bradluen
bradluen.bsky.social
bradluen
@bradluen.bsky.social
Actual Bluesky challenge: post your favorite work of art from 500 years before you were born

artsandculture.google.com/asset/st-fra...
December 9, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Ken Krimstein, Einstein in Kafkaland. If, as seems almost likely, the two met at a salon in Prague 1911, what would they talk about? Insurance, apparently. This does a fine job of representing 4-D physics on a 2-D page (analogically; you still have to learn the equations, kids.) Not much Kafka!
December 9, 2025 at 7:40 AM
Akane-Banashi's had one of the all-time art + storytelling Weekly Shonen Jump years, up with Dragon Ball '91, Hunter x Hunter '00, and Chainsaw Man '20

(no I didn't read all of those in real time I'm not that old)
December 8, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Daniel Warren Johnston, Jorge Corona et al., Transformers 1-24. The run begins promising "Transformers like you've never seen them before" and ends with Optimus Prime fighting Megatron (don't even act like that's a spoiler.) Still, as an '80s schoolboy, I can't help responding on a visceral level.
December 5, 2025 at 8:25 AM
#GWE Jon Moxley vs. Claudio Castagnoli vs. the camera crane. Amazing how much Mox gave given the result. He's stuck in a tough position where he can't play face properly yet but everyone knows it'll happen. Claudio just had to be the unstoppable force, which you know he can do. Better: Claudio (3½*)
December 4, 2025 at 6:04 AM
Let's check my 2025 last.fm playcounts, surely these will reflect my time spent exploring the bleeding edge of taste—
December 3, 2025 at 5:21 PM
One last thing to get out of the way before beginning year-end cramming. (Thought I was nearly done with this one at the start of the PPP '75 poll, and, well, it complicated things.)
December 1, 2025 at 5:05 PM
aaaaaand that's it

'60s rock albums next year sometime
December 1, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Ram V/Felipe Andrade, Rare Flavors. There's so much in six issues—food, film, family, ethical consumption under capitalism, whether one does have to break a few eggs—that the supernatural stuff takes up unnecessary stomach room. The recipes look good, as do the people inasmuch as they're distinct.
November 30, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Tsuru bringing the spirit of Creem to Girl Meets Rock!
November 22, 2025 at 6:01 PM
New album dropping in a week (with lots of Funky QLA assistance), keep yr year-end lists open
November 21, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Maurice Vellekoop, I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together. The coming-out-to-conservative-family graphic memoir is VERY well-trodden ground, but this is above-average enough to be worthwhile. Just when you think things are settling into a comfortable pattern, there's someone to stab you in the head.
November 20, 2025 at 11:20 PM
"got good brain but not much knowledge"
November 20, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Greatest living pop musician who doesn't have a Nobel
November 19, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Anyway I'm giving up on Rhode Island and declaring victory
November 19, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Blllurb
November 18, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Tomas Tranströmer, The Blue House: Collected Works (tr. Patty Crane.) Pretty succinct for a Nobelist. Peak decade is 1973–83; throw in the debut (even then, he knew how to put a collection together) and the late prose reminiscences Memories Watch Me and you get a pretty good idea of his development.
November 17, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Big blurb energy
November 15, 2025 at 8:29 PM
This was my clear number one, never heard it before the poll and now I wonder if it's the great Nigerian pop song of its era (pace King Sunny)
November 12, 2025 at 7:22 PM
I don't have proof but I suspect might be the only US album that Xgau got to and A-listed due in some part to me
November 3, 2025 at 7:12 PM
November 2, 2025 at 5:20 AM
A major punchline: Qing cultivated land went up a lot through 1850 (tho not nearly as fast as population growth) before stagnating outside of the Northeast and to an extent the Southwest. Famines became much more common. (The data seems solid for 1724 and 1850, but in between is a bit of a guess.)
October 30, 2025 at 7:16 AM
amazing
October 30, 2025 at 6:15 AM
YouTube link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jipQ...

Album review (published a year and a half after the album came out, I'm not saying I'm quick on these things):
October 28, 2025 at 5:19 PM
<sighs> there's no way we could've avoided this
October 28, 2025 at 1:07 AM