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Things you might want to know, for Feb 24, 2023:

• The Last of Us is finding apocalyptic meaning where The Walking Dead couldn’t — I don’t know if he ever explicitly said it, but it’s obvious TWD was designed to be an open-ended, long-term source of income for Robert Kirkman… it was a creator-owned property that he could write for and earn from as long as he liked. Then it became a TV show, Kirkman became fabulously wealthy, and he ended the comics. There was never much room in there for him to focus on a single POV, or give the series as a whole any kind of thematic goal other than “survive another year”. Comparing it to TLOU isn’t really fair to either show.
• Alec Baldwin enters not guilty plea over Halyna Hutchins death
• You already speak fluent computer code according to Nvidia’s CEO — Perhaps the single greatest, real advancement that ChatGPT and its kin are bringing to the table is the ability to convert human speech into functional code, or convert from one computer language to another. For all the scary possibilities over the horizon, the ability for average people to automate their lives could yield massive, positive change in the world. Then again, that was the plan for democratizing access to broadcast speech, and look how that turned out…
• Baldur’s Gate, one of my favourite CRPGs of all time, will be free-to-keep for Prime subs next month — Hey, I may finally play this 20 year old game! Next up: Half-Life 2! 😂
• The Greatest Unexpected NBA Performances
• Marilyn Manson Accuser Ashley Morgan Smithline Now Supports Manson — This is where we deploy one of my guiding principles: it’s possible that Evan Rachel Wood was abused by Brian Warner, and Ashley Morgan wasn’t. The truth doesn’t have protagonists, only characters.
• James Webb telescope captures ancient galaxies that theoretically shouldn’t exist — Any time we find out anything about the early universe, someone says “this may upset our understanding of the early universe” because frankly, our understanding of the early universe is mostly based on recent observations, calculations with missing variables that we don’t know are missing, and hubris.
• Stephen King’s It is getting an HBO Max prequel series set in Derry — I loved the book, liked the Tim Curry TV movie from the 90s, and couldn’t make it through that mess with the Stranger Things kid. So honestly, I have no idea how to feel about this.

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 23, 2023:

• This fan remake of a Star Trek text game from 1978 is way better than it has any right to be — One of my first “serious” programming efforts was rewriting the UI for Super Star Trek on the Commodore 64. By default, the game’s interface looked as you see above. I turned it into a first-person view of a Starfleet ship’s bridge, with a working view screen that displayed blocky versions of Klingon BoPs, sensor readouts, and the current red alert status. I had way, way too much fun with that game.
• Retsuko got her shit together — now it’s her loser boyfriend’s turn — Aggretsuko is a delightful little show about a sweet, unassuming red panda who spends all day being abused as a Japanese office girl, only to vent her rage via heavy metal screaming fits at a karaoke bar every night. It’s mundane and thus relatable, and the characters are all cute as a button.
• It’s not a darning tool, it’s a very naughty toy: Roman dildo found — When it comes to any sculpture, weapon, or household object discovered by an archaeologist, it’s safe to assume the Romans at one point tried to fuck someone with it.
• Florence Welch’s ‘Great Gatsby’ Musical to Premiere Next Year — I don’t give a shit about Gatsby, but I’ll watch anyway, given a chance.
• Warren Beatty Appears in Bizarre Dick Tracy TCM Special in Apparent Film-Rights Ploy (VIDEO) — I was wondering why he was doing this dumb schtick… he just wants to retain the —now largely worthless— Dick Tracy film rights.
• Gran Turismo 7 VR hands-on: it might make you a PSVR 2 believer
• ‘No Man’s Sky’ Fractal update overhauls VR gameplay in time for its PS VR2 release — No Man’s Sky was one of the first games I tried in VR, and it kinda summed up the experience: “Wow, holy shit, this is amazing. Wait, what? This is awkward. Seriously, I have to what? Okay, whatever.” But it looks like this latest patch will dramatically improve matters.
• You Can Buy Everything Everywhere’s Real Raccacoonie and More
• The US Copyright Office says you can’t copyright Midjourney AI-generated images — It’s nice to see the Copyright Office reach a fairly nuanced and reasonable conclusion on this case, because it helps set the cultural and legal expectations for how we view the creative regurgitations of our bots.
• Meet the mushroom that could one day replace plastic

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

• TikTok’s Latest Trend Is…Flashing Your Boobs — Dude, that’s always TikTok’s latest trend.
• Malcolm X’s Family to Sue FBI, CIA and NYPD for $100 Million — Seems like a winnable case, but I wouldn’t expect the award to reach the heights the plaintiffs are seeking.
• The Supreme Court is deciding the future of the internet, and it acted like it — Just put down the internet and walk away, old people.
• Well bless their poor little hearts — Why does the American south have the worst credit scores in the country? SPOILER: medical debt.
• Keith Lynch’s timeline of net related terms and concepts — So, so many of these terms have fallen into disuse because the software, hardware, and protocols to which they referred are dead and buried, but some of them just… aged out.
• In defense of prompt engineering — It should go without saying, but those who can talk to the Big Models and get consistent, useful results will have a massive workplace advantage over everyone else.
• Teller Reveals His Secrets — Penn was my guy, because he’s a writer and a talker. But Teller has always been the creative genius.
• There’s a New Number One Board Game — I don’t pay much attention to tabletop gaming, and even I knew Gloomhaven was the game. So seeing it toppled from the top spot is a big deal.
• Scam authenticator app advertising on App Store: Sends all your QR codes to the developer — One more time, for the cheap seats: use your OS provider’s built-in or downloadable multi factor authenticator system. Don’t even try to use anything else.
• Fossils of a 340-Pound Giant Penguin Found in New Zealand — 340lb. Penguins. I don’t think further explanation is needed.

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

• Pus*y-flavored kettle chips — Ugh. Disgusting. Kettle chips are so gross…
• The best TV of 2023 so far — I definitely need to get to Party Down, ASAP.
• The Walking Dead is being turned into a tabletop RPG by the creators of the Alien and Blade Runner RPGs
• Ben Stein is sad that there isn’t a “large African-American woman” on his syrup bottle — Okay, “Bueller…? Bueller…?” is a memorable line from a cherished film, but seriously, fuck Ben Stein.
• Jon Favreau has already written the fourth season of The Mandalorian — Outside of Swingers, I’ve never been a Favreau fan. But with The Mandalorian, he has definitely found the right material for his skills.
• This Lab-Grown Skin Could Revolutionize Transplants
• The ChatGPT Reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade Is Coming — This is an interesting piece, but please people… stop talking about the random crap spewed by image and language models as if they’re demonstrating some kind of emergent intelligence. All they’re doing is replicating patterns they’ve found in the output of human intelligence… that’s it.
• The Myth of the Psychopathic Personality Refuses to Die — I’m less concerned about the pseudoscience of evil itself than I am with the increasing banality of an “evil” that exists everywhere, in everything from common assholes to unthinking institutions.
• ‘M3GAN’ and ‘Get Out’ producer Blumhouse is moving into horror games — Horror games have been a hit-n-miss genre over the decades, and being good at scary shit in one medium doesn’t guarantee success in another. We shall see.
• Netflix buys the entire catalog of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ author Roald Dahl — …which might have something to do with the recent “update” kerfuffle.

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Things you might want to know, for the afternoon of Feb 20, 2023:

• Happy Birthday, Kurt Cobain — Given how things have gone with my heroes over the last 30 years, a fiftysomething Kurt probably would have been an insufferable nutjob. But I sure wish he’d given us a chance to find out.
• Your desktop reveals your D&D alignment, like it or not — So, for the first time in the history of goofy D&D alignment charts, I am officially Chaotic Evil.
• The Expanse extended gameplay trailer showcases zero-G exploration and tough decisions — I’m really, really looking forward to Telltale’s side-story for Drummer. She’s one of the best characters on a great show, and Telltale’s style means I won’t have to do any stealth mission bullshit just to explore the story.
• What rewatching old shows teaches us about ourselves
• Conspiracy Theorists Are Coming for the 15-Minute City — The worst thing that we did in the early days of the internet was get it into our heads that everyone should be empowered to speak. ‘Cause we somehow overlooked that at least 50% of humanity is entirely stupid and utterly unreasonable.
• Shigeru Miyamoto is working with his hands again — I’m vaguely interested in Disney’s Star Wars world, but to be honest, Universal’s Super Mario World is more my speed.
• OG sealed iPhone breaks record selling for almost 2x that of a recent auction — There’s all kinds of outdated, classic tech that the collector in me covets. But I assure you, I wouldn’t pay $50 for an unopened 1st gen iPhone, much less $50,000. Fucking idiots.

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

• He Smeared Feces on a Critic, and Lost a Job. Now, He Wants to Be Heard. — “She didn’t tell me I was great, so I naturally felt compelled to smear her face with shit, now let’s talk about something else,” said every toxic baby-man, ever.
• Their Ancestors Were Convicted of Witchcraft in Connecticut. They Want Justice. — I used to question this sort of performative apology… the people who were wronged are long gone, after all. But now I see it’s important for governments to go on record with their apologies, so it’s harder for the historical record to fudge the question of who was in the wrong.
• Richard Belzer, Law & Order: SVU Star and Comedian, Dead at 78 — I’ve watched very little L&O, and haven’t seen even an episode of SVU. But I watched Homicide: Life on the Streets religiously, and Munch was an important part of the show. He’ll be missed.
• Alaska woman admits she killed ‘best friend’ after being promised millions in catfishing scheme — It’s interesting to see that “Alaska woman” is just about as smart as “Florida man”.
• This Tool Could Protect Artists From A.I. Image Generators — This is a cool idea, but as the article states, it’s just the first salvo in what will be a never-ending battle.

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

• Raquel Welch: A life in pictures
• Former US President Jimmy Carter to receive hospice care — The first presidential election I could understand was Jimmy’s… I have no idea why, but I felt very strongly that he should beat Ford. Of course, I also felt that Howard the Duck should win as a write-in, so my pre-teen politics weren’t finely honed.
• Age of Empires 4 is getting a dash of Age of Mythology-style magic in tomorrow’s big update — We played a lot of AoE and AoM around here twenty years ago. There was a lot of Warcraft 2 & 3 along the way, but it was Age of Empires that drew me back.
• Meet the actual therapist using Dragon Age to teach relationship skills — I really enjoyed Origins and how it played. I still haven’t made it past the opening of Inquisition… by that point, it was feeling way too much like an action game.
• The best games for PlayStation VR 2 — They’re mostly retreads of SteamVR and Oculus titles at launch, but I’m confident Sony will do better over time.
• Olivia Colman makes the perfect Miss Havisham in the new Great Expectations trailer — I’ll enjoy anything Olivia does. She even made Broadchurch watchable.
• Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a movie-length gross-out gag — There’s an actual movie about a bear doing cocaine. That exists. So I feel like anyone wanting to defile the Winnie the Pooh brand needs to set their sights higher than Blood and Honey… or lower, depending on perspective.
• The first big Shadow and Bone season 2 trailer ushers in the darkness — About damned time. I was surprised at how good this show turned out to be, and I’ve been wanting more of it while that third season of The Witcher remains just over the horizon.
• Who Destroyed Live? Alt-Rock Band Torn Apart By Drama, Crime, Lawsuits — …I had no idea Live was an ongoing concern as late as 2019. Wow.
• Roald Dahl’s Children’s Books Republished to Remove Offensive Language — I can’t say I approve of this sort of thing, but I’m relaxed about it. The unedited versions still exist, so I choose to view this as a translation into “modern English”.

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

• Watch a Florida woman fight off attacker in gym of apartment complex (video) — Just remember, ladies… always shout “Hey Siri, call 911” while bashing your attacker’s face in with your phone.
• Meghan Markle: Blasted as Harry’s “B-tch Wife” In Brutal South Park … — I’m guessing that JLo, Kanye, and JonBenet’s parents all figure Meghan got off easy.
• A movie trailer editor deconstructs iconic trailers
• Ray Liotta to Receive Posthumous Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — I didn’t properly memorialize Ray when he passed, but Goodfellas and Cop Land were two of the best movies of the ‘90s, due in no small part to Liotta’s work.
• A new mainline Civilization game is in development at Firaxis — About damned time. I bought and/or played Civ VI on three different platforms, but never had as much fun with it as Civ V. I hope the next iteration is more streamlined.
• FBI says it has ‘contained’ a cybersecurity incident on its network — One of these days, an “incident” won’t be “contained” at a major defense or law enforcement agency, and the effect across all of society will be chilling, to say the least.
• M3gan’s unrated cut is coming to Peacock
• The NBA app is going to let you digitally possess a live player — If you spend years involved in tech, eventually you realize that a great many things are done simply because they can. This is one of those things.
• The Case for Sleeping With Stuffed Animals as an Adult — It can easily be summed up this way: all the good girls do it.
• Twitter to charge for SMS-based two-factor authentication – How to use Google Authenticator instead — DO refuse to give Space Karen your money for access to a secure login experience. DO NOT use fucking Google Authenticator if your OS has built-in multi-factor authentication, like iOS/iPadOS/macOS.