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Torpedo baseball bats
Major League Baseball bat science doesn’t change much. Every so often there’s an innovation such as the Yankees and their torpedo bat designed by an MIT physicist.
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ChatGPT turning images into Studio Ghibli
ChatGPT turning images into Studio Ghibli
The trend kicked off pretty wholesomely. Couples transformed portraits, pet owners generated cartoonish cats, and many people are busily Ghibli-fying their families (I’ve stuck to selfies, not wanting to share with OpenAI my siblings’ likenesses). It’s an AI-generated version of the human-drawn art commissions people offer on Etsy — you and your loved ones, in the style of your favorite anime.
It didn’t take long for the trend to go full chaos mode. Nothing is sacred: the Twin Towers on 9/11, JFK’s assassination, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signing a woman’s chest, President Donald Trump’s infamous group photo with Jeffrey Epstein, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s congressional testimony have all been reimagined with that distinctive Ghibli whimsy (it’s not clear whether these users transformed uploaded images, or prompted the system to copy them). Altman has played into the trend too — he even changed his X profile picture into a Ghibli rendering of himself and encouraged his followers to make him a new one.
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HTML Review issue 4
The HTML Review is a literary magazine that exists only on the web and takes advantage of tricks web browsers can do to make text interactive or active.
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Severance is about slavery
An interesting take by Matt Pierce: Severance is about slavery.
Yet “Severance” and its parable about double lives has become hard to watch. Season 1’s subtler commentary about workplace alienation has given way a far more brutally explicit Season 2 plot, which is still being told as a “Lost”-style mystery: What is Lumon up to? There is no mystery about what Lumon is up to. The answer is on the screen in front of you. “Severance” is a titillating luxury TV show about slavery.
Part of the novelty of “Severance” is that the enslaver and the enslaved can share a physical body. Helena Eagan is heir to the Lumon corporation, an upper-level manager, and therefore the captor of the innies whose consciousnesses can’t escape Lumon’s offices. Eagan poses as her innie, Hellie R., to creep among the enslaved innie workforce without their knowledge. Helena Eagan exploits Hellie R.’s budding romantic relationship with an unwitting Mark S. to sleep with him.
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Airline safety videos become entertainment
I don’t fly often, so I guess I missed out on this train, but increasingly, airline safety videos are not filmed on on a plane.
… The airlines weren’t just making safety demonstrations. They were making entertainment, engaging in an arms race to make their safety videos bigger, better, and frankly: more ridiculous.
To track this evolution, I analyzed hundreds of airline safety videos spanning thirty years. And then, I took them apart. I dissected their locations, music, and celebrities.
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How Adolescence pulled off those one takes
Fascinating behind the scenes of how Netfix’s show Adolescence pulled off four one take episodes (steadicam & harness) plus seamlessly attaching a camera to a drone.
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A 500-year history of monsters
Natalie Lawrence goes through 500 years of monsters. Their origins often reflect the society and culture of the time.
At different points through history, individual monsters – both ancient and new – have had their moments in the limelight. They’ve becoming the emblems for specific events, conflicts and concerns that were troubling society at particular times.
The many topical monsters that have emerged over the past half-millenium can offer windows into an ever-shifting cultural psyche. What do they reveal about the zeitgeists of different periods?
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Dungeon Crawler Carl and the gleeful fun of LitRPG fiction
“You’re the main character of your story,” works well as a general lesson of self empowerment and a foundational aspect to role playing games (RPGs) such as Dungeons and Dragons. Literary RPGs take the other components of RPGs–combat and magic systems, creatures and quests–and weaves an adventure in narrative form.
Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series might be the best example of the genre, now on its seventh book. Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Donut, survive an alien invasion only to be thrust into a galactic survival game show with a sprawling cast of alien species and mythical monsters. As Carl and Donut progress through the dungeon, they level up with gear and magical items. What Dinniman brings to the genre is well executed humor, drama, and pathos.
Those well versed in pop culture will be rewarded as monsters and gear are referenced as the series progresses, sometimes with twists or subversive elements. There’s a reason for this, too, revealed in one of the books.
As the books progress, Carl encounters a different game being played in each level of the dungeon. Most of the time these plot devices work, but book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, involves a convoluted maze of trains, inordinate exposition is required to finish the story thus weakening the book. And that book pulls in numerous plot threads that come together in later books.
And with each level, the cast expands, a broader story of political intrigue grows, and existential themes of life, love, justice, compassion, and economic systems are brought to life in uncanny ways. A mentor acts as a guide but is an indentured servant to a brutal corporation. A Jurassic Park like dinosaur and the responsibility of fatherhood. A foul mouth head of a sex doll that exemplifies toxic relationships. A teenage girl that can command dogs but not her own trauma. And Carl, for all his John McClain gravitas, struggles to keep his humanity.
Are you getting Pulitzer Prize writing? No. But are you getting an escapist read that’ll distract you from real life?
Yes.
- Book 1: Dungeon Crawler Carl
- Book 2: Carl’s Doomsday Scenario
- Book 3: The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
- Book 4: The Gate of the Feral Gods
- Book 5: The Butcher’s Masquerade
- Book 6: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
- Book 7: This Inevitable Ruin
