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The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel
Jenny Nicholson's latest video is live, it's a 4 hour review retrospective of Disney's Star Wars Hotel.
Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world
"I’m bored of that conversation and I don’t want it to be the only thing I’m known for."
Kathleen Hanna interviewed about her newly released memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk
(archive link here)
"This is not a case of someone just taking inspiration from my work."
As previously mentioned, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs is an exhaustive exploration of that music genre, starting before it existed and currently up to 1966. It is notable for the extensive research that goes into each episode (the detailed exploration of where Johnny Cash drew inspiration from is particularly striking), so much so that another podcaster (not linked to here for obvious reasons) has apparently been plagiarising entire episodes.
Bobby Fingers Plays Fowl...Fabio-usly
Greatest human alive today, Bobby Fingers, has released another video, researching and creating a diorama of the 1999 incident where heartthrob Fabio came back bloodied after participating in the inaugural ride of the "Apollo's Chariot" roller coaster at Busch Gardens.
CATSTRAVAGANZA
The Desktop Cat Cursor (not free but really cheap) , from Samperson, turns your computer's pointer into a big cat's paw extending onto the screen. Currently only for Windows 10 and 11 but a Mac version is in the works.
Suck it, Lichtenstein!
I cannot tell you how or why, but at some point a few years back I discovered that Instagram Stories not only allows you unlimited emojis, it ALSO allows you to enlarge them to an apparently infinite degree. And so, may I present: FAMOUS PAINTINGS RECREATED USING ONLY EMOJIS! All on one page: Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. Klimt's The Kiss, Wood's American Gothic, Michaelangelo's The Creation of Adam and more, all moulded from shaded yellow spheres.
Finally, your checkers can nuke again!
Quadradius is back, baby!
(Note that it is still in development mode and has not yet gathered many players, so arranging your own matches may be necessary).
Previously.
"It was that welcome feeling that every treehouse was your home."
Set to the music of recent Hawaiian artists, The Edge of Paradise (SLYT) is a quiet, contemplative documentary on Taylor Camp, a treehouse community of war veterans and hippies that thrived on a jungle-backed beach on Kaua'i in the 1960s and 1970s (cw: black and white archival stills of unclothed community members, oral recollections of police actions against the community).
Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry
Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism, goes on a deep, deep dive into AdVon, a fine purveyor of content slurry.
The Sun Is Down, The Battery's Up
NYT: Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity
California draws more electricity from the sun than any other state. It also has a timing problem: Solar power is plentiful during the day but disappears by evening, just as people get home from work and electricity demand spikes. To fill the gap, power companies typically burn more fossil fuels like natural gas.
That’s now changing. Since 2020, California has installed more giant batteries than anywhere in the world apart from China. They can soak up excess solar power during the day and store it for use when it gets dark.
administrators aim to create a more politically quietist university
Who Has the Right to “Disrupt” the University?
Perhaps the most egregious example of the administrator-as-disruptor is Gordon Gee, currently the president of West Virginia University (WVU), whose administration pushed through extraordinarily deep cuts to the institution’s academic offerings last fall. During a meeting of the faculty senate, Gee said “I want to be very clear that the university is not dismantling higher education. We are disrupting it . . . And many of you know I am a firm believer in disruption.”
Best printer 2024 for printing printers who love to print in 2024
It’s weird because the correct answer to the query “what is the best printer” has not changed, but an entire ecosystem of content farms seems motivated to constantly update articles about printers in response to the incentive structure created by that robot’s obvious preferences. Pointing out that incentive structure and the culture that’s developed around it seems to make a lot of people mad, which is also interesting! Anyway, here’s the best printer for 2024: a Brother laser printer. You can just pick any one you like; I have one with a sheet feeder and one without a sheet feeder. Both of them have reliably printed return labels and random forms and pictures for my kid to color for years now, and I have never purchased replacement toner for either one. Neither has fallen off the WiFi or insisted I sign up for an ink-related hostage situation or required me to consider the ongoing schemes of HP executives who seem determined to make people hate a legendary brand with straightforward cash grabs and weird DRM ideas.Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers / After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale. [Previously]
Art, games, music, zines, and a list of fictional badgers
The blogging platform Cohost (previously) has launched a new section: Artist Alley, where members pay to advertise their podcasts, zines, art, games, and other creations (many of which are free to enjoy). Or sometimes members advertise just to play around - the "#doing a bit" tag is replete with Rickrolling, "Hey check out this picture of a pileated woodpecker I took", a silly survey, etc. Artist Alley is "a take on user-to-user ads we feel good about — a dedicated space which users can access to see promotions from other users, like an artist alley at a convention" and "a revenue product" for Cohost, which had a poor financial forecast in March which has since improved.
Guy talks About Starship Troopers for 25 minutes NOt clickbait
Patrick Gill discusses Helldivers 2, Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, and satire.
And how satire of fascism can be missed by viewers, undermined by its medium, or embraced by genuine fascists.
Claire Re-Recreates
Remember back in 2017-2020 when everyone was aglow with the warmth and camaraderie of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen? And then, well, Milkshake Duck happened. But not all is lost....
"Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers."
A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her.
Nurses in the Phillipines are doing the initial reviews, and making major mistakes. Cigna wants their reviewing doctors to take about four minutes to check the reviews and decide if warranted, or if it should be approved, and penalizing doctors who do the work to know what's really going on.
Simply put, there is a *ton* of fascist-chic cosplay involved
Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.” [...] “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said [last October], after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts.TNR: The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco: "If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay."
Passersby were amazed at the unusually large amounts of synergy
G/O Media, the much-reviled owner of such internet landmarks as Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and The Root, has been selling off their assets recently, including ClickHole (sold to Cards Against Humanity), Lifehacker (Ziff Davis), Deadspin (gutted), Jezebel and the AV Club (Paste). Latest on the auction block is The Onion... who ended up with a surprising buyer: Global Tetrahedron, a name that might ring a few bells for longtime readers. But what does the advent of this ominous conglomerate mean for America's Finest News Source?™
Policymakers in other cities can learn from Minneapolis
Minneapolis Land Use Reforms Offer a Blueprint for Housing Affordability:
Rents stayed flat as more apartments were built, even as the rest of Minnesota saw increases.
Examining What "Never Again" Means Through the Lens of Magneto
Writing for Defector, Asher Elbein talks about the evolution of the character of Magneto, who is (yet again) back from the dead and the shift of meaning in "Never Again," from inclusive aspiration to its violent modern application.
The core query softness continues without mitigation
Edward Zitron has been reading all of google's internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ's antitrust case against google.
Zitron concludes that Google Search died on February 5th, 2019
Zitron concludes that Google Search died on February 5th, 2019
Protesting for Gaza on US universities
Pro-Palestinian orgs at universities across the world protest in support of "Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment"
Columbia Spectator, the newspaper run by undergrad Columbia University students, published an editorial asking if Columbia University is in crisis, stating: Columbia’s crisis is not as the committee has attempted to define it—a characterization stemming from the belief that the University has become a hotbed of antisemitic thought and behavior. Rather, the crisis is rooted in a lack of genuine community engagement on the part of the administration, as well as a failure to fulfill its duty of care to all affiliates.
Revolution in Tennessee
The NLRB announced tonight that UAW won a historic union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga Tennessee. The union won by a margin of more than 70% as votes [continued] to be counted. With labor shortages throughout the manufacturing sector, many of the workers hired by Volkswagen were much younger and more diverse. Some had even moved from more pro-union parts of the country to work there.
“It’s a totally different ball game,” [Renee Berry] said. “The atmosphere is different. You see more pro-union than anti-union [workers]. A whole lot of people who were anti-union in the past have switched.”
“I still wanted to help. But I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
The Deaths of Effective Altruism
[archive] by Leif Wenar is a critical assessment of the effective altruism movement, taking in Sam Bankman-Fried and billionaires, Peter Singer and other philosophers, and GiveWell and the wider network of charities working off effective altruistic ideas.
"so many tech demos end up hiding an ugly truth deep down"
Amazon Go, "a new kind of corner store," that company's futuristic storefront where you installed an app on your phone, and could shop for things just by picking them up off of shelves and walking out the door with them, is being shut down. Some random internet person called "Matt Haughey" described his experience with the store, and how it wasn't nearly as magical as it seemed: as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras. Another random person on Mastodon points out the whole-lot-of-people part was probably a bunch of subsistence contractors in other countries. A third random person notes, even doing that, the store concept couldn't be made to work. Meanwhile the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all, unmoving but watching, silently.
Slowly, inch by inch, choice by choice, our stuff gets cheapened
The Problem with Adam Savage's Favorite Pencil: Former Mythbuster and MeFi's Own asavage goes on a surprisingly emotional tear about tool acquisition in the maker space, Blackwing 602s, Jeff Tweedy's pencil nerdery (🔔), and the "encheapening the product to increasening the profit" that has befallen his beloved PaperMate Sharpwriter #2. (It's not really about pencils.)
The Backdoor To The Entire Internet That Didn't Happen
A rather large drama unfolded a couple of weeks ago when it was discovered that someone had installed a backdoor into an installation utility used by much of the Open Source community. Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility targets encrypted SSH connections [Ars Technica] This was found by accident, a worker was maintaining his own code and found discrepancies in computer performance and investigated. How one volunteer stopped a backdoor from exposing Linux systems worldwide [The Verge] This seems to have been largely the work of one online account that spent years gaining trust in the group that maintain this tool. THE OTHER PLAYERS WHO HELPED (ALMOST) MAKE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BACKDOOR HACK [The Intercept] The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind [WIRED] Today, Fedora announced its own systems all clear of this thwarted backdoor attempt. CVE-2024-3094: All Clear
Machine Melody
Aphex Twin's 2001 double album drukQs is an unusual blend of Richard James' characteristically intricate, intense, and chaotic electronic soundscapes and a smaller set of more subdued neoclassical pieces performed on prepared pianos -- performed, that is, by computer. One piece in particular, Avril 14th, became a breakout hit for James -- at barely two minutes, its gorgeous, evocative rendition of a delicate Satie-esque melody in the clicking, lushly analog tones of a real Disklavier piano struck the perfect balance between human soul and machine precision, and remains to this day his best-known and most-beloved track. Explore the beauty and melancholy of this lovely piece with a wide variety of innovative covers, backstory theories, and a charming deep dive into the music theory behind it by YouTuber ixi.
That vast, astonishing, multiplicity of vision
“So when I started working on the story that turned into All Systems Red, I realized right away I wanted to write an AI that didn't want to be human…I was thinking a lot about what an AI would actually want, as opposed to what a human might think an AI would want…. I think it would want that connection to other systems, that vast, astonishing, multiplicity of vision.”—Martha Wells, from her keynote speech at the annual Jack Williamson Lecture at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico.
Lengthy how-I-get-to-sleep notes
"Notes on sleep" by Jed Hartman: "For many years, I had various forms of insomnia, and I still occasionally have trouble falling asleep and/or wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep. This page covers some of the things that have and haven’t helped me with that." And: "2024 sleep masterpost" by Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz for short): "Occasionally people on the internet ask for the community's collected wisdom about sleep. This is what I can think of for my own sleep routines, tips, and tricks, plus what I do about various confounding factors.... I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, primary insomnia, sleep maintenance insomnia, and ADHD." The latter has people sharing their experiences in the comments. (Disclaimer: I know both these people.)
Mark Bankston Versus The Most Divorced Man In The World
As part of a defamation lawsuit against the owner of Twitter for his tweets, Mark Bankston - whom you may recall was the lawyer for the Sandy Hook families in the Texas lawsuit against Alex Jones, where he told the conspiracy theorist that he had recieved a full copy of his phone's contents from his lawyer while cross examining him - has deposed Elon Musk under oath, in a deposition that is a sight to behold.
The long night had come again.
Imagine a planet in a system with six suns where total darkness, in the form of a solar eclipse, comes only once every 2,049 years. This is the setting of "Nightfall," a short story that appeared in the September 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. An immediate sensation, it sealed the reputation of its author, a little-known 21-year-old graduate student at Columbia University named Isaac Asimov.
Mary Poppins had more magic than you know
The folks at Corridor Crew recently reached back sixty years to recreate a truly wonderous piece of special effects technology that was thought to be long lost.
The comics legend lurking in a Sunderland basement
The BBC profiles comic artist and writer Bryan Talbot, following the recent announcement that he will be inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame.
"If that offends them, so be it."
"Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts" A letter from The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH) editor Chris Quinn
An Infamous Anime Genre Comes To English
As part of their regular updates to the English lexicon, the Oxford English Dictionary has added a number of Japanese loan words, most notably the term for a notorious genre of anime and manga - isekai, or "portal fantasy".
Hugo Award Finalists Announced
Announcement video: ”Hello, my name is Nicholas Whyte and I have a baller accent.” (video with transcript).
Text announcement on the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon Bluesky account. Full list of finalists with details about nominating numbers and disqualified or self-withdrawn items is online at File 770.Previously, censorship report- Previously, scandal erupts - Previously, 2023 boycotts - Previously, full tag list.
Conviction for illegal voting
Crystal Mason: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years over voting error acquitted.
Mason, who has remained out of prison on an appeal bond, said in a telephone interview on Thursday evening that she received the news while going through a drive-through and became emotional. “I was thrown into this fight for voting rights and will keep swinging to ensure no other citizen has to face what I’ve faced and endured for the past seven years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack,” she added.
They are risen
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence began in 1979 when a small group of gay men in San Francisco donned the habit of Catholic nuns, and used camp to subvert expectations & promote social and political change in San Francisco. Sacrilege or serious parody? Illicit joy or elicit compassionate apraxis? The Sisters have grown into an organization of queer joy with 65 houses in 10 countries. This Sunday Easter in the Park: Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary Competition is set to attract 10,000+ attendants, but the works of a Sister is never done.
whereas, the alt right prepper alone in his basement with tons of food
Zoe, The Leftist Prepper, on supporting one another after disaster.
From the Struggle Care podcast, with an auto-generated transcript. It's this rugged individualism that I think combined with gun love, because they are in my comments every single day... 'Oh, I'm gonna come to the blue state when the apocalypse hits and just take all your stuff.' And it baffles me... like, don't you care about the old granny next door who may need help opening her cans? I just, I don't get it.
Families in cars, driving all night with the heat on to keep kids warm
A new report on on rural homelessness Finding Home: A True Story of Life Outside (full report) and press release. Of the hundreds of homeless Oregonians interviewed for the report, roughly 60% are employed but cannot earn enough money to meet income requirements, credit scores, and security deposits necessary to re-enter the rental housing market. Interview with report author and former mayor of Ashland Oregon Julie Akins: At what point do we accept that? That you can be a working person and still homeless? That you can be a retiree who worked your entire life — and now you’re unhoused because your wife died, and only one Social Security benefit is not enough?
“I actually think that AI fundamentally makes us more human.” (BOOOO)
Ted Gioia: "Tech leaders gathered in Austin for the South-by-Southwest conference a few days ago. There they showed a video boasting about the wonders of new AI technology. And the audience started booing." [Xitter link]
Gioia argues that users are becoming much more wary, not only about "AI," but about tech in general.
This is one of the best Blake's 7 fan fictions that I have ever read
This is one of the best Blake's 7 fan fictions that I have ever read. Avon and Blake both survive Gauda Prime - but can Blake ever trust Avon again? and can they win the war against the Federation? In the Bleak Midwinter by x_los.
They Owe it All To Clean Living
Kevin Roose writes in today's NYT about how content moderation made Reddit what it is today - a successful IPO
"Today, Reddit is a gem of the internet, and a trusted source of news and entertainment for millions of people. It’s one of the last big platforms that feel unmistakably human — messy and rough around the edges, sure, but a place where real people gather to talk about real things, unmediated by algorithms and largely free of mindless engagement bait. "
No, really. Just ignore the porn, and everything is great. Really.
Remember that one episode of DS9 with the tribbles?
The Making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Trials And Tribble-ations [32m, complete with commercials] was a documentary which was broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US on November 4th, 1996. The documentary looks at the writing and production of the episode [Wikipedia] and features footage filmed during production of the episode.
How Britain got done by Getting Brexit Done
Four years on from Britain's exit from the EU, how's it going? Swimmingly, say its supporters, who argue that we should stop blaming Brexit for our economic ills. Most people in the UK have more of a sinking feeling about it, but the prospects for repairing or reversing the damage are unclear.
His invention was instrumental
Shigeichi Negishi, the inventor of the world's first commercially-available karaoke machine, has died in Japan. He was 100 years old.
Finalists for the 59th Nebula Awards
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards.
TikTok... DOOM!
The seemingly dormant push to target ultrapopular video platform TikTok on national security grounds roared back to life this week as the House teed up a surprise bipartisan vote on forced divestment of the app's US operations.
An attempt by Chinese parent company ByteDance to mobilize users against the legislation clearly backfired, angering lawmakers into delivering a unanimous vote to proceed.
Critics warn the app offers the increasingly authoritarian CCP government reams of sensitive data and an unprecedented insight into the American psyche (along with a potent avenue for propaganda and influence operations), while defenders cite the company's diversified ownership and ongoing efforts at re-shoring US data operations.
Bolstered by support from the White House (and a troubling intelligence report on election interference), the bill sees likely passage in the House today and an uncertain path in the Senate, as well as a long legal battle after that. The biggest twist: former president Trump, a longtime Sinophobe who signed a failed executive order banning the app, has suddenly flipped in favor of it as a counterweight to Facebook -- a move many insiders see as calculated to undercut Biden's already precarious support from young voters.