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1) Saw Project Hail Mary and had no idea it was a comedic buddy film with pathos. ( Read more... )

2) Also saw Sheep Detectives. ( Read more... )

3) Switzerland vs. Algeria. ( Read more... )

Spain versus Austria. ( Read more... )

Portugal versus Croatia. ( Read more... )

Australia versus Egypt. ( Read more... )

Argentina versus Cape Verde. ( Read more... )

Finally the round of 32 ends with Ghana vs. Colombia. ( Read more... )

Paraguay versus France. ( Read more... )

Canada versus Morocco. ( Read more... )

1) Finally the apartment is done. The maintenance guys never showed up yesterday and I called the property manager this morning to see if we were on the list. Thankfully they came within the hour. They had various things to reinstall, and also helped me put the major furniture back in place.

I think the apartment was some 8 degrees cooler inside once the blinds were up (since I added our solar curtains). Celebrated by breaking out a jigsaw puzzle and spending a relaxing afternoon doing that and catching up on World Cup games.

2) Japan versus Brazil. ( Read more... )

Germany vs Paraguay. ( Read more... )

Speaking of, Netherlands vs. Morocco ( Read more... )

Ivory Coast versus Norway. ( Read more... )

France versus Sweden. ( Read more... )

1) I found this article about the New Sobriety movement of interest. As someone who's had maybe a dozen slushy cocktails in my life, the idea of having them without alcohol sounds like a real plus. I am glad, though, that there's a health movement afoot to label alcohol as the risky substance it is. But apparently sometimes addictive behavior just finds a new outlet.

2) While I'm sure FIFA decided to expand World Cup participants for financial reasons, I was pleased that so many more countries would be able to watch their players represent them on the world stage, and relish the victories, however they came. But the group stage always tends to lead to exhaustion and this is even more true with so many more games. I'm quite ready for this stage to be over. This six games a day thing is just crazy.

South Africa versus South Korea. ( Read more... )

Czechia versus Mexico. ( Read more... )

Paraguay versus Australia. ( Read more... )

Tunisia versus Netherlands. ( Read more... )

Ecuador versus Germany. ( Read more... )

Curacao versus Ivory Coast. ( Read more... )

Japan versus Sweden. ( Read more... )

Watched all of United States versus Turkiye. ( Read more... )

Uruguay versus Spain. ( Read more... )

Senegal versus Iraq. ( Read more... )

Norway versus France. ( Read more... )

New Zealand versus Belgium. ( Read more... )

Egypt versus Iran.( Read more... )

Cabo Verde versus Saudi Arabia. ( Read more... )

1) On Sunday we got several hours of rain but the storm cells went south of us. Others weren't as lucky as 3 deaths and various hospitalizations happened.

Repairs are still trudging on. Unfortunately they had to remove the blinds from a window as they did work on the walls (and will eventually paint). So we've had no way to keep the sun out. The room is empty but it's causing the AC to run more. Between that and the house plants having to stay outside, I'm hoping this will be done by Monday.

2) In further adventures of how sites have unhelpful error messages and marketing departments never forget anything (but they also never update their info).

I bought some items on Amazon and signed up for Prime since it would save us about $40 (and we get 30 days free anyway). Soon after I got an email reminding me that my Chase Amazon card would now save me 5% bla bla. Problem is I don't have one. ( Read more... )

3) Argentina vs. Austria ( Read more... )

Tunisia versus Japan. ( Read more... )

Ecuador versus Curacao. ( Read more... )

Germany versus Ivory Coast. ( Read more... )

Belgium versus Iran. ( Read more... )

Spain versus Saudi Arabia. ( Read more... )

New Zealand versus Egypt. ( Read more... )

Uruguay versus Cape Verde. ( Read more... )

1) One thing that confuses me about this article focusing on Hollywood plans to exploit Reddit communities. "[O]ne agency veteran says that assistants at their agency have identified “a bunch” of subreddits and short stories that they think could lead to compelling ideas." "That includes Backrooms, where a community helped create a world, but also subreddits dedicated to short stories, or the popular r/nosleep, where people write and read original horror. One of those stories on Reddit is being developed as a feature film produced by and starring Sydney Sweeney called I Pretended to Be a Missing Girl."

I get how they could tap someone who had created a story, but what happens to stories where "a community helped create a world"? How do rights get assigned there?

2) You don't say? We created a monster’: companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets "Amazon, Walmart and Uber are among early adopters that have introduced caps or discouraged wasteful activity."

2) Mexico versus South Korea. ( Read more... )

The other one was Canada versus Qatar, and this was a downer for a different reason. ( Read more... )

The rest of these games I watched in condensed view. Ghana versus Panama ( Read more... )

France versus Senegal. ( Read more... )

Portugal versus DR Congo. ( Read more... )

Argentina versus Algeria. ( Read more... )

Chezchia vs South Africa. ( Read more... )

Switzerland versus Bosnia Herzegovina. ( Read more... )

1) The deficiencies in weather reporting continue becoming apparent. Earlier today I began hearing thunder, and then what sounded like hail. I looked outside and it was clearly raining, and then began raining hard. Radar showed absolutely nothing within an hour of us. After the rain stopped, a cell suddenly appeared on radar over us, and then was predicted to move east, joining up with the cell that had previously been a small area north of us. My partner reported he had been driving through hail for a few minutes as he headed home.

Fortunately it was only rain and brief hail, but it certainly explains how our event last week came out of nowhere.

2) Repair update today was frustrating. ( Read more... )

3) We finished watching Dune Prophecy and I liked it a lot. ( Read more... )

4) Sweden versus Tunisia. ( Read more... )

Saudi Arabia versus Uruguay. ( Read more... )

Belgium versus Egypt. ( Read more... )

1) The past two days have been occupied. Yesterday we both had things to deal with after returning home -- plants to be seen to, laundry to be done, mail to be answered, etc.

Aside from completing the roof repair in just a day, maintenance brought us a dehumidifier to run. The first one worked for a while but then started leaking on the floor. We were able to get someone from maintenance just before they left for the day, and after they looked at it they just brought us a new one. ( Read more... )

2) After watching the first half hour of Canada versus Bosnia ( Read more... )

As far as the US versus Paraguay goes, ( Read more... )

Switzerland vs Qatar was interesting to me mostly in how it would affect Canada. ( Read more... )

3) Earlier in the week I saw the Pixar film "Hoppers." I found it a mixed bag. ( Read more... )

1) When I came across this article about basketball players turned broadcasters, what it made me think of was a faceoff on The Floor where a former baseball player was up against a former WNBA player on the topic of basketball players.

It was really clear the baseball guy never watched the WNBA. He did get some of their players but missed too many and lost the match, whereas the female player did just as well with both sexes. I thought, for once, misogyny did a man in.

2) Another month, another rotten experience with healthcare providers. ( Read more... )

3) Being on Board Game Arena, I have not bought a physical game in some time. However while they have a great assortment of games, including well known ones, what they don't have is media content games. So when I saw this game on clearance at Wal Mart a while back, I decided to give it a try.



We finally broke open the box this past weekend. Right off the bat it seemed like a cute game full of Ted Lasso callbacks. ( Read more... )

1) Stand with Wikipedia workers: Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia."In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream."

"This is the standard tech playbook. Fire the engineers who know how the system works, fire the ones organizing labor, hope nothing catastrophic breaks before you can ship something splashy. Twitter did it. Meta did it. Salesforce did it. Google did it. We have all seen this movie."

2) The American Prospect decided to do away with programmatic ads. A month later, people are spending twice as much time on the site. "“The reader’s attention, behavior, and personal data become a commodity, packaged and resold through a supply chain riddled with fraud, opaque middlemen, and unscrupulous actors…We’re reporting on court cases where it shows that Google is found guilty of being a monopoly, or Facebook is engaging in certain practices with its advertising,” he said. “And yet we were sitting there, in some way facilitating the continuation of this business model. And the contradictions, I think, became too great.”

3) Having posted about the dog at the Farmer's Market last time, thought I'd share the flowers we got there:

1) Curious to know, for anyone who has taken part in 3weeks4dreamwidth activities, what did you enjoy doing?

2) Turns out my expected trip to Michigan later this year won't happen, but I am instead planning a trip that will spend some time in Cleveland and Buffalo. Any recommendations? (The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a big draw).

3) I've begun playing in the tournaments on Board Game Arena, in part because my favorite game has been increasingly hard to find players for during certain hours. I started late during the last tournament round but still did ok, finishing in the top 100. I started early enough in this round that I was in the Top 10 for a little while, but started falling as more people joined in.

But then I started an incredible losing streak that dropped me over 150 spots. There was one common factor, ( Read more... )

4) I'd been hearing that Matlock is not a typical procedural, and I had tried out the first episode a while ago, soon after it launched. I could see why the ongoing series arc might make it a significant change. ( Read more... )

4) What I really enjoyed this past week was getting to see the play "Suffs" on Great Performances. (This is in contrast to my dislike of the PBS app, which is a pain to work with and apparently never added 4 or 5 other Great Performances episodes to my watchlist). It's so great to be able to see theater at home. ( Read more... )

1) I find the results of this research on people finding medical information to be sad but unsurprising. "Certain groups are particularly likely to say they get health and wellness information from influencers, including adults under 50; Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans; and those without health insurance."

The thing is though, the topics revealed in the study have very little to do with health and medicine and a lot more to do with appearance and weight (plastic surgeons are influencers!) This makes sense, both because women outnumber men as both influencers and viewers, and also because this area of "health" is particularly apt to be a source of revenue for influencers, whether trolling for clients or selling people stuff they think will help them. The number of people who even claim a medical background or auxiliary medical training are outnumbered by people who don't.

2) I mentioned in my last post watching the Roku Soccer Comes to America documentary. Although not that enlightening to somebody who lived through virtually all of it, two things were singled out as being critical to truly establishing the sport which I hadn't thought about. I found it an interesting coincidence that Ted Turner should die at the same time I was seeing it. ( Read more... )

3) Saw all of S2 of Percy Jackson and I think I enjoyed it more than S1. ( Read more... )

4) Daredevil's second season is more of a favorite for me than the 1st. ( Read more... )

5) I speed watched High Country. ( Read more... )

1) I've no idea why, but this afternoon my monitor screen brightness suddenly shot up to where the blue light on white areas is practically visible. I went to my computer settings and found that the brightness slider was greyed out. I looked for info online and – along with various instructions which seemed to lead nowhere – it was suggested that I needed to change the settings on my monitor. Problem is, I'm using a Roku TV as my monitor, and when I went in there the brightness settings were already low and making them lower changed nothing.

I did a Microsoft update yesterday but supposedly all the downloads were related to security updates. I already use dark mode on both browsers but this doesn't apply to MS Word, and in any case the dark mode has to be switched off at times because it obscures buttons or other info in certain layouts. (This is also true of MS's accessibility dark mode themes)

2) Ok, then: Regal sold its inventory of $50 “Dune” tickets projected in 70 millimeter IMAX film in a matter of minutes. "Some 17% of film tickets sold last year were for premium-format theaters with bigger screens and better sound, compared with 13% in 2021. They cost an average of $18 nationally, according to research firm EntTelligence, and as much as $30 in big cities such as New York and Los Angeles."

3) Perhaps relatedly, Las Vegas Sphere is a Success. Although largely for music concerts, the site has also been used for movies, notably “The Wizard of Oz.” "Dolan decided he wanted to turn the 1939 classic film into an immersive experience. He recruited Google’s AI engineers for the $100 million project...Red apples made of foam drop from above in one scene, and leaves swirl during the tornado. From its opening Aug. 28 through Jan. 20, the movie generated more than $260 million in ticket sales, the company said."

But it comes at a high price: Tickets to Sphere concerts can range for a few hundred dollars to thousands.

4) Not thrilled with the Copilot product placement in Season 2 episode 18 of High Potential. It makes me think we should have a contest to see what increasingly absurd examples of AI use will start to intrude into scenes across TV shows.

5) My partner clearly enjoys Dark Winds, because Mr. I-Hate-Binging watched 2 seasons of it within 5 days with me. This was probably just as well because I was not thrilled with S4. ( Read more... )

Every time I planned to post and got sidelined, something else got added to the list.

1) 3weeks4dreamwidth is underway, and I am again hosting a points donation and gifting event. If you have US $3 (or more) to spare, join in!

Dreamwidth stays afloat by selling paid services, but a lot of users can't buy them for one reason or another. That's a lot of people who would like to support the site but either can't get the payment through or are currently unable to start or maintain services. So if you currently can, leave a comment (all donors and recipient comments are screened) by May 4. At that point, a call will go out for recipients and they'll be matched up by May 15.

2) Finished the Fire of Love documentary about French volcanologists spending their lives studying volcanoes. Some of the footage they got is just spectacular, almost technicolor. But the risks they took are appalling. ( Read more... )

3) We finished watching S1 of the Puzzle Lady last month. It was fine as a series; we would watch more. One thing that stood out to me was the wardrobe and decor which normally is not something that catches my attention. ( Read more... )

4) A recent episode of Jeopardy had the following quotes in a category about words from the Founding Fathers. I don't think their choices were a coincidence:

"Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net." – John Adams

James Madison wrote, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

5) I'm still watching Daredevil Ep 6 (which I have been looking forward to) but I thought Ep 5 was really well done. The way the stories were balanced out, the flashbacks, and the details were well written. I think that was probably the best Marvel show episode I've seen so far. ( Read more... )

There's a party going on at Pillowfort from April 3-13 to celebrate its 10th anniversary. It's hard for me to believe I've been there for 8 of those years already.

Like Dreamwidth, Pillowfort is a small owner-run site with responsive staff that stays afloat via premium services. It functions like a combination of Tumblr and Dreamwidth. For those using Dreamwidth, two advantages I've found enormously helpful are the easy photo hosting/posts and the fact that improved reblogging exists, thus making it very easy to share content to communities. In practice, I find these two sites complement one another.

The atmosphere there is both welcoming and helpful. In my time I've had the occasional unpleasant encounter, but have found it quite chill. Apparently I'm not the only one, as this recent Tumblr refugee reported.: "Signed up yesterday. Decided this morning that I was gonna hang out on here and see what it was like. And... I've had the best time? (I don't mean to sound surprised; I'm just used to the normal horrible state of the modern internet.)..Where has this corner of the internet been for the last several years??? I'm so happy I've found y'all."

Given the "state of the modern internet", we definitely need more boutique social media site alternatives, not fewer. Pillowforter DoktorHobo has been tracking signups to Pillowfort for several years and noted that it has maintained a steady average of around 50 new people per week. I've never taken much notice of total accounts on a site because the vast majority are always inactive, and many more are sporadically active. But steady growth does tell a story.

For anyone interested in trying Pillowfort out, here are some starting points: ( Read more... )

If those don't answer your questions, feel free to ask away here about the site or its workings. There is also a community there for Dreamwidth users. It's been very inactive but I know that a number of people on Pillowfort do have DW accounts or have used it before. And if you just want to see what's going on with anniversary stuff there's a community collating it.

1) For those who use Zoom for meetings, something to be concerned about: WebinarTV Turning Zoom Calls into AI Podcasts. Stanford has issued guidelines to campus users to prevent it happening.

2) Turns out Xfinity offered us free Peacock (supposedly Peacock Premium but we have ads anyway). Getting Peacock access was quite a process though. All I should have had to do was click the email link and accept the offer. In fact, everything I tried kept sending me to a 404 page. ( Read more... )

3) When I finally did get into Peacock, I used it to watch Song Sung Blue and thought it was mostly an enjoyable film. I liked Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson leaning into their ages and downplaying his looks. The music was fun and it was a nice, small scale love story. ( spoilers ).

3) The Peacock issue wasn't the only technical frustration of the last few days. After finishing my taxes and other to-dos I had pending, I wanted to take some time to get back into my LEGO Star Wars game on the Xbox which I'd last tried almost 3 years ago. ( Read more... )

4) I feel surprisingly upset to hear that Starfleet Academy is essentially cancelled. (There's another season coming but that had already been planned before S1 began). I wrote earlier about how much I was enjoying it, and that was before I watched the fourth episode. I will miss these characters, and it seems there's so much more that could be done.

5) The latest marchmetamatterschallenge writing prompt was "How do you define genres? Is it still a useful tool to find entertainment you like, or have offerings become so niche and melded that it's hard to use categories anymore? Was it ever something useful for you, personally?"

To some degree yes, but increasingly no. ( Read more... )

1) My response to the meta prompt at marchmetamatterschallenge, "Do you think it's more likely that meta would be preserved and read if it were regularly included in other fanwork challenges? Would you take part if you had the chance?"

I do, and that's because I feel that challenges, fests, and other group activities help extend the life of the given fandom. ( Read more... )

2) I watched the Sally Ride documentary and had mixed feelings about it. ( Read more... )

3) I tried out Happiness, a New Zealand comedy about a director returning to his hometown community theater group. I'm liking it more as it goes on, though the way so many characters are turned up to 10 is a little much for me. What I am liking quite a lot are the musical numbers themselves. If more kids learned history like this, they might remember it.

4) I took a survey which explored how much people trust the wisdom of crowds vs AI. I clearly didn't do it the way they had planned. ( Read more... )

5) Delighted by the arrival of spring, wish it didn't feel like the arrival of summer.

1) Whoa, the changes at Tumblr have meant a flood of people signing up for accounts at Pillowfort. I just went through a feed four times longer than usual.

2) We've watched four episodes of Starfleet Academy and are both pleasantly surprised by it. I confess I haven't been very enthused by the new crop of shows. In fact my favorite season was one that it seems most viewers didn't care for, which was S1 of Discovery. ( Read more... )

3) Looks like it isn't just late night shows that are winding to a close but talk shows and entertainment news. I can see why podcasts would be far cheaper to make and competing with the audience, but I do wonder if most can put out episodes as consistently as is done with larger productions. (I note, for example, that Access Hollywood has four hosts).

4) Not being a reader of Outlander, I had no idea there was a separate Lord John Grey series. A spinoff based on the books sounds great, and you'd think with the success of Heated Rivalry (it was a Jeopardy question this week!) that the timing would be perfect. Granted, a period piece with a large cast would be significantly more expensive, but it also has a built in audience via its linked TV show and books.

5) Watched Zootopia 2 and enjoyed it. I particularly liked how they worked in references to favorite things from the first film without having it slow down or detract from the story in progress. For us this was wolves starting a howl, and the appearance of the sloth. There were lots of little in-jokes (such as the Hulu menu) and things moved along quite well, with fun new characters to meet.

1) I am starting plans for a fall foliage road trip in October through Michigan. Anyone have any recommendations?

2) Following up on what I wrote about in my last post, I watched several episodes of Paradise S2. I'm not sure why I'm still watching this. ( Spoilers )

3) By contrast, I saw the Muppet Show (special? Apparently a one-off?) and found it a delight. Disney has definitely struggled in finding a way to utilize the Muppets and two shows have now failed. I'm glad they tried to do something different with them, and I rather liked the show where they were trying to make a more realistic "behind the scenes" Muppet show.

But maybe these days a return to the past would be particularly welcome (and surely there's still a lot of appeal for kids). I've got to imagine they've got a potential guest list a mile long. My partner and I kept thinking that some of the puppeteers must have been filled with glee at being able to recreate this show.

It did make me laugh when Sabrina Carpenter said she'd watched the show, her parents had watched the show, and her grandparents had watched the show. We'd be rather young to be her grandparents but, yeah, 50th anniversary after all.

4) I found the first of my top 3 shows of the year last month when we watched How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. I'd quite enjoyed Derry Girls, so was interested in trying this. I found it had a lot of the fun from Derry with an added mystery at the center. ( Read more... )

5) When in his latest charity auction batch Stephen Colbert listed a Lord of the Rings sword that had been on the stage wall, we couldn't believe he'd be selling such a thing at any price. Turns out it's a replica of the actual sword used in the film, which he already has (and he joked he would be buried with). Even so, I figured it would go for a lot, and it's going to be well over $25,000. His neckties are going for over $1000.

1) marchmetamatterschallenge has begun! I'm particularly excited this year since I will finally come current with my meta archiving. I'm already finished with 2024 and should finish 2025 by tomorrow. One thing I hope is to do more writing this year.

2) The February CheckIn at everykindofcraft has gotten a lot of responses. It's interesting to hear all the different ways that people have learned these skills.

3) In less good news, a bunch of RSS feeds seem to have stopped working. The AO3 vids feed hasn't updated in weeks (so unlikely to be AO3's recent issues), and 4 feeds from Tumblr have stopped as well, though it seems only 2 have been updating lately. It's definitely not the feed service, because at least 3 other feeds I have set up have updated within the last few days. I'm wondering if Tumblr is somehow blocking RSS feeds now?

I also feel like there are people's posts that I have missed though I am less sure about that.

3) I was waiting for a cashier and there were 3 women and 2 small girls ahead of me. The two little girls were racing around everywhere, grabbing things and then having them put back by the women. It was all taking some time, and the squealing was getting on my nerves. But then one grabbed an Easter Bunny and told her mom she wanted it.

The mom asked the cashier if it was solid or hollow, and was told it was hollow (which seemed most likely to me given its size and price!) The little girl then asked what "hollow" was, and her mom struggled to explain it, finally saying "It has a hole inside it." The little girl then said "I'll put it back and get another." We all burst out laughing as her mom then tried to explain that the bunny wasn't defective, it was just the way it was made.

4) So it looks like Paramount will fold HBO into its service. I expect that will put paid to its bundling with Disney services, though it does make it more likely we'll keep Paramount+ around post-The Late Show cancellation. At this point the U.S. looks like it's going to have 3 major streamers, a number of secondary streamers (in which I include Peacock) and a vast number of tiny streamers.

5) Never posted here that I finished the latest season of Strange New Worlds. Thought it somewhat better than earlier seasons, despite the way it started, though I find it a bit jarring to see TOS episodes essentially revised for use here. The finale seemed a cross between Rey at the end of the Skywalker saga and ST:TOS's Lazarus episode. ( Read more... )

1) Squidgeworld will be doing video hosting! So if you have videos you need hosting and, like us, hate Youtube, you'll be able to host your videos on Squidge Images.

Various services are currently down for maintenance but there's more info about that at the link.

2) This post was about how people offer gaming opinions via social media but I think the larger lesson applies to everything, and says a lot about how forceful peer pressure (even of unknown peers!) seems to be:

"The feedback they provide is not about the game, it’s about an opinion they believe to be correct based on the crowd."

"When you share an opinion or give feedback, you are telling a story about yourself. People want to share a story that they like, and that makes them feel skilled, or knowledgeable. They do not write the honest objective truth about themselves into these things. They write the version that they wish they were. We know this because we’ve surveyed a lot of players over the years and then compared their answers with their actual behavior data, and the two rarely have anything in common."

"if there’s ever a conflict between what people say and what they do, believe their actions. People say things that aren’t true all the time, but the way they use buttons that say Play Now and Uninstall tell their ultimate truth."

3) Interesting thoughts in this course introduction on Global Cinema by Henry Jenkins. A few of them here: ( Read more... )

4) I found a way to make AI tell you lies – and I'm not the only one. "People have used hacks and loopholes to abuse search engines for decades. Google has sophisticated protections in place, and the company says the accuracy of AI Overviews is on par with other search features it introduced years ago. But experts say AI tools have undone a lot of the tech industry's work to keep people safe. These AI tricks are so basic they're reminiscent of the early 2000s, before Google had even introduced a web spam team, Ray says. "We're in a bit of a Renaissance for spammers."

Not only is AI easier to fool, but experts worry that users are more likely to fall for it...Even when AI tools provide source, people are far less likely to check it out than they were with old-school search results. For example, a recent study found people are 58% less likely to click on a link when an AI Overview shows up at the top of Google Search."

5) This post speculates about the impact AI will have on economies and frames it as a look "back" to our time period. The whole thing is available to read for free, in part because this analyst group sees this potential economic and social catastrophe happening within the next few years.

"It should have been clear all along that a single GPU cluster in North Dakota generating the output previously attributed to 10,000 white-collar workers in midtown Manhattan is more economic pandemic than economic panacea. The velocity of money flatlined. The human-centric consumer economy, 70% of GDP at the time, withered. We probably could have figured this out sooner if we just asked how much money machines spend on discretionary goods. (Hint: it’s zero.)"

The key to a collapse is the disruption in the historical model of companies that have become outmoded (or undercut) by new technology: ( Read more... )

I disagree with the report in two respects. The first is the speed of the timeline. AI does not work well and there is already public disaffection with the experiences they've had. I don't think it will be adopted as widely as predicted as quickly, because its problems will become apparent as early adopters start pulling back. Should improvements develop quickly though, I could see this playing out, but probably not within the next decade.

I also think they fail to address the power demands of all this accelerated computing, and how that will affect individuals (skyrocketing utility bills are already here) and the likelihood that the grid will collapse from the excessive demand. I didn't watch the State of the Union address, but did hear NPR discussion of it this morning. I found it striking that Trump addressed this issue at all. That tells me that there's way bigger pushback on the rapid development of data centers than has been reported.

Our only hope seems to be that AI will be so incompetent in the near term at solving problems within their customers' businesses and operations that it all collapses before it can spread that widely. And that might kneecap the tech industry enough that they slow down and stop breaking things. That leads me to another rather interesting post about how slowly very disruptive tech develops compared to its hype. Though I'd really recommend it as a read, the post is long so I'm only going to pull out one item from it, which you may have heard about in the news: ( Read more... )

1) It's surprising to me that it's been a month since I last posted...here. I have been posting every week in communities, but simply haven't completed some write ups and reviews I wanted to make.

However speaking of communities, marchmetamatterschallenge will be starting up again on March 1. If you've written meta, join in and copy your meta over to an additional location for both discovery and safekeeping! More details at the community link.

2) We were watching Colbert and his wife Evie was on. For Valentine's Day they read through her 12 year old writings about what she considered the perfect guy for her. Among her notes was that he should be "all man." This made my partner remember an event in hockey where a player was placed in the penalty box because his team had too many players on the ice. The TV caption however, as they showed him sitting there was "Too much man." I found this hilarious.

3) I daresay the article Stop Meeting Students Where They Are is relevant to various readers here. They key to me is that (a) younger online users are starting to intentionally reduce their time there, and ( Read more... )

4) Love how the same people scolding audiences for preferring to watch movies at home, don't go to the cinema even when it's free. "The Academy has long hosted screenings of Oscar-hopefuls for its members throughout the year in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York and London, and then again after the announcement of the Oscar nominations.

But in recent years — particularly over the seven years since the Academy introduced its members-only streaming service, the Academy Screening Room, through which members can watch films at home — attendance at all of these screenings has markedly declined.... “an average of five members attended these screenings in the last two years,” ...which reportedly cost the organization thousands of dollars a pop. So the Academy decided to save resources by eliminating them altogether." Aside from the Academy members can view movies on the big screen at the many showings hosted by the nominating studios. They just choose not to, just like most other viewers.

5) We finished watching Bodkin, which I will agree was an interesting view, though I had trouble getting into it, primarily because I was not fond of any of the main characters. A few episodes in the mystery was developing and I was fairly satisfied with how that unfolded and its complexity.

My big problem was that Netflix had labeled this "Comedy." ( Read more... )

1) "Bloomberg found that in areas near significant data center activity, wholesale electricity prices rose as much as 267% in a single month. After analyzing 25,000 “grid nodes” they found that more than 70% of those showing price increases were located within 50 miles of data center activity. With data centers forecast to account for 9% of all US power demand by 2035, the reporters said the “unprecedented granularity” of their data showed what is at stake for those living nearby this AI infrastructure."

Another data research story looked into climate change conspiracies, revealing "that hashtags were predominantly pushed by accounts with ties to oil interests in Gulf states and uncovered a coordinated effort to amplify climate conspiracy narratives through networks of automated and semi-automated accounts."

2) Been watching Celebrity Name That Tune and recently Christian Siriano was on it. In some ways this was the funniest one because neither he nor the other person were any good at identifying songs. By the second round they were tied and they ended up going through 4 tie breakers before he finally got one so that he could go on to the third round. Jane Krakowski ended up sitting down on stage while they went through song after song.

3) It's always great to celebrate new content in the public domain. It's still too little but major characters and works are now there, including Poirot and Miss Marple, Nancy Drew, Lord Peter Wimsey, various cartoons, art and music.

4) Cementing its reputation as worst company ever, Meta created ‘playbook’ to fend off government pressure to crack down on scammers. This includes making "scam ads “not findable” when authorities search for them."

5) Amid so many retail closures and the growth of audiobook sales, bookstores were growing in 2025. "This year, 422 newly opened stores joined the American Booksellers Association — nearly a hundred more than joined last year. Barnes & Noble added 55 stores around the country and Books-A-Million added 18. By comparison, Books-A-Million opened seven new stores in 2024.Genre-specific bookshops are also thriving." This even though 40% of Americans read no books at all. However "Only 14% of Americans say they prefer to read digital books, but these are some of the country’s heaviest readers. 13% of them say they read 50 or more books in 2025, compared to 4% of those who prefer physical books and 5% of those who prefer audiobooks."

1) In another sign of AI run amok, I do the AARP Trivia quiz each day. I swear they have delegated its creation to AI. There have often been errors in the past, usually spelling ones, though sometimes also offering the same answer twice (out of 4 choices) -- which if it happens to be the right answer means you have a 50/50 chance of being wrong even when you're right.

Last weekend there were two. An "explainer" or "further info" box usually pops up after you finish a question. One of them just said "nar."But my favorite was the question "What is the name of dish where beef is cooked in wine." The answer? Coq au Vin. To boot the explainer mentioned that though the name meant rooster it was often made with chicken. Which is, as we know, beef. ( Read more... )

2) This is the first I've heard that Friday Night Lights is getting a sequel, or maybe a reboot depending on how you look at it.

3) Back in October my Garmin tracker just stopped working as I was biking. It didn't do anything the rest of the day and I figured its (unchargeable) battery was dying, since it was guaranteed for a year and it was almost exactly that. Since Garmin seems to be moving away from selling trackers, I decided to try a Fitbit as my partner was satisfied with his. However the next day, the Garmin was working again, so I hadn't opened or set up the Fitbit yet.

Cut to last weekend when it went out again while I was exercising. The Garmin came back after an hour but I'm suspecting that the battery is dying and so it's particularly stressed during continuous activity. It's probably been cutting out for some time, as I've noticed odd differences in step reports during days that are functionally the same.

Skipping over all the things I already don't like about the Fitbit, I decided to start using it alongside the Garmin. The first morning, before I even started exercising, there was already a 200 step difference between what the Fitbit showed and what the Garmin reported. ( Read more... )

3) Saw the last Mission Impossible movie and have to say I was pretty unimpressed. Of course, they were never my favorites to start with. I thought I'd done a review of an earlier film but if so, I can't find it. So this will have to do. ( Read more... )

4) As if people who need groceries delivered (likely those with disabilities or lack of transport) weren't already paying more, now there's dynamic food pricing in action. "hundreds of volunteers shopped on Instacart for identical baskets of goods from Safeway and Target. Of the 437 participants, every single one was exposed to algorithmic price experiments, according to the report. The investigation also found evidence of price experimentation at Albertsons, Costco, Kroger and Sprouts Farmers Market." " All told, the price variations could cost families $1,200 a year, based on how much Instacart says the typical household of four spends on groceries."

"Customers were also shown different "original" prices, making some savings appear larger, the report found, a concept known as "fictitious pricing." Amazon was sued this October for allegedly using this tactic during its summer Prime Day sale."

Also a shout out to Consumer Reports for being one of the few sources that can be counted on in this time of media greed, kowtowing, and chasing squirrels.

5) While I've noticed my grocery has these errors all the time, perhaps they're just a new business practice. The attorney general's office said its investigation revealed that during 2019 and 2023, Dollar General failed more than 40 percent of pricing accuracy inspections.

"The settlement also requires Dollar General to modify its business practices to prevent future violations of Pennsylvania's consumer protection law, the attorney general's office said. The changes include training employees, maintaining enough staffing to update shelf tags weekly and posting notices at registers saying the lowest posted price will be honored." "We are hopeful the corporation takes this settlement very seriously as Pennsylvanians expect to pay the price that is on stickers and labels.""

1) Saw the One to One: John and Yoko documentary. It was, I thought, a clever way of creating one with very little new footage or audio recordings. It focuses on a 2 year period where they are in a small apartment in the Village and basically drops in bits about the two within a larger documentary weaving pop culture and political activity clips as if switching TV channels. ( Read more... )

2) Disney+ to Allow User-Generated Content Via AI. It's hard for me to imagine how this could possibly work. The only thing I can figure is that they plan to use a version of AI that is more like a choose your own adventure option, than something open to user input.

In other AI news however: "A staggering 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between artificial intelligence-generated and human-composed songs...underscoring growing concerns that AI could upend how music is created, consumed and monetized.

The findings of the survey, for which Ipsos polled 9,000 participants across eight countries, including the U.S., Britain and France...found that 73% of respondents supported disclosure when AI-generated tracks are recommended, 45% sought filtering options, and 40% said they would skip AI-generated songs entirely. Around 71% expressed surprise at their inability to distinguish between human-made and synthetic tracks." ( Read more... )

3) Big Tech banks on our laziness."Like any new technology, AI is a natural threat to these businesses, whose basic technology is already decades old. There’s a very real threat that a newcomer like OpenAI could mount a successful challenge to Google Search or Amazon Web Services. Yet, ingeniously, the platforms may manage to ward off AI challengers by using AI themselves to reinforce their dominance, protecting monopoly positions and justifying their large investments. Doing so depends, more than anything, on using AI to further increase our dependence and that sense of couchlock....( Read more... )

4) Webtoon Entertainment Inc. is partnering with Walt Disney to bring Star Wars and Marvel comics to Webtoon's English platform and with Warner Bros. Animation to co-produce animated series for global distribution.

5) Although this article focused on how many people want to listen to music made with AI, it was rather an interesting picture painted of how people consume music at all, what they know about artist pay, and what sorts of music related things they're willing to spend money on.

One thing I found personally interesting is that they either were not asked or did not respond, that a main way to encounter new music was via TV or movies, even though some of them mentioned that soundtracks were their favorite genre. I know it's been one of my big 3 ways for decades now.

1) Amazon plans to deploy automated translation of books into non-English languages.

2) Chances are so many past shows have been cancelled due to inaccurate measurements. While that's no longer true for streaming content, it still is for cable and broadcast. ( Read more... )

3) Alarming stats about AI slop: "There's a streaming platform called Deezer... And they're one of the very few platforms that... actually set up a AI detection algorithm..And back in January, they reported that 10% of those [new] songs were AI generated, and they don't allow them on the platform. But then a few months later in April, they said 18% of the songs...delivered were AI generated. And just a few days ago, the September report came out and the number is up to 28%. And so I think ... we're just not even given a choice about whether we wanna see this or hear this stuff or not."

4) When reading this article about how people given the right information refuse to change their wrong take in the face of evidence, I was reminded of an unpleasant encounter this week. The writer of the article concludes that this is a social media issue, but I think it's worse than that. Social media has exacerbated behavior where people always have to be right. ( Read more... )

5) Yet what a difference it makes when an employee makes an effort to help. I had a WalMart gift card which I knew worked because I had used it in May. A few months ago when picking up other meds and groceries I tried to use it. It wouldn't scan. I asked for help and after trying it a few times, the clerk said I'd have to go into a regular cashier line because only they could input the card number. Given the line and having to rescan everything, I just paid with credit and left. ( Read more... )