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) At the grocery this morning and their clothing displays mirror the seesaw of our weather – puffy coats next to sundresses. It was so warm today than when I came back to drop the groceries off, I had to change into a t-shirt before I went out again, and it was barely 10 AM.

2) Had a nice piece of luck as well. The grocery was running a $10 coupon for $100 or more of purchases. I had to drop my partner off at work this morning because he had an all-day thing, and in the rush forgot to take the grocery list. So as I was putting stuff in the trunk I remembered I'd forgotten his celery. Went back and decided to pick up a few more things since I had the $10 coupon now. Got to the register and realized someone had left that same coupon sitting in the machine when they left! So I got the $10 off and still have my coupon for next week.

It amazes me how people don't bother taking their coupons. It's usually for things they're buying anyway and a free item is not unusual. And this was literally $10 in cash sitting there, when groceries are so expensive! I didn't even know what it was at first, just saw that someone hadn't taken their coupon and figured I'd look to see if it was something I could use.

3) Also on the grocery front, I have recently become addicted to Sumo oranges. Came across them during a sale, and got just one bag because they're pricey. Came back home with 3 the following week.

Oranges have never been my favorite, even though we had incredibly good ones growing in our backyard growing up. These are the closest I've gotten to those. I never end up eating only one.

3) As part of marchmetamatterschallenge, I have been going through my tv_talk comments in case I discussed much about a show (mostly, no). However it was a good reminder about a great many shows I watched which I liked and would recommend, but might not think of if someone asked me.

Some of these were strong throughout, and some long running ones have some weaker seasons but still worth watching. In no particular order, just as they came up on my entries: ( Read more... )

4) One of the things reviewing all these past posts made me aware of is how much more TV I'm watching, but overall with less enjoyment. Every so often I hit a show I would really recommend, but usually they fall into the "ok" category or I just nope out of it a few episodes in.

I think the changes in TV have a lot to do with this. ( Read more... )

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) I happened to catch the Heated Rivalry episode on NPR's 1A, and they mentioned these HBO stats: "The audience on HBO went from 53% women the week of December 22 to roughly two thirds women by January." This apparently refers to viewers and not signups to the service, so it makes me wonder how they know these demographics? Also, I would have thought new signups would be the bigger success rate for a streamer.

2) When we heard this news story on Wait Wait this morning, my partner said, "So it was Llama and Order" : https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/crime-fighting-llamas-catch-thief-by-surrounding-him-in-a-field-until-cops-arrive/

3) Americans now listen to podcasts more often than talk radio, study shows



What's interesting to me about this is that for a long time I had been reading articles about "when is podcasting going to break through". The surge in 2020 is unsurprising -- it's when a lot of people discovered podcasts, but then there's an immediate drop the following year. Meanwhile radio drops in 2020 because so many people listen to it mostly while commuting, which fewer are doing. ( Read more... )

4) Apparently we'd better prepare for a large wave of dementia patients in coming decades due to early wave Covid infections.

5) Had one of my best nights of bowling, at least in terms of outcomes. Normally my goal is just to break 100. I almost did so in game 1, did 114 in game 2, and 141 in game 3. This followed a 20+ minute delay when our lanes (which had been getting balls stuck all evening), stopped altogether and wouldn't lower pins. We were eventually moved to a different set of lanes to finish game 2 and do one of the fastest game 3s I've ever played. Paid off though!

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... )