstice it will release Choronzon, the demon Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard bound in the arcane geometries of the Los Angeles freeway system.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I can't wait to watch this place blow up in the next Bond movie.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"You should come up with a story before you start shooting."

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

In the last ~30 hours I have gone from indulging myself in New Orleans to viewing (for the first time in ~30 years) and teaching (for the first time ever) Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. But I got to teach this amazing scene.

youtube.com

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) - Pontius Pilate Scene (5/10) | Movieclips

YouTube video by Movieclips

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Fair point, but the thing that many Canadians and Americans need to understand is that the Bezosites at the Washington Post are Trumpites. WaPo is now the lobbying arm for Amazon Web Services, a means of currying favor with the would-be autocrat. They represent no one but Bezos' bottom line.

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Michael Fry @bigdirtyfry.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Your Grandad Cyclops talks about his school days

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Reposted by Marc Singer

Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

When it all comes crashing down, the basic political assumption we must all carry with us is that Trump 2.0 was never a legitimate government and that it is the duty of a future, legitimate US government to decide which policy decisions and actions to repudiate and which to legitimate.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I was out late celebrating the night before after defending my dissertation. I woke up, answered some emails about a conference I was organizing, started to work on an article. One of my roommates told me to turn on the news. The conference was canceled and I never looked at that article again.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Got it, you won't vote for us under any circumstances. Goodbye and fuck off

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Legion of Super-Heroes #1, out this week, does a lot of things that have killed previous versions of this series. Rebooting the continuity AGAIN. Casting the Legion as enemies of a repressive future society. Killing off characters right off the bat. And yet... I kind of liked it?

Cover to Legion of Super-Heroes #1 by Hayden Sherman

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This review of Francis Spufford's Nonesuch by @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social gets at what I loved about this book but does not share my biggest gripe: this feels like a brilliant historical novel about life during the Blitz that keeps getting edged aside by a much more standard modern fantasy novel.

ancillaryreviewofbooks.org

Life (And Magic) During Wartime: Review of Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch

Abigail Nussbaum Under Review:Nonesuch. Francis Spufford. Faber & Faber, February 2026. In 2021, Francis Spufford published Light Perpetual, a novel that was, in a somewhat roundabout fashion, …

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Pile Of Garbage @pileofgarbage.net · 01/09/2026

I love how Werner Herzog is ALWAYS like this:

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

There's one other aspect to this: most long-running franchises have faltered because the writers think they are supposed to write grand story arcs that cater to the fans instead of the formulaic adventure stories that made people fans in the first place. Never bet against Umberto Eco!

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David Simon @audacityofdespair.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Grand. Truly. They have until tomorrow to learn "Sweet Transvestite."

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

What a glorious city. To deface these institutions is to defile a national treasure.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Francis Spufford, NONESUCH (2026)

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

He ran for president the next year in the Reform Party. He was talking about running back in the 1980s (Doonesbury made the exact same joke). But people will tell you Obama roasting him at the WHCA dinner made him run five years later, because only Democrats have agency.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

If you need a pick me up, just remember that right now, somewhere in Minneapolis, a newspaper editor is shouting "bring me pictures of Spider-Man!" into his telephone handset.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Barack Obama brought the troops home from Iraq, negotiated a deal that stopped Iran's nuclear program without firing a shot, ended DADT, shifted the country's views on same-sex marriage, and passed historic legislation that cut the number of uninsured in half while guaranteeing protections for all.

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 19/08/2026

this person was a successful government official, until Beans. It starts with "just one baked bean at a cookout." Then it's navy beans on weekdays. Pinto beans in the workplace. Before you know it, they're freebasing chickpeas behind a 7/11. Please, help stop bean abuse. Donate today.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

And if you watched all 15, you would see the villain in exactly one (1) post-credits scene.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

One thing about living through a crisis is that you learn who lives by their principles and who has no principles at all. If you read one thing today, please read this.

theatlantic.com

The Wrong Kind of American

The Trump White House needed me—until the fact that I am trans became public.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Nobody behaved honorably here. His supporters ignored all the red flags. His defenders sought to excuse academic fraud. His attackers hounded him to death. None of this should have happened.

telegraph.co.uk

Jason Arday found dead

Academic had resigned from the University of Cambridge last week

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

An important update/corrective for anybody who read the original accusations.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Really enjoyed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, even if (or because) it wasn't quite the movie the trailers made it out to be. I was a little disappointed that the villains were mostly restricted to a parade of cameos, but honestly, it was probably a better movie for it. 1/

Spider-Man dodges Boomerang's boomerangs. That's it, that's pretty much all Boomerang does.

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

poptimism needs the specter of the Finger Wagging Snob to legitimate itself because it has no affirmative basis outside of accusations of persecution

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The first wave of Marvel movies had the advantage of dipping into other genres (much like the early Marvel comics!) and that plus the vaguely real-world setting gave the impression they were about something other than themselves. Marvel started to go wrong when the genre became "Marvel."

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Seeing a lot of defenses of Woke 1 the last couple of days that seem to be missing the point (perhaps deliberately). Woke 1's problems were not that it persecuted journalists and canceled comedians (it didn't). The problems were that its ideas were bad and its chief exponents were frauds.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

A great post in a great series (one that finally motivated me to read the books this summer). I'm especially fond of this part:

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

In my experience, the dancing bears are far more common among admins and tenured faculty than they are among the adjuncts and NTT faculty.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I see a lot of people circling the wagons against this piece, but the criticisms Harper makes of his university--exploitation of faculty, Kafkaesque hiring practices, pandering to students, outsourcing to consultants--are the same everywhere. Reading this was like looking into a mirror.

theatlantic.com

Why I Quit the Tenure Track

The insufferable hypocrisy of elite academia

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I don't have much patience for Harper's descent into shtick, but these claims are not mutually exclusive. Everybody in academia is highly qualified, but there are so few jobs that hiring has become a lottery--and the principles that departments use to make hiring decisions are not always good ones.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

To be fair, this vote probably (?) won't kill as many people.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Genuinely surprised (not unpleasantly) that this is Tom's #1 event comic. I am a huge Morrison fan but I am on Team Incomprehensible Cobblers with this one. I take Tom's point about the propulsive rush of the storytelling, which has its charms. But the story keeps getting in its own way.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

At long last, we have created the virus from the classic conspiracy theory They Created the Virus.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Great post on witch hunts, fandoms, and parasocial relationships across the political spectrum.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

"Aunt Hestia" is what puts this one over the top. <chef's kiss>

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Almost forty years after Rick Veitch quit Swamp Thing in protest over one of its covers getting censored, he was finally allowed to finish his story. Now that I've read the ending, I wonder how much of Swamp Thing 1989 was Veitch's original plan and how much was revised for this version.

Cover to Swamp Thing 1989 #88 - published in 2026 but using the 1980s numbering and trade dress.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Superman: The Animated Series master thread, collecting all the posts reviewing the entire series.

Superman posing in front of the Metropolis skyline

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Superman: The Animated Series, final thoughts. I revisit STAS about once a decade or so, but I hadn't really thought about why until I started to write about it. Some reasons are obvious: the solid grasp of the characters (narratively and visually), the art design, the optimistic setting. 1/

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Everybody knows Dorothy Thompson's typology of budding fascists in "Who Goes Nazi?," but this bit about a young immigrant is the most beautiful part and it is exactly why the fascists hate them.

But H is wrong. There is one other person in the room who would fight alongside H and he is not even an American citizen. He is a young German emigre, whom I brought along to the party. The people in the room look at him rather askance because he is so Germanic, so very blond-haired, so very blue-eyed, so tanned that somehow you expect him to be wearing shorts. He looks like the model of a Nazi. His English is flawed—he learned it only five years ago. He comes from an old East Prussian family; he was a member of the post-war Youth Movement and afterward of the Republican “Reichsbanner.” All his German friends went Nazi—without exception. He hiked to Switzerland penniless, there pursued his studies in New Testament Greek, sat under the great Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, came to America through the assistance of an American friend whom he had met in a university, got a job teaching the classics in a fashionable private school; quit, and is working now in an airplane factory—working on the night shift to make planes to send to Britain to defeat Germany.

He has devoured volumes of American history, knows Whitman by heart, wonders why so few Americans have ever really read the Federalist papers, believes in the United States of Europe, the Union of the English-speaking world, and the coming democratic revolution all over the earth. He believes that America is the country of Creative Evolution once it shakes off its middle-class complacency, its bureaucratized industry, its tentacle-like and spreading government, and sets itself innerly free.

The people in the room think he is not an American, but he is more American than almost any of them. He has discovered America and his spirit is the spirit of the pioneers. He is furious with America because it does not realize its strength and beauty and power.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Great essay about tactics, strategies, and the trap of self-radicalization.

The Prairieland events, by contrast, met the administration on exactly the terrain the administration wished to be met on. Since Trump's inauguration, the administration has been desperately attempting to get a "do-over" on the George Floyd protests of 2020. They wish to manufacture images of steely-eyed soldiers facing off against violent un-American riots. These images are intended to leverage support for increased state powers and expanded authoritarianism.

The Prairieland activists decided to meet the administration on the field the administration picked and deliver them the fight the administration wanted. By contrast the ordinary citizens of Minneapolis, and their resolute nonviolence, even in the face of brutal murders committed by agents of the state, have done far more to change national opinion on the mass deportation machine. They chose not to give the administration the fight it wanted. They met physical force with soul force, as Dr. King put it. Forget about the morality. The tactic was effective.

Whether you think the Prairieland activists are victims or heroes is left to you, reader. This is a cynical essay. And this cynic notes that there seems to be an advantage to wrapping yourself in the flag and declaring that your goal is to save America, as opposed to dressing all in black and explaining how your goal is to destroy it.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Great news! Would have been nice if people had realized two years ago that Donald Trump would turn out to be Donald Trump.

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I don't understand all this fuss about the Strait of Hormuz. Why don't we send the ships through the Second Strait of Hormuz?

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Superman: The Animated Series S4E2, Legacy. STAS goes out with a bang in a two-parter that builds on existing relationships, takes a couple of them to new levels, and builds up to a huge finale. It takes on the daunting task of wrapping up the entire series in two episodes and basically nails it. 1/

Superman leading the forces of Apokolips under his standard

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Marc Singer @theothermarcsinger.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Superman: The Animated Series S3E10, Unity. The series is getting close to the end of its run. Season 3 mostly introduces new characters that expand the DCAU or revisits old ones that have played out their potential. This episode presents a new concept that needed more time on the drawing board. 1/

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