I have a new passion. Comeuppance videos. You know, videos where some asshole content-creator who steals content or abuses people or lies to attack other creators subsequently gets called out for being a fucking piece of shit... then canceled over it. It's that last part, the cancelation, which is surprisingly rare. Powerful, popular creators bring ad revenue to Google with their YouTube videos, so Google tends to look the other way when these shitbags do shady, repugnant shit.
But there are times when the actions of the content creators are so bad and the community outrage is so overwhelming that Google has no choice but to drop the hammer.
And it's a glorious thing to see.
I'm not going to name names because I don't want to invite amy drama. These assholes may be shitbags, but they do have their fans. And usually these fans are insanely protective. I found out the hard way that they're usually the type of fans who will obsessively search Google for anybody who would dare to disparage the person they worship. Then unleash their displeasure with a near-freakish level of vitriol. I have rewritten posts over an insignificant comment I've made because some people really want to go ten rounds over somebody they've never met, yet fanatically adore for some reason.
And I have enough problems.
And it's Monday.
Happy Father's Day, everybody! And now prepare to upgrade the last day of the weekend... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• D'oh! New Orleans is my favorite American city. This wonderful video where a scene from Homer eating his way through the city has been recreated. I couldn’t love it more...
I don't know what impresses me more. That The Simpsons was so faithful to the locations... or that they bought all that food to recreate it,
• CowPhobia86! Okay, this is genius...
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It's the ranch dressing love at the very end that makes it so good. That's Jonathan Harris for you!
• Chips! I love these Jolly school videos. And this one is particularly hilarious because it turns the tables a bit. And then... they mentioned a "chip butty," a sandwich I used to eat all the time, but stopped for whatever reason. Probably because I ate so many I got tired of them.
And so... I had one for lunch today. Dang it was good. Fries in a white bread sandwich with butter. I also like a chip butty on a bun with ketchup and mayo like a burger. Yummeh.
• FAKE! I've said many, many times that 95% of Influencer Culture is fake as fuck. I'm probably lowballing it. This is just bonkers. But we knew it would be...
The thing that really bothers me is that people judge their lives by the lives of these lying influencer assholes.
• Wright! The current season of Top Chef is SO good. I've loved all the chefs. Not an asshole in the bunch. They're all competitive while being supportive. I'm way behind, but I'm going back to re-watch the Frank Lloyd Wright episode again because it's peak Top Chef for me. As a massive Wright fan, it's so cool to see his work factor into a challenge. But all the challenges have been good, and it's really freshened up the show for me (which has been slowly stagnating over the years)...
Sad that Padme is gone, but Kristen Kish is killing it. They couldn't have picked a better host.
• Who Watches the Watchmen? Oh interesting! I wonder if they will be faithful to the source material or if they will Zack Snyder it up. Again...
After watching the HBO sequel... and how they actually made the REAL ending that the movie dropped for some astoundingly stupid reason... I hoped that one day we might get a faithful adaptation. This is probably as close as we're going to get.
• Trash App! Facebook announced that they removed a photo of mine. They say it violates their community guidelines when it comes to suicide and self harm or whatever. They won't show what it was. And when I request a review so I can ask what it was, that's not an option...
How the fuck are you supposed to do ANYTHING on this stupid app to keep out of trouble when you don't even know what it is that gets you into trouble? Facebook is trash. And now they keep showing me "Help is available."
And now back to your regularly-scheduled .
Jake absolutely kills me.
He's always been all about carrying his toys around, but he wants me to know it because he starts howling while carrying them now. Adorable. His toy box is in my office upstairs, so I'll hear him howling... then stop... then be howling... then stop... and so on. Then I'll go upstairs for something and see toys dropped around like...
In other Jake news... his snaggletooth, which was once an on-again off-again thing while he was sleeping, seems as though it's a permanent fixture now. Every time I see him sleeping, there it is...
He seems none the worse for wear, so I guess it's all good.
Another day another way Sonos is screwing their customers. I am so fucking sick and tired of this shit.
First Sonos forces you to upgrade to a new piece of shit controller app that's missing features and is badly unintuitive. But they dumped it on us before it was ready so they could release a new pair of headphones that requires it. And while I can forgive a lot, having to constantly wait for playlists to load is driving me up the fucking wall. This is what I see ALL THE FUCKING TIME NOW...
And it gets worse. Playlists constantly, unrelentingly pause to buffer. If you've got a lot of songs in a list, scrolling is absolute agony...
I'm guessing this is because you can no longer control your speakers locally, and have to go out on the internet through the shitty fucking Sonos servers to access the shitty fucking speaker sitting in the same room with you.
Then today it was revealed that Sonos removed the line from their user agreement saying that they won't sell your data. It's still in the agreements outside of the USA but, because this fucking country cares more about corporations than people, Americans get fucked by Sonos. Again.
So what's next? Sonos starts charging you a subscription fee to use their idiotic fucking app that's required to control the speakers you bought? At this rate, it seems not only possible, but expected.
Sonos should be forced to allow local control of their gear by consumer protections... because that's how it was when we bought it. Now it's just an internet device that puts you at the whim of Sonos's fucking stupidity, and I would have never signed up for that.
One of the most compelling villains in movie history comes from a place that you likely wouldn't expect... a cartoon film.
Namely one of my favorite cartoon films, Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.
And now, in news that both surprised and delighted me, Feathers is back in a new movie... Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl...
This pretty much made my entire day!
When I bought my home, I had zero money. Technically, I had way, way less than zero money because I had a mortgage. But I had a lot of practice having zero money from when I was crawling out of credit card debt, so it wasn't a new situation for me. I needed a place that was safe for my mom, and that was my entire focus. How I was going to be able to afford to live was a distant second.
My furniture came from IKEA. Everything else came from Amazon or Target.
I never bought the cheapest stuff because I didn't want to replace it in six months. Instead I bought the best-reviewed stuff from the high end of the low end. When it came to flatware, that meant a set of minimalist utensils from Food & Wine. I loved the look of them, and I could get 8 sets for $100...
Despite a few reviews saying it would rust, most of the reviews were positive. I never had any problems with rust. I'd toss them in the dishwasher and that was the extent of my involvement with their care.
Last year once I wasn't drowning in new home ownership debt, I decided to upgrade my flatware. I bought a very cool matte black set for not an insubstantial amount of money. I loved it. All I could have wanted.
Until it started rusting if put in the dishwasher.
Which wasn't very long. Don't think it even lasted six months. Fine when you hand-wash and dry it... not at all fine drying in the dishwasher, despite the fact that it was advertised to be "dishwasher safe."
I bought the expensive stuff and ended up needing to replace it after six months, which is why I didn't buy the cheap stuff in the first place. Which just goes to show... quality doesn't exist and everything you buy is shit now-a-days, regardless of how much you pay for it.
And so I am back with my old cutlery. I'm still hanging on to the black flatware because it's too cool to toss, I'm just not using it on the daily since it can't go in the dishwasher. I'm saving it for special occasions. Of which I have very few now that I'm not hosting houseguests very often.
Though I suppose I could make an argument that every day is a special occasion with my cats and all. A pity hey don't eat with utensils.
There has been so much talk about movie theaters shutting down and "The Death of Movie Theaters" that I've pretty much accepted it as fact. With the exception of going to see Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour: The Movie (totally worth the risk of getting COVID), the last movie I saw in a theaters was Spider-Man: Far From Home in July of 2019. So... going on five years now.
It would be easy to blame this on COVID, but I had stopped regularly going to the theater years before. I'd just go to the Marvel Studios movies because the spectacle of it all was better on the big screen. Nothing to do with COVID... I just eventually grew to hate the fucking people you have to watch a movie with. Used to be that people respected the audience and any interruptions to your experience were rare. But then people started becoming bigger and bigger assholes, and you were guaranteed to have loud talking... people on mobile phones... kids running amok... and once I even witnessed a fight because somebody kept bumping the seat in front of them. It's madness. Who wants to pay money to put up with that shit?
For a while I circumnavigated the bulk of this mess by only going to "prestige" theaters or dinner theaters or what-have-you. When you have to pay a boatload of money to see a movie, you tend to get people who are there to be serious about watching the movie. But eventually even that was tainted. When I saw Avengers: Endgame There was a group of grown-ass adults loudly talking the entire time. It was at that point that I said "fuck it" and decided I was done with theaters. I ended up going to Spider-Man: Far From Home a few months later, which wasn't as bad an experience... but it was still bad. Because People. My love affair with theatrical releases was over.
That was pre-COVID.
Then COVID came along and I decided that I can just wait for streaming and view films from the comfort of my own home. It wasn't worth it before and now it really wasn't worth it (except for you, Taylor!).
Which is a darn shame because there was a time I loved the movie theater experience. In my high school and college years, I was going to a movie most weeks. Sometimes twice a week. Didn't even have to be a big-budget affair... I would go see anything in a theater. Aliens one week... Hoosiers another week... Manhunter the next (boy 1986 was a good year for movies — although the worst movie I've ever seen in theaters, Born American, also came out in '86 so there's that).
I don't know what it would take to get me back in a movie theater again. Odds are the answer is nothing. Or maybe Avengers: Secret Wars. I honestly don't know.
To me, movie theaters are already dead. and have been for quite a while.
Happy WWDC to all who celebrate!
And lo did Apple descend from the heavens to bestow upon all of us the glory that is World Wide Developer Conference 2024! As usual, I will be jotting down my thoughts as the keynote progresses.
UPDATE: Somebody compiled Craig being Craig and it's perfect. Except they didn't show the part with his Daily Hair Journal...
And here we go. The thing that everybody has been waiting for...
So... out of my Top Five Most Needed Things to Come Out of WWDC 2024, Apple managed to check one of them. My #2 ask. Oh well. That's so very Apple that I wouldn't imagine it having gone any other way.
Overall I'm excited to see how AI being integrated to seamlessly into our lives is going to change the world. For better? For worse? Time will tell. At which point it will be too late to do anything about it one way or the other.
UPDATE: There's buzz out of WWDC that we will finally be able to specify which device we want to use as a "Home Hub." Color me fucking shocked. Of course I'm going to specify my hardwired via Ethernet AppleTV that's connected to my main television. Since Apple's shitty fucking software can't figure out that's the best bet on its own. So damn embarrassing. So, yeah, I guess I'm giving Apple a half-point for that (doesn't seem like there's any other much-needed improvements happening, but maybe?).
Before watching The Big Event tomorrow morning, I'm making a list of stuff that I really wanted Apple to announce (it's a BONUS SUNDAY ENTRY!).
And it's not pie-in-the-sky stuff like HERE'S THE APPLE FLYING CAR! or WE'RE BUYING OUT SONOS AND FIXING IT! or ONE MORE THING... WE'VE CLONED STEVE JOBS! No. This is stuff that should happen to right past wrongs (limited to my top five, otherwise I could go on for days)...
Yikes. As I typed that last one, another five things popped into my head. I really could go on for days. Which says a lot about Apple. They have absolutely fucking lost it. No focus. No understanding how bad things have gotten. They just keep ignoring shit that needs to be updated and fixed so they can make $3,500 VR headsets or whatever. The basic experience of core Apple technologies
I may be in the middle of fighting the losing battle of keeping my home clean while having cats, but now there's a lull in the fight... because an all new All-YouTube Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Whither Adobe! As if there wasn't already enough reason to hate Adobe, their new draconian Terms of Service drives it all home...
Adobe has come forward to "clarify" that what they say is not what they mean... but why wasn't this clarication in the original Terms of Service? What a bunch of fucking piece of shit assholes. This was bad enough that I downloaded the latest versions of the Affinity graphic suite to take another look at switching to their apps whenever possible. I have to say... they just keep getting better. I could do most of my work in their ecosystem if I had the time to learn their tools. But I think I'm going to start looking into it more seriously. If you want to hop onboard, the already-affordable Affinity apps (which do not require a subscription!) are currently HALF OFF! It's a huge opportunity if you want a photo editor, drawing program, or layout app, head over and check them out!
• Nice Beaver! Holley Muraco has a magical YouTube Channel where she shows off the antics of her beaver rescues Tulip, Stormy, and Petunia. I swear, even the simplest things they do are wonderful. I am obsessed...
Beavers love bananas. Who knew?
• Dončić! I am not a big basketball fan (especially since the Seattle Sonics were lost to us) but I have fallen down a Luka Dončić (plays for the Mavs) rabbit hole and I can't escape. It all started when I saw a video of him on the bench when he sees himself on the Jumbotron and is happy and clapping. That's his whole attitude in a nutshell. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. He is an incredible trick-shot with a basketball! I've seen his shots pop up in sports news from time to time, but I had no idea...
So cool that somebody so talented loves the game this much.
• This Is a Hit? The new Netflix Glen Powell vehicle, Hit Man was sure to have an ending so obvious that I almost didn't watch. And indeed you do get that ending... at an hour in. Then the movie snowballs to the real ending which, I gotta say, was not what I expected. With a tighter script this could have been a great movie instead of a good movie. As it is, there are parts that drag so badly that you have to wonder how it got greenlit in this state. They really, really needed to take another pass on the story to make it more exciting in those dead zones which try to sabotage it.
But that's the problem with movies now. It's all about pumping them out and moving on to the next one instead of investing time into making a good one.
• Pliny! Adam Does Not Exist (whom I became a huge fan of after his pizza videos) has a fun video of trying to get Pliny the Younger, a very rare IPA where people from around the world fly to San Francisco (so they can go to whatever the region north of Marin is called) to visit the brewery to get it. — I've had it (and the more common Pliny the Elder). A friend had a dinner where everybody got a shot-glass-full. I absolutely hated it. It's just... bitter. There's nothing else to it (like most IPAs)...
While I'm not a fan of Pliny the Elder either, at least it had some other flavors to it (I think it was a pineapple-citrus flavor). But even so, this is a good video if you want to watch something fun (as are most of Adam's videos).
• Rox-ETTE! Unreal. Per Gessle is reforming Roxette after the tragic death of Marie Fredriksson? Good Lord, WHY? She simply cannot be replaced...
It won't be Roxette. Not even close.
• Generative Theft! I laugh at the idea that Generative AI is a victimless crime (much like I laugh at the idea that AI "art" is actually art). But that's not the most common line of thinking. That would be that AI "art" is not a crime at all. Despite the fact that it has been trained on material where the original creators were never compensated. Or likely never even told. Here's the entire nightmare in vivid relief...
Horrifying.
And now back to my regularly-scheduled Sunday cleaning.