Trey Lawson
@tlawson.bsky.social
2.6K followers 2.4K following 8.4K posts
I come to this place for magic. Educator. Writer. Critic. Cinéaste. Plus actor. Co-host Tomb of Ideas, a Marvel Horror Podcast | he/him
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Reposted by Trey Lawson
chrisgeidner.bsky.social
Well. Fuck. This unleashed it all. 😭

Gavin Creel singing Stephen Sondheim’s “What Can You Lose” from Dick Tracy.

“This is my favorite Sondheim song ever written,” Gavin says in the January 2011 video. “For me, in my heart, this is the greatest.”
Gavin Creel | What Can You Lose
YouTube video by BartonGMiami
youtu.be
tlawson.bsky.social
But really, the performances all around in TRON: ARES are fine. The script is just thin. Lots of telling instead of showing. Plus while I get that this movie is more about the real world, I miss getting to spend time in the “culture” of programs. The Grid in ARES feels like a barren, empty place.
Reposted by Trey Lawson
hobbydrifter.bsky.social
White people who have spent decades thinking “Born in the USA” is patriotic and “Every Breath You Take” is a great wedding song are suddenly very concerned about not being able to understand lyrics to some songs at the Super Bowl halftime show.
tlawson.bsky.social
It sure is something that the TRON franchise protagonists have gone from “worker screwed over by management” to “hacktivist prodigal son facing the sins of the father” to “empathetic pro-AI CEO”
tlawson.bsky.social
TRON: ARES is dumb but fine. The visuals are great, the plot…isn’t really to my liking, but it manages to get by on spectacle & vibes. Jared Leto isn’t bad (in the movie - IRL he seems pretty awful), but another actor could’ve done just as well w/o the baggage. The score is easily the best part.
Reposted by Trey Lawson
jamellebouie.net
if we are going to have a supreme court that is as powerful as it is, i basically think justices should be forbidden from public comment on their work as well as any supplemental source of income while they are on the bench. (they should also ride circuit again but that's a bit separate.)
andycraig.bsky.social
The substance of what she's saying is bad and unconvincing, but more fundamentally, I really don't think Supreme Court justices should be going on book tours where they publicly comment on their work and respond to criticism of it. Either put it in a written opinion or hold your peace.
atrupar.com
Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."
Reposted by Trey Lawson
andycraig.bsky.social
This is a great example, but there's a funny running theme that Vance, who after all has only been a senator and then VP for less than three years, excepts to be treated with POTUS-level traditions and respect, as if anyone in American history has ever cared about "respecting the office" of VP.
atrupar.com
STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back
Reposted by Trey Lawson
ashleylynch.bsky.social
This is why the costumes are honestly brilliant. Ngo, who has never said a truthful thing in his entire life (remember the concrete milkshake?) now has to convince people inflatable Sesame Street and animal costumes are violent terrorists.

Sometimes you just need an image too silly to demonize.
michaelehayden.bsky.social
“They are highly organized … [they] have purchased their own animal costumes”
Andy ngo mad about muppets again — this time in Chicago
Reposted by Trey Lawson
lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com
alan moore hated people like thiel misinterpreting his work so profoundly that he dropped out of public life to become a shaman and worship a snake deity
sharonk.bsky.social
thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.
tlawson.bsky.social
To celebrate my dad’s birthday early, we went to City Limits BBQ (recently ranked by Southern Living the best BBQ joint in the South).
Pictured: delicious eastern NC chopped pork with crispy ends, hash & rice, beans.

Not pictured: the best beef brisket I’ve ever had, in or out of Texas.
Huge platter of pork bbq with beans, hash & rice, and pickles.
tlawson.bsky.social
“Hey Kurt, please don’t take this personally but maybe you should go off and be a Spider-Man for a while? Give us all a break?”
Reposted by Trey Lawson
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
So my point is that we need to get better at understanding when the language of progressivism is co-opted by bad actors to hustle into the public sphere (“too innovative for regulation”) technologies that threaten the basic foundations of trust necessary to a functioning society.
Reposted by Trey Lawson
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
The soft opening for this was telling teachers to necromance chatbots out of Anne Frank. There’s a historical parallel to this I’ve been chewing on, a bit of gristle stuck in my teeth since I wrote this footnote about a public debate in Weimar Germany on the educative potential of replicas. 🧵
The use of copies to fill lacunae in collections was by no means always hitched to a progressive cause, as it was in this debate. For example, the Nazi-sponsored traveling exhibition Deutsche Größe of the early 1940s comprised replicas entirely. See Diebold
2015•
Reposted by Trey Lawson
billcorbett.bsky.social
It’s almost Halloween and I’m terrified thinking of all the skeletons walking around, hiding inside people. And nobody’s doing a damn thing about it!!
Reposted by Trey Lawson
veryimportant.lawyer
There has got to be a version of the Bible where “Nate silver kind of admits he’s wrong” is one of the four horsemen
edzitron.com
AI has lost the dunce vote. It’s over
Nate Silver
@NateSilver538 • 5h
•.°
I'm just one person, and my programming needs are somewhat unusual (building various kinds of statistical forecasting models). But I'm just not seeing the consistent productivity gains from LLMs that I would have expected if you'd asked me 6 months ago.
Reposted by Trey Lawson
sc4rfm4n.bsky.social
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.“

— Frank Wilhoit
tlawson.bsky.social
Not a single place prefers Mounds?! I am truly stateless.
Reposted by Trey Lawson
thevoidencore.bsky.social
The "cognitive decline and brain damage from repeat COVID infections" and "easy to use robot that makes slop and melts your critical thinking skills" is a hell of a combo in a post-fact media ecosystem
tlawson.bsky.social
My answer used to be SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, but honestly PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS has probably aged better.
tlawson.bsky.social
You can even still tie it to the Hitchcock legacy if you absolutely must (which apparently is necessary for him)
tlawson.bsky.social
Oh man, enjoy. There is a sequence later in the game that is legitimately one of my all time favorite sequences in any video game ever.
tlawson.bsky.social
Man, SINISTER is so good. Been too long since I revisited it. Ethan Hawke is a national treasure.
tlawson.bsky.social
Halloween 2025
Movies 8 & 9:
Paranormal Activity (2007)
and
Sinister (2012)
Original theatrical poster for Paranormal Activity Original theatrical poster for Sinister
tlawson.bsky.social
Halloween 2025
Movies 8 & 9:
Paranormal Activity (2007)
and
Sinister (2012)
Original theatrical poster for Paranormal Activity Original theatrical poster for Sinister
Reposted by Trey Lawson
chrisgeidner.bsky.social
BREAKING: Federal judge issues TRO following a second day of hearings, blocking the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois” from now through Oct. 23. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
STATE OF ILLINOIS, a sovereign state; and the CITY OF CHICAGO, an Illinois municipal corporation,
Plaintiffs,
Case No. 25-cv-12174
Judge April M. Perry
V.
DONALD J. TRUMP, in his official capacity as President of the United States; DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; KRISTI NOEM, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security;
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; PETER B.
HEGSETH, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Department of Defense; UNITED STATES ARMY; DANIEL P. DRISCOLL, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Army,
Defendants.
TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER
This Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, Doc. 3, and
ORDERS as follows:
1. Defendants,' their officers, agents, assigns entered, and all persons acting in concert with them, are temporarily enjoined from ordering the federalization and deployment of the
National Guard of the United States within Illinois.
2. This Temporary Restraining Order is at 5:55 P.M. central time on this 9th day of October
2025 and expires on October 23, 2025 at 11:59 P.M.
'President Trump, one of the name Defendants, is not enjoined by this Order. 3. Within two (2) calendar days of entry of this Temporary Restraining Order, Plaintiffs
shall post a nominal bond of $100. The bond shall be filed in the Clerk's Office and be
deposited into the registry of the Court.
4. Defendants' Request to Stay or Administratively Stay the Temporary Restraining Order,
Doc. 62 at 58, is DENIED.
5. A telephone hearing will be held on October 22, 2025, at 9:00 A.M. to address whether
this Temporary Restraining Order should be extended for an additional fourteen (14)
calendar days.
Dated: October 9, 2025
Coul MPeray.
APRIL M. PERRY
United States District Judge
2