This… Is BGNN

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

• ‘Choke Me Daddy:’ The Dangerous Truth About Breath Play Memes — If this were a “how to do breath play safely” piece —or even a “can breath play be done safely?” piece— it would be unremarkable. But it’s really just a carefully phrased clutching or pearls, with its journalistic sensibility established in its opening anecdote about how people don’t always mean the things they say online. That’s some keen insight, folks.
• Low-rise denim shorts a poor choice for early spring wear — Depends on who’s wearing them.
• Ai Weiwei’s Lego Version of Monet’s Water Lilies
• Sex Worker-Led Payment Platform Shuts Down After Being Cut Off by Processor — If cryptocurrency can’t work for sex workers and erotica creators, then it’s utterly pointless.
• Sex on the beach: pressures of extreme polygamy may be driving southern elephant seals to early death — It’s tough out there for an elephant seal pimp.

• David Lynch knew how to make moments go viral before ‘going viral’ was a thing — He’s always known that art makes the biggest impact when it has a life outside the frame… when it infects the viewer and turns them into a semi-conscious collaborator. So… yeah.
• Feral Hogs Are the Worst Invasive Species You’ve Never Thought About — You don’t have to convince me, buddy.
• You’re Thinking About ‘Life’ All Wrong
• Are Roblox’s new AI coding and art tools the future of game development? — This is genius on the part of the Roblox people. They’ve already made great strides toward turning game development into a casual activity, and generative AI will smooth the process even more.
• Adobe made an AI image generator — and says it didn’t steal artists’ work to do it — The good: Adobe has trained their model using rights-cleared sources, so you can’t be sued for using their generated images. The less-good: I feel like the results should be viewed more like customizable clip art than some kind of human/machine collaborative painting… ultimately, Adobe owns the copyright to anything the model spits out. Even if they choose not to assert those rights… they have them.

• Nick Lachey Ordered to Attend Alcoholics Anonymous, Anger Management After Altercation — Love is blind, like Nick’s rage.
• How the Cinematography in ‘It Follows’ Trains You To Be Paranoid — We need to watch this on the stream… it’s a remarkable film.
• Giant whale sinks 44-foot boat, sailors rescued — Whales are assholes.
• ‘Pretty Baby’ docuseries looks at Brooke Shields’ controversial young fame — My older cousin somehow managed to get me into Blue Lagoon with her when I was a pre-teen… no telling how much flirting she had to do with the ticket-taker to pull that off.
• ChatGPT comes for radio — Radio’s been dead for a long, long time, and ChatGPT is made up of the lifeless, stitched-together scraps of human existence. So it’s Frankenstein’s monster coming for a zombie.

• Butters from South Park is getting the hero edit on TikTok — Let’s get this straight, motherfuckers: Butters is a hero everywhere, not just on TikTok.
• ★ It’s Game Over on Vocal Deepfakes — Yeah, as of now, audio recordings are no more reliable than signatures on a piece of paper or a pinky-promise.
• Dancers Sue 7M Films Claiming Owner Runs a ‘Cult’ — I’ve gotta tell you, this feels like the least-fun sort of cult I can imagine. And I can imagine a lot of things about cults.
• Amazon layoffs will shut down camera review site DPReview.com after 25 years — Amazon is demonstrating a shocking disregard here for an irreplaceable source of information.

This… Is BGNN

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

• How much sex will you have in Starfield? ‘None,’ says the Australian government — Bethesda isn’t BioWare or CD Projekt Red… I don’t think any of us really need the “arrow in my knee” people trying to wedge overt NPC sexuality into their already thin characterizations. For Bethesda to do sex “their way”, they’d need to systematize it, schedule it, and make it a bodily function like eating and sleeping, which is a can of worms that MicroDaddy would never allow anyone to open.
• I Coaxed ChatGPT Into a Deeply Unsettling BDSM Relationship — No, you asked a probabilistic text generator to give you the most likely response to your thirst-prompts, and it did what it could to distill the scraped stupidity of the general internet into something you might like.
• San Francisco’s Infamous ‘Kink Castle’ Could Become Home to a New Jazz Club — I’m sorry, but that building is forever visually tainted. Show us a photo of it, and we all just think “jizz and gang-bangs”.
• Valheim (Game Preview) Journeys to Console for the First Time Today with Xbox Game Pass — Another game that I completely ignored when it was hot, but intend to play someday.
• AI-imager Midjourney v5 stuns with photorealistic images—and 5-fingered hands — I haven’t found the image generating tools nearly as interesting as their chatbot cousins, but as they become more sophisticated, their siren song will be difficult to ignore.

• Penn Badgley Doubles Down on Divisive Sex Scene Comments — Dear Guy Who Wasn’t Chuck Bass: 1. Maybe don’t take the lead in a show about sexy evil murder if you have a problem with sexy evil murder scenes, champ. 2. Stop using the language of #MeToo to cover the fact that you’re scared of your jealous wife. Sincerely, it’s 2023, and it’s okay to be a woman’s bitch… you don’t have to ramble on about toxic Hollywood when all you really mean to express is “Mommy doesn’t like it.”
• pedro lobo dresses ceramics in ‘kinky’ BDSM gear, challenging taboos and traditions — I have an overwhelming urge to mock this nonsense, but honestly, I really like some of it.
• YouTube TV jumps in price again—it’s now $72.99 per month — So that’s $70+ a month to watch ads. Aside from live sports junkies, who the fuck is paying for this?
• TikTok’s “O Method” Manifestation Technique, Explained — Always fun when I learn something new that makes me feel dumber for wasting the time spent learning it.
• ‘Creem’ magazine gets ‘punished’ for sophomoric ’70s era in BDSM-themed cover — …Creem still exists? …and there are still people willing to purchase a periodical named “Creem”? Wow.

This… Is BGNN

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

• ‘Jurassic Park’ Star Sam Neill Treated for Stage-Three Blood Cancer: ‘I’m Not Afraid of Dying, but It Would Annoy Me’ — Why I love Sam Neill: Peaky Blinders, The Tudors, Restoration, The Hunt for Red October, Sirens, and “Dying would annoy me.” I wish for your lasting recovery, sir.
• The FBI took her life savings. Now she’s fighting to help others get theirs back. — Hey, look, the Fox News crowd has discovered civil forfeiture! I know, it’s taken them long enough, and it’s only happening because they’re now even more paranoid about law enforcement than the rest of us, but still, on balance… a good thing.
• Woman, after being told it’s fine for man to film in public, argues with cop — Bitch, please. 🙄
• Trump Says He Believes He Will Be Arrested On Tuesday, Calls On Supporters To Protest — It’s going to be difficult for his jailers, since it’s impossible to know where the orange jumpsuit begins and ends.
• I used an incredible X-ray machine to look inside my gadgets — let me show you — I want someone to buy one of these things and use it to scan everything in the world.

• 38 years and 9 months ago, Tetris is officially released in the Soviet Union on the Electronika 60, closer to World War II than to today — Ugh. I am really, really old.
• Will Vladimir Putin Actually Be Arrested for ICC Warrant? — SPOILER: No. No he will not.
• The Jubalaires – Noah (First RAP Performance) — I’m not sure I get the “rap” part, but it’s still a good listen.
• Disney Plus’ Willow isn’t canceled, just paused for at least a year, says producer — The fallout from the massive, post-COVID streaming contraction will be felt for years to come, and will impact projects that aren’t faltering… they’re just expensive. (RIP, Batgirl.)
• Maybe stop with the uncomfortable Pedro Pascal thirst edits — Maybe chill the fuck out, Polygon writer. Pedro’s a grown-up, girls are horny, and until someone tries to Rebecca Schaefer him, let the fans have their fun.

• The 20-year-old metaverse game ‘Second Life’ is getting a mobile app — I would say that Dwight is very excited by this, but let’s face it, by now he’s already in Berlin with the chandelier.
• RUMOR: Sacha Baron Cohen to Star as Marvel’s Mephisto in Disney+ Special — Okay, this could be very good. Because Mephisto is a ridiculous character that is taken seriously, and that’s, well… that’s pretty much SBC’s whole thing.
• How to Get ChatGPT on Your Apple Watch

This… Is BGNN

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

• How ‘Spring Breakers’ Forecast the Next Decade of American Chaos — It’s a ridiculous fever-dream of a movie, with a ridiculous James Franco performance bubbling and spewing within it, but like its girls and their guns, it pops.
• Ozempic is a game-changer. Here’s how it works. — I’ve read about a lot of “game changers” in my lifetime, and very few have been able to justify the hype. But every once in a while…
• This ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Mod Brings a Slice of Valve-level Action, Created by Annapurna Developer — I’d love to revisit Alyx, but I have neither the PC nor the floor space to even consider it at this point. So I live vicariously through screenshots and demo videos.
• What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Be a Gen X Girl — Heh.
• Steven Spielberg and John Williams on how music became an actor in Jaws and Close Encounters | Boing Boing — I don’t know how to rank Williams as a composer, but as an artist bringing something distinct and meaningful to a film’s narrative, he’s in a class of his own.

• The History of Rock: One Riff Per Year, From 1965 to 2022 — I don’t agree with all the inclusions, but there’s some quality stuff here.
• He’ll Be Back: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Act — I hope the old fucker enjoys the hell out of his final laps around Hollywood’s track… he’s been a fixture in my life since I was a kid, and while I haven’t always been a fan, I can’t help but like him.
• Danse Exquise is an animation that evokes the feeling of being inside a kaleidoscope
• ‘Everything Everywhere’ Stars Reunite in ‘American Born Chinese’ Teaser — The world needs more Michelle Yeoh.
• ‘My AI Is Sexually Harassing Me’: Replika Users Say the Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny — I haven’t dug into this Replika thing yet, but I loved the headline.

• What were the first fighting games like? — There were two kinds of people in mid-‘80s arcades: Karate Champ people, and Kung Fu Master people. I was decidedly the latter, as was my best friend, who blew $200 one summer completely, well, mastering KFM. By the fall, he could play for an hour on a single quarter, and naturally, no longer had any interest in it.
• Micky Dolenz Will Not Let the Monkees Die — I’ve only watched a half-dozen or so episodes of the show and a documentary or two. But when I was 19, I was in love with a girl who thought The Monkees were the greatest band in the history of everything… so y’know what, Micky? Keep going, dude. You’re making someone out there happy.
• This Is a Philosopher on Drugs
• Make ChatGPT Work for You With These Browser Extensions — Fuck the browser extensions… if you have an Apple Watch, just snag a copy of Petey, a ChatGPT app/complication that puts all that textual utility on your wrist where it belongs. It won’t control your lights or dial your phone like Siri, but for quick access to information, it’s infinitely superior.
• After ‘The Last of Us,’ Everything Will Be Transmedia — I don’t think TLOU is actually as big a milestone as the title suggests, but still… cross-medium storytelling and reimagination is going to be a huge part of the future.
• A Face Recognition Site Crawled the Web for Dead People’s Photos — We are all going to regret every single photo we’ve ever posted online.
• r/Android – Samsung “space zoom” moon shots are fake, and here is the proof — Samsung? Full of shit?! I am shocked…!
• The Demise of Silicon Valley Bank — A nice little explainer, walking you through the bad decisions and hubris that led to the bank’s collapse.