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kellypendergrast.bsky.social
kelly pendergrast
@kellypendergrast.bsky.social
3.1K followers 630 following 1K posts
technology // aesthetics // labor // shapes

writing: kellypendergrast.com
working: antistaticpartners.com
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kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Really funny how Instrument Serif and related fonts have made a comeback in a way that is vaguely reactionary-coded (healthmaxxxing, retvrn purity stuff) ... well and openly fascistic stuff too I guess!!
Promotional image for David protein bars Promotional image for Oura rings with the phrase "Health is our love language" Ad for the Trump Gold Card
February 6, 2026 at 8:04 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
i still haven't forgotten Spike Lee's terrible crypto ad and now he's shilling for Meta stupid glasses ick WHAT A SELLOUT you're already rich bro
Spike Lee wearing big hideous Oakley Meta AI glasses with orange reflective lenses. In the lenses you can see a basketball game reflected.
February 6, 2026 at 7:51 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
They brought Nick Land to San Francisco to be interviewed by Wolf Tivy and Curtis Yarvin at a shoes-off tech house event. oh lordy lordy.

Be cautious if you run into any AI founders this week - they are likely to be very overexcited from the gnostic wisdom that was dropped
Two men sitting on chairs on a low stage in a window bay, while an audience of people, some sitting and some standing, watch them. The room is big, cream colored, with recessed ceiling lights and a bizarre large fireplace surrounded by marble-ish crown molding. The men on stage are Nick Land and Wolf Tivy.
February 5, 2026 at 7:30 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Epstein file EFTA00004012
Photo of a beach on a sunny day. There are small stones scattered through the sand in the foreground, some rocky outcroppings in the shallow water on the left, and islands or distant shorelines visible in the background. The waves are smallish but choppy. In the center of the image is a black rectangle that appears to cast a shadow. It is likely a redacted picture of a person, but it almost looks like an art photograph.
February 3, 2026 at 9:40 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
oh god I'm going to see a Sondheim musical tonight all because I got obsessed with the insane border on Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte when i saw it IRL in Chicago... almost 3 hours of musical. the only Sondheim thing I know about are the lyrics to West Side Story. I'm scared!!!
Image of the George Seurat painting Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte (the famous one where a bunch of people are hanging out on the grass beside a river).
January 29, 2026 at 6:15 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Omg!!!! The exterminating angel was also the inspiration for my famous brunch tweet hahaha
January 23, 2026 at 5:33 AM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Startup guys once again validating my theory of combinatory slop and cultural stagnation!!
Combinatory slop and cultural stagnation Taco Bell theory: at Taco Bell there are about 10 key components on offer, and everything is a combination of those components. Ground beef sour cream lettuce grated cheese hard tortilla soft tortilla etc. Most of the “innovation” at play comes from combining the components in a new way. Crunch wrap supreme, etc. Occasionally a new component enters the picture — Dorito cheesy dust, Flamin Hot spicy dust — but mostly these new elements are existing branded components ported in from other popular junk food brand, and often available for a limited time. Kind of like a crossover ep in the marvel cinematic universe. This combinatory logic is widespread. You can see it at play in many spheres. Fast casual food concepts. Superhero movies. Trope-centric genre fiction. It is often perceived as freedom. The Starbucks drink, where the customer can have anything they can imagine that can be created from the list of components. It is specifically American. The salad with protein in a plastic clamshell. It reveals a kind of cultural stagnation. Taco Bell logic does not enable truly new things to be produced. But it does enable an almost-endless or seemingly-endless set of combinations to be constructed within a certain container (a mass-market paperback, a plastic clamshell, a 20oz drink cup, a streaming platform). Generative AI image slop can be considered a new iteration of this combinatory logic, automating the creation of new combinations and further removing any creativity or agency. Ultimately stagnant, produced from recombined input components, perceived as limitless and creative, favoring consumer choice over artistic integrity, trending towards conservatism.
January 12, 2026 at 6:04 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Funny to me how much juice and staying power the idea of "slop" has had (ie just read the new max read on slop maxread.substack.com/p/what-is-sl...). Slop is a useful concept, I guess!

Anyway I made another brief note on some of my thoughts on slop, stagnation, and taco bell
Slop/combination/stagnation Taco Bell theory: at Taco Bell there are about 10 key components on offer, and everything is a combination of those components. Ground beef sour cream lettuce grated cheese hard tortilla soft tortilla etc. Most of the “innovation” at play comes from combining the components in a new way. Crunch wrap supreme, etc. Occasionally a new component enters the picture — Dorito cheesy dust, Flamin Hot spicy dust — but mostly these new elements are existing branded components ported in from other popular junk food brand, and often available for a limited time. Kind of like a crossover ep in the marvel cinematic universe. This combinatory logic is widespread. You can see it at play in many spheres. Fast casual food concepts. Superhero movies. Trope-centric genre fiction. It is often perceived as freedom. The Starbucks drink, where the customer can have anything they can imagine that can be created from the list of components. It is, I think, specifically American. The salad with protein in a plastic clamshell. It reveals a kind of cultural stagnation. Taco Bell logic does not enable truly new things to be produced. But it does enable an almost-endless or seemingly-endless set of combinations to be constructed within a certain container (a mass-market paperback, a plastic clamshell, a 20oz drink cup, a streaming platform). Generative AI image slop can be considered a new iteration of this combinatory logic. Ultimately stagnant, produced from recombined input components, perceived as limitless and creative, favoring consumer choice over artistic integrity, trending towards conservatism.
December 19, 2025 at 8:36 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
suited and booted in my openai chore jacket, bill cunningham smiling down at me from heaven
screenshot from open ai worker merch store, showing a french "worker blues" chore jacket with the words "Research and Development Co" on the right side of the chest, and the openAI circle logo on the left breast pocket.
December 15, 2025 at 6:19 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Just pulled out a time capsule from 2003
An open page from a CD binder showing 4 CDs (each of the four images attached to this post shows a different spread of CDs)
December 7, 2025 at 8:01 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
For the past 5 years we've been sadly planning to get rid of our 1991 volvo 240 wagon which is increasingly unreliable but has valiantly served ~350k miles, and get a Prius or Honda Fit or something.

But I just saw this mint 91 Subaru on FB with only 114k miles and now I'm like hmmmmmm
Red boxy subaru wagon sitting in a parking lot in front of a marina, looking glamorous in the sunset.
December 3, 2025 at 8:27 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
If you would like to read more from the already-existing field of maintenance studies, The Maintainers Study Guide is a great place to start. I am proud to have contributed editing + design labor to this project!! themaintainers.org/study-guide/
Cover of the Maintainers study Guide document. The title sits above an image of a garage workshop. Below the image is the subtitle "A guide to ground your practice in principles of maintenance, repair, and care."
December 1, 2025 at 10:09 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
I'm sorry to be a hater but... really??

(from longnow.org/ideas/the-es...)
text reading "Maintenance, in this larger sense, has nothing optional about it. The necessity of maintenance doesn’t accumulate invisibly; it is understood as a given. When you take responsibility for something, you enter into a contract to take care of it. If it’s a child, to keep it fed. If it’s a knife, to keep it sharp. This series, I’m pretty sure, is the first to look at maintenance in general. It asks: What can be learned if you think about all the varieties of maintenance at the same time? I doubt there are any nontrivial “laws” of maintenance to be discovered. All I can offer here is to muse across a representative sample of maintenance domains and see what emerges. This series is an invitation. Using maintenance as a frame of reference is — I hope to show — a fruitful way to rethink all manner of things."
December 1, 2025 at 10:05 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
🤔
@Funeralwells asks: "Why do you like and approve of billionaires? Most of my life I've felt that being a billionaire was "evil" but recently felt like that is flawed thinking. Stewart Brand responds: "Billionaires are a new and interesting economic sector added to the Private (businesses), Public (government), and Social (nonprofits and NGOs). The current set of billionaires are creating the sector and how it relates to the other sectors."
December 1, 2025 at 9:45 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
hahahahahaha

Some might say that the existence and expansion of the billionaire class is antithetical to the maintenance, flourishing, and survival of our planet and people, but NOT STEWART BRAND!
Tweet from Stewart Brand saying "This convinces me there's such a thing as Spending Momentum. (I generally like and approve of billionaires). They travel a lot and do need security and can easily afford as much as they want. It's not surprising that some carry on to fantasizing and building underground castles..." followed by a retweet about billionaire survivalists.
December 1, 2025 at 9:37 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
san francisco ... home of the world's most embarrassing people
November 30, 2025 at 11:18 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
plenty of nasty shit too (this is from oct 12 2023)
November 30, 2025 at 11:13 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
organizing my archives (aka deleting old screenshots) and finding some good stuff. never did figure out if Christo is cool.
screenshot of a google search "is christo cool" where the auto response is "did you mean: is christ real"
November 30, 2025 at 10:51 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Really not enjoying the way various tech-adjacent thinkfluencers are deploying Ozempic as an imaginative tool // futuring technology // rhetorical cudgel.
Tweet from Bryan Johnson: "There’s an argument that GLP-1s are playing a critical role in society, not just for weight loss, but as a technology of imagination. Something humans are in desperate need of as we try to reconcile with AI becoming the new fabric of society. GLP-1s expand human imagination by breaking psychological ceilings. Important because AI expands human capability without necessarily expanding self belief. The future requires us to imagine new versions of ourselves and GLP-1s show humans how a simple injection remaps what they can aspire to become. Most people live with a fixed self-model. Something like “I’m addicted,” “I’m obese,” “I can’t change” or "I can't do that." Their mind struggles to simulate a different version of themselves, especially after countless failed attempts to change. When someone takes a GLP-1 and their cravings collapse overnight, or they overcome some other addiction, their imaginative horizon expands. They now see a future self that previously felt impossible." Quote tweet from @growing_daniel: "It's amazing the effect Ozempic is having on people's genetics", responding to a tweet from Ellie X saying "work in progress" and a selfie on the left of a small-fat woman (presumably herself), then a selfie on the right of a thin woman (presumably also herself) with a hand placed on her stomach to show that it is small. Daniel's implication being that people who had claimed that their weight was grounded in genetic factors are lying, because if they take Ozempic they can become skinny.
November 25, 2025 at 10:57 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
the protein-bro-ification of greek yogurt is severely funny to me. why does this look like a barrel of whey protein... is regular yogurt too femme?
Black and white tub of plain oikos "triple zero" greek yogurt, with "18g protein" prominent on the tub.
November 18, 2025 at 11:01 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Realizing how accustomed I’ve become to modern machines that don’t want you to access their innards, bc I’m trying to troubleshoot this serger and it’s like …what, do they think I’m a mechanic or something???
Photograph of the inside mechanism of a serger, showing many metallic parts and threading loops and cutting mechanisms Black and white diagram showing the threading instructions for upper looper of a serger
November 17, 2025 at 12:19 AM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Do you want some mail? It's that time of year again: @annapendergrast.bsky.social and I are prepping our 7th annual Antistatic Print Object. Sign up here and we'll send you a zine + extra object in the post (gratis). We love to send gifts to our friends!! Sign up>> docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Image of a spread of Antistatic Print Object zines and paper ephemera in different colors spread on top of a wooden table.
November 13, 2025 at 9:42 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
Epstein telling Deepak Chopra "I've felt a kinship with Woody because he is tortured by existential dilemmas as am I" hahahaha ok

So many banal-yet-sicko details to dig through
From: Sent: To: Subject: Attachments: Deepak Chopra 8/8/2016 9:52:40 AM jeffrey E. [jeeyacation@gmail.com] Re: America's Shadow: The Real Secret of Donald J. Trump - SFGate by Deepak Chopra supergenes[2].png Importance: High Yes Thanks for forwarding it! It was a fascinating evening! I've felt a kinship with Woody because he is tortured by existential dilemmas as am I. The Russian was just being Russian- a socialist with right wing tastes . I actually liked him. The wife was being a mother to Woody. I think he's needed that all his life . I will meet you at the Bowery at 230 PM Send me the address Deepak Chopra 2013 Costa Del Mar Road Carlsbad, CA 92009 'ffaste• Super Genes: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Wellbeing On Aug 8, 2016, at 5:43 AM, jeffrey E. wrote: i will forward it. he asked if you would come back again, without the russian. to me it was a woody allen movie. you talking conciousness , his wife more concerned with the salad dressing, and the russian deciding the future of syria. . As you know I find ideas no matter how extreme , the root of possible insight, so the other day I had viisitn the psychedelic crowd. one of them has opened a store on 1 st and the bowery called the alchemist kitchen. . How about we meet there , I want to see the store and you ride with me back uptown. lets say 230? I have left my schedule open after.
November 13, 2025 at 7:45 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
hmm
Q: We are hearing you will have indoor trees and a maximalist look. True? A: True. The great Flora Grubb has agreed to be our consultant in all things plant-related, and together we are dreaming of a virtual forest of trees, succulents, flowers, and even vines inside our space. We want the look of Art + Water to be maximalist, warm and welcoming, and bursting with life and color. And because of the unique nature of the pier, most of Art + Water will be on wheels - endlessly re-shapeable. You'll never come to Art + Water and see quite the same space twice.
November 5, 2025 at 11:39 PM
kellypendergrast.bsky.social
if the new Dave Eggers art school space thing wants to be taken seriously it is imperative they get a new logo because

www.artpluswater.org
logo for a new art initiative called "Art + Water". The logo is a kind of wordmark with the word Art aboove the word Water, both in extremely over the top white cursive. Between the words is a teal plus sign, and on the left and right of the teal plus sign are random teal curlicues.
November 5, 2025 at 11:35 PM