resembles nonfiction Archives - Page 10 of 23 - Egregious

sara reads the feed

Low-key grumpy commentary on currentish events

2024-02-17 /

I am so off-kilter. Has weed withdrawal gotten worse in the 2-3 week mark, or is something else funky going on? There’s so many things going on, except being productive. Maybe PMS. Maybe grieving. Maybe cutting back on caffeine. I don’t know, I’m barely alive right now.

It’s been a minute since I posted an SRF. I’m going to try to just include links that are “current,” but I might have missed updates on stories – feel free to let me know if I’ve got something old here.

~

Mathematicians solve the “reverse sprinkler” problem. (Ars Technica) I didn’t know this was a problem, but it’s a pretty funny mental image.

~

Lindsay Lohan is getting a St. Paddy’s Day Netflix romcom. (TSFKA Twitter) I really liked her Netflix Christmas romcom, so I’m excited for this.

~

There’s going to be a “Roddenberry Archive” available on the Apple Vision Pro allowing you to walk around various Star Trek locations. (Reactor) If you can’t spend $3500 on the face brick, you are kindly invited to gfy.

(You can find pretty cool Star Trek ship-themed rooms on Steam, for free, if you have a plebeian face brick.)

~

I like very-prehistoric times. For “Out of Darkness,” which is a movie about paleolithic nomads, they made a conlang for their actors to speak throughout the film. It sounds interesting. (Variety)

~

There’s a GMO purple tomato that was created by mixing tomato DNA with snapdragon DNA. It’s a very pretty color and said to include some bonus healthy compounds that are sciencey wordy stuff. (NPR) They want to make people less afraid of GMOs, but I am not sure home gardeners are the people most worried about GMOs.

~

Crypto lost a ton of its shine when its advocates realized it is, indeed, very very traceable, and thus not a great way to hide illegal purchases after all. Of course we are now getting around to expecting large crypto miners to report their energy use (Ars Technica), when we should really be looking at kneecapping AI-generated energy use imo. Really we should be hitting everything like this. It’s madly exploitative against humans and the planet humans need to live on. Like, it’s not the time for this, even if it wasn’t bland and mushy (commentary of mine off TSKFA Twitter).

~

I still think Free Public College is a great idea, but people looked at the actual proposals from Warren and Sanders (Crooked Timber) and found that it would have pretty much just benefited rich kids as usual. Mostly because there was no real oomph behind the proposals. Entirely unserious. I guess this is the best the institution has had to offer leftist ideas in a while. :/

~

Her Hands, My Hands reviews When Grumpy Met Sunshine.

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The director of Prey, one of my fav movies of 2022, is getting another Predator-franchise film. (Reactor)

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In Ohio, a pastor was housing homeless people at his church. The state said “absolutely fucking not.” (NPR) The pastor said “but it’s my religion!” The state said “okay but you have to do a bunch of renovation because we can’t have you doing something imperfect that we are totally disinterested in doing ourselves.”

~

A Southern Nevada judge has been developing a court tailored toward working with autistic offenders. (NPR)

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Vaccines are rad. (NPR) There’s now an ebola vaccine that halves the risk of death, even if you receive the vaccine after becoming ill.

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Sneakily entertaining show that didn’t get traction is ending with four seasons + bonus episodes. (Variety) I watched the first season of Evil but fell off ages ago. It actually was quite good though.

~

I always like Psyche’s articles, and this one introduces “rhetorical figleaves” to add to the concept of “racist dogwhistles.” Blah on the subject matter but it’s interesting.

Comment

Sara Reine

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Diaries

even my third eye is sleepy

2024-02-15 /

Although I’m not actively practicing yoga atm, I’ve been studying it (as I am wont to do with random subjects). I like to study stuff by getting into communities and absorbing discussions.

I just saw someone talking about how he’s done yoga and meditation a long while, and after his third eye opened*, he just didn’t care about over-performing at his job anymore. He was in a really competitive field and started getting poor evaluations because he stopped striving to meet stressful goals.

(*A lot of people don’t like talking third eye or other spiritual/metaphysical concepts, but I argue it is only terminology, and we can call it whatever we want. I am not a literalist. The general concept here is reaching a kind of personal understanding that you feel like…everything makes sense. Self and universe in unity.)

I opened my third eye a while ago. Now I’ve been off weed for three weeks, it has not closed (yet?). I still have this deep, profound sense of peace gained from years of psychedelic meditation. I am just not interested in artifice, external goals, or performing.

I spent my 20s chasing goals but didn’t get satisfaction when I achieved them. Literally I did not celebrate hitting the New York Times Bestseller list. Didn’t celebrate when I hit my first million sales. Nor when I got an agent. Or any of the other milestones that seemed to matter so much when I was younger. It was everything for so long, and I spent so much time working on it, and then I realized it didn’t make me happy. I was so accomplished and i was never happy. I was just more scared.

I am happy now. And so I am satisfied with what I accomplished Back Then, more than I used to be, but…I did that, so why would I go back to chasing goals again? I know now that isn’t where happiness rests. Happiness is something I can only give myself. It’s a matter of surrender and presence in the moment. (Theoretically I could feel this while chasing goals but I haven’t figured it out yet.)

When I think about what matters now, it’s basically my family, of the furry persuasion and otherwise. It’s both scary to know that I can’t keep them forever (as losing my darling Annie has reminded me, yet again) but it’s also so satisfying to know I am with my family now and we are together and this moment is really good, and it doesn’t feel like anything matters beyond distributing snuggles and emotional support to mi familia. I’m just gazing at my dogs while I type this lol.

Obviously I’m still doing stuff. I am still writing a lot and have a couple trunked books. I’m gonna finish Fated for Firelizards because I think it’s important to complete some projects. I am drawing and crocheting constantly, too. But I’m not doing any of this because I wanna accomplish anything beyond the moment of engagement with it. I’m not sure how to tell people what they will get out of interacting with my art (my purses are chaotic, my game is weird, my reviews are silly) because I am just experiencing the creation of it.

I don’t feel unsatisfied, or like anything is missing. Art is just something I do because I am here and that is one of my most fundamental methods of self-expression and it’s rather like breathing, dreaming, thinking, or anything else I can’t stop.

The weirdest thing about this peaceful state is the fact that I seem to no longer have any relevance in the world, and the world has minimal relevance to me, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. Surely this is not sustainable, just existing peacefully.

I think the most hilarious side-effect of my shifted attitudes is that I give the vast majority of movies 5* because I just think they’re nice. lol. Did the movie establish and meet its goals? Was I amused? Five stars for you! And you! Five stars everywhere!

Comment

Sara Reine

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Rory Links

Rory’s links #3: Sound it out

2024-02-12 /

Welcome back to links! Only took me three months to come back! Let’s start by collecting my initial year-end wrapup posts, if you haven’t seen them. (I spent my time and energy on these for a while instead of linkspams.)

1. Movies pt. 1 (there will be a pt. 2 next month, along with Oscar posts)
2. Music
3. TV
4. Books
5. Video games

I felt late posting these, but I did manage to squeeze them in right before Lunar New Year, so maybe I was right on time.

A couple links on literacy: The Loss of Things I Took For Granted, a Slate column with a college professor that has watched literacy in their students drop over the last decade, and At a Loss for Words, about the flawed US teaching method of three cueing that has left kids and young adults struggling to read. The short version: sounding out words is a valuable skill.

A random hobby wiki page: Did you know DND 5e allows characters to get married for an armor class boost? Why did no one get fake married in the DND movie or Baldur’s Gate 3? Wasted opportunities.

Do you like space? Watch some documentaries and clips on NASA+. I think there’s Earth stuff on there, too.

Totally respect if you don’t want to click Substack links, but here’s one person’s alternatives to Spotify. I’m not fully ready to ditch Apple Music in 2024, but I agree with the poor ethics of using these services and plan to prioritize buying music this year, especially for smaller artists.

If you’re wondering why I’m bringing up Substack, the company has been really reticient about banning Nazis and white supremacists off the platform. (All the articles that came up when I searched were paywalled, like this Atlantic article, but they’re there.) Substack made a token reversal effort in January, but if we’re talking about digital ethics, moving off Substack is great to do in that regard. If you want alternatives: Egregious is WordPress + domain; Rory Learns is on Buttondown, Casey Johnson has talked on Bluesky about how She’s a Beast uses Ghost.

JP Brammer of ¡Hola Papi! fame has an interesting column about Latino identity in the LA Times. So many good lines in this one, such as “…language, nations and identity are all ghosts with teeth, phantoms that aren’t real until they bite you and draw blood.”

Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk’s X. I’ve limited my Twitter usage for a variety of reasons, both ethical and functional. In the past, I’ve also witnessed and been a part of online communities standing firm against profit machines that don’t care about people. No judgment from me (except for soulless billionaires).

This might be paywalled if you’ve looked at New York Magazine much lately: Apple Vision Pro Owners Are Struggling to Figure Out What They Just Bought. Sounds like Apple is selling expensive VR headsets to people too cool (or work-focused) to buy already-existing VR headsets. I think there’s space for work apps on VR; I think most people buying the Vision Pro don’t have the skill to use them. Still, if Apple wants people to promo the Vision Pro, they should give one to Sara, who has VR experience and wants work apps. Just saying.

Interesting YouTube videos recently (expanding the info box will allow you to click to a transcript, if you prefer to read):

FD Signifier’s short take on cultural appropriation pointed out that Travis Kelce started sporting a fade because it was a way to signal that he was dating Black women. (That was pre-Swift, of course, but he hasn’t changed his hair since that started.)

Slowly going through Variety’s latest Actors on Actors series, and I think Andrew Scott & Greta Lee’s is going to be tough to beat. Past Lives is my favorite Best Picture nominee so far (it’s on Prime Video right now), and I can’t wait to see All of Us Strangers, which I can pretty safely say got snubbed without even seeing it (but it’ll be on Hulu as of February 22nd, so I’ll speak more authoritatively about it then).

An essay about east Asia and buying luxury. I got into cdramas a few years ago and was surprised to see how many Chinese actors/idols had deals with luxury brands. It was helpful to get perspective on how economic/social trends coalesce within collectivist cultures in this way.

It’s hard to be remotely a US film nerd and not have heard about how Sofia Coppola ruined the Godfather Part III, but this essay put into perspective how much Francis Ford Coppola failed his daughter. It’s fascinating because only a nepo baby could have the career Sofia Coppola has after decades of (undeserved) attacks, but also, she never would have been made the face of the movie’s failure if she hadn’t been a nepo baby in the first place.

Creative ownership and copyright have been hot topics the last few months, between tech bros stealing from artists for their fancy autocorrect, Steamboat Willie entering public domain, and hbomberguy’s big plagiarism essay, to name three prominent examples. A different essay talks about some creative copyright infringement from the past and asks where we go from here. You should mostly watch it to see Turkish Star Trek and Filipino musical Batman, if you haven’t.

Comment

Rory Hume

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Diaries

the scientist withdraws

2024-02-11 /

What kind of oddball drug tests herself periodically through withdrawal to see when the THC has cleared from her system? This oddball, right here. I got a pack of THC drug tests when I quit weed.

These tests work the opposite from pregnancy/COVID tests: when you are negative for THC, you get two lines. So far I have only had the control line.

15 days after quitting, I got the faintest line – meaning it detected very very little THC. This was using my most dilute sample (end of day, very well-hydrated) so I suspect I’d have zero line testing again tomorrow morning, but! I am getting there.

Technically *any* line is a negative because these tests are qualitative (yes/no) not quantitative. Community apocrypha says you pee clean after a month, but I might get there sooner – pretty wild considering I was such a heavy user for almost a decade. But it also makes sense considering that I was cutting back the last couple months and mostly inhaling (versus edibles), which clears faster.

I’m still expecting to have weed-related cognitive issues for months, even when it’s out of my system. I am told I could remain intermittently foggy for almost a year. Also, THC binds to fat, and I’ve stored a bunch in my adipose tissue. It can release if I lose weight or exercise hard.

The process isn’t linear, is what I’m saying, but this is cool progress to experience.

I told my spouse that I was drug testing myself and I was like “I know it’s really weird, but–” and he was like “No this is just you having a scientific mind, like always, and it’s why I love you.” I love him. It’s true though — any excuse I have to run tests on myself, I will do it.

I haven’t been posting Sara Reads the Feed posts (or much else) mostly because this quitting process has totally thrown me off my groove. I’ve made mood-management, self-care, and adjusting to sobriety kinda my full-time job during this period, which is also how I got off nicotine and alcohol. It’s telling myself “this is the most important thing right now” and giving myself lots of space to Feel Stuff.

Of everything I have quit, weed is by far the easiest on me. Alcohol was emotionally easy because FUCK THAT STUFF, it is POISON. Nicotine was the worst. The most brutal withdrawal, the most intense cravings. But I did that! I am free. It’s awesome.

Still, here I am, babysitting myself again. Hopefully this will be the last substance abuse self-babysitting for the rest of my life. It’s funny how I feel Very Done With This but I am neither embarrassed nor regretful about what all I’ve done. That was just like…the road. You know? That is the road I was on. No hard feelings, cannabis, but we’re done now. Thank you for what we had together. Bye. Can’t wait to see two bold lines on the drug test.

Comment

Sara Reine

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Annie (2008 – 2024)

2024-02-06 /

I resent that other people have emotions. That they have weight. I resent that other people must need to take space during a time when I cannot hold the weight of my own emotions. I wish I didn’t have to be a mother when I’m very sad. I wish other people would be fine without me. I wish I could just fall into the donut hole of myself and stay there until I feel better. Once the weight becomes not so smothering.

~

Sixteen years ago I got a kitten. She came from a box behind a grocery store. She was riddled with mites and ticks. We took care of her very closely, our first medically complicated mammal-friend.

She grew up so loving that it was annoying. She couldn’t take no for an answer. I tried to give her to my sister so I wouldn’t have to keep dealing with that tortoiseshell attitude, but at the last moment, I got way too sad. I loved her much more than I recognized.

So she stayed.

~

I don’t want to remember everything because it just makes me feel sad.

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The cost of loving very, very much is hurting very, very much when something ends. And everything ends eventually. You know you’ve been lucky if it hurts a lot.

They say that our little mammal-friends give us the best years of our life, and then the single worst day of our lives.

~

This is the last of the cats my husband and I had before we got married. She was a little box baby found in a Walmart parking lot. We nurtured her through ear mites and ticks and watched her grow into the biggest personality. After I had Moonlight, thirteen years ago, little Miss Annie ate one of their baby bottle nipples and needed $3000 surgery to remove it. I spent a while calling her the other things I could have used that money for. “Little Miss Caribbean Vacation.” “Little Miss Used Car.”

When Little Sunshine was born, Annie used to curl up in bed with both of us and lick the baby’s head. She would put him down for naps like that. When he went through the grabby baby hand stage, she loved it and would position herself so that he could squeeze her face.

We chose not to remove a tumor that developed on her shoulder. It grew very aggressively, and she couldn’t compete with her siblings for food/water anymore, so we gave her the entire spare bedroom as an apartment. It helped her perk up a ton. She spent her last year in there getting multiple daily visits, where I would groom and tend her, and we would snuggle extensively. I loved her more in this last year than I have ever loved a cat. Something about taking care of someone who is sick becomes so intimate.

Her tumor became so large, it really bothered her. She seemed worn out. I made a little sweater for her with a webbing inside to hold crocheted cotton bandages, that way we could cover the tumor and the kids could still visit. But she was so tired. It was time. I miss her already.

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There is no dying without regret. It’s one of the things that makes it so hard. You can’t do it perfectly. It’s like how you can make a birth plan when you’re pregnant, listing out all your preferences, but your body and baby will decide how it happens. Death never comes at the right time. It’s never pretty. It is hard and unpleasant.

~

I do think we will meet again someday, somehow, in some form.

I truly believe that.

Comment

Sara Reine

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Rory’s 2023: TV

2024-02-05 /

TV and YouTube-esque video are the only media where I don’t get auto-generated stats about my year. (I still don’t have a great way to track YouTube watching, so I’m not recapping 2023.) But I did track TV via Notion in 2023, to somewhat messy results. I’m not happy with it. Unfortunately, I have no better ideas on how to track it right now, so I’ll probably do the same for 2024 (unless Letterboxd actually launches TV tracking and I don’t hate it).

Still, messy or not, I can talk broadly about the shows I watched.

Old rewatches

-Community: It’s hard to be Very Online at my age and not have seen at least some Community. During my early-2023 winter slump, watching in full was a good way to pass the time. It’s not an uncomplicated watch—many of the jokes and stances haven’t aged well, and there’s a whole lot of behind-the-scenes goings-on that I can’t begin to watch—but Troy and Abed are two of my all-time favorite TV characters.

-The Untamed: I started 2024 with a rewatch of this, too! Wonder who I have to bother to get a US physical release of this show so I can stop worrying about it disappearing forever. I think this is the only comfort rewatch TV I have at the moment, and I’m happy to have it.

-Big Love: I watched Big Love in full as it aired and remembered loving the ending, so I wanted to see how it held up on a rewatch. (Answer: I still like it, but the last season is largely silly and undermines it.) It’s fascinating how the show’s fiction is built around the myths of Mormon polygamy just as much as some of the realities; watching Sister Wives and looking up analysis of that has taught me a lot in that regard.

(Yes, I also watched Sister Wives and Shiny Happy People this year, but I’m largely refraining from commentary because TLC is completely morally bankrupt, and I would have to do a lot of grounding in greater context to feel like I’m even beginning to do that justice. I rec Shiny Happy People if you can handle it, though; look up trigger warnings first.)

-Interview with the Vampire s1: I made a point of rewatching when they had the episodes up on (HBO) Max temporarily. A quick marathon was nice after doing a week-to-week first watch. It worked great both ways! I wish there were more episodes, but the writers filled the time beautifully. Makes me regret how dull I found Mayfair Witches (but then, I’ve always been more into Vampire Chronicles).

Shows that finished in 2023

-Succession: A show that rushed its ending, but they were far from the only HBO show to have that problem in 2023. (I suspect the looming strike was also a factor.) Endings are hard, but even with everything, I found Succession’s last season satisfying and emotionally devastating in parts. I’m extremely pleased that this was the Sarah Snook-Kieran Culkin award season. My faves!

-Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: I never fully clicked with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was a fascinating revisit with a lot of the same people. In this case, age came with evolved perspectives on people and relationships. I like art that recognizes that we can grow and be kinder over time!

-The Crown: This was a comfort show for me in the first couple seasons, so seeing its writing degrade over time was a real bummer. (Nothing in the show topped 2×06.) I don’t regret watching the rest because I liked the production design and some of the casting. Plus, I felt like they were circling a monarchy-is-dying message in the finale that was interesting. But ultimately, it was a lot of unchecked bigotry and unchallenged regurgitation of palace narratives.

-Schmigadoon!: One of two shows I moved from my “may have more seasons” to “finished” column before I started writing this. It’s a shame because there was a lot of talent and fun here, but I’d be lying if I said season two didn’t capture me like season one did. Maybe it’s better that Apple canceled it before it became Ted Lasso? Still, disappointing to lose an outlet as an agoraphobic musical-theater kid.

-Our Flag Means Death: Here’s the second show I moved to “finished”. The trajectory this show took in my life is fascinating. I went from elated and telling everyone I knew about it as season one aired, to cooling on the show while waiting for season two, to sad while watching season two. It definitely didn’t deserve the obvious shoestring budget it was working off, and I loved all the ensemble. Here’s hoping I can watch Vico Ortiz in something else soon.

Continuing shows

-Heartstopper: I might not have a lot of comfort TV shows, but Heartstopper is one of my comfort comics, and I love its TV adaptation deeply. Season two was even better than season one for me, although I watched both back-to-back and had a great time. I’m so glad season three’s in progress.

-Good Omens: I love the Good Omens book, but I haven’t quite clicked with the show in the same way. S1 wasn’t a bad adaptation of the book, but it still missed something for me? And then s2 was forging its own path and worked even less. (This might have been because I didn’t get to watching the new episodes right away, and the online hype grew too big.) I’ll still watch the last season, whenever that happens.

-What We Do In The Shadows: Guillermo! It’s hard to keep a show fresh for multiple seasons, but I’ve loved Guillermo’s journey the whole way through. I think 2024’s going to have the show’s last season, and while I’m sad, I do think it makes sense and doesn’t feel overly rushed. Maybe this will be a comfort rewatch show when I have all of it. (Fingers crossed they don’t blow the landing.)

-Wheel of Time: I love this show despite myself? Some of it is that I imprinted on the book series as a young teen and seeing some parts onscreen will never not be a thrill. But there are several arcs that dragged, and several things that were iffy in the books and felt worse onscreen (sul’dam/damane, anyone?). All that said, I still felt a huge rush of joy watching the finale. Sometimes, you just wanna see the ride, even if it’s flawed. (It helps that the Forsaken are fantastic so far!)

Star Trek

This gets its own section!

-Lower Decks: I think Lower Decks is as good as any show can be in its fourth season. Which is really good, but definitely showing a little wear? I thought the Mariner arc was fun, and there were some highlights this season that were as good as any of the best episodes in other seasons, but they’re in a place where they kind of had to promote everyone, and that moves it away from some of the ensemble charm and core lower-decks identity that’s always been my favorite part. That’s pretty nitpicky on my part, though. I still enjoy every episode more than basically any other show on TV.

-Strange New Worlds: High highs and low lows. Lower Decks does a good job at channeling the 90s era Treks, and SNW does a decent job at translating classic Trek into the 2020s. I wish I could jettison the post-Enterprise grossness around military and ethics, and I wish it was remotely queer. Still, I definitely have fun most of the time. They had body swap! A musical episode! Red-shirt and time-travel shenanigans! I just wish it didn’t also have “eugenics is good actually” and “M’Benga can just kill whoever he wants”? But unevenness is also in line with original Trek, so…good job, I guess?

-Lower Decks on Strange New Worlds: SO GOOD. I can’t believe how well they translated animated comedy characters into a live-action show! Boimler and Spock blowing things up together was so fun, and I loved Mariner bonding with the crew. Possibly one of my all-time favorite episodes of Trek?

Comment

Rory Hume

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Don’t be shitty, don’t have thoughts, don’t have glp-1

2024-02-02 /

I don’t have much commentary right now because my brain has announced it doesn’t plan to function today. Trying to grab at thoughts is like trying to grab laser beams in drifting dust.

~

I’ve been listening to sahn this week. Her music is a chill, bittersweet vibe – one of love and loss. The mood is no surprise given that sahn is Chadwick Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward Boseman. Imagine a more aurally sparse and grief-focused Solange that sparkles like morning light through a prism. Much recommended.

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Florida’s manatees may be recovering. (NPR) We love a community of happy sea cows!

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North Carolina healthcare plans are cutting coverage for GLP-1 products prescribed for weight loss. (Ars Technica) These shots can cost a ton of money. It’s important to preserve supply for diabetics anyway, but I foresee a world (which we may already live in tbh) where being medically skinny is entirely a class indicator, and the movers and shakers of world culture no longer have any motivation to support body positivity. I suspect we will move away from body diversity in pop culture, basically, as the ruling class continues use medications and surgery to trim down, while poorer people have medicalized weight loss dangled at a distance and are judged for its absence. So you know, business as usual in a society without a flat hierarchy.

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Reactor (formerly Tor dot Com) shares a trailer for a National Geographic programme about Black people on the American side of the space race. Here’s the synopsis:

The Space Race weaves together the stories of Black astronauts seeking to break the bonds of social injustice to reach for the stars, including Guion Bluford, Ed Dwight and Charles Bolden among many others. In The Space Race, directors Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza profile the pioneering Black pilots, scientists, and engineers who joined NASA to serve their country in space, even as their country failed to achieve equality for them back on Earth. From 1963, when the assassination of JFK thwarted Captain Ed Dwight’s quest to reach the moon, to 2020, when the echoes of the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd reached the International Space Station, the story of African Americans at NASA is a tale of world events colliding with the aspirations of uncommon men. The bright dreams of Afrofuturism become reality in The Space Race, turning science fiction into science fact, and forever redefining what “the right stuff” looks like, giving us new heroes to celebrate, and a fresh history to explore.

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This isn’t the most recent article, but I’ve been saving it a couple days – it looks like we might have found Amelia Earhart’s plane? (NPR)

~

Lee Hutchinson was not amused by Elvis’s series, Masters of the Air. (Ars Technica)

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Tom Selleck talks about how he was in over his head while appearing on Friends – on the comedy end of things, anyway – and how Matthew Perry helped him with funny line readings. It’s nice seeing people reminisce about him with such love. (Variety)

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BookRiot shares 100 Must-Read New Books by Black Authors.

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Here’s a fun article about weird virus-like obelisks found in the human mouth. We still don’t seem to know all that much about ourselves, huh? (Engadget)

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I really hope Elon Musk is lying about sticking Neuralink in an actual human. (Ars Technica)

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Are we at risk of another major entertainment industry strike this year? IATSE and Teamster Talks Will Open With Focus on Pension and Health Plans (Variety)

In an unusual move, all of the “below the line” guilds — IATSE, the Teamsters and the other “Basic Crafts” unions — will join forces to collectively bargain on health and pension issues for the first week of talks in March, the unions announced Wednesday. […] Both contracts are set to expire on July 31. The unions have said that, unlike in previous years, they are not inclined to grant extensions. Bargaining with the major studios is expected to be contentious, though both sides took a significant hit last year.

~

I’ve been watching Will Ferrell shop around a documentary about a road trip with his friend, who is a comedian and a transgender woman. Netflix picked it up. Yay! (Variety)

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The VFX team reporting to James Cameron on the Avatar movies has voted to unionize. Good luck comrades! (Engadget) If you have to make 2020s Sigourney Weaver into a blue teenage catgirl for a billionaire’s satisfaction, I hope you get paid well for it.

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Reportedly, Justin Timberlake hates how Britney Spears’s older music keep beating his new music on the charts, and I just love it for him. lmao. (Page Six)

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I am genuinely upset about this one. Google Search is getting rid of its cached page feature. (Engadget) It’s one of the most useful features that still has me coming back to Google. With this gone, I don’t know why I’d use this search engine anymore, period. Weird to live long enough to see the “don’t be evil” company become the villain and then become too shitty to even be worth such a word.

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Sara Reine

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