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.

The Daily Dad

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

• Hot Wheels car designer Harry Bradley dead at 84 — Hot Wheels were —amusingly— a giant part of my childhood. I had several plastic storage cases full of them, one of which was molded to look like a Goodyear tire. My brother and I raced them down home-made courses because we used the official plastic strips of track to hit each other, I lingered over them in the toy aisle at Kmart like an art collector at a museum, and sat in my room making up elaborate stories for them akin to what girls were doing with Barbie. Only I never made my cars scissor with one another.
• ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’: Every Episode Ranked From Worst to Best — Any list that suggests there were 24 episodes of Buffy —an entire season!— worse than “Doublemeat Palace” was created by someone who is both sad and stupid. (Probably an AI.) I’m okay with someone preferring it to, say, “Beer Bad” or “Where The Wild Things Are”, but DP is a top five, all-time worst for the show.
• Jim Brown, all-time NFL great and social activist, dead at 87 — It seldom gets mentioned, but he was also an elite lacrosse player in college, a nationally competitive runner in track-and-field, and a decent basketball player… there was pretty much no sport Jim couldn’t have dominated if he’d cared to try.
• Can casual sex ever really be casual? — “Yes.” There, I’ve answered this piece’s insipid opening question.

• ‘The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed’ Review: Joanna Arnow’s Hilarious and Clever Debut
• The Smiley Face Killers Conspiracy Theory Died Down. Then Came TikTok — PROTIP: the more ephemeral the medium, the less seriously you should take it… TikTok has nothing to teach that you need to learn.
• How BDSM & paradoxes inspired director Zachary Wigon to make his new erotic thriller ‘Sanctuary’
• The Ephemeral Tattoo Studio provides tattoos that completely fade away after 1-3 years — I’m in favor of anything that makes a girl’s dumb decisions less permanent.

• Anna Nicole Smith’s Father ‘Tried to Have Sex’ with Her After Playmate Party, Friend Claims in Netflix Doc — Of course he did.
• I founded SNCTM, the world’s most exclusive sex club — it ruined my marriage — Of course it did.
• Illicit sex parties enjoyed by Silicon Valley’s finest at ‘warehouses’ — Of course they are.

The Daily Dad

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

• PSA: Death Stranding Is Free On PC Right Now — I find it maddening to actually play, but as an experience, DS is as fascinating and stupid as all Kojima games. Definitely worth downloading as a freebie.
• ‘Vanderpump Rules’ Stan Maren Morris Turned Tom Schwartz’s Blubbering Into a Country Song
• “Marvel Comics in the 1970s” is a new book about a wild and trippy creative era — I dunno… I feel like identifying every “wild and trippy creative era” in modern comics is as simple as tracking Jack Kirby’s place of employment.
• Human-evolution story rewritten by fresh data and more computing power

• It’s the End of The CW As We Know It, and We’re Not Fine — Voyager, Everybody Hates Chris, Buffy, Dawson, Roswell, Veronica Mars, Gilmore, Smallville, Charmed, Felicity, Popular… even if you ignore the last decade of Arrowverse shows, the death of UPN/WB/CW is one more nail in my youth’s coffin.
• OpenAI launches free ChatGPT app for iOS — This thing has needed a native iOS/iPadOS app from the beginning, and I’m delighted it has finally arrived.
• Dynamite & Disney announce DISNEY VILLAINS: HADES comic series
• ‘Futurama’ returns July 24th as a Hulu original after a 10-year hiatus — …and honestly, I don’t care. I know Futurama is beloved by many, but I’ve always found it little more than “faintly amusing.” But I’m in favor of anything that keeps Katey Sagal employed, so I hope it works.
• Google pushes .zip and .mov domains onto the Internet, and the Internet pushes back — Yeah, so… this does seem like a rather dumb idea.

• Watch the first trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon — The first Scorsese movie I’ve been eager to watch in at least seven or eight years.
• A pan that makes both a pancake and a waffle… at the same time

The Daily Dad

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

• Liz Phair to Play ‘Exile in Guyville’ in Its Entirety on New Tour — “And when I asked for a separate room/It was late at night and we’d been driving since noon/But if I’d known how that would sound to you/I would have stayed in your bed for the rest of my life/Just to prove I was right”
• Why is everyone so into rough sex right now? — Because they always were. They’re just talking about it now.
• Pest banned from talking about sex to women across England and Wales
• Loki season 2 hits Disney Plus this October — I’m tempted to say “and no one will care,” but nerdy girls need masturbation material too.
• Echo Season 1 Will Drop All at Once in November — Ah, how handy, I can say it after all… and no one will care.

• Did We Upset You Abel? The Weeknd Responds to Rolling Stone’s Expose on ‘The Idol’ — Dear Rolling Stone: if you think he’s actually upset by your coverage, you clearly don’t grasp just how appealing you’re making this show sound. You’ve turned it into a “can’t miss” for me.
• iPhones will be able to speak in your voice with 15 minutes of training
• ‘Just Do What I Say’: 10 Women Claim Comedian Chris D’Elia Preyed on Them — Targeting vanilla girls and just hoping they’ll play along is the surest sign that you’re made the transition from Mean Man to Misogynist Dickbag.
• We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies — Surveillance Culture is bigger than omnipresent security cameras and drones.
• PSA: time to recycle your old Wemo smart plugs (if you haven’t already)

• Martha Stewart STUNS in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover — Oh, it’s stunning, that’s for sure. (Like a 2×4 to the face.) I can only assume this is Martha’s revenge for Kathy Ireland getting her own housewares line 25 years ago.
• Google will start deleting inactive accounts after two years
• Drunk driving suspect switched seats with dog when pulled over — I feel like the audacity and cuteness of this move deserved some sort of reward.
• A high-schooler filmed her teacher using the n-word, then got suspended
• Indiana Jones: Disney Plus Release Announced for First Four Movies — Only one of which is actually worth watching. Yay.

The Daily Dad

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

• Frank Miller Wolverine variant cover ignites Twitter debate — It’s ugly. It’s not interesting. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a legitimate, thoughtful piece of art. That’s just where Miller’s head is at these days, for better or worse.
• Invisible creatures are having sex on your face — while you sleep — Your pores are literally cum dumpsters. Let that sink in.
• New study puts a definitive age on Saturn’s rings: They’re really young — Some day they’re going to run away from home, and then Saturn will really be sorry.
• The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse — Dash has always had lots of very confident opinions about matters he considered settled as soon as he developed an opinion. Which means he tends to be half-right about things, as he is here.
• 7 men, 1 depraved sex network: Unravelling the full story behind the wife-sharing drug rapes

• Justified returns July 18 but WHAT is going on with Raylan’s hat? — A studded hatband is Raylan Givens’ idea of exploring an alternative lifestyle.
• Twitter Fights Over Who’s Hotter: Young Al Pacino Or Young Robert DeNiro — Al’s worst looks were/are worse than Bobby’s, but when sufficiently cleaned up and styled, Pacino is better looking.
• Artist creates everyday objects out of Lego
• San Francisco women named Thor Kill sentenced to prison for possession of bomb-making supplies, ammunition — And now she just has to hope she doesn’t run into Zeus Rape at the correctional facility.
• The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed

• Archer’s superspy adventures are finally coming to an end after the series’ 14th season — I’m slightly sad, but mostly content. I more or less gave up on the show during Sterling’s coma, and while I’ve tried fighting my way through, it’s a struggle… they’ve never recovered the weird sincerity that once underpinned all the snark the show serves up.
• Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British accents?
• Double-screen ‘free’ TV will show you ads, even when not in use — Okay, so, the ONE thing I like here: the second screen keeping their ads off the content. (A handy way of avoiding lawsuits from content publishers.) Everything else about this whole idea is a surveillance nightmare that —sadly— might actually be successful.
• MTV News Confidential: Kurt Loder, Tabitha Soren, and John Norris Tell All
• Dedicated player builds Gundam in Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — I remember having the kind of time and focus it would take to come up with this shit. Barely. Wow.

• Kanye West files trademark for socks that are also shoes — Excuse me, Ye? I believe Mr. Bundy has a concept you’re going to love…
• ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is coming to Disney+ and Max on June 7th — Does this mean I have to re-watch the first one? Should I take it as an omen that I really don’t want to re-watch the first one?
• Woman busted with 1,500 grams of cocaine hiding behind her fake pregnancy belly
• Why Gen Z loves Seinfeld — …when did this happen? I approve, but given Millennial indifference to the show, I’m surprised.
• Cash App founder Bob Lee was part of an underground party scene of sex and drugs called ‘The Lifestyle’ prior to his death, report says — This just keeps getting wilder and wilder.