Alexander Pyles

We buried our son today. We enter a new phase of grief now. Thank you, everyone - for everything. Here is Frankie's eulogy as promised. Also, a google doc link too, in case the screenshots are annoying: docs.google.com/document/d/1RQ…

Every friend group has that one guy whose point of view coincides with that of the omniscient thitd person narrator

Yeah well, someone bombed the other first and if you lose after that...well

Today is my wife's birthday - Ks in the chat!

Sure, your eyes aren’t tricking you. That clip looks better than the new trailer, and the reason has nothing to do with talent. The VFX supervisor on Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014? Jerome Chen. The VFX supervisor on Brand New Day? Also Jerome Chen. Same person. Completely different system around him. In 2014, Chen had 50 effects artists at Sony Imageworks, the largest VFX crew the studio had ever put on a single project. They handled about 1,000 of the film’s 1,600 VFX shots on a $255 million budget. The crew shot on real film (not digital), on location in actual New York City, scanned Times Square with 36,000 photographs of over 100 billboards, and built physical lighting rigs on set so the CGI would match the real world. Now look at how Marvel makes Spider-Man movies. No Way Home had 2,500 VFX shots spread across 12 studios and about 3,000 artists. The budget was $200 million, $55 million less than TASM2 despite having 56% more VFX shots. Digital Domain, one of the VFX vendors, was delivering final shots days before the December 17, 2021, release. They kept reworking shots into mid-January, after the movie was already in theaters. Zoom out, and the math gets worse. Marvel released 6 films between 2008 and 2012. From 2023 to 2025, they pushed out 7 films and 7 TV shows. The Hollywood union representing VFX workers reported that Marvel pays artists about 20% below industry average and staffs one person where other studios hire three. Artists described 64-hour weeks and breakdowns on the job. Then, in February 2025, Technicolor, the parent company of MPC (three-time Oscar winner for Life of Pi, The Jungle Book, and 1917), collapsed almost overnight. 4,500 jobs gone globally. The studio had been actively working on Disney and Paramount films when the lights went out. Brand New Day has four months before release, and trailers routinely show unfinished shots. But the gap between a 2014 Spider-Man and a 2026 Spider-Man has nothing to do with technology going backwards. The industry has been asked to do three times the work for less money per shot while its biggest studios are going under.

@colettebrn 👀👀👀

Working on books that reaffirm faith in language, art, and life’s mysteries really does heal everything🖤

love it when Very Serious Media Guys give advice that was dated 10 years ago and then piss on everybody 2 steps below them on the ladder

Writers should not publish for free. They should not publish at all. The only acceptable form of publication for a true writer is posthumous, ideally against their own express wishes

reasons to submit to death kit:- • accepted work hits shelves in london, new york, berlin, & beyond • we pay you • we are nice deathkitcom.wordpress.com/submissions/

@BurialMagazine Shoot intrigued by Burial and Keep Planning - need to drum up the will to write something.

here is another “labor of love” currently putting out some of the most exciting work in the english language keep-planning.net

‘the sandbox’ by kate wagner @mcmansionhell burialmagazine.neocities.org/thesandbox

Catchy opening! But the comma splice is unwieldy. Why dont you try "It was not just the best of times. It was also the worst of times."

This is changing my life

@ryanhasbadtaste 10/10

Finally watching Predator Badlands and it riiiips

@deathdashkit 👀 Working thru the Jungle (Sinclair)

here is our weekend reading what is yours

@JLSoprano @bilbosfootcomb McMansions to me remain the worst. Split levels aren't great per se but I don't mind them.

@bilbosfootcomb @PylesofBooks Also, that's a split-level, possibly the worst house design ever devised.

Black people started getting to have it too and white people decided it would be better if nobody could so we elected Ronald Reagan and here we are

@goodreads 6!

Be honest. How many books are you "Currently Reading" right now?

Sinclair's The Jungle is quickly becoming a top 10 book for me.