Welcome to Data Stream, a monthly download of what’s caught my attention lately. Film, music, ideas, books, art, and anything else worth sharing. Think of it as a mixtape for the mind—curated with care, sent your way.
Dear Reader,
In less than a month I’ll be back in a classroom, and honestly? I’m equal parts terrified, nervous, and wildly excited. Still, the whole thing feels like the start of a chapter I’m genuinely optimistic about.
Most of the summer has been a paperwork marathon. I’ve hunted down tax returns, chased transcripts, and filled out what feels like a thousand forms just to figure out tuition and financial aid. Now it’s the hurry-up-and-wait phase, hoping I get some grant money.
The season hasn’t been all spreadsheets and signatures, though. It’s also been drenched in love, both falling into new love and nurturing the love already here. Journaling every day has helped nudge me to show up with intention and choose connection on purpose.
I hope your summer is thick with whatever you love most.
Warmly,
Xavi B
Bee My Honey
I was in Sedona recently with my partner, and while we were there, we stumbled into a cute little honey shop called Savannah Bee Company. I picked up an insanely tasty hot honey; sweet up front with a fiery habanero kick on the finish.
Did you know mead is basically a wine fermented from honey? Well, I didn’t. We sampled a flight of their meads, and I’m sold. I don’t drink much alcohol (I’m more of a stoner) but I could definitely get into mead.
Bees, unfortunately, are in a precarious spot right now. Between June 2024 and January 2025, beekeepers lost 62% of commercial honey-bee colonies in the U.S. It’s the second straight year of mass die-offs. The culprit is viruses spread by pesticide-resistant varroa mites, and, naturally, funding for real solutions is throttled by the profit motive.
Capes, Capitalism, and Mommy Vibes
July gifted us not one but two superhero movies—and I’m happy to report, they were both actually good.
James Gunn's Superman feels like a palette cleanser after the grayscale grit of Zack Snyder's version. A friend of mine summed it up perfectly: “Snyder only uses about three colors in each film, and two of them are black and white.” Gunn’s take, by contrast, is drenched in saturated color. The new suit is somehow both classic and modern, and the tone is hopeful even if a bit naive. I submitted a full review to the paper, but here’s a clip:
[Lex] Luthor is shown to be the system, just stripped of its polite mask. He runs a pocket-universe prison for metahumans and political prisoners, backs the Boravian war effort in exchange for stolen land, and brazenly steers the national security apparatus. Yet the film doesn’t question the legitimacy of the state his corporation is fused with. His downfall is framed as personal corruption, not as a structural consequence of capitalism. In this way, the film offers a bourgeois fantasy: evil is a matter of bad individuals, not a consequence of the class relations capitalism produces.
As for Fantastic Four—Pedro Pascal’s take on Reed Richards is delightfully unbearable. The man radiates charisma in most of his roles, but here he had to play a character who’s almost allergic to charm. He nailed it! Vanessa Kirby brings real depth to Sue Storm, and yeah, she’s giving major mommy vibes throughout. It works.
This might also be my favorite depiction of Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm. Johnny’s that perfect blend of lovable asshole and fiercely loyal. Ben’s hilarious, a damn good cook, and the kind of uncle I hope my future kids have.
Big Glass, Big Feelings
The public beta of upcoming iOS 26 is out, and it’s a big one! It’s a complete redesign known as “Liquid Glass.” To say it’s been polarizing might be putting it lightly. After its initial sneak peek back in June, social media was ablaze with people who loved it and others who absolutely hated it.
I’ve gotta say, I was a bit hesitant at first. Big change is scary. I haven’t tried the beta just yet, but I think we’ll get used to it. The real egregious design issues seem to have been ironed out during the early beta period. The early sneak peek was an accessibility nightmare, with what looked like a lot of unreadable text.
I’m excited about the call screening, iMessage features, and new CarPlay design, among a few other features that MKBHD highlights in his video about the new operating system. He points to many of these features being copied over from Android, and I for one hope that trend continues.
The Bots Are Coming for Our Jobs
Everyone and their grandmother seems scared of AI. People fret about what it’ll mean for students and jobs. Others worry about sci-fi coming to life with robots taking over. I think this quote from a New York Times opinion column puts the fear succinctly:
I came to feel that large language models like ChatGPT are intellectual Soylent Green — the fictional foodstuff from the 1973 dystopian film of the same name, marketed as plankton but secretly made of people. After all, what are GPTs if not built from the bodies of the very thing they replace, trained by mining copyrighted language and scraping the internet? And yet they are sold to us not as Soylent Green but as Soylent, the 2013 ‘science-backed’ meal replacement dreamed up by techno-optimists who preferred not to think about their bodies.
Under capitalism, every breakthrough in technology mirrors the system’s dystopian streak. How could it not? Instead of freeing us, a leap like this usually means layoffs and shattered livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of workers. In 2024, more than 130,000 tech workers lost their job.
Under socialism, the same technology could serve human need. It could shorten the workweek, push the worst jobs onto robots, and lift living standards across the board. Imagine what we could build with AI under democratic control, not in the hands of a few shortsighted parasitic billionaires.
Red Is the New Black
We’re only halfway through the year, and it feels like history is speeding up. The war in Ukraine grinds on. Israel's genocidal campaign against the Palestinians continues. Trump tried to start a trade war with China and had to awkwardly walk it back. It’s disorienting—the tectonic plates of the world situation have shifted massively.
The International I’m part of published its World Perspectives document—a sweeping analysis of global developments that will be voted on at our upcoming World Congress. There’s a lot to unpack, but a clear through line is this: conflict between imperialist powers is intensifying. As the article puts it:
The struggle against militarism and imperialism has become a central point of our epoch. We are staunch opponents of imperialist wars and imperialism, but we are not pacifists. We must stress that the only way to guarantee peace is the abolition of the capitalist system which breeds war.
The ruling class has no issue burning through lives and precious resources in pursuit of profit. But for many young people, these wars are waking up something deeper. Today’s 18-year-olds were born in 2007. They’ve spent their entire conscious lives watching one capitalist crisis after another. So it’s no surprise that even the Cato Institute—a right-wing think tank—was recently horrified to find that 62% of Americans under 30 have a favorable view of socialism. And a third say the same about communism.
Folks, it's no exaggeration to say that it’s socialism or barbarism. And the kids seem to get it.
Farewell
If you enjoyed this, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with a friend. If you come across something you think I might find interesting, please send it my way!
Thanks for reading. Live long and prosper 🖖
Where can I read your full review of Superman?