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NO TIME? Watch the army/navy seal type guy getting on the boat, the Dr. Phil clip, and the kid from Ikea ranting (under comedy).


INITIAL MOMENTARY THOUGHT MIND THING

  • Can we have a conversation about why people with zero platform or meaningful agenda are so darned MEAN? I don’t get it.
  • Also, I’m pretty confused why I’m addicted to this British Man’s Youtube Channel, but here’s one of his short videos. Explain what’s happening to my mind as I am so happy:

  • Cheers to leisure:

“This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places – the activities that are intimately associated with boredom – are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeated stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained.” ? Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

PHILOSOPHY

  • I do get this and it is the most horrifying thing. Well, sorry to drop you into a life of pain and suffering:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko’s_basilisk#The_Basilisk

Upshot: Superintelligent AI is coming. If it becomes evil, it will wipe out everyone that didn’t help bring it into existence. If you don’t exist, it may recreate you to torture a simulation of you, and it’s possible we’re in one of those simulations. This is a gross over exaggeration, but even reading this means it’s opened you up to the potential punishment.

But I am curious about the best case scenario of this thought experiment about an evil artificial intelligence… namely if the Artificial Intelligence was *good*. The singularity is widely accepted by experts as “not if, but when”. If a friendly AI approached the singularity, that AI would be a reverse version of Colossus in the Forbin Project, or better yet a Skynet, in that it would look at humans basically as we might look at a dog. We’re a lesser species, and it would want to take care of us. In that, it would run endless simulations of how it might save us from ourselves and repair damage and manage our process of destruction. The probability we’re in one of the infinite simulations that the AI is running is more statistically likely than us actually living in our true reality. This is *right now*. I’d never understand the depth of philosophical intent with suggesting we’re in a simulation, but I get it now. I’m pretty grounded and don’t like to spiral with stuff like thought experiments, but I’ll admit this one has captured me. But the Rokos Basilisk enters some territory that is a bit much, but it’s fascinating. Where’s the movie adaption.

 

  • Heidegger would have dug Lovecraft. Also, this hits home and hard:

“One of the factors of anxiety in Heidegger’s philosophy is to know that the world is an empty and frightening environment. This fear is available, and through one’s human existence and how one feels, he reveals his location and life.” We don’t exist. The only way we exist is through death. Heidegger’s ideas about death…. Death Existence Inexistence Being. Find the power of existence through death: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405883116300077

 

 

SPACE or EARTH from SPACE!

  • Ingenuity fired up and working perfectly. Amazing. First flight on another planet!

 

 

  • Typhoon Surigae is stunning.

However: Typhoon Surigae intensified with surprising speed, bearing the fingerprint of climate change The storm went from Category 2 to Category 5 in a day, its peak winds catapulting to 190 mph https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/04/19/typhoon-surigae-record-intensity-climate/

 

TECH WE ARE GOING TO DIE AND SCIENCE HAPPENS WHICH IS NICE AND HISTORY ARCHEOLOGY IS SUPER

  • This is the most bonkers “OH CRAP WE’RE HERE NOW” 20 seconds I’ve seen in a long time.

 

  • There is no free will. Upshot: Our actions or decisions pre-date our consciousness or awareness of them.

Philosophers and neuroscientists join forces to see whether science can solve the mystery of free will. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/philosophers-and-neuroscientists-join-forces-see-whether-science-can-solve-mystery-free

 

  • THIS IS THE CORONAVIRUS DATA I AM HERE FOR.

I am so excited to see the data showing who did well, and who killed people. Upshot is CA is doing better than anyone in vaccine distribution and cases, vs the rest of the country riding a 4th wave. But the DATA FOLKS!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Cellphone-data-show-the-Bay-Area-remains-extreme-16109193.php

OMG THIS IS AMAZING: https://tracktherecovery.org/

The mobility stuff is wild. https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

 

  • A sex doll ranting about how horrible humans are and the end of the human race? YOU BET!

 

  • Tangentially related: The ethics of in-app purchases during sex with a robot:

“What, if any, are the real issues with robot companions? I worry that companies may try to take advantage of people who are using this very emotionally persuasive technology – for example, a sex robot exploiting you in the heat of the moment with a compelling in-app purchase. Similar to how we’ve banned subliminal advertising in some places, we may want to consider the emotional manipulation that will be possible with social robots”. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/17/ai-ethicist-kate-darling-robots-can-be-our-partners

 

 

  • The Gan2 Deep Learning procedurally generated AI art is getting smarter. Text input: “What a Wonderful World”, taking horrible things and making them beautiful. Not sure if that’s part of the prompt or not.

 

  • A few years old, but a tech that turns the movements of a glove into text from sign language.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140592-glove-turns-sign-language-into-text-for-real-time-translation/

 

 

 

  • But we should show caution in generalizing our complex history. I do however feel that hunter and gatherer faced such a difficult existence that their commune like group setting would be aided by cohesive and collectivist approach vs it being the beginning of 2001: https://www.livescience.com/640-peace-war-early-humans-behaved.html

 

  • This David Rubenstein interview with Didi Chuxing President Jean Liu is great, namely for the end few minutes. The company she runs is the largest ride hailing platform in the world. China’s Uber. The one thing that stuck out to me is what she said about life.  She said, while growing up, her father always told her that “Life is supposed to be hard”. I’ll tell you, prior the pandemic I would have thought it harsh. I’ll admit I probably could have heard it, and it would have helped.

The CASSI will be tested at the Wright Brothers National Memorial for three months.

 

  • Dr. Phil but everyone is Dr. Phil:

 

HUMOROUS THING THAT FIND ME LAUGHING BELLY JELLY

 

  • Nate Bargatze stand up is pretty clean, but brilliant, and he has Tennessee Kid and a new one on Netflix. There’s “Full Time Magic” too, but you need to rent it I think. Watch TN kid first, as it’s his earliest. Then Full Time Magic, then the new one. (Because he calls back to prior specials).

 

  • Literally correct, Bo Burnham. 30 seconds of truth. Also, his role in Promising Young Woman was SO FANTASTIC.

 

  • I’ll always remember Dan Harmon talking across 3 hours how he broke down crying when Harold Ramis passed away. He sat on the sidewalk in Burbank and sobbed. Funny, my favorite artist ever, Eyvind Earle, where one of his lives was as a Disney matte artist, got his start as a painter of house numbers in Burbank, so I imagine that sidewalk to be hallowed. But he sat there and cried about a stranger he had never met, and he didn’t even cry at his grandfather’s funeral. TL;DR, pop culture is powerful and important and impacting and it’s a bigger deal than we’d prefer.

  • Speaking of Dan Harmon, this might be in his top 10 rants:

 

JFC this guy is hilarious… and he likely started out of desperation. Funny stuff, thanks James!

 

  • A free Comedy Central set from Sam Morril. Sorta raunchy lite, but fun: “I’m not bragging, but I do pretty well in Tampa”

 

  • Steven wright forever?

 

CONTENT MAYBE TV MAYBE MOVIE OSCAR EDITION

 

  • Here’s the Oscar films and a few others we’ve seen. Minari and Nomadland are tonight and tomorrow.

Man, The Sound of Metal is just perfect. First time ever that something like the condition of not hearing, hasn’t been exploited or looked at a condition. Amazing. That final shot. Man. Riz is going to win, although Odom Jr was phenomenal in the next film: [Amazon Prime]

1 Night in Miami is a brilliant and timely exploration of the notion of what it means to be a man, and that just because you say “black men” doesn’t mean they’re not individuals with wildly disparate points of view, beliefs systems, and ways of processing reality and getting through existence. This details a fateful night where Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke meet as friends to talk about their lives, civil rights, and how they perceive the best way to navigate life. [Amazon Prime]

A Promising Young Woman is an interesting selection. It feels outside normal Oscar genre blindspots, but it’s a superb thriller that bends convention and does a bit of that “cabin in the woods” messing with the audience. [rental]

Druk / Another Round is a profound treatise about the existentialism of how we change, who we become and the ultimate struggle of the human condition to find balance in joy. [Hulu] JOKE: This movie is about someone needing to adopt a senior dog.

  • This is a film I need to recommend, but cannot in good conscious. It’s along the lines of Irreversible how it builds tension expertly, and uses practical effects in a horrifying way that isn’t gratuitous for the sake of pushing the story along. Cronenberg does what Cronenberg does, but David’s son might be more consistent than his pop. Possessor is a nearly unwatchable gruesome masterpiece. Sophisticated and fully competent but an intellectually terrifying and existential sci-fi horror film that is one of the most brutal I’ve ever witnessed. I cannot get it out of my head. Atmospheric, mystifying, so incredibly controlled as a director, and probing the boundaries. It reminds me of what it feels like to watch Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, etc. I had my sweaty palms clinging to a blanket almost over my face, most of the movie. [Hulu] joke: The detectives trying to piece this case together are going to be SO confused.

 

  • ORGANIZING DIGITAL LOCKERS AND WATCHLISTS!

This is the best discovery tool to find movies and shows, and aggregates your watchlists across all streaming services. The sort and filter features are amazing. This has helped us keep track and find stuff so well. I am sure google or apple will end up buying it, or something.

https://www.justwatch.com/

Movies Anywhere lets you combine all your locked content, ie movies in apple, amazon, google, etc. Whatever you’ve bought in Amazon ends up in your apple library, and vice versa. Quite convenient.

https://moviesanywhere.com/welcome

 

 

  • I don’t care that no one reads this. It’s super fun. But if you are reading this… knowing that “top favorite films” is a rotating carousel of dozens of films, what would you say right now are your favorites? Here’s a start on my “these faves are my faves and not on many fave lists”

Last Black Man in San Francisco
Spring by Benson and Moorehead
Harold and Maude
Annihilation by Alex Garland
Color Out of Space
Ex Machina also by Garland
Big Night

 

  • In the weeds of movie copyright legal disputes, but the fun question, “What 3 movies have featured 2 governors acting together”? Predator is one… what are the other two? =)

 

 

  • I really have to say, it’s unreal how botched the Fox run of X-Men is. My head hurts about all the salient, fully relevant runs of Claremont’s Xmen to modern times, and that they’ve fully destroyed every attempt other that the jester of Deadpool really leaking into the world, and that Logan is absolute fucking genius and it’s hard to understand how they didn’t fuck that up. With the rights and licensing issues of adapting “Old Man Logan” and all that spider man shit, I’ve got to say it’s absolutely insane that Logan exists. You can make a comedy super hero film with Deadpool. You can make a horror with a BOTCHED New Mutants attempt. Logan was the western. It was genius. But to think they botched Dark Phoenix’s material, as well as never intelligently utilized God Loves, Man Kills is INSANE. The idea that Fox didn’t mine Chris Claremont’s 1980s storylines for massively important, Watchmen like commentary is insane. So Disney signaling they’re good with R rated Deadpool hijinks, Alien level adult R-rated material, all makes me really excited. There was a rumor they would let a production of “Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe” to run, which would include all that Moby Dick and literary stuff. We’ll see.

‘NEW MUTANTS’ IS THE PERFECT END TO FOX’S FAILED X-MEN CINEMATIC UNIVERSE https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/new-mutants-killed-x-men

 

  • LOL in 2014 they had chimps watch the new Planet of the Apes film. They liked it and reacted to it!

Chimps Attend ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ Screening Two chimps watched “Dawn of Planet of the Apes” in a movie theater https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/chimps-attend-dawn-planet-apes-screening/story?id=24565266

MUSIC?

 

 

 

  • As Cat Stevens says, the most popular pop song ever written:

 

  • THIS BAND IS GODDAMNED CATHARTIC. I wrote a post about how The Doors are the first punk band. I agree with my conclusion shopping. I wrote a post about them, their influence on Iggy Pop, and my friend January, Jim Morrison’s best friend, jack of all trades, barber, and famous leather maker. Enjoy: https://unclefishbits.com/doorswerethefirstpunkband/

 

  • SERIOUSLY CAN WE TALK ABOUT THESE LYRICS? I’m nothing but pegging Stevens for predicting the future, vs predicating any nonsense. This is unreal, and why don’t people talk about it?

 

STREAMING MUSIC TO LISTEN TO

 

  • TIP YOUR SERVICE INDUSTRY PEOPLE PLEASE

 

  • We love Sofi and Tukker, and they’re in the back of a truck. It’s Sofi Tukker!

 

  • This guy rips:

 

VIDEO GAMES-LANDIA!

  • This Lovecraftian Crime Noir is supposed to be unreal, but the saga itself is also quite cosmic!

The Sinking City has been removed from Steam again: Frogwares issued a DMCA takedown request against the ‘pirated’ version of the game released by publisher Nacon. https://pcgamer.com/the-sinking-city-studio-and-publisher-fight-over-pirated-steam-release-in-competing-store-page-updates/

This goes into detail how the publisher pirated the devs work. https://frogwares.com/how-nacon-cracked-and-pirated-the-sinking-city/

I REALLY WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME THO.

 

  • RE8 looks to be no joke. I just beat RE7 too! It’s a trilogy, and Village is Part II:

 

 

SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND PEOPLE ARE WHY WE CANNOT HAVE NICE THINGS

 

  • It’s been 6 years since we lost Time Cube. Reminds me of Raleigh from Sublime. “You went for line drawings and you fucked up”.

Time Cube is gone https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9247913/time-cube-is-gone

But there’s always the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080709075217/http://www.timecube.com/

 

 

The account: PASSENGER SHAMING: https://www.instagram.com/passengershaming/

 

  • THIS IS HILARIOUS AND FUN:

VEHICLES OF MERIT AND NOTE:

I find these videos relaxing. And I pretend I am Dana Carvey doing Robin Leach.

 

  • In Resident Alien, the “Colorado”, ie British Columbia town, is a character. I love when inanimate things are huge aspects of a show or movie. I always remember the cars of Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul carried that over, but man Walter’s Aztec was something else. That being said, “The Sound of Metal” is sublime, the first time a “condition” hasn’t been treated as a “disability”, and what amazing performances all around.

So, speaking of the Oscar nominated Sound of Metal that will win Riz his first Oscar, DAYUMMMM that RV was sexy and a character. Whooooooooo boy. Airstream 345 Motorhome—>

More here: https://www.motorhome.com/lifestyle/rv-living/the-classic-ride-soaring-into-history/

 

There’s a Facebook group for them, in that link.

Malaise Motors Is Your Safe Space to Love Cars That People HateMalaise Motors Is Your Safe Space to Love Cars That People Hate

 

  • But, they weren’t all bad. I featured a Ferrari concept here a few weeks ago. This is a great list:

Memorable Concept Cars of the Malaise Era: The 1970s Weren’t Entirely Bad ‘Sucking in the ‘70s’ is not just the name of a Rolling Stones record album. https://www.automobilemag.com/news/concept-cars-malaise-era-1970s/

 

  • Malaise gets a bad rap… here’s more stellar neck turners:

https://www.gearpatrol.com/cars/a708895/best-cars-malaise-era-1970s/

12-Malaise-Era-Cars-That-Managed-to-Not-Be-Awful-gear-patrol-FJ60

12-Malaise-Era-Cars-That-Managed-to-Not-Be-Awful-gear-patrol-Renault-5-Turbo

12-Malaise-Era-Cars-That-Managed-to-Not-Be-Awful-gear-patrol-Alfa-GTV-6

12-Malaise-Era-Cars-That-Managed-to-Not-Be-Awful-gear-patrol-Lotus-Espirit-S1

12-Malaise-Era-Cars-That-Managed-to-Not-Be-Awful-gear-patrol-Ferrari-308-GTS

A good history on real malaise era non-standouts: https://www.fuelcurve.com/malaise-era-hoopties-small-cars/

 

  • Jesus this racing Aston sounds incredible.

  • These are *real* cars… and the Toyota concept’s steering wheel is a nice change of pace. Like an X-Wing. The Shanghai Auto Show!

https://www.thedrive.com/news/40248/here-are-the-most-exciting-new-cars-at-the-shanghai-auto-show

The Opal looks nice (below). The Zeekr and Opel look interesting, but this Evo looks great!

 

  • The first minivan! People are saying it’s time for a comeback vs SUVs:

Minivans are better at daily life than SUVs, and it’s time for a comeback They have a commanding view, three rows of seats, and even handle OK, too. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/04/heres-why-its-high-time-for-a-minivan-renaissance/

Answer: Batman & Robin, and Running Man. Jesse and Arnold!

 

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