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.

The Daily Dad — Feb 23, 2024

Things you might want to know:

• Alan Cumming plays a character on Traitors, but season 2’s surprises snapped him back to reality
  ❝ “Do you mean you want it to be sort of like a James Bond villain?”
• Here are the full dimensions of the 2024 iPad Air and iPad Pro
  💭 A 12.9” iPad Air will be a very compelling device. I’d miss FaceID, and the iPad Pro’s Mini LED screen is frequently gorgeous, but other than that… a big-ass M3 Air with TouchID would be the sweet spot for a lot of people.
• Vice Media to halt publishing to namesake site, cut ‘several hundred’ jobs in restructuring | CBC News
  ❝ The head of Vice Media Group has informed employees that the company will stop publishing content on Vice.com and will be cutting several hundred positions.
• ‘Community’ Movie Script Is ‘Almost Done,’ Says Dan Harmon (EXCLUSIVE)
  ❝ Show creator and the film’s writer Dan Harmon confirmed to Variety that work on the “Community” film is “almost done.”
• Bluesky starts letting users host their own servers
  ❝ The decentralized social network is rolling out the initial phase of self-hosting, letting users host their own data and run their own servers on the AT Protocol.

• Scheana Shay Granted Sole Ownership of New Home With Husband Brock Davies
  ❝ Scheana Shay’s husband Brock Davies has agreed to grant Scheana with sole ownership of their new $2.5 million home.
• 90 Day Fiance’s Mary Clarifies Colon Cancer Claim: ‘I Made a Mistake’
  💭 Even accounting for the language barrier, this is a bizarre “mistake”. But given Mary’s history of panic attacks, I can actually see her hearing “your colon” and immediately jumping to a cancerous conclusion. And her idiot husband would buy whatever she said without asking for details. So I can believe the whole thing was the work of two nervous nitwits, not a couple grifters.
• A little US company makes history by landing on the Moon
  ❝ “We’re not dead yet.“
• ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Review: Ethan Coen’s Queer Crime Joyride
  ❝ It’s the first solo Coen film suffused with personality, thanks mostly to Margaret Qualley’s free-spirited queer horndog.
• Katy Perry’s ‘American Idol’ Exit: Son of 84-Year-Old Vet Says Pop Star Should Be ‘Run Out’ of Showbiz as Vicious Court Battle Rages on
  💭 It’s hard for me to give a shit when the 84-year old vet in question is a rich fucker whose kid is pissed that his drug-addled daddy sold a piece of his inheritance.

• Avengers: The Kang Dynasty Reportedly Getting a New Title – IGN
  💭 I have never understood why anyone liked Kang. The prize of my teenaged comic collection was Avengers #11 —I paid $10 for a tattered copy in 1981– which featured Kang as the villain, and I thought he was boring and pointless even at the height of my enthusiasm for such things. I get why Feige didn’t want to do Doom, Galactus, or Dark Phoenix at this point, especially when this whole phase has been devoted to establishing the norms of the multiverse. But still… Kang is a bad visual with zero gravitas.
• Apple’s iMessage Is Getting Post-Quantum Encryption
  ❝ Useful quantum computers aren’t a reality—yet. But in one of the biggest deployments of post-quantum encryption so far, Apple is bringing the technology to iMessage.
• Can I Tell You a Secret? review – this superb documentary perfectly evokes the horror of cyberstalking
  ❝ Detailed, personal, terrifying … this excellent two-parter follows a Guardian investigation into the recipient of the longest ever sentence for online stalking – by focusing on the victims
• Frozen embryos are “children,” according to Alabama’s Supreme Court
  💭 What I’ve learned from this: we’re all six to nine months older than we thought. And we’re going to have twenty-six year olds with baby teeth starting grade school. And Alabama is ruled by morons. (That last one isn’t a new observation.)
• Signal will soon let you share a username instead of your phone number
  ❝ Signal is rolling out a new feature that will let you create and share a username to connect with other users in the app instead of revealing your phone number.

• Another wall crumbles in the console exclusivity war: Sony is bringing official PSVR2 support to PC
  💭 This is very interesting. Meta needs competition, and Sony needs a reason to manufacture more headsets.
• Newly spotted black hole has mass of 17 billion Suns, adding another daily
  ❝ An accretion disk 7 light-years across powers an exceptionally bright galaxy.
• The top streamed shows are almost all old. Why?
  💭 For starters: twenty episode seasons. Continuity Lite. Old school filler scenes/episodes and the rhythms of dip-to-black breaks are actually as good for multitasking viewers as they were for pause-free households. And every single broadcast episode was an on-boarding opportunity, not a piece in a narrative puzzle.
• Babs Reunites Crossed Creators Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows – IGN
  ❝ Crossed creators Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows are reuniting for Babs, a new series that puts an irreverent spin on sword and sorcery comics like Conan and Red Sonja.
• Micheal Keaton Refused to Let ‘Beetlejuice 2’ Use Green Screens
  ❝ Michael Keaton said the only way to make ‘Beetlejuice 2’ was for it to be handmade and not rely on too much technology.

The Daily Dad — Feb 20, 2024

Things you might want to know:

• ‘Everything is hairless’: what 100 women taught me about porn and body confidence
  💭 I feel like anyone seriously researching porn’s influence on women’s self-image in the 2020s has to be old as fuck, ‘cause no one under fifty thinks that porn is having a meaningful impact on modern self-image in the era of Instagram. When it comes to generating insecurity, a bruised-up, bored porn slut being impaled by a sketchy cock has got nothin’ on a perfect size 0 lounging —toned and smooth— in an microscopic bikini next to an infinity pool overlooking Santorini while eating an improbable pizza.
• Legendary Publisher EC Comics Rises From the Grave – IGN
  ❝ Oni has become the official home of the EC Comics brand, via a partnership with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. The new line will be overseen by Oni Press President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson and Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn in partnership with Cathy Gaines Mifsud and Corey Mifsud, the administrators of William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.
• Reddit has a new AI training deal to sell user content
  💭 I just nuked a handful of my stories from Reddit. It probably won’t achieve much… they’ll probably let their scraping-buddy —coughOpenAIcough— go through the deleted content too. But it was a small price to pay for the chance to say “fuck you” to our imminent overlords.
• The Text File That Runs the Internet
  ❝ “For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart.”
• New FDA-approved drug makes severe food allergies less life-threatening
  💭 Before long I won’t be able to count on a peanut perimeter to protect me from a full-on snuggle assault… which we in the business call a ‘Blossom Blitz’.

• ‘Life Is Strange’ and ‘Life Is Strange: Before the Storm’ Have Been Updated for Modern iOS Device and OS Support
  💭 Okay, so Life Is Strange’s writing is hella whack, yo. And the expression-challenged character models tend to make it feel like a department store mannequin production of an off-off-Broadway play about loss, death, and Polaroids. But the “rewind” mechanic elevates the material, and I’m glad we’ve been playing it on the stream. If you want a mobile version of it, here ya go…
• New York archdiocese calls funeral for trans activist at cathedral ‘scandalous’
  ❝ Pastor of St Patrick’s Cathedral condemns service for Cecilia Gentili after she was celebrated as being ‘mother of all whores’
• After a decade and $1.2 billion, NASA reveals its booty from Bennu: 121 grams
  💭 It saddens me when stories like this —which should be presented as the exciting developments they are— lead with angerbait bullshit along the lines of ‘See how much they spent to get so little?! Here are some paragraphs explaining why this is actually cool, but we couldn’t get you to read without pissing you off first.’ Human beings do something amazing, and it ends up serving random economic grievances.
• Asgard’s Wrath 2 Review – IGN
  💭 I’m tempted to buy this for my Quest 2, but I haven’t gotten into a VR game since Half-Life: Alyx, and I’m not sure I want to spend 90 hours spinning in circles and trying not to fall into the TV.
• ChatGPT vs. Gemini: Which AI Chatbot Subscription Is Right for You?
  ❝ Everyone wants your $20 per month for access to their best AI chatbot. Who gets it depends on what features are important to you.

• OpenAI collapses media reality with Sora, a photorealistic AI video generator
  💭 I recently read a pretty convincing argument that the nature of this generation of generative AI is self-limiting… the nature of the models will lead to most machine-created media looking uncannily similar, and thus boring. It won’t look bad, but those who consume enough of it will start to spot the seams. Which is good… in the short term. Hopefully, society will have time to prepare itself for the seamless shit we’ll see in 2040.
• For Hundreds of Years, People Thought California Was an Island
  ❝ Dozens of maps show cartography’s most persistent mistake.
• How to get on ‘Survivor’: Behind the scenes of casting season 45
  ❝ How do you get on ‘Survivor’? Read the incredible stories and watch the audition videos of contestants that made in onto season 45.
• Nvidia CEO calls for “Sovereign AI” as his firm overtakes Amazon in market value
  💭 I’m not saying that there’s nothing to his argument. I’m just not sure that the dudes who stand to make billions —trillions?— from machine learning hardware are the right ones to be calling for what will essentially become a post-nuclear, multi-polar Cold War.
• Walmart might buy Vizio to win the fight over cheap TVs
  ❝ Walmart is in talks to buy Vizio for $2 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The deal could put Walmart in a position to compete with smart TVs from Roku and Amazon.

The Daily Dad — Feb 11, 2024

Things you might want to know:

• Is There Lead in Your Reusable Water Bottle?
  💭 I feel like “drank hourly from a lead-tainted tumbler” is going to be the origin story for the world’s worst super-villain. UltraKaren or some shit. She’ll have the power to sigh loudly in line at the coffee shop and then shamelessly take five minutes to negotiate the preparation of her own venti latte.
• WhatsApp Chats Will Soon Work With Other Encrypted Messaging Apps
  ❝ New EU rules mean WhatsApp and Messenger must be interoperable with other chat apps. Here’s how that will work.
• Should you flush with toilet lid up or down? Study says it doesn’t matter
  💭 A parallel study concludes that pointless clickbait is a waste of everyone’s time.
• Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Says She Won’t ‘Enshittify the Network With Ads’
  ❝ WIRED spoke with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber about the X competitor opening signups to all, how to crowdsource deepfake porn moderation, Jack Dorsey, and more.

• Wil Wheaton Rages at Larry David for Elmo Attack: “Appalling, Unforgivable, Despicable”
  💭 Oh for fuck’s sake, Mr. Wheaton. I loved Stand By Me. I skipped the first couple seasons of TNG so I have no anti-Wesley bias, and bear you no ill-Wil. But c’mon, dude… it’s a fucking muppet. My dad hated and screamed at me, too… but we’re adults now. Intentionally triggering yourself with stupid, entirely optional shit and then publicly freaking out about it is infantile. And as for the sanctity of beloved Elmo…? Have you considered how many dicks Elmo has jerked off after-hours in a locked bathroom on the set? Elmo has probably done The Artistocrats for private audiences. Elmo goes to work every day with a man’s hand up his ass. Settle down, bud.
• Merlin is a brilliant pig who communicates through “speech buttons,” and loves to dance and eat ice cubes
  ❝ Pigs are so very smart, and this one named Merlin is no exception. In this terrific video, Merlin, who lives in West Sacramento with his human, Mina Alali, demonstrates how he communicates through pushing…
• Ars Technica used in malware campaign with never-before-seen obfuscation
  ❝ Vimeo also used by legitimate user who posted booby-trapped content.
• Polyamory Has Entered the Chat
  ❝ Mainstream awareness of polyamorous relationships is becoming more widespread. On dating apps, making connections is about more than sex.

• TikTok is full of tryhard slang
  💭 When people with sex blogs do it, they’re called “neolojisms”.
• Bluesky Social Network Ditches Invite Codes, Opens Registrations to All
  ❝ Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform conceptualized by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has now opened registration for everyone. On…
• Plex Launches Movie Rental Store
  ❝ Media platform Plex today announced the launch of a dedicated movie rental store, allowing U.S. Plex users to purchase content directly from Plex…
• feeeed: Embracing Feed Diversity and Personal News Curation
  💭 I don’t think it’s for me, but feeeed is interesting… it’s essentially a news and social media bucket for your life, collecting everything from dozens of sources and presenting them via an algorithm tuned for the end-user and not advertisers.
• Apple Updates Its Collection of Windows Apps
  ❝ Today, Apple introduced a redesigned version of its iCloud for Windows app. The updated app, which allows users to access photos, files, passwords, and other content on a Windows PC, has clarified how it works and where synced content can be found. The app also adds physical password keys and other refinements. I don’t spend

• Why Everyone Can’t Stop Talking About Palworld
  ❝ Palworld is the first video game blockbuster of 2024—but it’s not what it seems.
• Landline Phone Owners Are Protesting AT&T’s Plans to Drop Service
  ❝ In California, AT&T is designated as the Carrier of Last Resort. The fight is on to keep it that way.
• Disney invests $1.5 billion in Epic to create ‘persistent universe’ tied to Fortnite
  💭 When Epic rebooted a flailing Fortnite —ripping off PUBG in the process— I decided to give it a try… it’s such a mishmash of mechanics, I figured there had to be something in there for me to enjoy. I was wrong. Bleh.
• The Best Vibrators to Get Your Groove on
  ❝ Gender? I don’t even know her! No matter what you’ve got, these tools promise good vibes for all.

• Apple Vision Pro Users Are Mad They Can’t Watch 3D Porn
  ❝ Sorry, horny weirdos. You’ll have to find another way to get off.
• A Designer Dog-Maker Regrets His Creation
  ❝ The inventor of the Labradoodle believes he created a Frankenstein.
• Deepfake scammer walks off with $25 million in first-of-its-kind AI heist
  ❝ Hong Kong firm reportedly tricked by simulation of multiple people in video chat.

• Carl Weathers, Rocky, Predator and The Mandalorian star, dies aged 76
  ❝ Actor played Apollo Creed in the Rocky film franchise
• Microsoft may bring Bethesda’s Starfield and Indiana Jones games to the PS5 after all
  💭 After the massive, long-term strategy leak last year, it’s entirely possible that Microsoft is ready to just throw up its collective hands, pull a Sega, and exit the hardware business entirely.
• Apple made an AI image tool that lets you make edits by describing them
  ❝ The model, called MGIE, lets users type out their edits to photos. MGIE is open source and available for download on GitHub.

The Daily Dad — Feb 1, 2024

Things you might want to know:

• •Norman Jewison, Oscar-nominated director of ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ dead at 97
  💭 To me, he was the “director of Jesus Christ Superstar and Moonstruck”. Fare thee well, old man.
• DC’s new Supergirl is House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock
  ❝ Milly Alcock will play Supergirl in the new DC Universe, alongside David Corenswet’s Man of Steel and other heroes.
• Syphilis cases soar to highest level in 70 years — staggering 207,000 syphilis cases reported in US in 2022 — 80% increase since 2018
  💭 What the flippin’ furry fuck are you horny weirdos doing out there? What bubbling cauldrons of genital-shriveling disease are you embracing? And what’s next? Macramé vests, AMC Gremlins, and 8-tracks? I mean, clearly, you desperate little shits are aiming to bring back all the worst aspects of the ‘70s…
• Even princesses of Hell fail sometimes, as shown in this exclusive clip from Prime Video and A24’s Hazbin Hotel
  ❝ The princess of Hell has a breakdown in this exclusive clip from A24’s Hazbin Hotel

• Disney aims to revamp Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with help from Dolly Parton)
  💭 It’s a nothingburger of a story, and amounts to glorified Dolly Parton clickbait. But just to be clear: where there is no Joss Whedon, there should be no Buffy. If we’ve decided we no longer wish to hear from Joss —and “I” among “we” have not— then we should no longer have Buffy. I don’t want to see Jay & Silent Bob written by Tina Fey, either. Or Legally Blonde directed by Wes Anderson. (Okay, technically, I’d love to see those things. But only in trailer form.)
• Arc Search Review: My New Default iPhone Browser
  ❝ Every once in a while, I come across a new app whose design, feature set, or combination of the two redefines my expectations for a particular category of software. The new Arc Search app for iPhone, which is launching today on the App Store as a separate app from The Browser Company’s previous Arc Companion
• Pokimane’s main reason for leaving Twitch: ‘So much manosphere, red pill bullshit’
  💭 I’m wondering if this was the inevitable result of the internet creating thousands upon thousands of micro-celebrities? I mean, what if the only reason this “manosphere” bullshit caught on is that thousands of men were suddenly vying against thousands of women for views, and the women had boobs on their side? Brazen macro-misogyny probably looks like a viable weapon when all you’re packing otherwise is a micro-penis and a backward baseball cap.
• Florence Pugh: Camera Broke During ‘Oppenheimer’ Sex Scene
  ❝ The actress joked that the malfunction was “bad news for whoever had to give [Christopher Nolan] the news.”

• Amy Hart reveals trolls dubbed her the ‘fat one’ on Love Island as she shares throwback bikini snaps
  💭 Amy darling, first, I’m glad your life is going so well. Good for you. Second, you were never, ever “the fat one”. That was Anna. You were “the crazy-eyed desperate one”. But dysmorphia gonna morph, I suppose.
• Meet the sexy Egyptology scholars who dress like Indiana Jones characters
  💭 I’ve only read the first few paragraphs. But I looked at the pictures. Good grief.
• Apple Introduces Transcripts for Podcasts
  ❝ I switch to Apple system apps every summer to test the latest versions of the company’s OSes. I usually return to my favorite third-party apps over time, but Apple Podcasts has been an outlier since last summer for various reasons. The app has come a long way in recent years…
• Award-winning lesbian realtor, 50, is jailed for tricking 90 year-old man with dementia into thinking they were lovers
  💭 Congratulations to whomever wrote that title. I don’t think you could make it more sensational without including a reference to “Satanic terrorist strap-ons” or something.