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John E. Branch Jr.

@JEB54

5th-gen. Texan now in NY. Into tech & culture. All views my own or stolen from admirable sources. (I write, but not for NYT.)

 New York, USA
ifitbenotnow.wordpress.com
Joined December 2007
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Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)Photo by John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)
Manners matter! The aliens in #ScheherazadeIncident never talk to humanity like this. #ScheherazadeIncident is a forthcoming SF novel. Details soon.
A promotional graphic for a Netflix TV series, showing a crowd in a public place. Superimposed on the scene are the words “You Are Bugs” in large type. Smaller type says “3 Body Problem Another Season Coming.”

ALT A promotional graphic for a Netflix TV series, showing a crowd in a public place. Superimposed on the scene are the words “You Are Bugs” in large type. Smaller type says “3 Body Problem Another Season Coming.”

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Memories are like imaginary friends. No one else can see them. No one else knows when they’re talking to us.
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We live on a good planet for skies, and October skies may be the best. There are days when all I have to do is look out my window to see something like this. (Unprocessed image. Might remove the circular artifact, experiment with luminosity masking, and so forth later.)
Image from John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)
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It’s kind of funny that a software glitch afflicted the very fast, very pricey F1 cars in yesterday’s race. They had to quickly install a software update, which someone had to quickly write, before they could run the race!
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“The sun sets on a horrible summer,” says a heading in today’s Economist Espresso. The summer may be ending. I’m afraid the horrible isn’t.
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A bit of wordplay on the title of a BBC documentary: “Will Robots Take My Job, Please?”
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Thanks to the AMC network and a curiosity of the culture industry, when I see Mont-Saint-Michel now, I think of zombies. Luckily they’re not visible on today's bing.com/ landing page.
Crafting continuity

Crafting continuity

A basket can carry far more than its contents. The

bing.com
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Still waiting for Shazam to merge with Neuralink so I can find out what that music is that’s running through my head.
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“Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me.” Those are good lines. Less good but more true would be something like this: There was not noise enough outside And so a jackhammer began.
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Had an encounter with the Metropolitan Police over the weekend. Nothing worrisome, though. Nice to see DCI Jane Tennison again.
Image from John E. Branch Jr. (@JEB54)
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At times like this, mad dogs and Englishmen are what I expect to find on the MTA.
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Even snowy egrets in Florida know the drill for #grwm, aka #GetReadyWithMe. Just check today’s Bing landing page, at bing.com/
Crafting continuity

Crafting continuity

A basket can carry far more than its contents. The

bing.com
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One of life’s little mysteries is why the end-credit song for Three-Body, the Chinese TV adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, almost exactly quotes a familiar line from Blade Runner.
A TV screen showing a woman in front of a crowd, a set of Chinese-language credits, and a closed-caption line reading “I’ve seen things you people won’t believe.”

ALT A TV screen showing a woman in front of a crowd, a set of Chinese-language credits, and a closed-caption line reading “I’ve seen things you people won’t believe.”

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I never took a voice class. But I went to school with one!
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Maybe the biggest surprise of the 1st space race: not that people tired of it but that it led to complaints, ironic but sometimes at least half serious. To wit: “They can put a man on the Moon, but they can’t solve the common cold?!?!”
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I’m well aware of this because: It’s now 50+ years after Apollo 11, I’m writing and thinking about space, and I’ve got a blasted cold. <burn sizzle grimace wink looney-eye-roll>
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I won’t say you should read more books, but if you read none, you may be a drag to others. The current Economist says this about books and book clubs (at economist.com/culture/2026/0…):
A block of text with this highlighted: “Perhaps, instead of listening to people talk about books, you should enjoy books the old-fashioned way. Sit down. Open a book. And silently enjoy it.”

ALT A block of text with this highlighted: “Perhaps, instead of listening to people talk about books, you should enjoy books the old-fashioned way. Sit down. Open a book. And silently enjoy it.”

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I think this is partly wrong and partly unbalanced, but it left my head spinning: nytimes.com/2026/05/04/opini… [sub only]
Opinion | Speak, Yuppie

Opinion | Speak, Yuppie

The young urban professionals of the 1980s changed our cities, our politics and our meritocratic work lives.

nytimes.com
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Seen on the Wired landing page today. Haven’t read it but can guess how it starts. Step 1—Travel back in time by about a week. Step 2—Avoid breaking time-travel rules.…
A block of text that reads “Machine-Picked for You: How and When to Watch the Artemis II Mission’s Return to Earth, by Jorge Garay.”

ALT A block of text that reads “Machine-Picked for You: How and When to Watch the Artemis II Mission’s Return to Earth, by Jorge Garay.”

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This teaser headline appeared in: A—The Onion B—The New York Times C—AI News for Youse D—Other
A headline that says: No One at Waffle House Remembers FEMA Official Who Says He Teleported In

ALT A headline that says: No One at Waffle House Remembers FEMA Official Who Says He Teleported In

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