The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Jun 6, 2023:

• Apple Vision Pro Hands On: The Opposite of Disappearing — Roughly half the shitty hot takes on this are on the level of the “iPad? What a horrible name! And it’s a big iPhone!” crap we heard in 2010. The less stupid ones are fixated on very real limitations —that battery pack— and the risky choices —EyeSight— while ignoring that Apple has finally produced Good Enough VR. It’s nowhere near Cheap Enough, mind you, but there’s now a solid foundation upon which to build. It’s a giant leap over everything else out there.
• Can We Please Stop Designing Sex Scenes Purely for Shock Value? — Can We Please Stop Promoting The Idea That Scary, Gross, Violent Sex Is A Guy Thing When It So Clearly Isn’t?
• Barbie movie caused global pink paint shortage
• New iPhone feature warns about unwanted nudes — Otherwise known as the Draw My Attention To This Photo Right Now feature.
• Inside 4chan’s Top-Secret Moderation Machine

• Danny Bonaduce Selling Home in Wake of Brain Surgery, Health Scare — Oof. Good luck, Danny.
• Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests — I never liked Apollo, but that’s the craziest API monetization scheme I’ve ever seen, Reddit.
• Apple MacBook Air 15-inch preview: Portable power — I want.
• Where Do Desires for BDSM Come From? — Well sometimes, when Mommies have been very bad, and Daddies need to punish them until they beg for relief, they can get a little too excited, the condom can break, and they end up having accursed children.

• Meg White on The White Stripes, Fame, and Anxiety
• WWDC 2023: Vision Pro, iOS 17 and everything else Apple announced today — Lots of little goodies coming, but no giant changes. Which is probably for the best. (Word on the beta is that Stage Manager on the iPad is already much improved.)
• Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 as a Time Machine — I listed to American Top 40 religiously. Dr. Demento, too. This is some cool stuff.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger Apologizes for Groping Women in Netflix Docuseries

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Jun 5, 2023:

• Billy Joel Announces End of Monthly Madison Square Garden Residency — I always kinda hoped I’d get to see him there someday. This is what happens when you drag your feet, kids.
• ‘I’m not used to seeing sex that kinky’: Is The Idol the most shocking TV of the year? — I don’t know who’s ultimately responsible for how brilliantly this show has been promoted, but they’re getting a corner office before too long. I’m sure it’ll end up being fairly tame, but I’ll be ready for the first ep to drop all the same.
• Idle rich baffled by poor people’s distaste for dangerous, low-paying jobs
• From pole to canvas: Exploring BDSM through dance and art
• Google’s Android and Chrome extensions are a very sad place. Here’s why — This isn’t why I use neither Android nor Chrome… but it doesn’t help.

• Vita Radium Suppositories (ca.1930) — Before Viagra, there were radioactive buttplugs.
• I’m a ‘mommy’ dominatrix — CEOs pay me to humiliate them with my hijab on
• The rise of rough sex in the time of sexual recession: ‘I want to be manhandled without being judged for it’ — Wait until she figures out that it’s even better when he manhandles you and judges you for it.
• Intimacy Coordinator Shows What It’s Like To Choreograph Sex Scenes — Do I think the whole “intimacy coordinator” thing is important for every film? Not necessarily. But if you’ve got a production big enough to need a stunt coordinator and a second unit director, then you’re big enough to need a specialist in charge of bumpin’ uglies.
• Gurman: Apple May Announce Drop of ‘Hey Siri’ Trigger Phrase at WWDC — I am very skeptical of this. I’d love to be wrong… I hope they’ve figured out how to dramatically reduce the number of erroneous invocations, to such a degree that dropping the “hey” is viable. But I’m not getting my hopes up.

• Trippy TV returns with The Sid & Marty Krofft Channel — I was a Land of the Lost kid. “Marshall, Will, and Holly, on a routine expedition…”
• Criminal Charges and Consensual Kink — Some well-intentioned thinking. Kind of out of step with how real people live real human lives, but still… interesting.
• Book-ban advocates gnash teeth over Utah school Bible removal — I don’t want to generalize, but book-ban advocates of all stripes can go fuck themselves.
• Digital finances were a boon for the legal adult industry. Now, they’re shutting out sex workers. — PayPal shut me down in 2002 for “providing adult services”. I have successfully held a grudge for twenty years now.
• Russian spy beluga trying to come in from the cold — Spongy-headed, boop-nosed death machines.

• Let’s Get what now? Original version of badly-aged Black Eyed Peas song a viral hit despite “censorship”
• Mutation causes woman to live virtually pain, fear and anxiety-free, with ability to heal rapidly

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Jun 4, 2023:

• How The Expanse: A Telltale Series Aims to Tell Their Small Story in a Large Universe — I’m eager to get my hands on this… it’ll be a Day One purchase.
• The Best Audio Porn Apps and Sites For Your Next Solo Session
• Motorola makes its 4th-gen foldable, the Moto Razr+, official — I watched a full review of this thing, and it’s indeed a neat little device. Conceptually, I’m all in favor of foldable phones. But nothing that expensive should feel even slightly compromised.
• The Explosive Legacy of the Pandemic Hand Sanitizer Boom

• Meta beats Apple to the mixed-reality punch with $499 Quest 3 coming this fall — I’m going to need to see a lot more game footage before I get enthused about this. But if the leap from Quest 2 to 3 is big enough, this could be a big deal.
• The 7th Guest VR remake uses ‘volumetric video’ for 3D FMV scenes — I played the first hour or so of the original 7th Guest on CD, and as a result I’m not even slightly excited at the thought of returning to it today… but I will admit, they’ve done some nice work here.
• VR Assassin’s Creed, Stranger Things and Ghostbusters arrive on Meta Quest later this year
• ‘Asgard’s Wrath 2’ is Meta’s most ambitious VR game to date — I played an hour or two of the original Asgard’s Wrath, and my opinion was divided. There were moments where it created those feelings you only get from VR —a game’s sense of scale is completely different when you’re in it. But after I explored a while, it became clear it was less “a VR-first Skyrim” and more “a VR-first, SNES-era Zelda game”. I hope they’ve dramatically expanded it for the sequel.

• Amazon and Walmart are taking a rare $20 off of a set of four AirTags
• No Man’s Sky just launched on Mac with cross-play support — I’m curious to see how it performs on an M1… it was solid on a 2080 Super a few years ago.
• Meta’s Popular Quest 2 VR Headset Pricing Is A Roller-Coaster — Back down to $299, where it comfortably sat a few years ago.
• VW ID Buzz debuts three-row electric Microbus for the US with more power and space — My family briefly had an original bus back in the mid-‘70s, and it was one of my favorite vehicles. As a kid who wanted to disappear into the back of any car and spend the entire drive reading, all those rows of seats were awesome.

• Hit cat game ‘Stray’ is coming to Macs — I may actually give this a try now, ‘cause I love the look and the idea of it.
• VR Helped Me Visualize Gender Dysphoria

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Jun 2, 2023:

• Tina Turner Is the 10th Singer From ‘We Are the World’ All-Star Charity Single to Die — I’m worried about you, Billy Joel and John Oates.
• The arguments against washing your clothes — I’ll help you out here: there aren’t any. Wash your shit, you hipster greaseball.
• Fighting Fascism in America — It’s the project of generations.
• Copenhagen’s Circle Bridge
• Former first lady Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia, Carter Center announces — Aw. I really liked the Carters… I was too young to comprehend Watergate, so the election of ‘76 was the first big political moment of my life.

• David Lynch interview: ‘Even in the so-called dark things, there’s beauty’ — Amen, brother.
• Slacker, the picture perfect image of an Austin which no longer exists. — There are tiny bits and pieces of old Austin left, but just bits and pieces… it’s mostly gourmet pizzas, alternative clothing boutiques, and Tesla dealerships now.
• Visit Oatman, Arizona to see wild burros wandering about town
• Sex Workers Are Still Hot for Twitter Spaces — By all means, folks, use Musk for all he’s worth. But don’t depend on him. Ever.
• Hopeless Romantic, Seeking Treatment

• The 15 Most Expensive Lego Sets You Can Buy Now
• The Night Gwen Stacy Died, and Other Essential Marvel Moments — I remember Gwen Stacey’s death really freaking me out when I was little. I wasn’t particularly attached to her, but it was my introduction to the idea of inevitable death… that even with great power and great responsibility, some people just can’t be saved.
• Hirotaka Hamasaki arranges leaves into favorite cartoon characters — Some lovely stuff there.
• The forbidden 1970s cereal: Mr. Wonderfull’s Surprize — Being a kid in the ‘70s was awesome… companies were making cakes and candy bars and selling them to your mom as “part of a nutritious breakfast”.

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Jun 1, 2023:

• Madison Beer Tuned Out the Noise to Make Her Album ‘Silence Between Songs’
• The Best Sex Blankets in 2023, Tested by Sex Experts — I… did not know “sex blanket” was a thing.
• You can watch the entire first season of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ for free on YouTube — Good stuff. The casting for this show is above average, and their version of Spock is even growing on me, so watch it while its free.
• Be Your Own Pet Reclaim Their Dominance in ‘Worship the Whip’ Video
• Silent Hill: Ascension’s new trailer teases some very on-brand fleshy monsters — I’ve read the article and still don’t know what this is… I feel like I’ve been slapped with a dick made out of corporatespeak.

• Peacock Premium Deal: Get a 1-Year Subscription for $20 — Peacock isn’t even as good a streaming service as Paramount+, let alone Netflix or Max. But at $20/year, it could be worth considering.
• AI-expanded album cover artworks go viral thanks to Photoshop’s Generative Fill — Generative Fill is the biggest leap forward for Photoshop since layers. And outside of whatever entity owns Corel these days, who else owns an app and a giant stock photo library that can be used to train an AI in a legally viable way?
• Danny Masterson Guilty Of Rape On Two Counts, Jury Decides; Facing 30 Years In Prison, Actor Taken Into Custody — I’m pretty surprised… but kind of not, too.
• Timothy Olyphant Returns as Raylan Givens in ‘Justified: City Primeval’ Trailer — The trailer isn’t particularly exciting, but I’m not gonna hold that against Raylan.

• The farm sim series that started it all just teased two new games and one is multiplayer — Harvest Moon on the PS1 was a lot of fun… in fact, the first time I tried Animal Crossing on the N64, I was mentally comparing it to HM. But I have no idea how the series has evolved over the last couple decades.
• AI Deepfakes of True Crime Victims Are a Waking Nightmare — Yeah, here it comes. The weird stuff is gonna start happening all at once.
• Hardcore review – a BDSM paradise that leaves you yearning to join in
• ‘Lost’ Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous Culture — I bailed on Lost not long after they found the bunker, so I’m not attached to it at all. But what stood out was Harold Perrineau talking about how he and Daniel Dae Kim were frequently banished to go “do a few scenes on another beach” while the real story continued undeterred.
• The Z Word

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for May 27, 2023:

• The Nakedest Naked Dresses at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival — ‘Cause naked-ish.
• Quentin Tarantino Reveals New Details About the Subject of His Next Movie — I have no idea how he’s going to dig into it, but I’m now cautiously enthused about Q’s next/final project.
• Study narrows long COVID’s 200+ symptoms to core list of 12 — The first item on the list is a bit vague. I know a number of people who didn’t lose their sense of smell… their sense of smell just changed. Dramatically. In horrible, unpleasant ways. They’d all be much happier if they’d actually lost the sense entirely.
• Want to try Wegovy or Ozempic? Get ready to fight with your health insurer.
• Kansas’ news anti-Trans “bathroom ban” turned on cis woman and disabled son at Wichita Public Library — I’d say something mocking about unintended consequences, but honestly, any outcome that includes some uppity Other being put in its place is desireable to these cruel and witless fucks. Disabled, dark, or ambiguously sexed… doesn’t matter, as long as they know they’re less.

• Fallout: New Vegas is currently free to keep on the Epic Games Store — It’s old and it looks it, but it was an amazing game once, and it’s free.
• The year’s scariest horror film is The Zone of Interest
• ‘Survivor’ Superfan Sia Gives $130,000 to Her Favorite Contestants — She is one of the most serious fangirls I’ve ever seen… it’s remarkable.
• MoviePass relaunches nationwide with a new pricing model — Having now seen how it works with my local cinemas, I’ve got to, uh… pass. Unless I’m willing to watch movies in the early afternoon —and even then, only after they’ve been in theaters for a few weeks— then it’s only marginally different than buying a ticket directly from the establishment.

• The Brady Bunch house is for sale — It’s a 1970s nightmare, but a part of me would love to have it. Or maybe just walk through it once.
• Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Over Underage Nude Scene in 1968 Film ‘Romeo and Juliet’
• Building a Scale Model of Time — A pretty impressive day’s work, and an interesting video. I’ve seen better visualizations, but this one might resonate with someone.
• About Our Ratings — Rolling Stone has apparently decided to do away with star ratings on albums. It’s made out to be a move to respect the taste and intelligence of the audience, but it’s more likely they’re seeing external and internal pressure to re-rate old albums, and decided chucking the whole idea was easier.
• People in Old Testament Jerusalem suffered from widespread dysentery, study finds

• Barbie trailer finds Margot Robbie dancing, singing, and having an existential crisis — Are you kidding? You had this kind of footage in the can, ready for promotion, and you gave us those weak-ass teasers? This is a Barbie movie I’ll happily watch… it looks fucking delightful.

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for May 25, 2023:

• Comedy superstars perform “Hans & Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma”: The Podcast — I’m going to watch this, because it’s either going to be very funny, or so awful that it amuses me.
• More and more Americans are skipping medical care due to money woes — This isn’t a surprise. Duh.
• Halo and Destiny developer Bungie reboots classic FPS franchise Marathon — Bungie hasn’t done anything I enjoyed since Halo 3, so this doesn’t mean much to me. But the old school Mac people are pissed… Marathon was a Mac-first game, but the new version doesn’t even have a Mac version on the roadmap.
• The perfect gift for Father’s Day? A $199 sex toy, according to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop — Silly Gwyneth. A girl’s tongue is free.
• An Android app started secretly recording users almost a year after it was listed on Google Play — Apple is better at policing this stuff, but they’re still imperfect… as a rule, you shouldn’t install anything on your phone that you’re not going to use regularly. If you need some free piece of crap for a specific purpose, just install it, use it, and uninstall.

• American Born Chinese is very different from the book, and that’s great
• Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti and AMD’s RX 7600 highlight one thing: Intel’s $200 Arc A750 GPU is the best budget GPU by far — It’s been a long time since anyone recommended a $200 card for anything, so Intel is clearly on to something. Now let’s see if they can keep it up.
• Bill Lee, Jazz Bassist and Father of Spike Lee, Dead at 94
• All Hail the Side Chick, the Unsung Hero Finally Getting Her Due — You’re an afterthought to him, baby, but Twitter cares about you.
• No One Captured Beatlemania Like Paul McCartney

• Assassin’s Creed Mirage gameplay trailer delivers pole vaulting, finger-blades, and an October release date — Despite their objective beauty, I haven’t liked the settings of any of the recent AC games… but this one could be interesting.
• Paralyzed 40-year-old man walks again after doctors gave him brain and spine implants
• Georgia GOP Chair Goes Full Flat-Earth, Says Globes Are Part of a Conspiracy — Sweet fucking fuck. It’s not that this bitch is too stupid to be in a political leadership position… she’s too stupid to be allowed near sharp objects or dull children.
• How NASA plans to melt the Moon—and build on Mars
• Windows 11 is getting a force quit option to close apps without the Task Manager — Yet another “that took long enough” moment.

• Witcher Showrunner Says Show Could’ve Ended or Moved on Without Geralt After Henry Cavill Departure — “We’re all excited about Liam coming in…” You, madam, are a stone-cold liar. The only way anyone will be in any way excited about Liam Hemsworth is if Miley snaps, hunts him like an animal, and then cooks him over a spit during a Backyard Session.
• If you’re not using ChatGPT for your writing, you’re probably making a mistake — If your writing is mind-numbingly corporate or academic, they’re probably right.
• ‘The Talos Principle 2’ brings mind-bending puzzles to a new generation — The original was a pleasant distraction as a “pancake game”, and a bit more engaging in VR. I’m not anxious for more, but who knows…?
• DeSantis’s Twitter campaign launch suffers rapid unscheduled disassembly — RUD is officially the only thing Elon has given the world that I actually appreciate.

The Daily Dad

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

• Wonder Woman’s Earliest Comic Book Appearances Were a Problematic Fever Dream — Yes, Wonder Woman was created by a polyamorous kinkster who originally conceived her as a way of talking about the superiority of femdom relationships and woman-led societies… there’s nothing new in the linked article —and the piece actually feels like ChatGPT wrote it— but it hits the high points and collects some fun panels from the ‘40s comics.
• The Little Mermaid Review — I have a simple question for the production team behind this movie: if James Wan’s five year old underwater scenes in Aquaman could be eye-popping spectacles, why the fuck can’t yours? This movie deserves to be exploding with color, but it looks as drab as hell.
• Dream bigger: Get started with Generative Fill, powered by Adobe Firefly Generative AI now in Photoshop | Adobe Blog — Adobe’s work here is technically excellent, and legally brilliant… they trained their AI on their licensed stock photo library, so the images created by Firefly are immune to court challenges, unlike everything you’ve seen come out of Stable Diffusion and its ilk.
• Netflix crackdown on account sharing hits US with $8 fee for each extra user — Just so ya know, your parents are about to kick you off the family account.

• Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet — There’s been a lot of hand-wringing in the press lately over the supposed self-righteous self-neutering of Gen Z, but I call bullshit. First, ‘cause I’ve got plenty of personal evidence suggesting that Z is as kinky as any other generation. Second, because we all need to stop letting the worst people in every room suck all the oxygen from it… left-leaning, sex-repulsed cryptofemcels don’t represent their generation any more than right-skewing, empathy-deficient members of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. Here’s an idea: maybe Gen Z wants all the same wild, weird fucking that people have always wanted, but they think it might be cool if a little more thought went into it now and then? Maybe they’re kids, and are still figuring their shit out? Maybe the rest of us should ease up and stop panicking every time they fumble around a bit? Just a thought.
• Woman with untreated TB still on the lam three months after arrest warrant — This bitch is still roaming loose?
• After 40 years, Marvel is finally reprinting Rom: Space Knight — I had that #1, once upon a time. But I don’t remember it nearly as fondly as many of my contemporaries do.

• The Biggest Changes Coming to D&D’s Core Rulebooks Overhaul — Most of this seems —through the eyes of someone who hasn’t touched D&D in 40 years— like a series of solid, long-overdue updates.
• Windows 11 finally gets native RAR support — ‘Bout time. Sheesh.
• Star Trek Resurgence Review — I didn’t even know this was in the pipeline, and it looks pretty intriguing.

The Daily Dad

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

• Paramount Plus will raise its prices next month — At least you’re getting something extra to go with the price hike… with Showtime’s content catalog folding into Paramount+, all three seasons of Twin Peaks should be accessible at a better price than before.
• What is the function of these mysterious ancient Roman dodecahedrons? — If all else fails, assume it’s a freaky sex toy. You’ll probably be wrong, but it’s always a safe bet, assuming the Romans were doing something weird.
• Hands on with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad — TL;DR: Logic is solid, Final Cut is a mess.
• $270, 2,561-piece Lego Pac-Man arcade cabinet will eat ghosts, disposable income
• Ivory for Mac Review: Tapbots’ Superb Mastodon Client Comes to Apple Desktops and Laptops — I haven’t tried the macOS version yet, but Ivory on iOS/iPadOS is a solid Mastodon client.

• What’s the Deal With Adulthood? 25 Years Later, ‘Seinfeld’ Feels Revelatory. — I’m still shocked to find out the Gen Z has embraced Seinfeld after watching Millennials snub it in favor of Friends. Gratified, mind you… but shocked.
• Max will stream over 1,000 movies and TV episodes in 4K at launch — This could end up saving me money, too… if the bulk of Discovery’s in-house programming moves over, I can cancel Discovery+.
• NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) review: Better 1080p ray tracing for $399 — How quickly we become spoiled… a year or two ago, no one could actually get their hands on a decent video card, and now we’re a little bummed when year-over-year speed increases and downward price pressure are minimal.
• YouTuber Ordered to Read His Defamation Sentence Every Week on Camera
• Everyone should use Personal Voice; it does in 15 minutes what currently takes several weeks — When it launches with iOS 17, yes, do it. You never know.

• Alec Guinness’s well-paid half day of work on “The Empire Strikes Back”
• The Color Purple’s first trailer promises a powerful reimagining of the original film — I’m attached to the Spielberg version, but Fantasia alone is reason enough for me to watch this.
• Hypersensitive robot hand is eerily human in how it can feel things
• Did Scientists Accidentally Invent an Anti-addiction Drug? — Most useful scientific developments have been the result of an observant and rigorous person stumbling over a pattern no one else saw.
• A Brief History of the Concept Album — There’s nothing “brief” about Blue Oyster Cult’s Imaginos.

• Kurt Cobain: Guitar smashed by Nirvana frontman sells for nearly $600,000
• The fascinating reason why yellow dominates TV graphics — Because other colors are little bitches who aren’t good enough to lick yellow’s feet, that’s why.
• A Club for the Cancelled — “Damn it, someone tell me I’m special,” said a bunch of assholes at a party.
• TikTok star pretends to have sex with his ‘sister’ at furniture store — Better than pretending to have sex with the furniture at his sister’s house.