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Primary Sources of an American Dreamer

Montez Dot — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been a bit obsessed with primary sources the last few years. It’s a cool way to learn the facts of the matter. You can see the other people (sometimes few) who cared to do the extra digging. Those sources show how boring or restrained their repo is compared to all of the remixing that happens elsewhere. On the fun side, this digging led me to learn that a movie I enjoy deeply, A Most Violent Year, is titled American Dreamer by its Japanese distributor. A link and more below.

It’s a bit ridiculous, with how connected our times are, that even the most well-funded outlets don’t provide the direct references to subjects they discuss. You’ll also be surprised at the lengths to which some of our institutions go to provide primary sources even when they may not be viewed. Incredulity and hope. The times.

An example of my contribution is the Local LMs topic on OBJECTS Forum, where you can share direct links to the local LMs emerging almost every day. Hopefully I save you some scrolling and wishing to the algo.

The latest fun primary source dig was looking for trailers for A Most Violent Year directly from its production companies and distributors. This movie was released in the American market through a younger and hungrier A24 that was mostly doing distribution deals at the time. In Japan, it was distributed by GAGA, which titled it American Dreamer; this makes sense to me and is probably no small part of why I like it. You couldn’t tell me Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac weren’t two of the best to do it at that time, and it seems like they continue living up to that expectation of them over a decade later.

Here’s to seeing how films are showcased directly by those bringing them to a foreign market. You can also see what each of those companies is up to today and yesterday.

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Production Companies

Participant Media

::youtube{url=“https://youtu.be/m4mPyb9wzRo”}

Image Nation Abu Dhabi

::youtube{url=“https://youtu.be/uBVgf53R4Is”}

Distribution Companies

Revisiting Forums with OBJECTS

Montez Dot — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve considered how much to share on all of the cool things and people I learn about relevant to object design and engineering in this space for my writing. Seems like it’d be too noisy to share things I just discovered that don’t require much of my own editorialization. So, I made OBJECTS Forum, a corner on the web for the world of designed physical objects and the people, tools, and materials behind them. A little bit on why a forum too below.

You can sign up, read, and post here: forum.objects.foundation

One of the product form factors I’ve been revisiting in recent years is the forum. Much of the web we know today owes much gratitude to them a la Eternal September. Facebook News Feed and its derivatives have brought many of us online but the dedicated spaces of people talking about topics in ordered public/semi-public threads are still holding strong (some being older than me and with many broken links to their past references). I won’t link out to any specific ones to keep them in the shadows but they aren’t hard to find if you care deeply about anything. OBJECTS Forum is broken down into two categories for now: Making Objects and AI & Software. This creates a neat physical <-> digital divide but adaptable enough to fit anything from designer profiles to CAD kernels which I was having a hard time finding on the web beyond tuning my feeds or hopping into chats.

Few things I like about the form:

Highly searchable and categorized
Async and collaborative since anyone with an account can catch up and post on a shared topic even years later
Can be built on .md files
Long legacy on specific topics with even notable figures being regular visitors
Slower and more intentional than algo media which attracts subject matter experts and enthusiasts
I think it’s good for SEO and GEO/AEO (however answers show up in your agent of choice)
Megathreads create cool discovery jump off points for other parts of the forum, web, or whatever the topic is

Forums aren’t a place to go viral but they create a strong foundation for communities. Fitting for a word that we can give much thanks to the Romans for. Revisit the obvious or learn about the experimental. It’s all there.

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Line #1

Montez Dot — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Butter inside, outside burnt toast

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Keeping Up with Space Launches

Montez Dot — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Artemis II, the first crewed flight around the moon in over 50 years, takes off today. It’s a part of the Artemis program that has the goal of returning humans to the moon and setting the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars. It’ll be crewed by Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.

I may have missed this launch since I don’t have network TV nor the YouTube app installed. So I looked into how I could stay notified when it, and any similar launch, starts. I found Next Spaceflight and RocketLaunch.org. Glad those two exist.

Lots of space travel happening. Excited to see if we will eventually have permanent bases on the Moon and Mars in my lifetime.

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Seoul to Soul

Montez Dot — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After working in SoHo, I popped into Iconic on Mulberry to peep the magazines. Peeped a lil fine shorty too. As I’m ear hustling with one ear cup off to find an in to speak, I overhear “Howard,” “BTS,” “a little trouble” shared between her, the shop lady, and her friend. Her friend, probably 40s with greys in her hair, is unexpectedly the k-pop stan initiating the convo. I chat to them both to get the details that I missed as she’s talking about her “biases” and the tradition of idols taking breaks from their groups.

::youtube{url=“https://youtu.be/Exukk6JO9i0”}

Quick rundown. BTS did a promo video for ARIRANG, their next project. A part of the short clip is a scene of a group of 7 Koreans singing on Howard University’s campus in 1896 that you wouldn’t know was Howard except for their signature clock tower atop the Founder’s Library (the trouble). This refers to the real group of 7 Korean runaway sons of noblemen that, being blocked elsewhere, popped up to enroll not knowing any English. They went on to record a version of “Arirang” that stands as the earliest audio recording of Korean music and Koreans in the US.

I knew Koreans and the Black South had ties from growing up with my guys in East Atlanta (one being we like similar food) but this was a brand new story for me. Can’t say I’m too mad, learned something new. There’s plenty of cultural exchange between Asian people and Black people that won’t pass the modern purity tests since it’s not always a “We Are the World” UN thing. Looks like a good time to better monetize and collaborate to get ahead of the exploits.

Looking into the credits, I see maybe that’s my comfort of being from Atlanta because look here Mr. Mike WiLL Made-It, one of the main architects of the 21st century Atlanta sound himself, has credits on multiple songs on the BTS album (along with JPEGMAFIA). Mike WiLL has his own tape dropping the same day.

The effort to bring K-Pop further into the US is clear. I liked Lalisa’s album featuring Future even though it’s been panned in reviews. Hybe’s Katseye has good songs outside of “Gnarly” if you listen to “Gameboy” and “Gabriela” (also MM 👀). It’s not new for the East to tap into the popular sounds of the US which Black-led genres are a foundational pillar of. Check out these J-Pop tracks from the 2000s: Neptunes/Timbaland-inspired beats, attempts at soulful crooning, and a song that could easily sit in a Moesha soundtrack. For a long time, music journeymen knew good music is everywhere but wouldn’t always bloom in your environment in the wrong package. Now an off chance found sound can be more easily followed by a call, a flight, a move.

I notice a particular interest to get Black guys to care about this wave. If you can get me into it, you can get someone at Roc Nation into it who can pitch it to Hov and then the NFL Super Bowl halftime show is not far off. We’re all attempting to expand our global reach if you haven’t noticed.

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Meeting CD of Dries in SoHo NYC

Montez Dot — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I met the new creative director of Dries van Noten for a small gathering. New York been feeling more like New York. Got invited by way of the homie and filmmaker Anthony. Put Julian on to Dina Ayada who’s based in Belgium and co-signed by Gunna. He put me on to they just did their first collab with a rapper, Gala Dragot.

Met some fly people, two being an architect who founded a gallery, ZAROLAT, in Dumbo and one of her designers turned artist who’s proof we’re never too old to go back to school. Made sure my guys Niclas and Obi pulled up with me. Gotta make sure our presence reaches the collection somehow so the brand stays tough.

I’ll be out in Venice with family to see the soon-to-be opened Dries van Noten foundation in May as a bday gift to myself. Good timing to see the shared values his work attracts as he opens a new chapter. He bought a mansion out there and threw a bunch of design disciplines in it.

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Dave Chappelle's XXL Intro

Montez Dot — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I found this intro to Amerikaz Nightmare by Dave Chappelle when I stumbled on public—scans, an anon based in Toronto scanning old mags, while blogging. Sent it around immediately to a few people. I enjoy the sense of place and how it’s an example of how small the world is for our top performers. After his intro, Dave moderates a roundtable produced by Vanessa Satten and Bonsu Thompson with m-1, Talib Kweli, stic.man, Kanye West, and Common. You can find that in the Oct 2004 issue of XXL.

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HERE WITH ME

That’s right, folks. The hottest comedian, Dave Chappelle, and the hottest magazine, XXL, have joined forces. Eat your heart out, bitches.

In the Fall of 1999, while driving down 8th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, I bumped into Talib Kweli. After we exchanged small talk for a few minutes, he invited me to a session he was doing at Electric Lady Studios.

“We’ll be there all night,” I remember him saying. I readily accepted the invite. We weren’t really friends at that point—I had only met him once before—but I was a fan. I kept the Black Star LP in regular rotation in my CD changer. So, later that night, I showed up not sure what to expect. That was my first time in a recording studio, now that I think about it.

Kweli was in a cramped studio on the top floor. He and Hi-Tek were playing back a track for what would become the Reflection Eternal album. Everyone in the room was nodding their heads in unison to the beat. They were all kinda lost in what they were doing. A cloud of freshly smoked reefer hung in the air. I soaked the vibe up for less than a second, and decided I was glad I came. I was witnessing raw creativity.

At the time, I was writing a stand-up special for HBO, and the Reflection Eternal session inspired me. I started doing comedy at such a young age that all of my peers were always older than me. This was the first time I was in a roomful of people my age who were professional artists. These guys had traveled the world. The realm of conversation was immense. Everything from politics to socio-economics, to the new Dr. Dre record. It kinda blew my mind. For the next few nights, the studio became part of my routine. I would go to a comedy club early in the night, and then head over to Electric Lady to soak that vibe up again.

While Kweli was recording upstairs, Common was downstairs recording Like Water For Chocolate. All kinds of MCs were dropping by to lend their vocals and support—Tariq and ?uestlove from The Roots, Mos Def, M-1 from dead prez, Rah Digga. Shit, even Lennox Lewis was doing drops. It was refreshing to see camaraderie in a business that’s known for its beefs. Especially for a guy like myself, working in the competitive world of stand-up comedy. That’s how I first met a lot of these guys.

Kanye West was a name I heard often in that circle. I remember when my partner Neal and I were looking for a theme song for the Comedy Central show we were referred to Kanye by several people. We almost bought a beat from him. I’m not gonna say for how much, but nowadays you probably couldn’t even get him on his pager for that kind of money.

We actually ended up using the beat from “Hip Hop,” the dead prez song. I have to say dpz is one of my favorite groups of any genre. The spirit of what they do is right up my alley. Personally, I think they get a combined Tupac score for expressing themselves and educating their audience, while still managing to make dope music. It’s an impressive feat. I met them the first time at a thing called Black August—a show that raises money and awareness about political prisoners at home and abroad. I remember that particular year it was hosted by Chuck D. Dead prez were closing the show, and I have this image of this one White dude in the crowd jumping up and down, screaming “I’m an African!” with his fist raised in the air. I knew for certain then that they were spitting some powerful shit.

Fast-forward. I’m walking in to the Milk photography studio in Chelsea for the cover shoot of the issue of XXL that you’re holding in your hands. I’m tired as shit, which is how I feel a lot these days.

With the show comes an incredible amount of press obligations. It seems like every day I’m on the phone or at lunch with a journalist, explaining why I say “Nigger” on TV. After a while, it gets a little uncomfortable talking about yourself all the time—unless, of course, you’re trying to get some pussy.

However, today I’m actually excited to be here. This is the first time I get to sit down with a lot of these guys since that Kweli session five years ago. Unfortunately, not everyone I asked to come could make it—Mos Def, ?uestlove, Black Thought. But the good news is they couldn’t come because they were working. Peace to you guys. Keep up the good work, 'cause we need you out there. To everyone who participated in this piece, I just wanted to say thanks.

Dave Chappelle

Guest Editor, Hip-Hop fan, I’m Rich, Bitch, Etc…

XXL MAGAZINE, October 2004 Issue

Physical Design Memories

Montez Dot — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

3D CAD is the next category next to text, image, and video. “Worlds” seems like streaming video to me so not as distinct. 3D CAD is real-world ready, it’s one of the early steps of physical designs being made.

For all of these categories, I think about portable memory. How can you bring your memories along with you to every tool and app?

For physical design and manufacturing, I think portable memory looks like what I’m doing with OBJECTS. Sign in with OBJECTS and your design memories come along in your journey.

:::github{repo=“OBJECTSHQ/protocol”}

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On Jane Street Indian Futures

Montez Dot — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I recently read the reports of Jane Street being temporarily banned and fined by the Indian securities board. They made $4.3B in a little over two years and are being fined $570M, per Bloomberg.

Short: Jane Street has much more money than Indian firms and retail traders so they can push prices in low volume markets and win big based on their typical HFT methods. Their play was exposed while suing another American firm, Millennium Management, that hired their guys who brought the approach there too.

Competition can be healthy. Situations like this will make Indian investors smarter and more formidable in the long-term as their economy opens to more actors. The part that I have beef with is that someone else is on the opposite end of the trades and the equity is concentrating with some guys at Jane Street’s desks. Retail investors lost an equivalent of $21 billion from trading futures and options in the three years to March 2024, according to SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India). In the short-term, there is capital loss that will need to be recouped, rough regulation introduced, and compounding incentives to play zero-sum games by domestic and foreign traders. There’s an opportunity to sway the direction away from this extractive model to a more collaborative model that has financial upside.

Host countries that open up their economy will want investment activity but inherently expose themselves to being overwhelmed by mature trading exploits. Aligning foreign traders with the host country’s intents is more structurally sound than ad hoc laws/bans. Indian leadership will continue a patchwork of regulation if they stick to reactive regulation.

What does host-country-driven market collaboration look like?

India has strict requirements for firms to start trading but this creates an imbalance. Big foreign players like Jane Street can afford the legal and technical hurdles to get going in the Indian markets but the requirements are cost prohibitive for smaller foreign firms. The unequal playing field is exposing India’s retail investor-led markets to the dominance of global leaders in trading. In more mature markets, competition from local firms would provide a gradient of competitive cover between the two. India’s local firms aren’t quite ready to take on that role by themselves. The opportunity to right this ship could lie in businesses that tokenize assets, handle legal and tech setup on behalf of foreign small and medium-sized firms, and drive onboarding of retail investors from abroad.

The model of retail investors getting into the play could be similar to what we saw from the coordination of capital for Gamestop that was led by group chats, feeds, and easy trading apps. That kind of grassroots capital movement based somewhat on hype and long-term holdings is bound to grow beyond just memes. This is especially true now that mature asset classes like commodities, currencies, and futures contracts are being tokenized for 24/7 global trading that can’t be blocked. That’d be good for India in the short term since it’d inflate their low-volume markets’ values without simply extracting capital from investors there. Long-term, they’d have to find ways to validate the valuation like Gamestop is doing (that’s been chaotic lol) but seems like an easier task for a country with growing productivity and economic activity.

Tokenization and including more actors ultimately will stabilize and mature some emerging markets. This kind of work helps push forward countries and the individual lives within them.

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On Effective Governance

Montez Dot — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Most of us Americans only live in peace with maybe hating your job being your biggest gripe. Or indeterminate worry that you’ll be burgled that warrants you getting the security system with your home wifi.

The depth of chaos in the human experience are abstract concepts to many. In your backyard or abroad. Across time and space. We’re not as civilized or mature as you may want.

Emotional appeal has its place but reality is much more mechanistic than theoretical word flips. Once you understand that, you realize politics is something we all participate in and there’s a spectrum of tools to communicate our view. Talking it through is fairly recent and coincides with us becoming more global in the 16th-20th century. Law, rhetoric, rational reasoning, emotion, physical domination, familial ties, religious belief, business agreements, national allegiance. All and more tools for how the world is decided.

Principles aren’t common and your obvious isn’t another’s. Even your sense of time may greatly differ from another’s. So how do we reconcile to a sense of peace? That’s much more messy and something we put on the professionals. It’s almost pushing them to lie when the people are removed from the realities of a system while making demands and delivering critique.

Being inundated with access to information (and power to produce it) without adequate tooling or skill to understand it has led even more people to shun the pursuit of truth. But that’s because the literate pie is much bigger so a slice is multiplied in size too. We may be the most informed society to exist so far. We have an opportunity to best synthesize this privilege to get to an even more robust civilization. The steps to get there are much bigger than any one individual but will require individual contributions.

Don’t believe anyone with a master plan. Create a plan, follow someone with a plan, help with a plan, coach a plan, vote for a plan, set the atmosphere for a plan, argue a plan. Whatever your role, your donation means something. Antisocial tactics are at direct odds with our social nature.

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Atlanta, Island Within an Island

Montez Dot — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It’s not a coincidence that Japan is an island and has the cultural force it does. With access to the water and mindful maintenance of trees.

My city Atlanta commonly felt like an island within an island. No water but plenty of greenery, music, and charm. We always say, “there’s Atlanta, then there’s Georgia”. With ties to the countryside, I know very well.

As I’m less than an hour or so from where my grandma must have grown up in Jersey, it’s so clear.

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4 Elements

Montez Dot — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

If we look back on cultural waves, there seems to be some foundational elements that each needed. Here are a couple I noticed and one I think we’ll look back on in 2030.

4 Elements

Hip hop
  • DJ
  • MC
  • Graffiti artist
  • Break dancer

Streetwear
  • IG
  • Rapper
  • Fashion designer

Current
  • Product designer
  • Founder
  • Artist/performer
  • Multiple accounts

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Primary Sources of an American Dreamer

Production Companies

Participant Media

Image Nation Abu Dhabi

Distribution Companies

GAGA (Japan)

A24 (United States)

Entract Films (Canada)

StudioCanal (France)

Icon Film Distribution (United Kingdom)

Eclipse Pictures (Ireland)

Ascot Elite (Switzerland)

Lumière (Belgium and the Netherlands)

Vértigo Films (Spain)

Roadshow Films (Australia and New Zealand)

Cinema Mondo (Finland)

Paris Filmes (Brazil)

GSC Movies (Malaysia)

Shaw Organisation (Singapore)

Golden Scene (Hong Kong)

Movies Inspired (Italy)

Maison Motion (Taiwan)

Hong Lian International (Eagle Movie), Taiwan

Lev Cinema (Israel)

Seven Films (Greece)

Spentzos Film (Greece)

Revisiting Forums with OBJECTS

Line #1

Keeping Up with Space Launches

Seoul to Soul

Meeting CD of Dries in SoHo NYC

Dave Chappelle's XXL Intro

HERE WITH ME

Dave Chappelle

XXL MAGAZINE, October 2004 Issue

Physical Design Memories

On Jane Street Indian Futures

What does host-country-driven market collaboration look like?

On Effective Governance

Atlanta, Island Within an Island

4 Elements