The Daily Dad — Feb 28, 2024

Things you might want to know:

• Denis Villeneuve Says TV Corrupted Movies, Defends ‘Dune 2’ Runtime
  💭 Thank you, Denis, for casually explaining why your work leaves me cold. Take the naked Ana De Armas out of Blade Runner 2049 and I would have fallen asleep… his contempt for dialogue is what makes his Dune an unwatchable exercise in tedium. (Speaking of Dune, David Lynch is a master of crafting unsettling images that haunt the viewer, but his dialogue lingers in my mind decades after hearing it. Cinema without words is missing the point.)
• Apple Music Debuts Heavy Rotation, A New Daily Made For You Playlist
  ❝ This morning I woke up to a pleasant surprise. Apple had quietly added a new Made For You playlist to the Music app called Heavy Rotation that’s updated daily. As you’d expect from a playlist called Heavy Rotation, mine is comprised of 25 songs, most of which I believe I listened to yesterday and probably
• Humorously morose comedian Richard Lewis, who recently starred on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ dies at 76
  💭 I can’t say I was a fan… his stand-up never interested me, and most of his acting left me cold, but I do have two fond memories. First, his role in Robin Hood: Men In Tights, and his supporting role in the Sherilyn Fenn/Johnathan Penner/Lynn Redgrave sitcom, Rude Awakening. RIP, Richard.
• Why your next Switch controller should be one you already own
  ❝ 8BitDo’s USB Adapter 2 makes a strong case for using what you’ve got, whether it’s a PlayStation or Xbox gamepad
• The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet sue OpenAI and Microsoft
  ❝ OpenAI allegedly removed information like author and ownership from training data taken from The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet.

• Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers
  💭 This would be sadder if the pre-GPT internet hadn’t already gutted and eaten journalism.
• Jam Master Jay: two men convicted of murder in 2002 death of Run-DMC star
  ❝ An anonymous Brooklyn federal jury delivered the verdict on Tuesday in the trial of Karl Jordan Jr and Ronald Washington
• After a decade of stops and starts, Apple kills its electric car project
  ❝ Report claims Apple leadership worried profit margins simply wouldn’t be there.
• The sexy subversions of A Court of Thorns and Roses
  💭 Seems to me this was an obvious direction for romance novels after Game of Thrones.
• Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools
  ❝ Internal documents obtained by 404 Media show that Tumblr staff compiled users’ data as part of a deal with Midjourney and OpenAI.

• If a “helen” is an amount of beauty, then “1 millihelen is t…
  ❝ If a “helen” is an amount of beauty, then “1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship
• R.I.P. Chris Gauthier, Once Upon A Time actor
  💭 I watched the first four or five seasons of OUAT —and all of OUAT In Wonderland, which I considered the superior show— but I can’t say Smee made a big impression on me. Sad, though.
• A single year on Pluto is longer than the whole history of the US
  ❝ Time is relative.
• Mascuzynity: How a nicotine pouch explains the new ethos of young conservative men
  💭 Guys, we don’t need 1,000 words on a nicotine patch to explain this shit. It’s arrested development, pure and simple.
• Hollywood Fights AI With Script Writing Team Gauntlet
  ❝ Hollywood writers are fighting AI with a new script analysis team called Gauntlet

• Alan Ritchson might have been Thor if he acted better in his audition
  💭 A Ritchson Odinson would have been significantly less funny, but might have had his own sort of gravitas.
• Stardew Valley’s anticipated 1.6 update coming in March
  ❝ A new festival, late-game content, and lots of dialogue
• Netflix confirms it’s cutting off Apple billing for legacy subscribers
  💭 I don’t give two shits about Netflix’s bottom line, but I wish Apple would ease up on the transaction cut they take, just so people like Netflix will keep their payment processing within the ecosystem. It is dramatically easier to cancel/renew subscriptions that are processed by Apple, and I cringe every time I have to jump out to a browser to manage something.
• Yahoo Lays Off the Leaders of Engadget
  💭 Wow… Vice and Engadget, both shot in the head the same week. It’s getting ugly out there.
• Dev who created Zip file support in Windows is part of the shadowy cabal of people who have actually paid for WinRAR
  ❝ There should be a globally-recognised medal for anyone who’s bought WinRAR.

• Kenny Rogers Explained How He Got Caught up in a Phone Sex Scandal
  💭 I somehow missed this story back when it was new in the ‘90s… Kenny Rogers had a private phone sex line for girls he wanted to fuck but didn’t have time to actually woo. Wow.
• There’s a New Theory About Where Dark Matter Is Hiding
  ❝ An idea derived from string theory suggests that dark matter is hidden in an as-yet-unseen extra dimension. Scientists are racing to test the theory to see if it holds up.
• Game of Thrones movie trilogy was blocked by HBO, say showrunners
  💭 Someday there will be a blistering tell-all that addresses all sides of those disastrous last couple seasons of what had been —up ‘til then— one of the best shows on TV. I really need to appreciate shows like Breaking Bad more, for how well they stuck the landing within the nightmare world of corporate television.
• David Lynch’s presence has been haunting video games for decades
  ❝ The influence of Twin Peaks creator David Lynch can be seen in a huge range of games, including Alan Wake 2, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Control.

• Beef Season 2 Could Feature Double the Feuds With Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway – Report – IGN
  💭 I’m willing to give this a chance to find its footing as an anthology series, but I can’t say I’m dying to see a totally different show with the same name… True Detective and American Horror Story have already taught me to expect diminishing returns.
• Google’s hidden AI diversity prompts lead to outcry over historically inaccurate images
  ❝ Inserting depictions of diversity into AI images creates revisionist history, critics say.