It's another scorcher out there today, but never you fear about my melting... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Strange Decks! There is now no question what-so-ever that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is my favorite Trek. It has eclipsed The Original Series, as I knew it would. And this latest episode (dropping early in honor of ComicCon!)... which is a mind-blowing crossover with the comedic ANIMATED show, Star Trek: Lower Decks... is beyond genius. They brought voice actors Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid into Real Life and the transition is seamless. They are very much the same characters, just no longer animated...

Now, they could have easily did this as a throw-away episode. Or dismissed it as a dream. Or any number of things which would have kneecapped it into irrelevance. But it was well-thought-out and completely serious while honoring the tone and characters of their respective shows. It's borderline thrilling how Strange New Worlds keeps one-upping themselves episode after episode. AND THAT ENDING! Brilliant Trek. Brilliant television.

   
• American Heartland! In a shocking announcement, a new $2 BILLION theme park is being built in Tulsa. Called "American Heartland" this seems like a carbon copy of "Disney's America," a theme park outside of Washington, D.C. that was never built which is based around Americana...

Now, I think this is a cool idea. Definitely. But Oklahoma?!? And not Southern Oklahoma which is close to Texas and might have a longer operating season... Northeast Oklahoma, which likely has fairly mild winters, but not California/Florida mild. And it seems primed for failure given that the biggest city (Oklahoma City, 2-1/2 hours away) has under 700,000 people. The nearest actual major city is Dallas or St. Louis, but they're a five hour drive. Which begs the question... why not just put it near Dallas or St. Louis? They at least have a big population and a major airport there! But still... they are promoting a laundry list of experienced Disney/Universal attraction designers, so there's that. I'd like to see it, of course. But it seems as though this is going to go the way of "Disney's America" and won't be built.

   
• Seek Discomfort! one of my long-time favorite YouTube channels is Yes Theory which is a group of people doing extraordinary things via travel and adventure by stepping out of their comfort zone. It's a channel I binge for a while, then leave for a while, because while it's beautiful to behold... it's also emotionally overwhelming. We're so inundated with reasons to feel cynical that watching the opposite of that for too long can be tough. And a couple of their latest videos are pretty darn special...

If you're a longtime fan of the channel, that surprise guest in France was almost too much to take.

How amazing is that?

   
• 'MURICA AI! This Buzzfeed article is nuts: I Asked AI What Europeans Think Americans From Every Single State Look Like, And The Results Are Just Plain Mean. Mean? Maybe. But some of them are scary accurate. Go ahead and click through. I dare you.

   
• Rescued! Miracles happen. What an incredible story...

Is it wrong that the entire time watching the video I'm screaming "BUT HOW IS THE DOG DOING?!?

   
• Ketchup> Hallmark Channel's "June Weddings" event is over... but I went back to watch the first half hour of The Wedding Contract because I wasn't paying much attention until the end when I watched it last month. What's REALLY NICE is that Hallmark is putting a little diversity over the same old story... they had an Indian wedding, and this is a Jewish wedding (seriously... she's baking a challah for Shabbat dinner!). But the best part is how it takes place in Chicago... but not really. It's shot in Vancouver. BUT IT'S TOTALLY CHICAGO BECAUSE SHE'S SITTING ON A PARK BENCH WITH A SLICE OF DEEP DISH PIZZA NEXT TO HER! BWAH HA HA HAAA! But wait, there's more! They get a coffee at cart called Chicago's Finest Hot Dogs and... what's that on the cart there?

THERE'S A BOTTLE OF KETCHUP ON THE CART! BWAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! HA HA HAAAAAA!!! Clearly the set decorator has never been to Chicago. That ketchup would be hidden and provided (RELUCTANTLY) by request only. Ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago... BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA =gasp= HA HAAAA!!! People have died for less!

   
• POD PEOPLE! I really, really want to see this...

Looks interesting. Looks different. Has great lead actors. Why not?

   
Hope you're having a cooler Sunday than I am!

Years ago I was talking with a friend about travel and the places we've been. Inevitably we got to the point where we were discussing the places we've been that we didn't care for. I said that there's nowhere I've been that I wasn't able to enjoy at least some of it. Then tried to give an example by mentioning Korea. Love their culture. Love their music. Really love their television. But I found being a vegetarian there is so difficult there that I didn't feel I could ever fall in love with the country. Indeed there were times I would fly there on one day. Work the second day. Then fly back the third day.

Unless I went to an "American" restaurant or chain, I'd always end up eating kimchi or some kind of vegetarian bibimbap with a red bean paste dumpling for dessert. And, as good as it is, I get tired of it for every meal. Koreans love love love meat...

I did remember having a 16 course vegetarian meal that was nice... but it was essentially the same food in different forms.

But anyway... I ended up Googling "Vegetarian in Korea" to see if I was missing something other than pickled vegetables and garlic. It was then I ran across a YouTube channel called "Korean Englishman" and this video...

The channel was excellent and I checked in from time to time. They do a lot of cool things there, like exposing famous people to Korean food.

At some point the same guys (JOsh and OLLIE) created a new channel called Jolly. I never really looked into it.

But recently rediscovered it. Because of this video...

And now I'm addicted to Jolly. What a fantastic channel. The boys visit the US from time to time, and those videos are gold...

Nothing like seeing your country from the viewpoint of foreigners! And yet they're always so positive, which is nice.

So if you're looking for a Youtube rabbit hole to fall down, here you go.

To say I love CGP Grey videos is a gross understatement. That's like saying "Cheese is okay" and "I guess baby kittens might be a little cute." His videos are frickin' EPIC!

And today he unleashed one SO good and SO true that I cannot bring myself to save it for Sunday bullets.

No, you're getting it right freakin' now...

Couldn't possibly agree more with his assessments.

And the fact that he made it hysterically funny is just S-tier work. Keep it up, Grey.

It's freakin' freezing this Easter Sunday, but there's warmth in my heart... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Christianity! Given that this is Easter Sunday and a day devoted to celebrating the Resurrection of Christ, I'll be sharing this interesting video which explains the different denominations of Christianity...

But only the version of Christianity you believe in is the correct one.

   
• Shrinkflation! Man. Not only is food getting more expensive, but it just keeps getting smaller and smaller. I usually make my own burritos, but lately I've been buying El Monterey frozen burritos so I can have them on-hand when I don't feel like cooking. This latest bag I bought... the... the burritos look tiny. Almost comically so. No longer are they burritos... they're almost more like taquitos or something! It's crazy. I am having to actually adjust my cooking time so I don't incinerate them!

Shrinkflation has gotten ridiculous. Just give me 7 regular sized burritos instead of 8 mini burritos!

   
• Click! I have never heard of Cookie Clicker before watching this video...

And thank heavens. This is horrific. And the longer it goes on, the more horrific it gets!

   
• Unstable! Okay... I'm loving this show. Rob Lowe has this weird talent for delivering insane dialogue in a way that seems totally natural, and this series exploits that to its fullest...

As if that wasn't enough... Rob's real-life son plays his son in the show! How cool is that?

   
• Spacey! Why is it that Canada gets a frickin' gorgeous logo that's flawlessly executed and beautifully simple while still being very Canadian... while the US gets a rip-off retread from Star Trek that's been complicated to the point of absurdity while having tiny nonsensical "stars" details that will be completely lost when it shrinks down for actual use AND doesn't have any graphic language which tells you this is for the USA?

You literally have to READ it to GET it, which is THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT A LOGO IS SUPPOSED TO DO! And it's not like you can immediately blame the designers, because you just don't know how much of it is them and how much of it is from client demands.

And do not get me started on the idiotic "MMXIX" (2019) detail, WHICH DOES NOT EVEN BELONG THERE! WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?? Also... has anybody seen the Space Force logo in Black and White? Oh yeah... THEY FUCKED THAT UP TOO! Space is black... NOT WHITE...

And that "swoosh" doesn't have a hold-out against the black Star Trek logo, so it looks very disturbing coming out the other side. Yikes.

   
• Home Owner Associations are Awful! John Oliver did a story on HOAs in his latest episode of Last Week Tonight. And I love how people are all "If HOAs are a problem for you, then don't buy a house in an HOA!" — And it's like... in many communities, you may not have much choice for one reason or another. To get a house in my old neighborhood so my mom with dementia had a safe place where people would know her, the only option was an HOA. Now, my HOA is just us four owners, and they've been incredible to me (from allowing me to skirt their 55+ rule since I was buying for my mom... and allowing me to build a catio... and other stuff), but it's entirely possible I would end up in an HOA that was a draconian monster like they're talking about...

And there wouldn't be anything I could do about it if that's what I got. At the very least, there should be a way to appeal an HOA when they are being grossly unfair or unreasonable. But since they are unregulated, they ain't. And since many times you don't get to know the rules until you buy... well... YA FUCKED!

   
• Breadly! How my Easter Sunday began (HE IS RISEN!)...

How my Easter Sunday ended (HE IS BAKED!)...

He was also delicious!

   
And now I'm going to gorge myself on freshly-basked bread.

If the first part of this entry is something you'd like to skip, there's a second video at the end that you most definitely should not skip. It's horrifying stuff that should be seen by as many people as possible.

The stuff I wrote about here on Blogography is pretty random.

Not random-random, because there are several subjects I like to write about more than others... still other subjects I enjoy but have no interest in writing about... and still other subjects I have a lot of interest in writing about, but know that precious few people will want to read what I wrote.

This post falls into the latter.

Because while I am absolutely fascinated with mathematics, in general, and the maths of quantum computing, specifically, the people who read my blog for cat photos and pop culture commentary will likely not care.

But every once in a while I run across something so amazing that I find myself hoping that people who might otherwise skip a post might want to take a chance and read it.

One of my favorite YouTube channels, Veritasium takes a look at how quantum computing will make all of our current encryption efforts laughably obsolete. Considering that encryption is what keeps all of our most secret information safe... from account passwords to banking details to text message privacy... this is an astronomically huge deal. And in as little as a decade, it could all be completely worthless.

But how are quantum computers able to crack this security so easily? Glad you asked! And this video is for you. Now, there is some math that gets thrown at you, but you honestly don't have to understand it to get the gist of what's going on. So maybe give it a shot?

And now for that second video I promised.

It's a story on Timeshares from Last Week Tonight that is essential viewing. Especially if you are considering buying into a timeshare or vacation club or whatever...

Fucking yikes.

I'm really glad that I never had the money to invest in these.

Don't let the Sunday Evening Blues get you down... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Little Guys! Paul Rudd reading Scott Lang's autobiography is about the best thing ever. And it's not just a commercial for the new Ant-Man movie, it's an actual book...

Yeah, I will definitely be buying the audiobook of that one. Assuming that there's a real audiobook to go with the real book.

   
• Kelce! The whole rivalry between the Kelce brothers is almost making me want to tune in to the Superb Owl. And the more it pops up, the more amazing it gets. Which has me genuinely afraid to know too much about them because it's so typical to run across some truly horrific stuff in people's past...

All I know is that Jason likes to dress up as "Fat Batman" and there's not much else I care about...

Here's hoping they're good people. And that their mom is having the best game ever (there's a petition to have her flip at the coin toss, and could there possibly be a more perfect person?).

   
• Pedro! Pedro Pascal hosted Saturday Night Live last night, and it had some very funny skits...

AND FIND THE LIE...

I'd post more, but you might as well go track down the episode on Peacock to see them all.

   
• Woodall! "Analysis videos" are often more about the perspective of the analyst than a deep dive which actually analyzes anything. There are exceptions. I've mentioned Thomas Flight, who remains one of my favorites for film analysis. Another one I recently binge-watched for hours is James Woodall. His thoughts on film and television are fantastic. What's amazing is that he has a grand total of twelve videos in two years. One of his most famous is likely his look at The Devil Wears Prada, currently at 2.4 million views...

But all of his videos are worth your valuable time if you like a good deep dive.

   
• Fuck Off! And I don't know what to do with fucking piece of shit dumbfuck bigot assholes, so I guess we're even? (Here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

I've never seen people so fucking brain-dead over crap THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM in my life. What the fuck do you care? I guess these people really, really want to get a look at people's genitals or something.

   
• Peanut Butter! And then there's this...

And yet people keep listening to these dipshit assholes and accept everything they say as absolute truth because disinformation never gets removed from social media and there are zero consequences to talking out of your ass about shit you don't understand and know nothing about. And society just keeps getting more and more stupid because of it.

   
Enjoy those precious moments of weekend you got left while you still can.

I'm hungry, but not hungry enough to stop on bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• It's a Hoot! I love this video. I've watched it way too many times (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

   
• Kids! Legit dead (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

Things like this are why I can never give up TikTok.

   
• Shave and a Haircut! Or Instagram...

Cats make the world better.

   
• NOTHING! I can so relate (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

   
• Hair! How can you not love this? Samuel L. Jackson is having the time of his life... plus it's got Muppets in it!

Appearing on Sesame Street has got to be one of the biggest honors in existence.

   
• Hello Tomorrow! Wow. OH WOW!

This has incredible promise. Exactly the kind of retro-futurism that works for me... assuming it works as a show.

   
Time for dinner!

I watch a lot of YouTube. Like... a lot a lot. Probably more than actual television. Which is why I pay for the ad-free version, because being inundated by non-stop ads completely destroys my sanity.

There are a lot of YouTubers that I enjoy. I've blogged about them a couple times. And while I'm never looking for new creators to follow, I do poke around from time to time. And while I honestly don't need more to watch, sometimes I can't help myself.

My latest discovery is Anti-Chef.

I have never subscribed to a channel so fast. Not only that, but I also signed up to support his work on his Patreon.

I don't know how else to describe it... except Jamie Tracy is me! He's me in the kitchen!

This guy is a Canadian living in New York City, via London, via Belgium, via Toronto, who makes rather complex recipes and lets you watch. The results are often hilarious, because he's not an expert chef. He just a dude who likes cooking. But the complex nature of the recipes often has him confused and frustrated... and most times there's a complete disaster going on.

AND IT'S ME! THIS IS WHAT I GO THROUGH EVERY TIME I COOK! HE IS MEEEEEE!

In this video he's making Cronuts, which is something I've long wanted to try. But now that I've seen him attempt it... I know I would burn my fucking kitchen to the ground because he calls it a "one way ticket to hell" and I am not going to take that trip. But... they do look dang delicious!

Occasionally Jamie steps outside of the kitchen... as was the case with this video about PATATJES MET he filmed when he was living in Brussels...

His latest thing is to cook Julia Child recipes. Often to hilarious effect!

If you're looking for a YouTube rabbit hole to fall into, this is your guy.

   
Winter is here, snow has arrived, and it's freezing out, but there's warmth in my heart... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Happy Meal! As a huge architecture nerd, it's very easy for me to get sucked into architecture TikTok or YouTube. This morning while waiting for renders to process, I got hit with this fascinating video about the "Rise and Fall of Fast Food Architecture"...

So many good points to be had here. I very much miss the old aesthetic of fast food restaurants, which is why happening upon one of them (which is most often not a chain restaurant) is such fun.

   
• Whither Twitter! Watching Twitter implode in Real Time has been entertaining... but also educational. Elon Musk bought the services in the interest of "free speech," but he's learning a big lesson on being careful what you wish for. Twitter has become so toxic so fast that advertisers are bailing and Musk is essentially begging the big name Twitter accounts not to leave. The most hilarious indicator of this was when Stephen King said that he wasn't paying $20 per month to have a blue-checkmark verified account... and Musk shot back with "How about $8 then?"...

It's easy for me to sit back and not care about Twitter (I rarely use the platform because I prefer to have the ability to lock down my posts for a specific audience), but I think it's a bad idea to hope that Musk and Twitter fail. This is an important platform for discourse and interaction which, naturally, may be toxic (Musk himself has been tweeting out conspiracy theory bullshit) but it's also had a good influence in allowing people to have their voices... their causes... their passions... be heard. Which is why I was happy that one of my favorite YouTubers, Marques Brownlee, has this diplomatic take on how Twitter can save itself from itself...

The one thing that could get me to maybe go back to Twitter would be if there was a way to limit the audience of your tweets (ala Facebook). But even then I have serious privacy concerns about the platform which has me wary.

   
• More Enola! I liked the second flick even better than the first! These films can get a little convoluted... and repetitive in parts... but are enormously entertaining. And that mid-credits scene has me dying for not only more Enola Holmes films... but a Henry Cavill Sherlock movie as well.

Netflix needs to get on more of these movies, because they've struck gold.

   
• Glowforge! Michael Alm finally finished his new office so he could set up his Glowforge. If I didn't want one of these things before, I most certainly want one now. But the price for entry is $4,000... and to get the model which is the most capable and flexible, you're paying $7,000.

I know that I would never use it enough to make it pay. But that doesn't stop me from wanting one anyway. Just like a 3D printer, which is another device I would love to own. Ah to be a billionaire where you just buy stuff you want and don't have to care about whether or not you can afford it.

   
• Joy Noel! The fact that Netflix keeps churning out quality holiday rom-coms is something I am 100% onboard with. While Hallmark continues to release some films which are worth my valuable time... you have to sit through a lot of crap as well. Netflix doesn't have a flawless record, but they do release more good movies than bad, it seems. This year, in addition to the Lindsay Lohan film that's coming up, they also have The Noel Diaries dropping this month...

I know that this is is Justin Hartley from This is Us (a show I could never get into), but the only thing I'm really familiar with is when he played Aquaman in a failed TV pilot that was actually not bad... except The CW decided not to buy the show after the merger with The WB.

   
• Matter? I keep referring to Thread/Matter in my home automation posts, which has been confusing to many people who don't know what this is. Fortunately, Shane Whatley has a wrap-up which is pretty good about why Matter matters...

Matter is something I have been waiting for ever since INSTEON died, came back, and looks to be dying again. I would prefer not to have to replace all my smart home crap every five years, so having something that isn't tied to any specific company seems like a good idea. But the big news about Matter is that it endorses Thread, which is a technology I absolutely love. It's so smart and so fast and so impressive that it really does seem like the holy grail of automation. The fact that it has pretty good range and is low-power is just icing on the cake.

   
And now I think I should get back to cleaning my house, which is a full-on disaster with all the work that's been going on.

One of the reasons that I am a YouTube Premium subscriber is that I watch a metric shit-ton of YouTube videos. So much YouTube that I would insane if I had to watch their idiotic commercials.

The vast majority of the YouTube videos I watch fall into three categories... 1) Woodworking and Home Renovation (50%), 2) Education (30%), 3) Apple/Mac/iPhone (10%). The final 10% is entertainment and general nonsense.

Woodworking is a bottomless pit. There are so many great content creators in this field. My newest favorite is Michael Alm and Alm Fab...

It's like... if I had millions of dollars, I'd just build a woodshop and do stuff like that all day every day. And then there's this magic out of wood...

Then there's behind the scenes stuff like this...

And this deep, deep dive into Zack Snyder's crap movies is pretty amazing. And, for what it's worth, it actually gives me a larger appreciation for the guy (even though I still think most of his movies are awful)...

And, of course Taylor Swift is back. Her first video from the new Midnights album is brilliant. Unfortunately, there are people trashing her for her struggles with an eating disorder. Despite speaking about it multiple times, people believe what they want to believe instead of even attempting to understand. In the video she had a clip of her looking at a scale which says "FAT" and people lost their minds, calling her "fatphobic," when she's actually trying to show what she feels when she looks at a scale thanks to our toxic society. And it's this toxicity of people feeling that they must be thin in order to be accepted THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT. It's the opposite of fatphobic. But oh well, she took the clip out of the video because she doesn't want her art misinterpreted by people who are looking to tear her down instead of try to understand how she (and a lot of other people) are made to feel...

And then there's frickin' DITA VON TEASE!!!...

Brilliant. And now I have another hundred videos to watch.