This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Mar 7, 2023:

• Why the Floppy Disk Just Won’t Die — You know what makes the 3.5” floppy such a compelling medium? It has mechanical components, in its little sliding “window” and enclosed, free-spinning disk. It’s almost steampunky, in the way it stores digital info on a weird plastic-and-metal artifact that elicits ridiculous, chunky noises from the drive in which it’s inserted.
• Scientists have found Lake Huron wreck of 19th century ship that sank in 1894
• SimCity launched a decade ago, and it was so disastrous it killed the series — All I remember is people bitching about the DRM. For my part, I spent countless hours with the original SimCity on DOS, and played a lot of SimCity 2000… but I lost interest in the main game series at that point. I did screw around with SimCity Build It on mobile for a few weeks, but the freemium treadmill wasn’t for me.
• Walgreens won’t sell abortion pills in “Red” states, even where it is legal — And I now have a reason to move by business to CVS.
• Skating through an empty Los Angeles — Eerie.
• Toblerone chocolate bars loses its Swiss status and must chuck the Matterhorn from its packaging — Do people actually eat Toblerone, or is it just something you give as a gift to people you couldn’t be bothered to actually shop for?
• Financial Doms Say Their Job Is “Beautiful” And “Liberating” — And hot. Let’s not forget hot.

• Olivia Dunne Is the Highest-Paid NCAA Female Athlete — and Wants ‘Equal Opportunities for Men and Women’ — If I’m interpreting this correctly, I’m on board. Let’s make all athletes in every sport just as hot as Livvy. The world will be a better place.
• When It Comes to OnlyFans, Humans Can Outcompete AI — I agree, in principle. The primary customers for AI porn will be incels who can’t communicate with human women anyway.
• The bizarre and disturbing story of Larry Ray — Yet another entry in an ongoing series: How To Fuck Up A Sex Cult.
• Artist has extreme talent for punch-needling realistic 3D foods — I find this kinda creepy-gross, in an uncanny valley sort of way.
• Young workers don’t know how to use office printers, scanners, ancient desktop PCs — The Millennial experience with sudden technological corner-turning has been illuminating. That generation showed us all the ways our work with computing devices had been successful —we’d truly lowered the bar of participation for people with zero meaningful instruction— but also highlighted the abandonment of the ‘80s era drive to teach normal people how the tools work. I suppose it’s been a lot like watching the world become electrified in the early 20th century… electricity went from this amazing power that altered every aspect of society to just another utility that most of us only understand in terms of plugging things in and waiting for a hum.