Various and Sundry

A Savage Outlook on Work

A few weeks ago, I realized I could easily go back and re-watch a bunch of episodes of Mythbusters, which led to the natural rabbit hole of watching additional Mythbusters-related videos on YouTube which led to some of Adam Savage’s current YouTube videos originally recorded as a video/Patreon version of Reddit’s “Ask Me Anythings” (AMAs)… though, in truth, this seemed to be themed around work which, hey, works for my often work-focused Wednesday posts… This…

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Site Update

It’s a Blogiversary with Fine Pottery Among the Willows… or Something

Nine years ago today, I relaunched a personal website, something Internet denizens hadn’t seen since the days of Netscape Navigator. Depending on how you mark anniversaries, this will be the pottery or willow anniversary. Not as exciting as the Bronze Anniversary last year, but I guess folks decided that metals could use a break. As with previous versions of this blogiversary post, I’ll be looking at the posts that were popular over the past year…

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Various and Sundry

Beltalowda at the Bottom of the World

TL;DR? An Antarctic outpost has been shown to be developing its own English accent at what is, to my mind, a fast pace. You can read all about it in this BBC article by Richard Gray from last week. Yes, for those of you who got the reference in the title, this is sadly not some continuation of The Expanse. And for those of you who have not seen The Expanse and like hard sci-fi…

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Various and Sundry

The Hot Wing Torture Interview Method: John Oliver Edition

I’m a big fan of John Oliver’s investigative comedy on Last Week Tonight, so I’m happy that the show is returning this weekend. That does mean he’s making the rounds of media appearances, for example, he and Steamboat Mickey can be seen on Colbert from earlier this week. But the one that especially caught my eye was his interview for Hot Ones, which I confess I did not realize had been going on since 2015.…

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Various and Sundry

How Much Toil & Trouble is in the A.I. Bubble?

The hue and cry about “A.I.” –aka all sorts of machine learning and algorithm use– that exploded last year shows no sign of letting up this year. Not only that, this flavor of AI is creeping into all sorts of technology we use if it’s not there already. For example, iOS 18 will purportedly include a major overhaul including A.I. when it launches later this year. Now, my seven or nine regular readers might have…

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Various and Sundry

A Viewing Guide for Star Trek: Voyager

One aspect of Trekdom I discovered when I released my rankings of all the Star Trek series was how many people loved Star Trek: Voyager. Oh sure, I knew people were fans. And I became a bigger fan on my rewatch. But I hadn’t counted on the love. And just as with all Star Trek series, there are wonderfully Trekkish episodes to love here. So if you haven’t watched Voyager since the 90s — or…

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Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Mickey Mouse & the Public Domain: A Deeper Dive

I’ve already done a couple public domain posts this year, notably the one for Public Domain Day and one on Monday about how people are, predictably, already having fun with the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse which entered the public domain in the U.S. on January 1st. But if you just want to get deeper into the legal philosophy behind public domain and also how that particularly involves Mickey Mouse, I have a couple…

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Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Well, That Didn’t Take Long: Steamboat Willie Edition

I didn’t post this last week, but I actually saw some news even as I was posting about Public Domain Day last Monday: people aren’t wasting any time, Disney’s legendary legal ferocity be damned. One Steamboat Willie-themed Kickstarter launched on January 1st, there are memes aplenty (see image above), and –of course– there’s a horror movie. There’s plenty more in the works, as Sian Cain details for The Guardian (which also touches on the horror…

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Producing Various and Sundry

Now Playing: Detailed Public Viewership Stats for Netflix

I still should work on a wrap-up post regarding last year’s Hollywood Strikes, but one of the outcomes the unions were able to negotiate was visibility about the success of shows on streaming services. In what definitely feels like an effort to guide that narrative, Netflix released a heretofore unprecedented amount of data publicly in December regarding how many people watched what on their service. You can get a summary, watch a half hour press…

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Various and Sundry

TCM Remembers, 2023

Earlier this week, I did a post about the what we’ve gained in the public domain as of January 1st, “Public Domain Day” becoming something I post on. Thinking of annual posts, I meant to do this last month, so here goes: TCM does a great montage of folks we’ve lost in the previous year (see examples from 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 for the most recent entries). This time around, I decided to do…

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