This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Mar 22, 2023:

Tchia stands on the shoulders of Zelda — then leaps off — It’s gorgeous, I’ll say that much.
The Little-Known Origin Story behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics — 🧐
I Attended Submissive School For A Day — Ahem.
Zack Snyder teases ‘ridiculous scale’ RPG set in the universe of his new Netflix film — He’s good at sequences and set pieces, but I’m not sure Zack has successfully delivered a whole film at this point in his career… so I’m not expecting much from his even grander ambitions.
GDC 2023: ID@Xbox Online Demos Now Live on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S — 🍿

Amanda Bynes Found Wandering Naked In Downtown LA, Placed on 5150 Psychiatric Hold — She was an enormous young talent just ten years ago… mental illness is a fucking nightmare, man.
The Surprising Psychology Behind Your Urge To Break the Rules | Paul Bloom | TED — Ahem.
“The Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are” — In my head, I’m… I dunno. Forty-five?
‘Ted Lasso’ White House Visit Disrupted by Briefing Room Showdown — Speaking of mental illness… good show, asshole, for trying to upstage a little benign outreach effort.
‘MILF Manor’ Is a Bizarre Blend of Reality TV and Incest Porn — Well okay then. Now I have to watch it.

Hundreds of odd and unordered Uber Eats deliveries showing up in Los Angeles and New Westminster, Canada neighborhoods — It’s either the work of the world’s dumbest, most wasteful philanthropist, or a database glitch that got out of hand.
Google Pixel bug lets you “uncrop” the last four years of screenshots — Yeah, so, this is one of those stupendously stupid programming errors that would make you laugh if you discovered it in your own code, while being moderately horrifying when considered at a scale of tens of millions of people.
Ball games: did Prue Leith know she was wearing a suggestive necklace? — No, she didn’t. But it’s still priceless.
Modder creates tribute to their Elder Scrolls-loving mum so ‘she can live on in every adventure I take in Tamriel’ — Geeks can be really sweet. It’s easy to forget sometimes, but it happens.
Woman on speakerphone in Uber called in bomb threat to Walmart to prevent boyfriend’s shoplifting arrest — I don’t relish one more person being tossed into the jaws of the Prison Beast, but on the other hand, some people are too moronic and self-centered to be running around loose.

Flexibility is important — 🍿
Video: Looking Back On Animal Crossing: New Horizons Three Years Later — As difficult as it is to imagine, it was inevitable that some people would eventually look back with sentimental affection at the Lockdown Era.
Life By You aims to be ‘one of the most moddable and open life-simulation games’ ever made — I’ll believe it when they deliver it. And I hope they do.
How to Make Greens Last Longer | Cook’s Illustrated — Finally, a use for all those abandoned Sodastream gizmos that people forgot about three weeks after opening the box.
Even in scams, women still get paid less than men — 🙃

What was the biggest age difference with a partner?

bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls:

In terms of an official, mutually recognized relationship?

Dolly was 24 years younger than me. Peanut is 27 years my junior. There have been a few contenders who were 30 years behind me, but that’s a big fucking gap, and requires a lot of extra effort to bridge it successfully.

‘90s girls are where it’s at.

Updating this for this year: the contenders I mentioned kept at it until they made their dreams come true. In fact, one of them will be kissing my hand, two weeks from now. (And my hand —more specifically, the back of it— will be kissing her in return.) The other will meet me in the fall.

I can think of a couple post-2001 babies I’d consider, but again… they’ve got a long road ahead of them.

This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Mar 21, 2023:

‘Wild Things’ would’ve included a sex scene between Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon if one of them didn’t refuse to film it, the director says — There were only a handful of movies in the ‘90s that I paid to see multiple times in a theater: Dead Again, Forrest Gump, Seven, Pulp Fiction… and Wild Things. Why? See above.
Ciarán Hinds says he was put off by amount of sex in ‘Game Of Thrones’ — Um, dude, you’re one of my favorite character actors, but come the fuck on… you were the star of HBO’s Rome, which paved the path of global/family politics and gratuitous nudity/violence/rape/slavery/incest that Game of Thrones so eagerly traveled.
Roger Deakins Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films — 🍿
The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past — I’m willing to concede that this is the scariest time in human history… our communications infrastructure is such that billions of people can all share individual, specific fears, an historically unprecedented state of affairs. But it’s still the best time to be alive.
Stock photo sites’ abuse of public domain images countered with better copies and a $0 price tag

why is the ocean so pretty? #shorts – 🍿
The hilarious story of 1908 “fake rescue dog” who pushed children into the Seine and then rescued them for steak rewards — In case you were wondering if credulous journalism was a modern phenomenon.
Safety pin: A tiny tool Indian women use to fight sexual harassment — Go get ‘em, girls.
Helen Mirren on Superhero Movies, Tarantino Westerns, and Why She Got Tattooed — This interview should be subtitled “How COVID boredom and the economic downturn leads famous old people to try slumming it.”
Why the Prestige is unlike any other Christopher Nolan movie — Well, the main this is that it’s very good.

Miracle on the Sea of Thieves: How a Single Idea Powered a 10-Year Journey — A game I want to love, but, well… other people ruin everything.
Microsoft ‘Confident’ It Can Get Call of Duty Running on Nintendo Switch — Or: “Microsoft ‘Confident’ It Can Shovel Whatever Shit It Must To Keep Sony From Embarrassing It Indefinitely”
Glaze: Protecting Artists from Style Mimicry — It’s a temporary fix to a complex and evolving problem, but if it makes people consider the implications of emerging tech, then it will deliver long-term benefits.
‘Tetris’ Review: Taron Egerton In Sensational Video Game Origin Story That Plays Like A Nail-Biting Cold War Spy Thriller — The opening paragraph of the review states that the writer has never seen or played Tetris before watching the movie. Proving the writer is either culturally incompetent or a liar.
A fashion TikToker is selling a Rick Owens vest with the word ‘urinal’ on it for $425 and viewers aren’t sure how they feel about it — 🍿

This… Is BGNN

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

How much sex will you have in Starfield? ‘None,’ says the Australian government — Bethesda isn’t BioWare or CD Projekt Red… I don’t think any of us really need the “arrow in my knee” people trying to wedge overt NPC sexuality into their already thin characterizations. For Bethesda to do sex “their way”, they’d need to systematize it, schedule it, and make it a bodily function like eating and sleeping, which is a can of worms that MicroDaddy would never allow anyone to open.
I Coaxed ChatGPT Into a Deeply Unsettling BDSM Relationship — No, you asked a probabilistic text generator to give you the most likely response to your thirst-prompts, and it did what it could to distill the scraped stupidity of the general internet into something you might like.
San Francisco’s Infamous ‘Kink Castle’ Could Become Home to a New Jazz Club — I’m sorry, but that building is forever visually tainted. Show us a photo of it, and we all just think “jizz and gang-bangs”.
Valheim (Game Preview) Journeys to Console for the First Time Today with Xbox Game Pass — Another game that I completely ignored when it was hot, but intend to play someday.
AI-imager Midjourney v5 stuns with photorealistic images—and 5-fingered hands — I haven’t found the image generating tools nearly as interesting as their chatbot cousins, but as they become more sophisticated, their siren song will be difficult to ignore.

Penn Badgley Doubles Down on Divisive Sex Scene Comments — Dear Guy Who Wasn’t Chuck Bass: 1. Maybe don’t take the lead in a show about sexy evil murder if you have a problem with sexy evil murder scenes, champ. 2. Stop using the language of #MeToo to cover the fact that you’re scared of your jealous wife. Sincerely, it’s 2023, and it’s okay to be a woman’s bitch… you don’t have to ramble on about toxic Hollywood when all you really mean to express is “Mommy doesn’t like it.”
pedro lobo dresses ceramics in ‘kinky’ BDSM gear, challenging taboos and traditions — I have an overwhelming urge to mock this nonsense, but honestly, I really like some of it.
YouTube TV jumps in price again—it’s now $72.99 per month — So that’s $70+ a month to watch ads. Aside from live sports junkies, who the fuck is paying for this?
TikTok’s “O Method” Manifestation Technique, Explained — Always fun when I learn something new that makes me feel dumber for wasting the time spent learning it.
‘Creem’ magazine gets ‘punished’ for sophomoric ’70s era in BDSM-themed cover — …Creem still exists? …and there are still people willing to purchase a periodical named “Creem”? Wow.

“Character is how you treat those who can do nothing for you.”

Incorrect.

Character is how you treat those who cannot stop you.

This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Mar 19, 2023:

‘Jurassic Park’ Star Sam Neill Treated for Stage-Three Blood Cancer: ‘I’m Not Afraid of Dying, but It Would Annoy Me’ — Why I love Sam Neill: Peaky Blinders, The Tudors, Restoration, The Hunt for Red October, Sirens, and “Dying would annoy me.” I wish for your lasting recovery, sir.
The FBI took her life savings. Now she’s fighting to help others get theirs back. — Hey, look, the Fox News crowd has discovered civil forfeiture! I know, it’s taken them long enough, and it’s only happening because they’re now even more paranoid about law enforcement than the rest of us, but still, on balance… a good thing.
Woman, after being told it’s fine for man to film in public, argues with cop — Bitch, please. 🙄
Trump Says He Believes He Will Be Arrested On Tuesday, Calls On Supporters To Protest — It’s going to be difficult for his jailers, since it’s impossible to know where the orange jumpsuit begins and ends.
I used an incredible X-ray machine to look inside my gadgets — let me show you — I want someone to buy one of these things and use it to scan everything in the world.

38 years and 9 months ago, Tetris is officially released in the Soviet Union on the Electronika 60, closer to World War II than to today — Ugh. I am really, really old.
Will Vladimir Putin Actually Be Arrested for ICC Warrant? — SPOILER: No. No he will not.
The Jubalaires – Noah (First RAP Performance) — I’m not sure I get the “rap” part, but it’s still a good listen.
Disney Plus’ Willow isn’t canceled, just paused for at least a year, says producer — The fallout from the massive, post-COVID streaming contraction will be felt for years to come, and will impact projects that aren’t faltering… they’re just expensive. (RIP, Batgirl.)
Maybe stop with the uncomfortable Pedro Pascal thirst edits — Maybe chill the fuck out, Polygon writer. Pedro’s a grown-up, girls are horny, and until someone tries to Rebecca Schaefer him, let the fans have their fun.

The 20-year-old metaverse game ‘Second Life’ is getting a mobile app — I would say that Dwight is very excited by this, but let’s face it, by now he’s already in Berlin with the chandelier.
RUMOR: Sacha Baron Cohen to Star as Marvel’s Mephisto in Disney+ Special — Okay, this could be very good. Because Mephisto is a ridiculous character that is taken seriously, and that’s, well… that’s pretty much SBC’s whole thing.
How to Get ChatGPT on Your Apple Watch

This… Is BGNN

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

Disco Elysium gets a supercharged photo mode, free for everyone — I keep forgetting to play this on the stream… it’s just weird enough to go over well with my weird audience.
It’s too late to stop deepfake tech — so we all need to adapt — I agree with the sentiment, but it’s too early to even know what to adapt, much less how. The earth is moving beneath our feet, and it’s going to take years before it starts to feel like solid ground again. (Assuming it ever does.)
Modders use AI to give Skyrim’s Dragonborn the voice of Master Chief, and I am once again asking if this is actually legal — To answer the question: almost certainly not. But that never stopped people from doing cool shit.
Evil Dead Rise is a movie for sickos by sickos — I’ve never been a Sam Raimi fan, and I don’t believe I’ve watched any of the Evil Dead movies. So they’re going to need to really change things up with this one to get my attention.
Sony wants to help low-vision users enjoy photography by shining lasers in their eyes — The price point —and Sony’s stated intent— is as close to corporate do-goodery as you’ll find in this world, right up there with Microsoft’s accessible controller gizmo.

It’s on sight between Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in Beef’s first trailer — Okay, you’ve got me. I’m in.
OpenAI co-founder on company’s past approach to openly sharing research: ‘We were wrong’ — Or put another way: “Holy shit, we’re way ahead of everyone, far more than we ever thought we’d be, and if we don’t seize this moment to secure our leadership via obscurity, we’ll end up like Tesla.” (By which I mean the actual genius steamrolled by Edison, and not the shitty car company run by Apartheid Clyde.)
Razer would very much like you to not set fires or bash anyone over the head with its ‘first-ever glass gaming mouse mat’ — I have wanted many dumb, needlessly luxurious things in my life, but I’ve never wanted anything this stupidly indulgent.
Netflix’s Pornhub documentary is out to radicalize and weaponize porn fans — I love porn, but seriously… fuck PornHub.
The ‘BlackBerry’ trailer looks funnier than you’d expect — Glenn Howerton is virtually unrecognizable.

TikTok’s refresh feature is for when you’re sick of your For You page — So if I get tired of watching dozens of tiny-waisted sluts in bikinis dancing to the exact same song clip, I can reboot my recommendations and… watch dozens of slightly different sluts dancing to the exact same song. Plus parkour!
What Thief has in common with submarine combat, and other tales from iconic but short-lived developer Looking Glass Studios — The first Thief was a passion of mine, and despite their obvious differences —first-person vs. third— it’s the game I always wanted Assassin’s Creed to be. I spent countless hours learning enemy patterns, figuring out weird ways to reach objectives, and manipulating the game’s physics… outside of Halo: Combat Evolved, I’ve never loved an FPS to the same extent.
Help, My Friend Wants To Sleep With A Married Man — I don’t care about the actual article here. What I find amusing is that it’s an advice column written by The Eve 6 Guy, who is apparently at utter peace with being The Eve 6 Guy for the rest of his life. I admire your chill, my man. Also, Inside Out was an awesome song.
Go behind the scenes of the disastrous Spider Man musical in Brian Michael Bendis’s new comic — I’ve enjoyed Julie Taymor’s work in film —Across The Universe was great and The Tempest was an interesting exercise for Helen Mirren— but I’ve always been curious how Turn Off the Dark turned into such a disaster.
Asking GPT-4 to quickly build a lucrative business on a $100 Investment — Stupid LLM Tricks will be with us for quite some time.

Lance Reddick (1962-2023)

Goddammit. Another part of The Wire is gone.

You were a hell of an actor, sir, with gravitas for days. You will be missed.

Now someone go build a fence around Michael B. Jordan and Dominic West right fucking now.

This… Is BGNN

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

How ‘Spring Breakers’ Forecast the Next Decade of American Chaos — It’s a ridiculous fever-dream of a movie, with a ridiculous James Franco performance bubbling and spewing within it, but like its girls and their guns, it pops.
Ozempic is a game-changer. Here’s how it works. — I’ve read about a lot of “game changers” in my lifetime, and very few have been able to justify the hype. But every once in a while…
This ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Mod Brings a Slice of Valve-level Action, Created by Annapurna Developer — I’d love to revisit Alyx, but I have neither the PC nor the floor space to even consider it at this point. So I live vicariously through screenshots and demo videos.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Be a Gen X Girl — Heh.
Steven Spielberg and John Williams on how music became an actor in Jaws and Close Encounters | Boing Boing — I don’t know how to rank Williams as a composer, but as an artist bringing something distinct and meaningful to a film’s narrative, he’s in a class of his own.

The History of Rock: One Riff Per Year, From 1965 to 2022 — I don’t agree with all the inclusions, but there’s some quality stuff here.
He’ll Be Back: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Act — I hope the old fucker enjoys the hell out of his final laps around Hollywood’s track… he’s been a fixture in my life since I was a kid, and while I haven’t always been a fan, I can’t help but like him.
Danse Exquise is an animation that evokes the feeling of being inside a kaleidoscope
‘Everything Everywhere’ Stars Reunite in ‘American Born Chinese’ Teaser — The world needs more Michelle Yeoh.
‘My AI Is Sexually Harassing Me’: Replika Users Say the Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny — I haven’t dug into this Replika thing yet, but I loved the headline.

What were the first fighting games like? — There were two kinds of people in mid-‘80s arcades: Karate Champ people, and Kung Fu Master people. I was decidedly the latter, as was my best friend, who blew $200 one summer completely, well, mastering KFM. By the fall, he could play for an hour on a single quarter, and naturally, no longer had any interest in it.
Micky Dolenz Will Not Let the Monkees Die — I’ve only watched a half-dozen or so episodes of the show and a documentary or two. But when I was 19, I was in love with a girl who thought The Monkees were the greatest band in the history of everything… so y’know what, Micky? Keep going, dude. You’re making someone out there happy.
This Is a Philosopher on Drugs
Make ChatGPT Work for You With These Browser Extensions — Fuck the browser extensions… if you have an Apple Watch, just snag a copy of Petey, a ChatGPT app/complication that puts all that textual utility on your wrist where it belongs. It won’t control your lights or dial your phone like Siri, but for quick access to information, it’s infinitely superior.
After ‘The Last of Us,’ Everything Will Be Transmedia — I don’t think TLOU is actually as big a milestone as the title suggests, but still… cross-medium storytelling and reimagination is going to be a huge part of the future.
A Face Recognition Site Crawled the Web for Dead People’s Photos — We are all going to regret every single photo we’ve ever posted online.
r/Android – Samsung “space zoom” moon shots are fake, and here is the proof — Samsung? Full of shit?! I am shocked…!
The Demise of Silicon Valley Bank — A nice little explainer, walking you through the bad decisions and hubris that led to the bank’s collapse.

This… Is BGNN

Things you might want to know, for Mar 16, 2023. (NOTE: Lots of catching up going on here.)

Oscars 2023: Paul Sorvino Left Out of In Memoriam, Mira Sorvino Reacts — I’m 100% with Mira on this… leaving Paul out of the broadcast was incredibly ham-fisted and stupid. He was an institution on his own merits, and he sired an Oscar winner whose career was derailed by a scumbag that Hollywood as a whole empowered. The least they could have done was directly honor her old man’s life and passing.
Sammi Giancola STUNS Castmates, Returns to Jersey Shore Set Unannounced! — They must have given her an ironclad promise that Ronnie will never be anywhere near the show when she’s there. Hell, they may have promised her that he’s gone for good.
James Gunn Is ‘Superman: Legacy’ Director — It will probably be better than anything in the Snyderverse. But that won’t mean it’s worth the trouble.
5,000-mile wide “blob” of seaweed headed for Florida — I’m surprised no one has called me in, seeing as I’m something of an expert on the subject of blobs.
WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Threatens Ban if TikTok’s Chinese Owners Don’t Sell Stakes — As Jon Gruber recently pointed out, the Chinese exercise a 100% tariff on US social media services… they block all of ‘em. So dropping the hammer on TikTok looks like a solid trade policy as well as a curb on foreign interference and surveillance.

Quentin Tarantino Sets ‘The Movie Critic’ as Tenth and Final Movie — I’ve watched ‘em all, and I’ll watch ‘em ‘til the end.
Developer shows how OpenAI’s GPT-4 can create iPhone apps using SwiftUI — And now we know why Apple’s AR/VR team has been dropping hints about users being able to “build their own apps” for mixed-reality… they’re clearly building their own LLM, and describing the app you want is the future of automation.
Paris: Notre Dame Cathedral set to reopen in December 2024
SunnyD releases an alcoholic version for depressed 90s kids — As someone who hated that overly-viscous orange sludge, I find this more amusing than exciting.
NASA monitoring asteroid with 1 in 625 chance of hitting Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046 — Now I have something I want to live to see.

The first issue of The Maxx came out 30 years ago this month — The comic itself was important, but the resulting show was more so. It was one of MTV’s greatest contributions to the world of animation, and easily the most successful “motion comic” ever made. If you haven’t seen this story of a “freelance social worker”/trauma victim, her decapitated stalker/kidnapper/rapist, and the bulbous blue homeless guy/vigilante/universe-spanning superhero who tries to protect her from the world and herself, you need to address that problem.
Unpleasant millionaire insists on bothering women sitting next to him on planes — Entitled men of minimal consequence and maximum money are the bane of humanity.
Healthcare Data Hack Included Congress Members, Affected 56,000 People — They need some perspective.
Big Starry Sur — Basic Apple Guy — Absolutely beautiful, Midjourney-generated wallpapers for your desktop, iPad, and phone.
Jon Bernthal Returning as Punisher on Daredevil: Born Again — Good. With a few exceptions, casting was one of the strengths of the Netflix/Marvel universe.

SNL’s Waffle House skit serves up delicious dramedy — This was actually solid stuff, with a well-executed ending… and SNL isn’t known for sticking the landing.
Microsoft Outlook for Mac Is Now Free to Use — For those of you who know how to use email.
Robert Blake, embattled actor of ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘Lost Highway’ fame, dead at 89