Best Reads from Lately
ten or so articles, reviews, columns and the like I thought worth saving—well, that I enjoyed enough to pass along.
movies/tv
Close Encounters of the Spielberg Kind
Anybody remember Taken (2002), that limited series Spielberg produced? Or was associated with somehow, it’s all kind of blurry now. Really cool and quite terrifying show, anyway. Reason I’m thinking of it’s that, in Disclosure Day, the aliens visit people by taking on the form of animals—really sort of nerve-wracking animals at that: the fox*
Best Reads from Lately
best ten things (well, articles, columns, that-type thing) lately, from all over
Fango’s Top 100 Horror Films
If only I had room, ANYWHERE, for this excellent poster (someone just gave me an 8 x 11 thing I’m putting in a frame, and cannot find even enough wall space for that). And? Looks like Martyrs is the only one I haven’t seen, here. It’s not that I don’t like grueling. I mean, okay,
Best Reads from Lately
Stuff I dug. Probably leaning more science than not? But the mystery about jacket buttons is in here as well. I’ve never understood that, until now.
Best of April 2026
ROTE EP by The Sulac System (read a lot of books as well, but they don’t even have covers yet, I don’t think. and, have been rereading the whole Sin City series, too)
Blue Butterfly Land
few things I thought sort of funny and save-able, from BlueSky, the only place I am—except for here. And, you know: life, the world. “Colorado,” I guess, sometimes. Less often than I want, really.
Best Reads from Lately
Ten things I read (from . . . 500?) from lately that I think worth sharing. Doesn’t mean they’re good or even tolerable. But, chances are I saw something to them.
Best of February 2026
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue [image or embed] — Omg. WTF
Best Reads from Lately
(and . . . all these I been saving up, too) https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/nov/30/fran-lebowitz-interview-love-novels-hiking-leaf-blowers-labubu Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees staggering reduction in homelessness | Street Roots https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506650-asteroid-bennu-carries-all-the-ingredients-for-life-as-we-know-it https://www.sciencealert.com/curiosity-cracked-open-a-rock-on-mars-and-revealed-a-big-surprise Chernobyl Fungus Appears to Have Evolved an Incredible Ability : ScienceAlert Huge undersea wall dating from 5000 BC found in France This Weirdly Smart, Creeping
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/11/17/wolf-tool-use-animals https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/12/business/last-penny-minted https://www.wired.com/story/a-disease-carrying-mosquito-has-landed-in-the-rocky-mountains-where-it-historically-couldnt-survive https://www.wired.com/story/can-a-hydroelectric-dam-really-make-the-days-longer Neanderthals and early humans ‘likely to have kissed’, say scientists | Neanderthals | The Guardian https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/11/19/how-mark-wahlberg-became-the-king-of-streaming https://www.extremetech.com/science/scientists-successfully-extract-40000-year-old-rna-from-woolly-mammoth Superman edition found in mum’s attic is most valuable comic ever at $9.12m ”Star Trek: The Next Generation” readies for last episode https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/graphics/see-how-egyptians-built-giza-pyramids They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity | Christianity
Best Reads from Lately
https://matthewjacksonwrites.com/tag/tracing-the-shape The Story Behind the Photo of Anne Murray and the Hollywood Vampires Journalists exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules | AP News Leonardo DiCaprio on ‘One Battle After Another,’ Hollywood, and Playing an Atypical Hero in Conversation With Paul Thomas Anderson https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-none-australias-only-shrew-declared-extinct-265988 Woman arrested at Alabama ‘No Kings’ rally after refusing
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-settlement-books-copyright https://www.today.com/health/men-s-health/tooth-in-eye-surgery-restores-vision-rcna230395 ‘It’s resurrection’: 1,000-year-old seeds could grow ancient plants in England’s ice-age ghost ponds | Wildlife | The Guardian https://slate.com/culture/2025/09/me-and-bobby-mcgee-janis-joplin-kris-kristofferson-lyrics.html Victor LaValle On Mental Illness, Monsters, Survival : NPR https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/health/hiv-treatment-shots-lenacapavir.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Aggressive squirrel attacks send San Francisco Bay Area residents to ER | AP News Poking around the excellent cauldron of new horror lit Scientists
Cinemuck lives!
Some of y’all may remember way, WAY back when, when I was thinking I was meant to write movie reviews. Welp . . . that never happened. But, there’s artifacts! Thanks to Clockpunk Studios, who dug these all up from a database and got them displaying. Back when this site was Cinemuck.com, I think I
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/22/doerner-fir-tree-on-fire-saved https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/opinion/culture/ai-chatgpt-college-cheating-medieval.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/authors-celebrate-historic-settlement-coming-soon-in-anthropic-class-action Wildlife photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures | Environment | The Guardian Neil Young quits Facebook and Instagram over Meta’s use of chatbots with children | CBC Music An incredible Denisovan skull is upending the story of human evolution | New Scientist Horror ‘It Girl’ Gretchen Felker Martin on DC
Best Reads from Lately
All right, got all carried away with this one. Well: forgot to post, once they’d built up. And they just kept building . . . https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-dna-reveals-mysterious-new-group-of-humans-in-colombia-with-no-genetic-ties-to-people-today-180986819 Supreme Court just saved kids from reading about Trump | Opinion Infamous During The Civil War, This Seriously Old-School Survival Food Has Been Around Longer Than You Think America’s