Broken Girl News

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

‘Irreversible’: One of the Most Controversial Movies Ever Is Back — …in case you want to become uncomfortably aroused in a dark room full of strangers.
A Well-Turned Curse Can Remind You of the Power of Language — Fucking A.
Why the Myth of the Library of Alexandria Is Wrong — Pretty much the same reason every other great story is less great in fact… reality is boring and complicated.
Willis Family Statement | AFTD — I was a giant Moonlighting fan when I was a kid, so when Bruce Willis broke out in Die Hard, I remember inwardly cheering at his success… this goofy, fast-talking actor was going to be an action star! Seeing how things have gone over the last ten years is as sad as that time was hopeful. I’m glad he has the family and money to make things as comfortable as possible, but… fuck. Just… fuck.
Watching this artist drag an easel into Half-Life: Alyx makes me want to be a VR painter too — Every time I see an Alyx mod or something, I want to re-enter that world… ‘cause it’s a fun place to visit. And then I think about setting up the lighthouses, and the cables, and the hulking beast of a PC I need to run it… and I go back to Mario Kart.
I Returned to ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’—And You Should Too — …and speaking of returning to Nintendo…

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 16, 2023:

Guns N’ Roses Funko Collection: New Duff McKagan Vinyl Gold Collectible — If they did Slash, I’d consider it.
Pornhub ‘Money Shot’ documentary coming soon to Netflix | Boing Boing
The Boy in the Bubble — I wasn’t really aware of David Vetter —I was a little kid myself— but I assure you I watched the John Travolta TV movie “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble”. And was scarred by it… the implications of being trapped in a plastic cage lingered in my boy-brain for a long time.
New Yoko Ono and John Lennon Doc Follows Them for a Week in 1972
Every actor on our ruined planet will star in Apple TV+’s ‘Extrapolations’ — Clearly, Apple wants to give us the feeling of seeing a Robert Altman movie in 2023.
Microsoft’s Bing is an emotionally manipulative liar, and people love it — Of course they do.
Mansplaining makes women question their workplace competence—and can stunt their careers, study says — Of course it does.
Raquel Welch: US actress and model dies at 82 — She was just a little before my time, so I primarily remember her for a guest spot on Seinfeld. “Raquel Welch does not move her arms when she dances.”
You are not prepared for the final season of Star Trek: Picard — I think you’re wrong, but let’s find out.
The Little Mermaid looks magical and kind of muted in a new teaser — I can’t say I’m looking forward to this, but I might give it a shot.
Louis Vuitton picks Pharrell Williams to lead men’s designs — Pharrell is clearly getting bored.
Prototype of the final unreleased 3dfx GPU sells on eBay for $15,000 — I believe the Monster version of the Voodoo 2 was the last 3Dfx card I owned.

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 15, 2023:

Check out this teaser for The Mandalorian’s third season | Boing Boing — Cuteness is the way.
Cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving — Capacity invites use. That which we can, we do.
10 years ago, we were turning nuclear bombs into nuclear energy. We can do it again.
I tried using AI. It scared me. — You’re scared of AI. I’m scared of what comes after AI. Because I’ll probably see it. The cycles are coming too fast now… the next big leap will happen quickly.
You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you – The Oatmeal — A noble effort; it warns of its own futility, but offers itself all the same.
Ivory for Mastodon gains post editing and more on iPhone and iPad as Mac development continues — Leaving Twitter is easy once you have a decent client.
Halo dropped the ball on Cortana’s villainous turn — Hard to argue with this one… everything of narrative interest happened offscreen, and rendered the character’s turn meaningless. Infinite works despite the narrative, not because of it.
A Novel Male Birth Control Could Be an ‘On-Off Switch for Sperm’ — More of this.
Lana Del Rey’s New Song ‘A&W’ Is Definitely Not About Root Beer — Heh! I had no idea what it was about, but yeah… makes sense.
Feist Details New Album ‘Multitudes,’ Releases Three Songs: Listen — 1, 2, 3, 4 … 35,728, 35,729, 35,730… it’s been a while since I thought about Feist.
Ted Lasso Season 3 is returning March 15, and I still believe | Boing Boing — About time.
Reverse City Builder ‘Terra Nil’ From Devolver Digital and Free Lives Gets New Gameplay Trailer, Releasing This Year – TouchArcade — I love this concept, and the sound design seems amazing… remains to be seen how it plays.

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 13, 2023:

Porn conventions are decadent and depraved (and also very mainstream) — Given how much of the industry has receded into relative anonymity since its salad days, I’m not surprised.
Best Mini Arcade Game: Buy This $24 Tiny Arcade Atari 2600 on Amazon — Looks impossible to play for more than three minutes at a time, but then again, it’s a glorified desk toy… that might be all you need.
Wyoming bill to legalize “chicken roping” in bars awaits governor’s signature | Boing Boing — I… did not know that was a thing.
Two people rescued after falling into vat of Dove chocolate at factory | Boing Boing — Those two dudes are gonna be known as “Augustus” and “Gloop” for the rest of their lives.
Skyrim’s latest release — yes, we know — is an outstanding board game — I doubt I’d ever play it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t covet it.
How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics’
Ballet director smeared faeces on critic’s face after bad review — Does the fact that it was dog feces make it better or worse?
ChatGPT-assisted diagnosis: Is the future suddenly here? — My guess? No.

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 13, 2023:

$500 a Month, No Strings: Chicago Experiments With a Guaranteed Income — I think a guaranteed subsistence income is, at its core, a solid idea. But how you implement it —and how society reacts when people recklessly/stupidly choose not to subsist— has kept it in the realm of solid ideas. So it’s nice to see small-scale experiments like this.
Why is every character suddenly an ‘antihero’ now? — It’s not sudden, and it’s not now. For fuck’s sake, Clint Eastwood’s entire acting career —and much of his directorial one— was based on being an antihero. We’ve been trending that way for a long, long time.
The Flash’s first trailer gives new meaning to “world’s finest” — Watching James Gunn and WB/DC turn the deck-chairs on the Titanic into a lifeboat in real-time is, quite frankly, impressive as hell. They might actually pull this shit off.
The Sadomasochistic Cenote and Its Legal Upwellings | Michael Angelo Tata | The Hypocrite Reader
U.S. tells citizens to get out of Russia immediately | Boing Boing — “Immediately”? The time to go was a year ago.
Post Malone’s Tattoos Got Him Turned Away From an Australian Bar — The shocking part of this story is that he claims nothing like this has ever happened before.
Watch: stagehands break down and remove Rihanna’s Super Bowl set in barely 4 minutes | Boing Boing
‘Party Down’ Revival: On the Rowdy Set With Paul Rudd, Adam Scott — One of my oldest posts around here was basically me asking the universe for a new season of Party Down, and now they’re actually shooting it.
VR Veteran Studio Behind ‘Bigscreen’ Unveils Thin & Light PC VR Headset ‘Beyond’ — It looks like a nice device, but it’s a piece of expensive hardware backed by a small company in a niche space… so even if I were in the mood to throw away a grand, I’m afraid Bigscreen wouldn’t get it.
How The Parthenon Marbles Ended Up In The British Museum — I feel like the “how” is largely obvious.
Be careful who you trust with your new Playstation VR 2 — It never gets old, watching people lose their shit in VR.
Effective Altruism Has a Hostile Culture for Women, Critics Say

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 12, 2023:

Making a weed dispensary in Animal Crossing isn’t just for the high-minded — Interior design just isn’t my thing in AC… and I treat the outdoor area more like a Sim City than a carefully crafted diorama.
Recreational Virginity and the False Promise of Artificial Hymens
James Wilsey and the Secret History of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ — As beautiful as Isaak’s singing is, that guitar is what makes Wicked Game so haunting and distinctive.
The Ungodly Surveillance of Anti-Porn ‘Shameware’ Apps — There’s much to learn from intrusive, controlling church-folk.
‘Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence’ Is Beyond Disturbing — I find it’s best if cults stay just *this* side of “disturbing”.
Ted Chiang: “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web” — A pretty interesting way of explaining how the current batch of AIs can convey the impression of information without conveying the substance.
‘Witch doctor’ arrested for sexually assaulting woman during ‘ritual,’ police say

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 11, 2023:

What medieval attitudes tell us about our evolving views of sex — Womanhood… dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.
Pop Goes #Clowncore: Harry Styles, Playboi Carti, Dua Lipa, Doja Cat — I lived through Glam Rock and Hair Metal… it’s clowns, all the way down.
Amsterdam bans cannabis in its red light district — …and now my last lingering interest in visiting Amsterdam goes quietly to its grave.
Covid Can Boost Your Response to Flu Vaccines—if You’re a Man — Penis perks.
Government ID Cards Will Be Required to Watch Porn in France — Wow, it’s a good thing VPNs don’t exist, otherwise this would be an incredibly pointless exercise in socio-sexual theater…

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 10, 2023:

‘Harley Quinn’ Gifts Us a Beautifully Twisted Valentine’s Day Special — Didn’t expect that, especially the way they decided to make it the 11th episode of the previous season, rather than a special
You’s secret to rooting for a bad guy: Surround him with worse people — It worked for Dexter.
Idris Elba doesn’t need James Bond, he has Luther — Luther is good. But he should still be Bond.
Hearthstone’s new Naxxramas miniset launches next week and we have a Legendary card to reveal — I pay absolutely zero attention to this stuff, and just keep playing the base game as if all the events and expansions never happened.
How to give the Game Boy and GBA games a retro look on Nintendo Switch
Apes separated at zoo secretly made a baby through a glory hole | Boing Boing — Life, ah, finds a way.
Burt Bacharach, iconic songwriter of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” RIP
Drug-free relief from chronic constipation may come from a new vibrating pill — Rattle her guts in a whole new way.
Bob Iger wants more Zootopia, Frozen, and Toy Story sequels from Disney

Broken Girl News

Things you might want to know, for Feb 9, 2023:

LeBron James Breaks Kareem’s All-Time NBA Scoring Record — LeBron was never going to be my GOAT, even though I watched his nationally televised high school game and thought, “Holy fucking hell, this kid is amazing!” Watching him play has just never made me feel anything. But when it comes to productive longevity, there’s no question of his greatness. (I feel a little bad for Kareem, though.)
Roger Waters at UN Security Council: Ukraine Invasion ‘Not Unprovoked’ — Waters made some of my favorite music of the ‘70s, but he’s still a giant, deluded jackass, and a compelling argument for the idea that age does not beget wisdom.
Discovery+ will remain as a standalone streaming platform after all — …because no one should have to watch Pedro Pascal shoot mushroom people when all they want is to see Angela rip the license plate off Michael’s car.
‘Squid Game’ is coming to VR later this year — Probably the best place for it, honestly.
Owen Wilson channels his inner Bob Ross in the first trailer for Paint — …let’s just say I’m gonna wait and see how it turns out.
Now Twitter Blue subscribers can write 4,000-character tweets — The last thing I want from any Blue subscriber is more of their bullshit.
Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online today
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s latest trailer reveals a new car and airship for Link
Love Island star Gemma Owen left ‘heartbroken and shocked’ after huge loss — It really was a beautiful horse, I’ve gotta say.
Read a bit of Neil Gaiman’s new Sandman story that comes with this bonkers box set — Okay, for the record, I find the idea of a $500, leather-bound Sandman boxed set to be incredibly indulgent and borderline stupid. But I kinda want it anyway.
Opinion | NASA’s Mission to Psyche, a ‘$10 Quintillion’ Asteroid — I like the idea of a researcher using our collective fascination with the hyper-inflated valuations of objectively worthless things to push her work into the spotlight.
Microsoft announces new Bing and Edge browser powered by upgraded ChatGPT AI — “Bing, explain to me how Microsoft seems to half-bake every idea it touches while still remaining financially solvent.”
Google will soon blur explicit content in search results — Oh for fuck’s sake, Google.

Broken Girl News

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

AMC Theatres to start charging more for the best seats in the house — In other news, Mr. B has decided the best seat in the house is in his living room. Fuck you, AMC.
Researchers discover way of layering graphene to mimic brain synapses — Any day now, I expect a headline like, “Scientists discover that graphene is a form of vibranium, Wakanda is real”.
Ed Brubaker’s crime comic masterpiece Criminal is getting a live-action adaptation | Boing Boing — Criminal is wonderfully written and visually grounded… it should translate to live action with little difficulty.
Little Debbie was a real girl, this is her story | Boing Boing — Come and listen to my story about a girl named Deb…
A Deepfake Porn Scandal Has Rocked Twitch — I feel like the words “scandal” and “rocked” are doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
AI Seinfeld was surreal fun until it called being trans an illness — It’s only “surreal fun” if you actually hate Seinfeld. And comedy.
Fox’s Super Bowl LVII ads won’t include any crypto companies — BREAKING: Super Bowl advertisers decide not to cater to sociopaths and stooges this year.
James Cameron did the experiment: Titanic’s Jack probably wouldn’t have survived
US school apologises for ‘inexcusably insensitive’ Black History Month lunch — I feel like that headline undersells what happened. That’s some pretty unambiguous shit.
Tinder adds an incognito mode and more safety features — Odd fact: I’ve never even installed the app and can’t remember what the swipes mean.
Put a name to the real artwork behind AI art with this algorithmically smart tool — The lawsuits are gonna start flying soon.
GoldenEye 007 marked a massive change in the course of game design — GoldenEye was unquestionably important… if showed that an FPS could be a viable game on a console. But I feel like Halo was a bigger shift… it showed that an FPS could be *better* on a console.
At Last, the Milky Way Gets a Better Close Up
HP’s Elite Dragonfly Chromebook Is Superb but Too Pricey — I know girls who drink their own pee for attention, but they don’t demonstrate one-tenth the self-hatred of someone who would pay $1,000+ for a fucking Chromebook.