A fascinating new book about the Bronze Age Collapse and a creepy new 45-minute masterpiece by one of my favorite horror directors
Roundup 05/19/24
Greetings from Read Max HQ, and welcome to our weekly roundup column, in which I pick out some worthwhile and often overlooked books, articles, movies, and music to recommend to paying subscribers. For this week’s round-up, I’ve got:
A fascinating book about the Mediterranean cultures that survived and rebuilt after the Bronze Age Collapse;
a strikingly creepy and satisfyingly short new horror masterpiece by one of the greats (that’s only accessible for some strange reason via a weird blockchain website, which actually, I will argue, adds to the experience of creeping dissociative dread); and
a beautiful album of ambient harp and accordion music; and
interesting links about A.I. chatbots and art, the history and future of search engines, and old Apple concept computers.
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Now, the roundup. First, as always, a dispatch from the future:
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