same time

The technologist and professor Mindy Seu was having drinks when her friend casually referred to the phone as a sex toy. Think about it, her friend, Melanie Hoff, explained: We send nudes or watch porn, it’s vibrating and touch-sensitive — it’s practically an appendage.

“What exactly is sex, and what exactly is technology?” Seu wondered. “Neither can be cleanly defined.”

Around the same time, in 2023, Seu had just published “Cyberfeminism Index,” a viral Google Sheet-turned-Brat-green-doorstopper from Inventory Press. Critics and digital subcultures embraced the niche volume like a manifesto — and a marker of Seu’s arrival as a public intellectual whose archiving was itself a form of activism. The cool design didn’t hurt. “If you’re a woman who owns a pair of Tabis or Miistas, you are going to have this tome,” joked comedian Brian Park on his culture podcast “Middlebrow.”

Still, the knot between sexuality and technology tugged at her. “Recently, my practice has evolved toward technology-driven performance and publication,” she said. “It’s not exactly traditional performance art, but I believe that spaces like lectures and readings can be made performative.” Though she wasn’t yet finished exploring this theme, she wasn’t sure how to approach it next — until an experiment by Julio Correa, a former Yale graduate student, sparked an idea. Correa had devised an Instagram Stories-based lecture format, and she immediately saw its potential. She reached out to ask if she could “manipulate” his idea into a performance piece, and would he like to collaborate?

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Thus, “A Sexual History of the Internet” was born. The work is two things at once: a participatory lecture-performance conducted through the audience’s phones, and an accompanying, palm-sized, 700-plus-page “script” examining how our devices serve as bodily extensions.

The book isn’t exhaustive but instead a curated miscellany of non-sequiturs and the kind of dinner-party lore Seu delights in. Did you know that the anatomical structure of the clitoris wasn’t fully mapped until a decade after the invention of the World Wide Web? Or that the first JPEG — introduced in 1992 at USC — cribbed a Playboy centerfold nicknamed “Lenna,” which journalist and the author of the 2018 “Brotopia” Emily Chang called “tech’s original sin.”

The metaverse, web3 and AI — none of this is new, Seu said in her loft this past Saturday, hours before her West Coast debut at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. “But understanding the arc is helpful, especially how it’s tied to militaristic origins rooted in power, and how those same people were also confronted with sexuality.”

She’s just returned from a whirlwind tour — Antwerp, New York, Oslo, Madrid — with Tokyo next month. She splits her time between L.A. and Berlin, where her boyfriend lives, but for now, she’s staying put in what she calls her “bachelor pad on the set of a ‘90s erotic thriller,” inherited from a friend, the artist Isabelle Albuquerque.

The floor-to-ceiling windows high in a historic Brutalist artists’ complex overlook MacArthur Park and the downtown skyline. She’s offset the building’s cement with a childhood baby grand piano and her grandmother’s lacquer vanity with pearl inlay. That Seu marries the feminine and the spartan in her space feels intentional — a reflection of the dualities that animate her life and work.

“A Sexual History of the Internet” by Mindy Seu

(Photography by Tim Schutsky | Art direction by Laura Coombs)

Though she moved from New York three years ago, she resists calling herself an Angeleno — partly, she admits, because she never learned to drive despite growing up in Orange County. Her parents ran a flower shop after immigrating from South Korea. The household was conservative, Presbyterian and promoted abstinence. Like with many millennials, her sexual awakening unfolded online.

“I asked Jeeves how to have an orgasm,” she writes. “I sexted with classmates on AOL Instant Messenger. Any curiosities were saved until I could sneak onto my family’s shared ice blue iMac G3 in the living room.”

At 34, the very-online academic holds a master’s from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and has taught at Rutgers and Yale before joining her alma mater, UCLA, as one of the youngest tenured professors (and perhaps the only one who has modeled for JW Anderson and Helmut Lang). Her first three years at UCLA have each had their crises — encampments, fires, ICE raids — yet her Gen Z students give her hope. “They’re so principled and motivated, even if it’s in a nihilistic way,” she said.

Online, fans declare their “brain crushes” on Seu, whose ultra-detailed spreadsheets have become unlikely catnip for TikTok. Vanity Fair dubbed her the rare cybernaut who “lands soft-focus photoshoots in niche lifestyle publications.” Her unusual power is the ability to move through different fields, Trojan-horsing her theories across academia, the art world, the lit scene, tech, fashion, et al. Seu’s notoriety continued to swell after appearing on the popular internet talk show “Subway Takes” with the standout zinger: “Gossip is socially useful, especially to women and the marginalized.”

“Mindy’s really good at bridging different audiences who might not read an academic text about the history of the internet but are interested in Mindy’s practice,” said Correa, Seu’s student-turned-collaborator. When the two workshopped their performance last year on their finsta (a.k.a. fake Instagram), they encountered one major hurdle: censorship. They had to get creative with their algospeak (like changing “sex” to “s*x”) to keep from getting banned.

Mindy Seu in her MacArthur Park loft.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“A Sexual History of the Internet,” designed by Laura Coombs, carries that collaborative ethos into its financial structure. Seu’s first book went through traditional publishing, where authors often receive about 10% and contributors receive fixed fees. This time, she wanted a citation model that compensated the 46 thinkers who shaped her understanding of the subject.

She approached Yancey Strickler, director of Metalabel, “an indie record label for all forms of culture,” and co-founder of Kickstarter. Seu’s original proposal waived all profits to collaborators. “Everyone got paid but her,” Strickler said. If she wanted the model to be replicated, he told her, it needed a capitalist backbone.

They landed on Citational Splits, where everyone who was cited joined a 30% profits pool, in perpetuity, across future printings (27 opted in). The remaining 60% goes to Seu and five core collaborators. Strickler likened it to music royalties or company shares: “Your presence increases the project’s value, and some of that value should flow back to you.”

Neither can name a publishing precedent. “It shows a profound, practical morality that underlies her work,” he said.

At MOCA, about 300 Angelenos braved an atmospheric river to sit in the darkened former police car warehouse bathed in red light. No projector, no spotlight. A pair of Tabis winks at her all-black-clad friend; a couple holds hands as Seu moves through the room. (“I intentionally wear very noisy shoes,” she said earlier.)

With the calm cadence of a flight attendant, Sue instructs everyone to put their phones on Do Not Disturb, sound and brightness to max and open Instagram to find @asexualhistoryoftheinternet.

The audience reads in unison when their designated color appears. What follows is a chorus of anecdotes, artworks and historical fragments tracing the pervasive — and sometimes perverted — roots of our everyday technologies. Hearing men and women say “click and clitoris” together is its own spectacle.

“From personal websites to online communities, cryptocurrencies to AI, the internet has been built on the backs of unattributed sex workers,” one slide notes. Sex work has long been an early adopter of emerging technology — from VHS to the internet — and the present is no exception. Two years ago, OnlyFans creators made more money than the total NBA salary combined; today, the company now generates more revenue per employee than Apple or Nvidia.

Seu ends with the widely known dominatrix Mistress Harley’s concept of data domination, a subset of BDSM in which her “subs” (a.k.a. submissives) grant her remote access to their machines. Seu tells the crowd that she has essentially done the same, “viewing the voyeurs” and taking photos of us throughout the performance, which are already posted to Instagram.

We walk out into the dark rain, wondering what exactly we witnessed — and realizing, perhaps, we’ve been witnessing it all along.

The final film of the late Glenda Jackson and, if he remains true to his word, of Michael Caine, “The Great Escaper” has made its way to America two years after its U.K. release. Premiering Sunday under the umbrella of the PBS series “Masterpiece Theatre,” the film tells the true-life story of Bernie Jordan, who, at 89, set off unaccompanied and unannounced from an English retirement home to attend celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France. (This event also inspired a Pierce Brosnan film, “The Last Rifleman,” which came out about the same time.) Love and time and duty are its themes. Written by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker, it’s a simple story, simply told — sweet, but not saccharine, and moving even when you know what’s coming.

Bernie (Caine) lives with his wife, Rene (Jackson), in a care home by the sea in the town of Hove. She needs more medical attention than he, but both have their wits about them. Having missed securing a spot among the groups traveling to Normandy, Bernie, a Royal Navy veteran, with Rene’s encouragement, decides to go it alone. Though he uses a walker and can seem tired or abstracted at times — he has much on his mind, and a specific mission to fulfill — the trip itself is not especially hard on him. It becomes all the easier once he meets, on the ferry across the English Channel, Arthur Howard-Johnson (John Standing, very fine), an RAF veteran who offers him a place with his group and a bed in his hotel room. As the film goes on, he becomes more and more focused, growing alert and lively and taking charge of Arthur, who had earlier taken charge of him. Each, it will transpire, carries a burden of guilt dating from the invasion.

Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson in “The Great Escaper.”

(Rob Youngson / Masterpiece, Pathé, BBC Films)

Back in Hove, the staff, represented by aide Adele (Danielle Vitalis) and manager Judith (Jackie Clune), is not immediately aware of Bernie’s absence — he’s allowed to come and go — and Rene, who has a tendency to fence with them anyway, is keeping quiet in order to give him time to get away. When they learn he’s missing, a search begins; eventually, Rene lets the truth slip, the exploit hits the press and Bernie, unaware of any of this, is given the nickname “The Great Escaper.” He’ll return home an annoyed celebrity.

Flashbacks, with Will Fletcher as young Bernie and Laura Marcus as young Rene, recall the couple’s wartime meeting and Bernie’s interactions with a young soldier on D-Day. Integrated as memories, they enrich the present action without overexplaining it.

Jackson and Caine, you may know or should learn, were icons of British thespian glamour in the 1960s and ’70s, she in “Marat/Sade,” “Women in Love” and “Elizabeth R,” he in “Alfie” and the Harry Palmer films (“The Ipcress File,” et al.); in 1975, they starred together in Joseph Losey’s “The Romantic Englishwoman,” co-written by Tom Stoppard. Always politically active, Jackson took off 23 years from acting, from 1992 to 2015, to serve as a member of Parliament, and returned to play “King Lear” in London and on Broadway and win a Tony for a revival of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women.” Caine, notwithstanding some slow times, made movies all along, all sorts of them, playing Scrooge in “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” Mike Myers’ father in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and Alfred in the Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy and parts in five other Nolan films. Watching “The Great Escaper,” you’re seeing history.

Neither has lost a step. (I find it pleasant to remember that, however frail or confused an older character may be, the person playing them is doing a job that requires strength and thought.) Given both the eminence of the actors and their age — Caine was 90 when “The Great Escaper” premiered, while Jackson, 87, died shortly before — it’s hard not to watch with a double consciousness of the players and the parts. But rather than a distraction, it redoubles the impact. Jackson and Caine wear their years proudly; there’s no vanity in their performance or their appearance. The couple’s eventual reunion is deep and real and, like their whole relationship, gorgeously ordinary.

The Dodgers need an outfielder. Cody Bellinger is available.

So, eight years removed from his Rookie of the Year arrival, six years since his 2019 MVP campaign, and three years after an unceremonious end to his Dodgers tenure, could the team and its once-beloved homegrown slugger actually reunite this winter?

It’s not impossible, with the Dodgers believed to have Bellinger on their radar as they evaluate their options in free agency.

In an offseason of wide possibilities, but thus far tempered expectations from the Dodgers’ front office, Bellinger represents something of a wild card in the team’s potential winter plans.

He is not the top outfielder on this year’s market, which is headlined by former Chicago Cubs slugger Kyle Tucker and the $400 million-plus bidding war he is expected to trigger.

But, for a team like the Dodgers, Bellinger could be a better (and more familiar) fit, providing the kind of positional versatility and financial flexibility someone like Tucker wouldn’t.

Granted, the seriousness of the Dodgers’ interest in Bellinger, which was first reported by ESPN, remains unclear. But the mere possibility will make it one of the more intriguing early subplots of the winter, representing one potentially splashier option for the club to consider in pursuit of 2026 roster upgrades.

To this point of the offseason, of course, the Dodgers have signaled a reluctance to add more lucrative, long-term, free-agent contracts to their steadily aging core. It’s shown up in their pursuit of relievers, with their preference seemingly being a shorter-term deal after being burned by big bullpen spending last year. It has also influenced the way they’ve viewed the outfield market, cooling summer-long expectations that they would be leading contenders in the Kyle Tucker sweepstakes.

After all, the Dodgers have two starting outfielders currently on their roster in Teoscar Hernández (who is entering the second of his three-year, $66 million deal) and Andy Pages (who is coming off a 27-homer campaign in his second MLB season). They have plenty of depth options at the position, from Alex Call to Ryan Ward to the versatility provided by utility players Tommy Edman and Hyeseong Kim (and maybe even backup catcher Dalton Rushing, who could experiment in the outfield again in 2026).

Cody Bellinger was the NL Rookie of the Year in 2017 and the NL MVP in 2019, but struggled in his last few seasons with the Dodgers.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

They also, importantly, have a promising wave of outfield prospects expected to reach the majors in the next 2-3 years, a group headlined by Josue De Paula (the top prospect in their farm system); Eduardo Quintero (their 2025 minor-league hitter of the year); Zyhir Hope, Mike Sirota, James Tibbs III and Zach Ehrhard (promising talents acquired in trades over the last two years); and Charles Davalan and Kendall George (recent first-round draft picks).

The team would still like to add another outfielder, likely of the left-handed-hitting variety, to the mix in 2026. It is hopeful of finding an improved replacement for Michael Conforto, after his woeful performance on a one-year, $17 million deal last season.

At the same time, though, the Dodgers want to preserve their longer-term flexibility at the position — making their odds of giving someone like Tucker the 10-year contract he is expected to receive appear dubious at best.

Bellinger, however, provides a different free-agent proposition.

He is a couple of years older than Tucker, set to turn 31 next season, but is also likely to receive a contract of roughly half the length and much less guaranteed money; pegged by most projections to be in the 5-6 year and $150-$175 million range (though he could reasonably surpass those figures if his market materializes well).

Crucially, Bellinger also offers positional flexibility. At present, he can play all three outfield spots, and remains a plus-defender in the corners. Down the line, he could eventually shift to first base, making him (for a team like the Dodgers) a potential future successor to Freddie Freeman.

Another key factor: Bellinger is a much different player than he was when the Dodgers declined to tender him a contract at the end of the 2022 season.

Back then, Bellinger was coming off two straight years of subpar performance in the wake of a shoulder surgery following the 2020 World Series. Between 2021 and 2022, he hit .193, struck out more than 27% of the time, and had an OPS+ of 66 (an advanced metric in which 100 is considered league average).

The last three years, on the other hand, have seen the former MVP winner stage a mid-career revival. While playing for the Chicago Cubs (who signed Bellinger ahead of the 2023 season) and New York Yankees (who traded for him last offseason), he hit .281, struck out just 15% of the time, and had an OPS+ of 125. Last season, he also hit 29 home runs, his most since collecting 47 in his 2019 MVP season.

Granted, Bellinger did benefit from the hitter-friendly environment at Yankee Stadium, where he had 18 of his long balls last year. He also does not hit the ball as routinely hard as in his peak years with the Dodgers. Yet, he has improved his approach, honed more consistent swing mechanics, and balanced out his platoon splits, batting .353 against left-handed pitching in 2025.

Those strides served as a reminder of Bellinger’s tantalizing talent, as well as a sign of his growing maturation as he enters his 10th year in the majors.

The question now: Whether it will all be enough for the Dodgers to make a legitimate run at bringing him back.

The nature of free agency, of course, means Bellinger is still likely to land elsewhere this winter. He is expected to field wide interest on the open market, starting with the incumbent Yankees (especially if their other free-agent outfielder, Trent Grisham, turns down a qualifying offer). The Dodgers, meanwhile, remain better positioned to explore the trade market for an outfield addition, possessing the kind of highly-rated farm system that could make them a factor for everyone from Steven Kwan to Brandon Donovan to Jarren Duran.

If Bellinger were to attract his own bidding war, the Dodgers would likely be reluctant to overpay (at least in their view) for his services.

But for now, the possibility of a reunion does at least seemingly exist — thanks to Bellinger’s versatile fit, recent resurgence and lingering familiarity with the franchise.

Years removed from his breakout, then flame-out, during his first tenure with the Dodgers, he could wind up in their winter plans again this offseason.