James Frey's Blog, page 12
February 6, 2025
Monster Spied
The jet of radio waves is the biggest ever detected so early in the history of the universe, astronomers reported Thursday.
By MARCIA DUNN | Associated Press
This image provided by NSF’s NOIRLab shows an artist’s illustration of the largest radio jet ever found in the early Universe. (M. Garlick/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA via AP)CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Telescopes around the world have spotted a monster radio jet streaming from a quasar dating back to the first 1 billion years of the universe.
At double the width of our Milky Way galaxy, this jet of radio waves is the biggest ever detected so early in the history of the universe, astronomers reported Thursday.
Radio jets like this are not uncommon in our cosmic neighborhood. But they’ve been elusive in the distant early universe — until now — because of the obscuring cosmic microwave background left over from the Big Bang.
“It’s only because this object is so extreme that we can observe it from Earth, even though it’s really far away,” lead author Anniek Gloudemans of the National Science Foundation’s NoirLab said in a statement.
February 4, 2025
Michel Gondry’s ‘Maya’
Michel Gondry‘s latest film Maya, Give Me A Title, is set to have its North American premiere at the upcoming New York International Children’s Film Festival (Feb 28 – March 16).
The French-language film will have its international premiere at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival. Indie Sales is selling. Gondry’s regular producer Georges Bermann of Partizan Films is producing. A U.S. buyer has yet to be set but The Jokers released in France.
The Lumiere-nominated film is a stop-motion animation charting the long-distance relationship between Gondry and his daughter Maya. The two live in different countries, and on each of their nightly calls Gondry asks his daughter “Maya, give me a title.” Whatever her answer is, he creates a short animated story in which Maya is always the hero.
February 3, 2025
Everywhere a Fight Club
The novelist on transgressive literature, the ‘exhausting’ appeal of Elon Musk – and why Netflix would never accept his shocking TV pitch
by Duncan White
‘We’re now into a period of radical action’: author Chuck Palahniuk Credit: Daniel Berman“There are probably a billion cults going on right now that we have no clue about.” Chuck Palahniuk is meditating on the American moment. At 62, and the author of 25 books of fiction, he has made a career diving into the murky waters of the national ID and dredging back to the surface its most transgressive desires.
From his 1996 debut, Fight Club, through to his latest, Shock Induction, Palahniuk’s propulsive novels have explored the dark recesses of the culture, his finger on a deeper pulse. And in this particularly disorienting moment, he sees some alarming precedents.
“I don’t think any historical moment is unique. I think about a similar period at the end of the Sixties, when hippie ideals and forms of protest no longer worked, people started to take more and more radical action, like the Hearst kidnapping, the Aldo Moro murder, and the Sharon Tate murders. Suddenly rich people had to have bodyguards. You had all sort of similar acts of radical action, because organised action was no longer working.
“And that’s what I thought of the other day when the Luigi Mangione shooting happened. And the two New Year’s Day attacks, in New Orleans and Las Vegas.”
January 24, 2025
January 6, 2025
JAMES FREY: Next To Heaven
The ‘A Million Little Pieces’ author is back with a satirical look at the “beautiful, wealthy and unsatisfied”
James Frey is known for pushing boundaries and his latest novel promises to be no different.
Billed as “a satirical thrill ride through the dark heart of privilege,” Next to Heaven is the perfect propulsive read for fans of shows like White Lotus and Big Little Lies, the publisher teases. The novel is set to be released on June 17, 2025 — and PEOPLE has the exclusive first look at the juicy cover!
With this new novel, Frey is ready to sink his teeth into the dark and frivolous.
“The world is so serious and dreadful these days, I wanted to write a fun, sexy, thrilling book that peels back the veneer of ‘perfect’ lives and exposes what money and desire can do to people,” Frey tells PEOPLE in an exclusive excerpt. “I hope readers laugh and generally have a great time watching it all unravel.”
January 5, 2025
Poof! (DO NOT WATCH or you’ll replay over and over again)
Always fun to revisit…
December 29, 2024
Always Go Balls-out
Robots! Huge capacitors! A pianist-programmer of impossible skill! One of Silicon Valley’s formative figures takes the stage at a wild event.
by JARON LANIER
ONCE IN A while, Silicon Valley is still Silicon Valley. It happened on August 8, 2024, at the opening ceremony for a nuclear fusion energy startup. The events of that day were so astonishing I wish I could blurt them out to you in an instant, like a hologram, but you will need to be patient, as the linear nature of language allows me to unveil only one piece at a time.
I had been sensing a malaise for a year or two, a feeling that tech had lost its flavor. The big AI leap was part of it. It wasn’t just the question of, “If AI could do everything, what would people be for?” (Deceptive question, since AI is made of people. Your data, remember?) More than that, the focus on AI seemed to change the way people thought about reality. A lot of my friends were talking about using language models to calculate the best future. Life was now a problem to be solved.
The way out of this trap, I think, is for people to become smaller. To get back in touch with the edge of mystery. This isn’t a conclusion I can argue for using language, but once in a while, if we’re lucky, it’s a thing that can be experienced.
So: An audience composed of venture capitalists, US military and intelligence agency officials, physicists, and San Francisco artists have been invited to a secret event. They enter through an imposing vault door to take their places in rows of seats that feel tiny in the shadows of a vast space. Behind them is a sea of refrigerator-sized capacitors. In front is a stage set that is a little hard to visually interpret. It is white and heavenly, high tech, large, glowing.
December 28, 2024
Rickey Henderson Gone
By John Tamny
“At 5-foot-10, Henderson was smaller than many big leaguers, but he overcame his size with a combination of horse power, a savant-like ability to exploit deficiencies in pitchers, and an extreme bravado that many players viewed as cockiness.” That’s how Michael Rosenwald described the recently passed Rickey Henderson in an obituary that Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard correctly described as a “masterpiece.”
To think about Rosenwald writing Henderson’s obituary was to imagine that he had as much fun writing about Henderson as Henderson had playing baseball. Same with George Will in his own column memorializing Henderson. Henderson loved baseball, and those who love baseball are returning his affection to him. This is a big deal not just because Henderson was so special, but because understanding a little about Henderson is a way of understanding a future in which many more people will work with joy similar to Henderson’s.
What was most appealing about how Rosenwald described Henderson was in his focus on the player’s mind. He had “a savant-like ability to exploit deficiencies in pitchers,” while Will’s column was titled “Man of Steal, mind of titanium.” Will wrote that “The cerebral Tony La Russa, who won more games than any manager not named Connie Mack, and who managed Rickey and against him, remembers him even more for ‘his baseball IQ’ than for his legs.” Yes!
December 27, 2024
James Frey's Blog
- James Frey's profile
- 3309 followers
