I feel like before Redbox went under, it was also a dumping ground for this sort of thing. For instance, that mid-budget Western “Rust” where Alec Baldwin killed the camerawoman on set felt like it was destined for this sort of distribution strategy. Who’s clamoring to go out to the theater to see a Western with Alec Baldwin these days? But it might stand out among all the other slop when you’re looking to turn your brain off on a Saturday night.

See also the rise of the “geezer-teasers,” where a random 80s/90s action star signs up to appear in the first and last 10 minutes of a generic action movie filmed someplace inexpensive, most likely eastern Europe or southeast Asia. There were a lot of those. Perhaps my favorite, that I still want to watch someday, was Danny Trejo and Danny Glover in “Bad-Ass 2: Bad-Asses.”

I’m guessing these people were JAQing off hard enough that they got kicked out of their local Oxford-style debate org and had to start their own.

I feel like “qualia” is both an interesting concept, and a buzzword that has rapidly grown to indicate people who need to be aggressively ignored.

he would continue to look like shit

The British elected a guy who wears a mop on his head. You cannot convince me that is his actual hair.

I still have occasional intrusive visions of Johnson busting into an unattended supply closet in the Palace of Westminster to steal a fresh mop head, shouting, “BLOODY LABOUR NICKED ME TOUPÉE!”

I’m employing the working hypothesis that gamers are particularly easy to trick with rage-bait because of short-circuited dopamine loops. One must compulsively game, but if the game sucks, then there must be an explanation that’s as simple as the game. I’ve got a couple of buddies who are always whining about the new Call of Duty, but always pick it up every year anyway. This correlates with all the anti-woke misogyny freakouts, too… their gaming is on a spectrum with their porn consumption, and a lot of these weirdos are probably alt-tabbing back and forth as urges arise.

I was rather shocked that Epic took down UT2003/2004 from the storefronts where it still existed, on top of already failing to deliver the new-generation Unreal Tournament. Seems like a wholly thoughtless way to bury their history, but maybe there were some expiring licensing rights tied up in that? I seriously have to doubt that, though.

bwahahaha “most reasonable operationalizations; conditional upon being e/acc.” Why does this person make me think of nasal, vaguely whiny prequel Spock?

“Tensor Templar” lmao. Hey buddy, what did the Knights Templar do, besides banking?

Anybody remember when they were writing off unsold dolls and hauling them straight to the landfill? That has to be a few years ago now.

I sharply disagree, but this is a subtlety that’s lost on a lot of people. The tech industry’s success since at least the 1990s, up until the mid-2010s, was about making technology easier for the individual user, a more accessible and (potentially) more efficient means for accomplishing many routine interactions. Tech devices existed as tools in service of the will of the end user, and if you were really willing to drink the kool-aid, extensions of the user themselves, Jobs’ “bicycle for the mind.”

The expectations being cultivated for AI now set it up as an entirely separate entity from the end user, and one that is potentially more capable at some point in the ill-defined future. This opens the door toward resources being reallocated towards this nebulously powerful entity, and the allocation of shared resources is at the very core of politics. This is a hard pivot away from how technology was designed before! You and I know it’s a load of complete hogwash, but that doesn’t prevent the potential bamboozlement of the lagging generation of policy-makers. Even someone as relatively young as Kamala Harris or her likely successor Gavin Newsom could be roped into this bullshit, if only because they know where their biggest donation checks come from.

The future in which the current crop of AI retailers enjoy a successful political program is no longer one where a rising tide lifts all boats. But, for the time being, it can still be pitched as such due to deeply embedded cultural expectations.

“My heavens, our self-regarding supremacist ideology can’t possibly imply violence… can it???”

“The Fancy Induced Burger” is what you nickname your baby if your pregnancy goes past the due date

I was happier when I had no idea who Patrick Soon-Shiong was, but Patrick Soon-Shiong was much happier still

LOTR fans stay losing

Strong suspicion that the “interim co-CEOs” bit is leading to an attempted sell-off/spin-off of the chip fabs (which are the part of the company getting the nice juicy government subsidies)

The eventual war crimes trials will very likely reveal that “AI targeting” has already been used as an accountability sink for a premeditated ethnic cleansing policy in Gaza.

If you asked people what they wanted, they would say a car that drives itself

Two posts in two weeks about professors using ChatGPT has me questioning my desire to go back to school

all your barsk are belong to us

I got a really nice omnibus edition of Blindsight/Echopraxia that was printed in the UK, but ultimately, the necessarily(?) cardboard nature of the vampire character in Echopraxia was what left me cold. The first chapter or two are some of the most densely-packed creative sci-fi ideas I’ve ever read, but I came to the book looking for more elaboration on the vampires, and didn’t really get that. Valerie remains an inscrutable other. The most memorable interaction she has is when she’s breaking her arm and making the POV character guy reset it, seemed like she was hitting on him?