This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Apr 20, 2023:

• Paul Staehle and Karine Martins Are Back Together, Back on OnlyFans
• How AI Is Being Used to Create the Ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure Game
• The Search for Long Covid Treatments Takes a Promising Turn
• ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ first season 2 trailer promises Klingons and Kirk
• Stardew Valley Is Getting Some Totally New Stuff For The First Time In Years

• Everything about the Love Is Blind season 4 reunion special was messy
• Galaxy Quest TV Show Is in Early Development at Paramount Plus
• The Pope’s Exorcist teases 199 sequels and I would watch every single one of them 
• Watch man use rolling office chair bases as rollerskates
• Bill Hader Didn’t Know Carol Burnett Was His Cousin Until She Emailed Him

• ‘Mrs. Davis’ review: Damon Lindelof’s nun vs. AI show is a campy blast
• Hundreds of years after the first try, we can finally read a Ptolemy text
• Netflix actor wields DMCA takedowns to block tweets sharing “rapey” clip
• Fox and Dominion settle blockbuster defamation lawsuit for $787 million
• Prime Video adds new Dialogue Boost feature to make voices easier to hear

• Paramount+ greenlights Star Trek film starring Michelle Yeoh
• Musk feuds with another public broadcaster, labels CBC “69% Government-funded”

This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Apr 18, 2023:

• Netflix cancels second-ever livestream after ‘Love Is Blind’ reunion hit by technical issues — Gee, Netflix… ya need Twitch’s help or something? It’s not like you’ve spent a decade building out the biggest streaming infrastructure in the world, right?
• The first CRPG is a min-maxing hell you can – and should – break — I played countless hours of Ultima III & IV back in the day, and even owned a biography of Richard Garriot that was released around the time of Ultima VI. I think it would have been fair to call me a fan. But I wouldn’t have wasted five minutes of my time of Akalabeth, ‘cause it was already antiquated by ‘83.
• Mythic Quest’s F. Murray Abraham Was Allegedly Fired for Sexual Misconduct — This is one of those surprising-yet-completely-predictable headlines.
• Hollywood Writers Just Took a Huge Step Toward Going on Strike in May — Most of y’all were too young to appreciate the impact at the time, but the 2007 Writers Strike was a big deal. It disrupted the early seasons of Breaking Bad, directly resulted in the creation of Dr. Horrible, and extended the 2000s-era reality TV boom by a few more years.
• Oklahoma county leaders caught on audio talking about killing reporters and complaining they can no longer lynch Black people — That they were saying it isn’t shocking. What’s surprising is that they were saying it openly, in a group of more than two, without bothering to encode anything or give themselves a trace of deniability… they were speaking without a hint of fear.

• ‘The Idol’ Gets Provocative New Trailer, Official Premiere Date
• The End of Computer Magazines in America — This one is a bit of a heartbreaker for me. I wanted to grow up to write for one of those magazines when I was a kid… it never happened, but it was a dream. In fairness, the “real” magazines —like Byte— have been gone for many years, and the scraps that remained were a pale shade of what came before. But still… I miss my 800 page copy of Computer Shopper.
• This set of TV catchphrases is pure Gen X nostalgia
• Anna Nicole Smith Doc Examines the Troubled, Misunderstood Life of the Late Superstar Model
• Cocaine worth nearly $440 million found floating in the sea off Italy
• Rainn Wilson calls for ‘Soul Boom’ revolution: ‘We are spiritual beings having a human experience’
• ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ Takes Final Bow On Broadway; Andrew Lloyd Webber Dedicates Show To Late Son — I never got to see it on Broadway, but I listened to the soundtrack about 10,000 times in my early 20s, which is directly responsible for me owning several Michael Crawford CDs.
• A ‘Morning-After Pill’ for Sexually Transmitted Infections Is Almost Here
• AT&T launches medical radar device that monitors older adults through walls
• Adobe Firefly’s new AI tools aim to cut down drudge work for editors

This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Apr 17, 2023:

• Kubrick’s Use of One-Point Perspective
• OK Go Deny Post the Okay to Go Ahead and Use its Name to Sell Cereal — I won’t claim to be a big OK Go fan, but I hope they whip Post’s ass in court.
• Silly car tire has a mind of its own
• Developer creates “regenerative” AI program that fixes bugs on the fly — I love that the dev calls it Wolverine.
• Here’s the scene on Friday night at a video rental store in 1987 (video)
• Texas Could Push Tech Platforms to Censor Posts About Abortion — Let’s make it easy for their legislators: #DeplatformTexas.

• When did comics shift to focusing on visual storytelling? — Look, I’ll grant that Stan-style scripts were too verbose, and often seemed more focused on putting The Man’s imprint on the page than on telling stories. But I’ll stand up for Claremontian walls of text ‘til my dying day… comics are a blended medium, and the panels can —should— carry far more than visual information.
• It’s Time to Stop Arresting People for Trolling the Government — We never should have started.
• “A really big deal”—Dolly is a free, open source, ChatGPT-style AI model
• Meet PassGAN, the supposedly “terrifying” AI password cracker that’s mostly hype — A useful counterpoint.

• The perfect Lego Nintendo Game Boy doesn’t exist… — I’m not a Lego nut, but I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty impressive.
• From the original series to Picard, we’ve ranked every starship Enterprise — I’m an Enterprise A man, thanks.
• Ubisoft+ game subscription service officially launches on Xbox — Seems the only rational way to play through Ubi’s vast catalog of iterative sameness.
• Virtual Clinics Have a Backup Plan: Misoprostol-Only Abortions
• Nvidia’s $599 GeForce RTX 4070 is a more reasonably priced (and sized) Ada GPU — On the one hand, it’s great that powerful GPUs are affordable again. On the other, $599 is what people consider “affordable”.

This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Apr 14, 2023:

• We’re one step closer to reading an octopus’s mind — Hmph. Big deal. I can already read a pig’s.
• Popular porn site must delete all amateur videos posted without consent
• Wonderful, an AI can crack the most common passwords almost instantly — We all have password managers now. Use them. Auto-generate passwords and store them. Set up two-factor on every account. Then you won’t have to worry about stories like this.
• How to Use Apple’s New All-In-One Password Manager — HINT. HINT.
• Half-Life: Alyx without a VR headset? It’s now possible — I’m not sure it’ll be that fun, but, well… you can do it.
• The Original Take Of The ‘Wilhelm Scream’ Has Been Found — I was surprised to see how familiar I was with Sheb Woolley’s body of work… aside from his contributions to the Dr. Demento canon, I’ve seen him in movie after movie.

• Beau Is Afraid Review — I can’t remember the last time Joaquin was less than watchable, even in a mediocre film. (Ahem, Joker.) So I didn’t need the glowing reviews to leave me ready to watch this one… but they don’t hurt.
• Unbrick your Wii U with a $4 Raspberry Pi Pico — I can’t even imagine spending the time to fully explore a Pi, but I admire everything the company does to empower people to tinker.
• The World’s Longest Suspension Bridge Is History in the Making — …again.
• Star Wars fans, rejoice! Here’s the first teaser for the Ahsoka series — I’m just gratified to see the Star Wars universe treating Rosario Dawson better than Marvel ever did.
• Black hole is soaring between galaxies, leaving stars in its wake — “Ways Black Holes Are Like Movie Producers for $600, Alex.”
• Kim Kardashian joins the new American Horror Story season — …thus confirming my long-ago decision to never watch one nanosecond of AHS ever again. Call me when you bring back Jessica Lange.
• Adobe Adds New AI-Powered Text-Based Video Editing Feature to Premiere Pro — Oh, now we’re getting interesting, Adobe. Well played.
• Woman with untreated TB is on the lam, took city bus to casino — I hope there’s a bunch of terrorism charges pending.
• Florida officials deleted data, stats from dubious COVID analysis: report — Florida poses a challenge to the whole “never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity” thing… because in Florida, it could always be both.
• Star Wars: Visions Volume 2’s first trailer is spectacular in every sense of the word