Matt Policastro

@mattpolicastro.com

252 Followers 523 Following

Distinguished fellow of Some Such Nonsense Studies. Data science and experimentation. Keep it wavy. mattpolicastro.com

City shot of the sun blotted out by wildfire smoke haze
Can of caffeine free Diet Coke circa 2003 on a plain white background
Red-bearded cyclist in a tan shirt holding up a tan Disc Trucker gravel bike with black and pink components against a clear blue sky, with green trees in the background.
Very large gray tabby named Earl absolutely crushing a back couch cushion after slowly breaking it down over years
Screenshot of Jewel Osco coupon/deal marking a whole rotisserie chicken down by $5 if you buy two ten-packs of mini Pepsi cans
My dishwasher being a prick in my notifications saying: “Admittedly, emptying the dishwasher is not necessarily the top priority.”
Two figurines of women in ropes and spa attire relaxing in a large glass… peanut milkshake? Captioned with “it’s a spa day for your gut. It’s not nuts. It’s peanuts”
Vandal from Marathon
Photo of the WGN-9 election night broadcast with a weirdly pixelated station logo
Screenshot of a Claude Code chat where I'd asked Claude to help import a blog post I'd written on my old framework. In response, it remarked favorably in response to a comment I'd made in the post itself about feeling compelled to be grateful/polite in my interactions with it.
Screenshot of LinkedIn’s notifications tab showing a recommendation to follow Bari Weiss
Screenshot of the Chicken Man’s website showcasing ribs and ham hocks
Earl the cat, a grey shorthair, in the foreground with a multicolored Christmas tree in the background
Selfie in a mirror while I hold Earl, my grey tabby with white socks, in the crook of my arm. I’m also wearing a dumb Hefty-branded novelty bucket hat
A makeshift tent made of painter’s plastic sheets to contain drywall dust generated from extensive sanding
Screenshot of iOS26 control center featuring dedicated ambient music player buttons
Screenshot of a scammy “support” bot account
A screenshot of the Divvy app which, for some reason, started at maximum zoomed-out level showing a map of North/Central America and the Caribbean, but absolutely nothing else
Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech painting but it’s edited so that the guy is shirtless and fucking shredded 100% natty
Short video of cottonwood seeds floating through the air so thickly it almost looks like snow
Huge No Kings protest crowd overflowing from Daley Plaza in Chicago into neighboring streets
Photo of the “sunset” horizon line from the Touhy Ave overpass
A massive dust storm in Chicago blocking the sunny, blue sky behind it
Soviet ekranoplan, a massive ground effect aircraft, in flight very close to the surface of a body of water
A well-worn IKEA laser/spirit level that has somehow remained in my toolkit for nearly a decade.
The corner of a cabinet interior where a cabinet hanging bracket is being faintly illuminated by a combination laser/spirit level trapped behind the cabinet
Another screenshot of the ring from much closer but still below. The sun is blocked out by a support/orientation strut with a light halo of light being cast around it
An aerial photo of a in-progress construction in the video game Satisfactory. It is a very large concrete ring suspended in mid-air framed by a temperate rainforest and backgrounded by a sea with several small islands
Concept of Tom Reed, the primary antagonist of Splinter Cell: Conviction, looking extremely similar to Musk’s outfit in the post above
Screenshot of an app icon for some indeterminate animal thing representing one Apple’s new generative AI image apps
And I've been surprised that this hasn't come up more amid our current national conversation about men. Because this is the heart of it. There are a lot of very large, very dumb men who want you to sleep three hours a night and invest in vending machines and do turmeric cleanses and they all know that every man in the country is one personal crisis away from being being algorithmically inundated by their videos. And as long as that's the case, there's really nothing we can do to fix things.
Shopped version of the same screenshot saying the temperature “Feels Like: Realbad”
Screenshot of a stock ticker for Tesla’s stock TSLA having fallen by 15.43% today alone, with another 3.22% drop in after hours training, meaning it is now worth less than it was six months ago
Holographic sticker of an astronaut with the text “SPACE FORCE 2020” on a paper towel dispenser in a bar bathroom
Screenshot of my results from a test determining where I cut off blue vs green
A video walkthrough of a partially-complete vertical pantry pullout shot in first person POV, ending with a thumbs up
Still image of G.I. Robot from the animated adaptation of Creature Commandos, narrowing his eyes in response to seeing a Nazi
Infamous political ad for David Perdue which was overlaid with the text “totally exonerated, no wrongdoing”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles logo with “bonkers court sketch Giuliani” text substituted
Screenshot of star shine’s original post about space cannons and orbital salvage followed by an unrelated instance of the smiling beard guy gif
Ian Ward: Agreed, Shia. We’re living in a moment of global rightward political retrenchment. I think it’s safe to assume that our cultural products will reflect that. I would add that, fairly or not, Trump and MAGA have taken on a certain countercultural appeal — and that tends to jive with artistic subcultures that position themselves against the cultural mainstream. It’s not cool or subversive right now to be a Democratic partisan, who are seen as defenders of the status quo. There’s a certain subversiveness to being MAGA, and I think we’ll see that echo throughout the cultural sphere — though I’m not entirely sure what it will look like.
A plywood sandwiched panel held between two pieces of pine and butting up against the fence of a table saw to index to the correct length. A track saw track is clamped to the two pieces of pine dangling off the end of the table saw’s router table section so a consistent cut could be made across the full set of eight plywood panels.
Screenshot from the article linked from Defector: "Everyone is quoting Gramsci on the interregnum, but that assumes that something new will be or could be born," Mike Davis wrote back in 2022. He looked at that tenuously post-Covid world and couldn't see it. There were wars and politics, as there are always wars and politics, but not any meaningful broad-based organization or movement towards the common good. In its place was what Davis called "pathological presentism, making all calculations on the basis of short-term bottom-lines in order to allow the super-rich to consume all the good things of the earth within their lifetimes." We can see, from this moment, what such a future might look like.
A screenshot of an almost certainly fake AOC “private” Bluesky account
An “I voted” sticker held in my left hand with a rainy sidewalk as the background. The sticker is standardized for Cook County with a kind of bland graphic design of pale words in different languages on red and blue fields above and below the statement, “I voted!”
A screenshot of a digital calendar app showing December 5th with a single, all-day entry: Dan Sinker’s Mysterious Promise/Warning
Grey cat with white paws putting one paw against my leg to prevent me from getting any closer on the couch we’re both sitting on.
A painted sign depicting skewers of shawarma, al pastor, doner, and gyro meat titled “celebrate diversity” I found at Doner 97 on Clark St in Chicago, IL
A row of cut-down plywood sheets arranged to most closely align on their wood grain in a pleasing fashion. This set has broad, high-contrast grain patterns.
Mark Hamill in black sunglasses giving a standing ovation to the Democratic ticket, President Biden, and their families as they leave the stage at the Democratic National Convention
Grey tabby cat with white socks and speckled pink toes asleep on a well-worn dining chair with colorful retro upholstery
Bugs Bunny in a tuxedo saying, “I wish all my home’s previous owners’ electricians a very fuck you and your romex”
A WWII-era motivational poster modified to call the viewer to block the NYT from their local network via IP blocks
simple line art character looking deadpan then slightly smiling and saying “Jesus fucking Christ”
Modular synthesizer case and accessories spread across a table at a local brewery
Screenshot from the satirical film Starship Troopers where a young soldier has turned to the camera to say, “I’m doing my part”
Picture of a painted sign depicting spit meats (shawarma, al pastor, doner, and gyro) over a background of flames, titled “Celebrate Diversity”
Screenshot of “Spark of Inspiration”, a minute-long single released under Suzuki Yokota’s name on Spotify featuring AI-generated album art. The single didn’t seem at all like something from Susumu Yokota’s previous works.