Jason Mittell

There wasn't a good list of accounts related to video essays - so I made this starter pack! Who did I miss? Who do you know who should join Bluesky to share & talk about video essays? go.bsky.app/PtthhCc

After 10 days, You Can See Everything is listed as the 6th highest grossing documentary of all time! Personally, I don't think concert films are a fair comparison, so really only Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins are legitimately ahead of it. I'd wager it will pass both soon...

‘Wildwood’ director Travis Knight on AI: “A pencil is a tool. A paintbrush is a tool. A 3D printer is a tool. A digital capture is a tool. AI is not a tool. AI can go fuck itself.”

Something I wish more people would realize.

Very proud of my Middlebury students articulating these values so clearly: www.middleburycampus.com/article/2026...

Inside the humanities we’re slowly losing our minds as we shout this til we’re hoarse—of course education in the name of ROI is an ideological project! Of course, treating knowledge as a content strategy results in bullshit! Still bracing to read this eloquent call to close the business schools

SCOOP: 'Tommy' from the now-viral exchange with Abdul El-Sayed is Thomas Teepell, a former staffer for Republican Senator Josh Hawley with close ties to Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht. He's the son of a former Bobby Jindal staffer whose consultant work was instrumental in getting Hawley elected.

No matter where you shop, you're getting screwed by Amazon. Amazon has found a way to make everything you buy - at Target, at a mom-and-pop shop, even direct from the manufacturer - more expensive. And they're not the only one: Expedia's done the same thing, but for hotel rooms.

Thoughtful, and I'm going to say, prescient stuff from @ibogost.com www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

This is the funniest thing I've seen today, possibly ever

Kudos to @acls1919.bsky.social for stating this explicitly in their request for reviewers. That stance & explanation definitely made me more eager to accept the invitation to review!

There are more Cornell frat boys accused of raping one woman than there are trans athletes competing in all of NCAA sports.

Exit, pursued by a fucking bear

Have you ever felt that your entire career has just been elaborate preparation to watch a single film?

Tonight marked the end of the Vermont summer concert season, albeit on a chilly wet night. Of Monsters and Men brought it hard, with a lot more rock show energy than I’d expected, led by a tremendous drummer!

New issue just launched, with nine new video essays on topics including Red Desert, One Night in Miami, surveillance footage, visual representations of sound, feminist zombie narratives, the British cine-club movement, and Before Sunrise! Check them out: intransition.openlibhums.org/issue/1969/i...

I think you cancel an IPO because you are worried people won't give you the $ you predicted, not because you should now focus on safety.

"They're not misunderstanding the film; they're co-opting a message"

🚨 BEWARE of VoteSafe.org 🚨 While it bills itself as a “safe” way to register to vote, it is actually a digital surveillance machine created by Elon Musk’s super PAC.

A truly infuriating & demoralizing read: Let us mourn for a global industry that provided the only livable wage for educated Africans doing intellectual labor for privileged lazy Americans, put out of business by replacing noble human cheaters with profiteering & environment-destroying machines.

Finally! That's what I'm talking about! #politics

Make your favorite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title: The kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being anybody has ever known plays a lot of solitaire.

How it started… how it’s going

Gift link to tribute by Jad Abrumad, creator of Radiolab and Dolly Parton’s America www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/o...

Great thread by Ryan - particularly the key point he makes about how such AI policing falls hardest on contingent faculty. Making it the default would at least normalize such policies and support those with least institutional power:

Look, are we the laughing stock of the world? Yes. Are we losing a war we should’ve never started? Yes. Is all our food poison now? Yes. Are all the jobs going away? Yes. But the important thing is a blue-haired college student I made up in my head feels bad about memes.

NEW VIDEO: Video Essay Creep youtu.be/itSlOoKo1t0?...

Tonight @themountaingoats.bsky.social brought it hard to Vermont! Beyond the tremendous musicianship, my favorite thing is how much John Darnielle projects total joy & delight that it is his job to sing songs about drug-addled actors, shipwrecks, and bitter divorces to adoring crowds!

In case you are an academic who is currently being gaslit into believing that you're a caveman who wants their students to be jobless if you resist allowing AI in your classrooms... I present to you Berkeley Law's response, which can be summarized as "Fuck off directly into the sun."

Once all the takes get aired, I’m betting that it boils down to Harper getting pissed off that his colleagues had better parking spaces than he did:

It is sufficiently rare for highly partisan GOP operatives to actually stand-up for consistency, so I'll give a little credit to Mark Fowler - the architect of 80s media deregulation & demise of fairness doctrine - for actually calling out FCC overreach & excess, even when it benefits his own party:

Talking Heads, "True Stories" (in retrospect, good choice 13yo me!)

"Why do the kids hate the filterless sociopaths who are destroying the environment and the economy and who monologue like James Bond villains?"

there is no such thing as "age verification." All "age verification" is actually "identity verification." You can coat it in glitter and "privacy-preserving" wrapping paper. But in the end, mandating age verification means mandating surveillance be built into software and hardware. Period.

amazing article

Most years, Lake Street Dive plays two sold-out shows at Shelburne Museum, always a highlight of Vermont summers. Tonight’s concert was phenomenal, just a huge party with top tier musicians!!

Every once in a while I have a moment where I ask myself "do I really live here?", even though I've been in Vermont for 25 years! Today we attended a great daytime concert by Kathleen Parks Band at Knoll Farm in Waitsfield, where this was the tremendous view as we listened to the music: