The Empty $72 Million Home on Flathead Lake

 

Forbes - "America’s Most Mysterious Private Island Is For Sale At $72 Million—An Abandoned Palace And A Lake Monster Included"

The Rise of Bad Bunny and Producing a Super Bowl Halftime Show

 

The Atlantic - "How Bad Bunny Did It"

"At the center of Bad Bunny’s sound is the rhythm that has ruled Latin American pop for decades: reggaeton, which marries dancehall and rap in crisp, minimalist fashion. Inspiring partying often with just a drum machine and a vocalist, reggaeton first flourished as the sound of working-class urban life in Puerto Rico. “This is where I was born, and so was reggaeton, just so you know,” Bad Bunny boasts in Spanish in one song.

He also grew up as a highly online Millennial at a time when American pop culture was ruled by Fall Out Boy’s pop punk, Lady Gaga’s synth pop, and Drake’s rap blues. All of those touchstones now inform his maximalist take on reggaeton. In any given Bad Bunny song, the melodies roll and sway between emo dejection and childlike glee, the electronic beats call to mind Nintendo games, and the low end churns as ominously as a lava pit. Bad Bunny’s vocal tone is unique: husky and flat, peppered with gasps and grunts, and shimmering with digital effects. He sounds like a ringmaster in a futuristic circus, and you don’t need to know Spanish to feel that a thrilling story is unfolding."

New York Times - "Super Bowl Halftime Is the World’s Biggest Stage. He Designs It."

Spider-Noir TV Show

 

From Wikipedia:

"Spider-Noir is an upcoming American noir superhero television series developed by Oren Uziel for MGM+, based on Marvel Comics featuring the character Spider-Man Noir. The series follows an aging private investigator and superhero in an alternate universe of 1930s New York City who grapples with his past."

"Nicolas Cage stars as Spider-Man Noir, after voicing a version of the character in Sony's animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)..."

"Spider-Noir is set to debut on MGM+ in 2026 and will consist of eight episodes."

Stranger Things - "a human-made equivalent of the algorithm"

 

New York Times - "How ‘Stranger Things’ Defined the Era of the Algorithm"

How Anime Took Over America

 

New York Times - "How Anime Took Over America"
By Joshua Hunt

Limitless Season 2

August 15, 2025 on Disney+.

MLB is Growing Again

Bloomberg - "Major League Baseball Is Growing Again. Why Isn’t Its TV Money?"

"Major League Baseball’s TV conundrum
Major League Baseball is off to its best start in years. Viewership is up across all its major national TV packages, led by ESPN, where ratings are up 22%. TBS and Fox have scored 16% and 10% lifts, respectively, the league said this week. Game attendance hit a seven-year high in 2024 and is inching up again this year. (The viewership on Japanese TV network NHK is also up about 22%.)

And yet, the league is scrambling to find a buyer for a major TV package that includes 30 regular season games, the Home Run Derby, the Wild Card playoff round and up to 10 spring training games. ESPN said in February that it would end its broadcast deal with MLB after the 2025 season, pulling out of the relationship three years ahead of schedule. The sports network had been paying the league $550 million a year and wanted to pay less than half that price.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred initially responded by saying ESPN was a shrinking platform, only to later concede “we liked the deal we had” and that he wishes he didn’t have to sell these rights at this moment. NBC and Apple are in talks to buy some or all the games, though neither is willing to match the $550 million price tag. Fox has expressed an interest in more baseball as well. Other potential buyers, including Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon and Netflix, are all sitting on the sidelines."

Robotaxi Future is Already Here

WSJ - "It’s Waymo’s World. We’re All Just Riding in It."

"The girls final dinner" White Lotus Season 3

Murderbot

May 16, 2025 on Apple TV+.

Cristóbal Tapia de Veer to Leave The White Lotus

New York Times - "Composer of the ‘White Lotus’ Theme Song Won’t Return for Season 4"

Stereogum - "White Lotus Composer Quits Over Creative Differences, Talks Tension With Mike White And Fan Outrage Over New Theme"

The Studio

Andor Season 2 Trailer

Andor Season 2

April 22, 2025 on Disney+.

Music Performances at the SNL 50th Anniversary Episode

Kendrick Lamar's Halftime Show

SNL - AI Software

From Goat to Armchair Quarterback

 

New Yorker - "Tom Brady, Armchair Quarterback"

"This persona is apparent in the career of one of Brady’s chief on-field rivals, Peyton Manning. Manning is from good Southern football stock—his father, Archie, was a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, his brother Eli was the scrappy, courageous leader of the New York Giants, and his nephew Arch will soon be drafted into the N.F.L.—but his excellence seemed well earned. His game was full of minute adjustments and quick decisions; he was famous for how encyclopedically he could master any playbook you threw at him. Nowadays, he owns a production company whose main product is “Manningcast,” an ESPN2 show that Peyton hosts with Eli. As they watch football games and chat, Peyton comes across as a great hang, an enlightened good old boy. He doesn’t seem driven by demons or a need to dominate anyone. It’s easy to understand why his teammates all seemed to like him so much.

Brady, though, has a fishier personality and a cooler eye. His closest likeness isn’t to other quarterbacks but to the basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, who, five years ago, died in a helicopter crash at a woefully early age. Like Bryant—who turned his gym-rat nature into a tall-tale mythos like that of Paul Bunyan—Brady likes to talk about his work ethic, about how desperately he needs to win and how far he’s willing to go to fill the void. Brady, in his own telling, holds on to small slights and inflates them just enough to fuel himself to victory. “I was always kind of motivated by people that say, ‘You can’t do it,’ ” he once told his fellow ex-player Michael Strahan on “Good Morning America.” All he needs is a snippet of smack talk, the hint of an insult, or even a cross look to make him mad enough to reach the end zone. If the classic quarterback, embodied by Manning, accomplished his exploits through the force of good will, Brady—a progenitor and a product of today’s so-called hustle culture—needs grist for irritation to reach his true heights."

The Studio

March 26, 2025 on Apple TV+.

Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes (2004)